How to choose the right materials

Have you been asked to pick up the materials for your school or your private tutoring students? Do you know what to look for when making this kind of decisions? If you don’t, please continue reading this week’s blog entry! If you do, please read it too and make sure you got it all covered!

Language learning process is never static, instead it is dynamic. Therefore we need to the help of instructional materials and teaching aids. Instructional materials could be text books, and lesson plans. Teaching aids include visual aids, audio aids, and audio visual.

In order to choose the appropriate materials, we need to figure out the general objectives and specific objectives of teaching English. For example, grammar focused, or skills of reading, comprehension, writing and conversation.

The characteristic of good instructional materials should include the following:

1. Supplement of Oral Teaching

During conversation class, the verbal statement made by teachers sometimes might not help clarify the view points. A pre-stage visual/ audio material might help students to get into the situation better. Student can also review and practice at home with it. Also, the audio/visual teaching material can sometime serve as a mood-changer in the classroom and keeps your students excited.

2. Effective Learning Aids

Audio Visual aids involve more than one sensory organs of the learner. By using multi sensory organs, it helps improving retentiveness and making learning permanent.

3. Time and energy saving

When teacher only demonstrates one skill such as verbal, it will take longer time for students to understand the content. Sometimes visual aids such as flashcards or pictures will make students understand it easier and faster. It saves more time and energy of both teachers and students.

If you enjoy this week’s teaching tip, then you have to come back! Because we are going to talk about how to pick up the right text book!

Test Anxiety

Teaching and testing often goes hand in hand. (sadly….) For some students, test anxiety is a real-life nightmare, especially for big exam like TOEFL. As a teacher, it is important to train your students how to get over their test anxieties.

Here are few tips that can help easing the anxieties:

1.      Know you material

Don’t let the test/exam be a total surprise. Help your students to be familiar with the materials, question formats, testing tool---score cards, computer, etc. The two-hour exam is not the place or time to figure out how to use a mouse.

2.      Learn actively, not passively

Students are more comfortable taking the traditional roles---passively taking notes. However, you must force your students to be active learners. Memorizing old examinations will not help the students at all. Involve your students in the hands-on running of the class, so they are never sitting down for any length of time. Active learning needs active movement!

3.      Set goals

Test requires dedication and diligence. You should set up standards with your students. Standards could include time, score, etc. These standards can help your students to be more familiar with the test and also easier to track their progress!

10 Easy Tips on Teaching Grammar Pt.3

7.  “Teach idioms, reductions, and slang to intermediate level students.”

Most of these idioms, reductions and slang did not follow the grammar rules. In order to avoid any confusion, it is better to teach these after they reach a higher level. Students need to understand the rules before they learn to break it.

8.  “Have your students peer-edit each other.”

Have your students edited each other’s work, it can train them to proof-read. Furthermore, it can remind them where to look for mistakes or not to make one. Another advantage is that it won’t overwhelm your students with sea of red marks---if your students made lots of mistakes. When they edited it before the paper get to you, they would have the chances to correct their mistakes.

9.  “Bring a concise English grammar handbook.”

Tired of students kept asking you the same questions and they just couldn’t remember it….. I know I am! Having an English grammar book in class provides the opportunities for students to look up the answers themselves. By doing so, your students will remember and actually “own” the answer.

10.  “Never say you don’t know the answer to a question a student has about grammar.”

By saying “I don’t know” devalues your position as a teacher. The best way to handle a situation like this will be “This is a good question and let’s deal with it next time,” and then go home, do your research, find out the answers. Next day give a mini 5 minutes lesson on the subject.

One more week till Global TESOL college’s amazingGrammar specialization courses! Hurry up! Sign up and learn more about teaching grammar!

“I Decided to Just Teach”

Here is an article I read the other day. It is something we teachers should all ponder on!


