I’m sure everyone reading this wants to make their ESL classes as awesome as possible. Any teacher would and even those who are abroad for just one or two years still want to have great classes and help their students learn English. But teaching isn’t an easy thing to do and it’s often the case that foreign English teachers walk into the classroom at their first job with absolutely no training whatsoever.
Help is here! If you want to make your ESL classes as awesome as possible, keep reading for my top 10 tips.
How to Teach English-Jeremy Harmer
Read this book. How to Teach English is like the ESL Teaching Bible and I actually find it shocking that not everyone has read it. It’s perfect for the newbie because it just gives you the straight goods, minus all the fluff (kinda like this blog?). Plus, plenty of practical things that you can use directly in your classrooms.
Student-Centred
It can be kind of tempting when you’re first starting out to think that teaching involves you being the center of attention all the time. This is called teacher-centred learning or teaching. For language acquisition, this isn’t the best way. Instead, get on the student-centered teaching wagon and try to get your students talking as much as possible. I usually do a little 2-3 minute grammar or vocab lesson, quickly set-up an activity and let the student go at it with their partner or in a small group. Then we do a very quick wrap-up as a class. For more details about student-centred teaching see this post over on my other blog: 5 Tips for Making Student-Centred Classrooms.
Mix It Up-Activities
Just because game X or activity Y worked for you last class doesn’t mean that you should use them in the next one, and the next one. There are a million and one things you can get your students doing so vary it up to keep things interesting and engaging. Think about it like this-when you work-out, if you do the same thing over and over, your body will adjust and you won’t make fitness gains like you used to. Learning a language is the same and students need to be challenged with different games and activities in their ESL classes. For lots of activities, look in the menu bar at the top of this site under “adults” and “kids.”
Mix it Up-Partners
Students often end up sitting next to the same person each class but this isn’t ideal for a whole lot of reasons such as errors becoming entrenched, the terrible student burden not getting spread around everyone and it doesn’t reflect real-life where you have to talk to a variety of people. I teach my students twice a week, so the first day I let them choose their partner and the next time I assign them a random one.
Review Often
Languages are learned through repetition and if you do something only once, your students will likely have a pretty difficult time remembering it. Help them out by reviewing throughout the semester.
Use a Textbook
Textbooks are written by smart people, edited by professionals and ultimately published by companies that have been in the business for years. Their plan for how to teach students English is quite likely going to be better than yours, especially if you’re a very inexperienced teacher. Just use the book, but be sure to interject a bit of your flair into it. In my opinion, the best 4-skills English textbook ever written (for high-school students/adults) is 4 Corners. Trust me. You won’t regret using this one.
Professional Development-Do It
The best teachers are those who are engaged in developing themselves professionally. You can do this in various ways such as starting a blog about teaching, reflective practice, or attending meetings and conferences for English teachers. Here’s a post where I talk about this: Professional Development for ESL Teachers-Start your Own Website.
Pay Attention to the Small Stuff
Sure, the big things like designing a curriculum or evaluation are important but you often won’t have any control over that. Instead, what you can control is the small stuff so be sure to get it right. I’m talking about things like eye contact and avoiding a “dead-zone,” making the best use of class time by not doing “fillers,” and not putting students on the spot in a way that can embarrass them.
Avoid the ESL Teacher Burn-Out
It happens to the best of us. We teach too many classes or have really unmotivated students and before we know it, we’re totally burnt out. Avoid it by having very strict boundaries between home and work and also by having hobbies and friends outside of work. And never forget: a bad day at work does not mean you are a terrible person, or a terrible teacher. You can bounce back tomorrow! See this post: Korean University Students-Your Problem is not my Problem.
Graded Language-You Should Use It
I’ve seen plenty of teachers over my years teaching English in Korea who don’t use graded language. They just speak to their students “native-speaker” style and think that their students should either sink or swim. They usually sink, which really isn’t helpful for anyone. Instead, you should try to speak at a level that is just slightly above the level of the students, in terms of speed, grammar and vocabulary.
To Sum It Up
It really is easy to make your ESL classes awesome by following these simple tips. Good luck and leave a comment with what you’re going to do to make your ESL classes even more awesome in the coming week.
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