Teaching Tips
ESL / EFL Lesson Planning 01
In the first of a series of videos, we look at the most effective way to plan a lesson to ensure you stay on target and make sure all the pieces fit together.
These videos will replace the podcast as my primary media, so feel free to subscribe.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbariMdEytYHdmkpXiILnQ/videos
23 – Should we DE-ACCENT our students? – Sam Hellmuth
THIS IS THE LAST PODCAST (for the foreseeable future).
I’m hardly prolific with podcast releases but this will be the last one for the foreseeable future. I’ve decided to concentrate more on the YouTube side of things.
YouTube Channel – www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbariMdEytYHdmkpXiILnQ
The channel will have materials, concept videos and general useful teaching stuff! Please do all the usual YouTube stuff so I can be more visible on the site and you know when new videos are released (plus, it’s a digital pat on the head for me).
With Sam Hellmuth of York University, England, we think about these questions:
- With language acquisition, which comes first – production or perception?
- Why do your students sound angry when they aren’t?
- How much does accent affect comprehension?
- Can we learn to ‘de-accent’?
- Should we bother teaching English stress patterns?
Sam smoothly mixes theory and practical tips with some excellent real-world examples. Something for everyone.
We make a few references to the Lingua Franca Core, which is a topic that was covered way back in episode 4. If you need a refresher, you can find it here – https://mastersoftesol.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/04-questioning-the-native-english-norm-jennifer-jenkins/
Sam Hellmuth York University Bio – www.york.ac.uk/language/people/academic-research/sam-hellmuth/
Sam Hellmuth Twitter – twitter.com/samhellmuth?lang=en
Sam Hellmuth Site – samhellmuth.com
Masters of TESOL website – https://mastersoftesol.wordpress.com/
Masters of TESOL – @MOTcast
07 – Why your ESL lesson bombed – Tom Randolph
In this episode we hear from TESOL methodology trainer Tom Randolph about some of the reasons ESL / EFL lessons don’t succeed, and how to avoid it happening. I chip in with my own experience as a teacher trainer based on the classes I have monitored that didn’t go well.
There’re plenty of solid tips and even activity ideas in this conversation, so there’s something for everyone, regardless of experience.
I’d love to hear your ideas too. Don’t be shy!
Build the suspense in team activities
I’m currently teaching at an intensive winter camp for adults. Each week there is an activity where the groups should break into teams and complete a series of activities, often in different locations on campus.
As this requires scores to be consolidated from different locations, I hit on the idea of how to do this in the most efficient way, whilst simultaneously keeping the students involved and excited.
The dangers of committing to one technology in the classroom – Evernote’s Penultimate
In the modern classroom, there can’t be many of us who only use the white/blackboard and the textbook for every lesson. To a greater or lesser extent, the convenience and liberating nature of the digital age has become part of our classroom workflow. For more than two years now, I have shunned the board and used Penultimate (since bought by Evernote) on an iPad, put through the VGA connection to the projector. It was great, basically like a digital board where I could write but have other media baked in too. I had all my textbook pages scanned in there, I could write on the scans and add new blank pages for corrections. It had this great ‘drift’ feature that allowed you to zoom in and the zoom focus would follow at the speed you wrote. Best of all, what was projected was just the page itself, so no one in class could see me changing pens/colours or zooming in for the drift. It wasn’t perfect, but it was easily the best of the ten-or-so note apps I’ve used. You notice I am using the past tense here. Unexpectedly, a few weeks ago, the app was updated. With the new changes, Evernote didn’t so much drop the ball as jettison it directly into the sun. Read the rest of this entry »
Masters of TESOL 