Teacher Discussion Forums

I've been teaching Special Education (K-8) for the past 7 years and just started teaching Adult ESL last month...I have 15 Beginner students, all women in their 20's and 30's, and all are Mexican immigrants....the difficulty is in knowing exactly what to teach.....I have tried the basic grammar, punctuation, conjugation approach but that did not go over very well......I'm getting a lot of feedback that I need to do more theme-based stuff - like spend a week on "Jobs" where we role play interviews, work conversations, etc and learn new vocabulary (salary, shift, paycheck, boss).......but am not really sure how to go about doing that...I speak just "functional" Spanish and so communication and feedback are difficult...

I teach in a similar situation and have had great success with Martha Lane's PEACE curriculum.
You can download it at www.caliteracy.org-click on the ESL link.

The focus with this kind of population needs to be language-not teaching *about* language. They probably don't have the educational background to understand direct teaching about grammar. Terms like *simple present* or *third person singular* mean nothing to them.

I focus a lot on vocabulary and survival English-picture dictionaries are great and usually come with teacher guides to expand activities.

Do you have any TESL certification and/or training? If not, I suggest getting some.