“I Decided to Just Teach” by    C. M. Thurston


A teacher I know, who wishes to remain nameless (presumably out of modesty), started teaching last year at a school where everyone was worried about improving state test scores. Teachers were fussing, fretting, and doing everything they could think of to help their students perform well. They structured lessons around what was going to be on the test. They gave lessons in test-taking. They gave practice tests.

The teacher I know decided that she had entirely too much to worry about, as she was teaching new subjects in a new grade in a school new to her. She was overwhelmed with responsibilities. “I just plain didn’t have time to worry about the tests,” she said. “I decided to just teach.”
At the end of the year, guess whose students made the most progress in the school, as measured by the tests?

Hers.

Okay, maybe she just lucked out. But maybe she succeeded because she did not focus on improving test scores. She focused on teaching and learning. Instead of boring her kids with practice tests and endless worksheets, she focused on keeping her students interested and involved. Maybe, just maybe, her approach is a sound one—to just teach.

It’s something to consider.

Cheryl Miller Thurston, Ideas That Really Work!  (Colorado: Cottonwood Press Inc, 2009) 13

10 Easy Tips on Teaching Grammar Part 2

Here are more tips on grammar teaching!

4.        “Once students have acquired enough language to understand the process, start teaching them the rules so they can apply them for themselves.”

Before they acquired enough language skills, your students won’t be able to understand the rules. Some more tangible grammar rules such as is/are, he/she etc. can be taught at beginner level. However it could be confusing to explain to your student the difference between adjective and adverb. A teacher’s role is to facilitate the process of learning. So the more students understand, the better they are able to tell when the form and the function are used.

5.        “The higher your students’ speaking abilities are, the more they need to study grammar.”

Some teachers/ students* believed their advanced students should be free-talking, conversational only class. However, we never really acquire our first language completely, so there is no point in a student’s life where he or she needs to stop learning.

* Many advanced students often request conversation class to maintain their English abilities. Though they might only request free talking, it is important to combine grammar into conversational class. Since these students are more advance, they would appreciate and understand the grammar rules better.

6.        “In a classroom setting, never correct a student’s error more than twice.”

Some students might feel embarrassed and shut down. This happens quite often in Taiwanese classroom setting, since “face(面子 mianzi)” is a key factor in the culture. If the student is still making the same mistakes, move the error correction into a much more private setting. Language leaning should be taught in a safe and comfortable environment.

If you enjoy this week’s tip, please leave your comment and come visit us again next week!

You may know the rules of grammar, but do you know how to teach them effectively?
Global TESOL College Grammar Specialization course can show you how! Sign up now!

Teaching Grammar Specialization    TESOL文法師資班

Tuesday ~ Friday: April 24th ~ 27th

星期二～星期五 : 早上10:00到下午5:00

Teaching Adolescents

Do you have any teenager students? They could be quite a handful sometimes. If you want to be an effective teacher for adolescent learners, first you have to understand their characteristic.

From my GLOBAL TESOL COLLEGE Adolescent English Specialization Training, I learned that “Adolescents do not approach learning with as much wonder and interest as children, yet they are not like adults because they also do not approach learning with as much focus.”

Adolescents and children share the following characteristics:

1.      The need to be physically active in the classroom.

2.      Require reminders to stay focused in given task.

3.      Sense and language through exposure.

4.      Need to have firm and fair discipline and structure to follow.

5.      Humor and games are important within classroom settings.

Do you want to know what characteristics adolescents share with adults? Come read my blog next week and learn about it more!

10 easy Tips on Teaching Grammar

Are you constantly struggling with teaching grammar? No matter how hard you try, your students just don’t seem to grasp the concept or remember it. If you have these troubles, then come read this week’s Teaching Tips on teaching grammar!

From my GLOBAL TESOL COLLEGE Grammar specialization training, I learn that there are easier and more effective ways to teach grammar! Here are 3 easy tips for teaching grammar:

1.      “Don’t try to teach formal grammar unless you have EXTREMELY motivated learners. Grammar should be taught in conjunction with something else.”

