Teach English as a Foreign Language

The English language is so astonishingly widespread these days that it is hard to go anywhere in the world and not come across it. Go to Asia, Africa or Latin America and you are likely to come across English speakers at some point on your travels. If you have ever wondered why it is now so popular then perhaps the following points give us a clue.

More Teachers

There are now far more English native speakers then ever willing to go and teach the tongue abroad. This is a fantastic experience for the teacher and also very useful for the students. Of course, this point only really means that it is now easier to learn English, rather than telling us why more people want to do this than ever before. We need to look a little further for evidence of the motivation of the students.

Crossing Cultural Boundaries

The amazing appeal of films and music in the English language is definitely a strong reason for making people want to learn the tongue. If you have ever enjoyed a film or a song in a foreign language then it probably perked up your interest in the tongue for a while, didn’t it? Well, now you just need to imagine someone whose favorite singer performs in English or whose favorite actor appears in English language films. As well as giving them encouragement to learn the language this can also introduce them to foreign cultural concepts.

Technical Words

The fact that a lot of technical terminology is given in English all over the world also helps. In many places English is an obligatory subject in college when the student takes a business or technical related course.

More Immigrants and Potential Immigrants

A lot of people all over the world dream of improving their lives by moving abroad. Some of the most attractive countries in the world for immigrants are English speaking ones such as the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and New Zealand. Getting a good grasp of the tongue is seen as an excellent way to start to move towards fulfilling the dream of living in one of these places. Then again, many immigrants wait until they arrive to their new home and then look for the sort of English classes Vancouver and other cosmopolitan cities offer. The higher the immigrant population the more demand there is for this linguistic service, which is why when we look at English classes Miami is one of the top cities.

No prep time
Need some blank paper
Pre intermediate
5-10 mins

One of the most fun warm ups I do is making a group story – its best in smallish groups of 5-8 and is very simple.

Each student gets a paper and is allowed to write one word before passing it onto the next student. They then have to continue the story. Very simple but great for developing sentences under pressure as they have to absorb the sentence and generate more. This means quick thinking and trying to find a word which makes sense.

From the feedback you can work on grammar errors which crop up. Just take a sentence and write it on the board and ask for corrections.

I feel that the trick of learning English, or any language, is a communicative approach – that is to achieve goals other than the goal of learning the language! By this I mean a communication activity where the goal is to get information from someone and the language becomes the process or the method and not the goal itself.

This serves two purposes – distraction away from the boring task of learning words, grammar etc without a context, and a wider cognitive goal of having to think through a process, hopefully a real world communication situation, and deal with it sucessfully. This prepares the learner for actual contact and language use in daily life.

Anyways, not always easy to do with schoolkids who’s main motiation seems to be looking cool and mucking about – and with good reason – most of them won’t need English for several years yet -if at all? – so it remains abstract and just another lesson in the daily grind.

So for me the question is how to generate a bit of tension and excitement to wake them up and get them interested while trying to use the language as a goal orientated process.

Not easy!

Anyways, one game I’ve been turned onto by a colleague is using a toy bomb which ticks down. Here is a picture (Japanese).

I use this to get the kids to use language against the clock. Stand in a circle and then get them to ask questions in the target language or free questions if they are more advanced. The questioner holds the bomb, asks the question and passes it onto the next person who has to answer quickly and then ask another question.

If it explodes then that person is out or their team loses points etc.

Although not my ideal goal for real world communication it works on the students’ language in the following way:

Repeated verbal practice of the target language.
Quick thinking to formulate and answer a question.
Listening practice.

The time element adds the tension and keeps the kids excited, as well as increasing their cognitive processing speed.

If you would like to get one of these bombs then please contact me, or you can buy online through the rakuten.com website (if your Japanese is upto it!).

Teaching one on one as opposed to a group has advantages and disadvantages.

In this article I’ll give some explanation about how I deal with a private student as opposed to working in groups. There are advantages to both and also to taking language courses through online universities. In this case, my experience in teaching privately is what I will address.

In a person to person situation the best way I’ve found to allow the student to get the most out of the lesson is following this kind of structure:

Warm up: 3-5 minutes where you just ask the student normal conversational questions about their day or week and allow them to get into a “speaking English frame of mind” with familiar and easy questions. Starting off a lesson with this is helpful to the student as they should be able to practise basic communication and not be afraid of making any mistakes.

It also lets you find out more about them which you can use to bring in related vocabulary during the lesson.

Language intro: depending on if you’re following a textbook or using your own materials, and the level of the student, I often start with a picture speculation. Having a flashcard or picture which is related to the topic area you are studying is very useful – it gives the student a visual reference (tells a thousand words…) and directs their attention to the language you’ll be covering. This is very useful for low level students!

Use the picture by asking the student questions about it – What can you see, what are they doing etc. Try to elicit as much as possible from the student and note any errors for later correction.

If the student is a higher level then pictures aren’t that necessary. In this situation I try to bring in recent events or related topics from the warm up to direct the student’s attention to the language for the lesson.

Introducing the language points: After the student has gotten a general idea about the topic for the lesson you can introduce the language points. I always try to introduce a blend of grammar and vocabulary in this section, work on getting the student to understand it and model examples for the student. After they get the hang of it then I give them a chance to practice using their own ideas and feedback any errors with corrections.

