Motivating Young Children to Learn English

Motivating Young Children to Learn English: Keeping Their Attention without Giving Them Gifts - by Shelley Vernon

Young children are often eager, almost too eager. The problem arises when they are eager to do things other than what you’re trying to teach them. Here are six top tips to keep them interested in class and motivated to do what you want them to do:

Tip #1: Keep Yourself Motivated.
Think back to when you were a child. If your teacher was not enthusiastic about what he or she had scheduled for class that day, how did you feel about it? It’s the same with young children today. If you, the teacher and often a role model for younger children, think this is a neat activity, then they will too!

Tip #2: Encourage.
Young kids thrive on praise and positive attention from the adults in their lives. If you want them to like you and be motivated in your class, you often just need to give them a lot of positive attention.

Tip #3: Play Games
Children learn through play. Oftentimes they don’t even realize they are learning if they are enjoying the game. Just think, children could sit there and fill out worksheet after worksheet or they could play an English game and learn the same concepts. Which would you rather do?

When I say English games I’m talking about games that are specifically designed to teach language and vocabulary. For example, you could turn using vehicle vocabulary into a relay game where children need to pick a card with a word and then run to a box of vehicles (or a stack of pictures of vehicles) and bring the correct one his or her classmates.

Here is another example: If you might normally give them a worksheet to write the correct verb next to the picture illustrating the action, have them instead practice their verbs by doing the action for the word you say or the word on a card that you hold up. Likewise, you could do the action and have them write down the word. You may access free samples of fun classroom games in the resource box below.

When you play games, you can use points and competition as a motivator, but not for kids under six who may find the competition too stressful. For them, just playing the game is motivating enough. You can also sometimes award extra credit, but use it sparingly so that it remains "extra" and a special reward. Also if you use it too much, children can have so much extra credit that it sways the actual grades too much.

Tip #4: Get Their Hands Dirty
Literally and figuratively. Children like to work with their hands and whatever you can do to get the items they are learning about in their hands is useful and fun for them. This can be anything from having a sensory table filled with sand and beach items when you want to teach them summer words to having them each bring in a piece of fruit when you are teaching fruit words. Anytime you can get young children up and doing instead of listening (often passively) you are getting their hands dirty in the learning process.

Tip #5: Get Them Moving.
Movement is a vital component to motivating children. The best way to prevent children from zoning out is to get them up out of their seats at least once each class period. Even if you just require them to come up to you instead of you going to them for help, the movement can help get them out of the trance that they sometimes get from sitting in one spot too long. Grouping the children for study projects and activities helps as well. If you can, let them move the desks around or sit on the floor to change things up as well. Many games involve movement without the children needing to leave their seats, such as miming, moving certain body parts and passing things around as part of a game or race. Therefore even teachers with large classes and no space to move can use this technique, albeit to a more limited degree.

Tip #6: Vary the Pace
Alternate calm games with lively ones to keep the children alert and motivated, but without letting the class get out of hand. Good discipline is essential to effective learning.

To read the full article on how to motivate children to want to learn English, please see the articles and tips section on teachingenglishgames.com in the resource box below.

Shelley Vernon has helped 1000s of teachers be an inspiration to their pupils and achieve results 2x as fast. Improve the effectiveness of your lessons by up to 80%. Receive free English language games now on teachingenglishgames.com The full article is on how to motivate children to learn is on http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/dirindex.htm

Notes

• Article Source: EzineArticles
• Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by quasarsglow via flickr

Dealing with Latecomers

One of the things most guaranteed to annoy me when I’m teaching groups is when people turn up late – I don’t mean just one person occasionally being late, but the whole group regularly dribbling in gradually over the first twenty minutes or so. What can you do about it? I’d like to suggest three strategies : talk to the group about it; agree a course of action; and adjust your lesson accordingly.

Talk to the group

Your first aim in talking to the group is to find out why they come late.

• Keep in mind that there may be a cultural element at work here – how important is punctuality in the culture? If you are working in a culture where punctuality is the norm (Swiss, German) and lateness a sign of disrespect (Japanese) you’re less likely to have problems than if you are working in certain Mediterranean or Arab cultures – where you may find that your expectation of punctuality and intolerance of lateness is far higher than that of your students, leading to your feelings of irritation in a situation that they find perfectly normal.
• Secondly, with the best will in the world lateness is sometimes inevitable. If you live in a city where the traffic is chaotic, or if your students have a boss who frequently asks to see them just as they’re supposed to be leaving, the lateness may not actually be their fault.
• However, lateness is sometimes due simply to a failure on the students’ part to recognise the true extent of its effect on the course. Your second aim is therefore to make sure that they realise that if not everyone is there at the start of the lesson, there are two possible consequences : firstly, that you wait and the lesson doesn’t start on time – which will mean that you don’t get through all the activities you have planned and that their learning will suffer; or secondly that you start, but each time someone arrives you will have to go back to the beginning and explain everything again, wasting an equal amount of time. Students often have no conception of a lesson as a structure with a beginning, middle and end which is planned precisely for the time available in the lesson. You need to make this clear to them if they are to understand the problems fully. I often show them a very simple plan (usually of their last lesson, so that they recognise it), with the activities and aims and timing for each stage specified. I point out for example how the lesson started with the presentation of new material, and then progressed through activities designed to help them gradually assimilate and use the new language. We then have something concrete to refer to in a discussion of the potential results for their learning of missing the beginning and/or not getting through to the end.