I can still see my students’ faces diming when I said “It’s grammar time, please take out your text book.” Textbooks, worksheets somehow have the magic power to turn your classroom into a lifeless dessert. Sometimes even I got bored myself teaching it. Try to combine your teaching with other activities such as games or role-play. When students think they are engaging activates, they are more focused and easier to remember the lesson.

2.      “When correcting students, never phrase what you are saying in a negative form. It is easier just to rephrase what you are saying with the CORRECT grammar inserted.”

This technique could avoid your students feeling discouraged and shamed in front of the class. Students will realize that that what they said and what you have said are not the same thing. However, from my personal experience this method only works with more advance students or students who have better perceptions. There were times when students could detect the differences.

3.      “Don’t overwhelm your students with the correct terminology. Use simplest terms possible”

If your students are younger, instead of telling your students that they will learn about VERBS today, you can easily replace it with ACTION WORDS. In this way, it is in a more familiar context for them and they would feel less intimated. If they are more advanced, you can use verbs and noun without scaring them but you should use verb-ing instead of gerunds, helping verbs instead of auxiliary verbs.

Here are this week’s teaching tips on teaching grammar.

Come back next week for more tips on teaching grammar!  

More on American Football

If you enjoy my last blog post or want to teach your students more on the topic of American football.
Here are two useful website that I came across with:
elcivics.com
This website has great flashcards that explain all different parts of the game really well. They also have four different types of worksheet for exercises. Great for game time!

eslgo.com/
This one has a fantastic grammar lesson plan using NFL reference. The lesson plan might be a bit old (2002)but the general concept of the lesson plan is still solid!

American Football Lesson Plan: Vocabulary

Super Bowl just ended, did your favorite team win?
Super Bowl is one of the most important sports events in America and has became the culture icon for American pop-culture.
Why not teach your students something about American football ?

This lesson plan includes the following vocabulary:

stadium 體育場

---a large building with seats for sports fans and a field for players.

 “The largest stadium in the America is the Michigan Stadium.

goalpost 門柱

---one of a pair of posts (usually joined by a crossbar) that are set up as a goal at each end of a playing field.

“In order to win the game, each team tries to kick the ball into the goalpost.”

referee 裁判

--- someone whose job is to make sure that players in a game obey the rules.

“My father will be the referee for tomorrow’s basketball game.”

quarterback 四分衛

---an important player in the sport of football who gives instructions to other players.

“I am the quarterback of my team.”

offense 進攻

--- the part of a game such as football that involves trying to score points.

“They’re a team that has always been stronger on offense.”

defense防守

---the players in a team game who try to prevent the other team from scoring points.

“Our defense team is not as strong as our offense team.”

touchdown 底線得分

--- An act of carrying, receiving, or gaining possession of the ball across the opponent's goal line for a score of six points.

“The football fans screamed out in joy after they saw their favorite team scored a touchdown.”

end zone 得分區

--- the area at the end of a football field where you have to take the ball in order to score points.

“After he received the ball, he ran as fast as he could to the end zone.”

fumble 漏接

---to try to hold, move, or find something using your hands in a way that is not skillful or graceful. In football, it means dropping the ball.

“He fumbled at the goal line.”

Super Bowl 超級盃

--- The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League (NFL).

“Super Bowl is one of the biggest sports  in America.”

Download American Football Lesson Plan: Vocabulary

Teaching Grammar

I used to teach all the subjects in my English school. The subjects ranged from reading, writing, listening, grammar, phonics, to science, math , and project. Among all these subjects, grammar is the least favorite subject from my students.
Instead of drilling them with lots of paper-based exercises, I noticed that if I spent less time explaining the rules and more activities-based drills. It created a more joyful learning atmosphere and my students seemed to learn faster and actually remembered it better. However, this method is a two-blades swords, by decreasing the paper-based exercises, it also decreases students's familiarity to the test/evaluation formats. Different teachers, students, classroom settings will all effect on the results.

So how do you manage your class when teaching grammar? Please share with us!