Free use: After the input and practice stages I offer students the chance to integrate the new point into a wider conversational setting. Picking up on topics found during the warm up or from previous lessons I encourage the student to try the new language in a natural conversational setting.

This isn’t always easy to do naturally so I always have on hand a couple of ideas for role plays which places the student in a situation where the language can be used.

Roleplays are a lot of fun, especially in groups, but one on one they can really help the student get to grips with the language.

Setting up a roleplay clearly is essential. They student has to understand the situation and be familiar with it to some extent so you’ll need to accommodate their culture and experience into deciding what type of situation to use.

Setting up can be done a lot more easily with lower level students if you have a couple of pics or a quick drawing to help explain the situation. Pics really are your friend!

Some roleplay situations I use are:

At a party (can be used for lots of common social language like greetings, asking about jobs/lifestyle, asking people out on a date or to go out together, register and casual/formal language as well as lots more).

At a shop etc – the obvious choice for business interactions etc.

At the doctors/hospital/chemist – obvious for medical language

On spaceship Earth – either student or teacher is an alien visiting Earth, or Human visiting an alien planet. Good for a range of activities from “What’s this?”, question formation, and explanations of simple things to talking about culture and customs etc.

During the roleplays I encourage use of the target language through modelling and then take note of any errors. When the role play is finished I offer feedback and error correction, first asking the student to try to correct the error themself.

Depending on performance I either start another roleplay or reverse roles or go back over the lesson to ensure that the student understands the concepts. If there is enough time I’ll try to do another quick roleplay to check if the point has been absorbed.

This lesson structure is very similar to a group one, but the main difference is in delivery – you can focus all your attention on the student’s language and really encourage them to open up and talk more freely.

Type: scoring system
Setup: 20mins to make the cards
Length: NA.

This is a scoring system which I invented around Halloween time.

If you’re running a competitive game with a score then you can spice things up with life or death cards.

The cards comprise a set of point cards (-20,-10,0,10,20 etc) as well as two special jokers a typhoon and a tsunami.

Typhoon means that all the scores from every team are swept away, and Tsunami means that that team’s points are given to another team.

There are also life cards (I use a picture of a baby) and death cards (a suitably comic skull or crossbones etc). Death card means that the chooser can “kill” someone on his/her own or another team. Life card means that they can bring anyone back to like, if they wish.

If a team member wins a point in the game you are playng, they have to take a card to score, and accept the consequences of the card they picked.

Although this is a little evil, the games get really fun when you have teams full of strong rivals, and the chaos when the last card picked is Typhoon and all teams points are gone is awesome. Consistantly getting minus points is really fun too.

I typically have 4 death cards and 2 life cards in a pack, but you can vary this.

You can find pics of babies and skulls etc freely on the internet. I’ve laminated my cards to ensure durability.

Type: verbal, written, concept check
Setup: 1 min
Length: NA.

This is a fun game which can be played in a variety of ways, is quick to setup and can last a while. The idea is to freely associate words going round the class and can be used to concept check vocab as well as spelling and pronunciation.

Start: Introduce the idea of free association by writing a single word on the board and then add a couple more to show that the words have a relationship. I usually use my name, then add teacher, English etc.

Once they get the idea do a trial run by writing another word and inviting free association from class members. Once everyone is onboard you can start the games!

Get students into groups and give them different coloured chalk per team. Divide the board into as many groups as there are, and then instruct the first person in each team to write a word.

Then the first writer has to move across and write an associated word on the other team’s section, once written move on the the other team’s and so on in a round robin style.

Once they have written on each team’s section and are back to their own team, they hand the chalk over to the next member of their team and start again. Great chaos and screaming, add tension with a time limit.

When its over, check associations and spellings – sometimes you’ll get a funny association that has no match and it’s fun to find out what was going!

Another way is to give each student a piece of paper and then have them all write a word at the top and when you clap your hands they pass it on to the left or right. You can double clap and that means reverse direction. Again great fun if you start slow and build up speed!

You can also do the same thing verbally with students in circles going round, or add a ball which the student passes to their friend (or enemy) to randomize the process a little. Can be great fun if pronunciation is off and the association starts going wild!

When the dust has settled give feedback on pronunciation or spelling or relationships between the words (clarifying meaning and concepts).

Bingo is always a favorite and is useful for filling up a few minutes at the end of a class.

Here are a bunch of premade bingo sheets just print out and cut up.

You can also make your own bingos using the bingo generator!

They include single words and also phrases.

What did you do? – phrases in the past tense.

How often?

How was your weekend?

Minimal pairs

Places

Pizza toppings

Hey

My name is Keith and I’ve been teaching English in Japan for several years.

I know there are thousands of sites out there which have great resources for EFL/ESL teachers, but I wanted to start my own as a place where I could share the materials and experiences I have gathered and hopefully make something useful.

I’m interested in a variety of methods to teaching English, and I’m learning more and experimenting everyday. Specificially I’m into using technology as a way of making English real for people, and there is now so much opportunity for interaction with the internet.
I hope you find this site useful, and if you have anything to share please register and use the forums.

Cheers

Keith