I am currently working toward my ESL teacher certification, and I would like to think that the ESL classroom serves as a “safe haven” for language learners. The ESL teacher is the one who truly understands what challenges students face and is responsible for making them feel comfortable and supported. I believe ESL teachers need to show patience and compassion in order for students to overcome the feelings of insecurity from the new language ego. By doing this, language learners will build confidence and not be so reluctant to take risks as they attempt to communicate.
I would like to know how established ESL teachers encourage their students to take risks while focusing on accuracy. What techniques have teachers found successful in building students’ willingness to communicate?
Socioaffective factors
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Socioaffective factors
Last edited by MegCast on Tue May 22, 2012 3:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Sally Olsen
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If it is vital for you to talk, you will. Make situations where it is vital that they talk. Projects shared in groups allows them to talk in small groups and then talk to explain the project to others, even if it is a memorized talk and to explain a poster to another small group. Starting with pairs and then larger groups, the students build up their confidence. Games are a good way to encourage communication because the students have to learn and then explain rules and talk about their actions. You can then build on these skills to include writing and reading and displaying the knowledge in a variety of creative ways - making a newsletter, a movie, a photo book, a poster, a song, a play, a new game, a theatrical performance, a book and so on.
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RachelMHansen
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Sally-
I also am working toward my ESL certification; I begin teaching in September. (I will be in an Elementary school).
I like all of your creative ideas and I understand and agree with your statement: "If it is vital to talk, you will." My question is: How effective are group projects if the students are all beginners? Are these techniques that you use in a diverse classroom (native English speakers/varying level of ELLs) or do you use these in a bilingual classroom? The school that I will be teaching in has a bilingual program and many of the younger students do not speak any English at all.
I also am working toward my ESL certification; I begin teaching in September. (I will be in an Elementary school).
I like all of your creative ideas and I understand and agree with your statement: "If it is vital to talk, you will." My question is: How effective are group projects if the students are all beginners? Are these techniques that you use in a diverse classroom (native English speakers/varying level of ELLs) or do you use these in a bilingual classroom? The school that I will be teaching in has a bilingual program and many of the younger students do not speak any English at all.
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
I don't speak Arabic but we were given a sample lesson by a teacher to show that any language can be learned in groups. She gave us a well-known painting of a landscape scene that was like a photo (not abstract). It was just an outline of the real thing and we had to chose the colours to use - what colour would the river be and so on. We had the colour words in Arabic and the main features of the scene - river, tree, cloud. One student in each group knew a bit of Arabic , we had a tape of the written vocabulary and you could do that with pictures. We tried not to use our native language (English in our case) and we coloured in the picture crayons and then all the groups compared their pictures and explained their choices as best we could. The teacher then showed us the original and there was another discussion. Lots of laughing and bizarre suggestions and drawings of other things inserted but we heard those basic vocabulary words - about 20 over and over and all around us and we did learn most of them in about half an hour. Any project that you would do for science in Elementary school can be done this way. You present the vocabulary and maybe a verb to go with it - things that fly, for instance - and then step back and listen and prompt and encourage and supply words that they need - Oh, shoot. That's wrong. Oh no. Yes and so on - fillers for the conversation.
Keep the atmosphere fun, letting colour outside the lines in all the ways that is possible.
Then you can write up the experience in a story on the board and they can copy it or write their own in a book with a small version of the picture on top of the page. You can bring in other pictures with the same colours, other experiences of rivers and so on.
Keep the atmosphere fun, letting colour outside the lines in all the ways that is possible.
Then you can write up the experience in a story on the board and they can copy it or write their own in a book with a small version of the picture on top of the page. You can bring in other pictures with the same colours, other experiences of rivers and so on.