Agree a Course of Action

Needless to say, this discussion has to take place in a positive manner. It’s not a matter of playing the heavy-handed teacher, but of trying to collaborate with the students in order to improve the success of the course for everyone. The next step in the discussion is thus to decide on a plan of action to avoid the problems as much as possible. I usually suggest the following :

• Firstly, that they do make an effort to be in the classroom ready to start at the start of the lesson – which means aiming to arrive at least five minutes early.
• Secondly, that if they know in advance they will be late – for instance because of an important meeting – that they let me know, so that I can adjust my plan accordingly.
• Thirdly, that if they do arrive late, they come in with the minimum amount of disturbance possible. I always ask students to leave seats near the door free for latecomers, so that they don’t have to climb over half the class to sit down, and I ask them not to launch into a long explanation of why they were late, or to start distracting their neighbours by asking what we’re doing, what page we’re on etc. They simply come in, sit down, listen, and wait until there’s a suitable point when I can catch them up.

How can this best be done? I would generally let whatever activity I’m in the middle of finish before turning my attention to the latecomers, otherwise the interruption may distract and penalise the students who were on time. There are then various possibilities :

• If the students are currently working on an individual, pair or group work activity, the fast finishers can be asked to explain what we’re doing to the latecomer, while the others continue working.
• Alternatively, at the end of the current activity I might ask the class as a whole to recap on what we’ve been doing. For example, if I had been doing a presentation of a new structure, I might ask one student to describe the “story” of the presentation situation, another to repeat the model sentences, and others to explain the rules. This not only involves everyone, but also helps me confirm that they have understood.
• Or thirdly, if the student comes in just before I’m about to start the group on a IW, PW or GW activity, I might get the activity started, check that they’re all on task, and then sit down and briefly take the latecomers through whatever they’ve missed. This should not be done however, if it means not being able to monitor the rest of the group.

Adjust the Lesson Accordingly

In my experience however, although this sort of discussion and agreement can improve the situation, it rarely resolves the problem completely. The other option is therefore to accept that lateness will happen, and to adjust the lesson accordingly.

I feel strongly that this should never mean simply waiting for the latecomers. This simply penalises the students who have turned up on time (which is unfair), and teaches them that they might as well arrive late too. However, it is possible to plan initial activities which are useful for those present, but allow you to hold back the start of the main part of the lesson for ten minutes or so while the others are arriving. For example you can :

• Check homework. This is often useful if there are only one or two students present initially. It gives you a chance to sit down with the students, look at their work, point out their mistakes and find out which they can self-correct and which need further explanation. It also means you have one or two workbooks less to take away and correct outside the class.
• Spend some time on general conversation – What did you do at the weekend? Of all the things you’re working on at the moment, what is causing you the most problems and why? Describe the story of the last film you saw at the cinema or on TV etc. This can be done in pairs or groups with the teacher monitoring and then writing mistakes overheard on the board for correction. If there’s time left, students can then report back on what their partner said.
• Use a filler activity for general listening or fluency practice. I would usually use an activity which is slightly below the level of the students in the class, so that it doesn’t need a lot of introduction or pre-teaching. For example, with an upper intermediate class, a fairly simple Find the Difference activity or one of the many other fluency activities described in the Teaching Speaking section. Or, in an advanced class I might use the type of activity focusing on idiomatic English which is included here in the Language Snippets section.
• Do a remedial activity. For instance, if during the previous lesson you noticed that various students were having problems with a specific verb form, do a brief remedial presentation and an exercise focusing on that form.
• Do a recap of the previous lesson. It often surprises me how few students review the last lesson before they come to the next. They therefore arrive not remembering at all what they did, and when the teacher tries to build on what has gone before, the foundations just aren’t there. Take them through the last lesson step by step. Ask them to recall the presentation situation and model sentences, to explain the rules, to remember what the reading or listening passage was about, etc.
• Do an activity which you had planned for the previous lesson but didn’t have time for.

Whatever you do, the objectives should be that :

• The students who are present feel that they have learnt or practised something useful and have not just been marking time.
• When the latecomers arrive, they walk into a class which is in full swing – so that they recognise that they have missed something.
• What they have missed does not prevent them, or anyone else, from achieving the main objectives of the lesson.

How long you feel you can hold back the “real” start of the lesson will depend on how long you have available. If you only teach 45’ minute lessons, it may be impossible to wait longer than five minutes. If you have two hours, it can be considerably longer. It’s a matter of balancing the time needed to teach a coherent lesson with the time available and the constraint that, if you start too soon, the lesson will in any case be disrupted and you’ll waste time repeating explanations.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons licence by Malky via flickr

Another Day in the Life of ... : Teaching in France

Michèle lives in France where she teaches English to private students. In this article, she describes a typical day in her teaching life.


I am French, living near Paris, and I’ve been teaching children and adults English for a long time (private lessons). I started up as a favour to an acquaintance and through word-to-mouth went from 2 school friends of my daughter’s to 20 students. I got caught by the teaching virus and I’m wondering if I could do anything else now. Most parents have become friends so I can infer that teaching English has enabled me to meet people and enlarge my circle of friends.

I usually get up at 7.00 and start my day with a couple of cups of tea - without tea I’m not myself! I have some toast while I am watching the TV news. My week is quite varied. Every day is different. Today , Tuesday, my first student is Pat. She’s 50 and started learning English 3 years ago. She comes twice a week for a ninety-minute lesson. It is mainly a conversation class using a variety of role plays I’ve adjusted according to the level of my students. We use two worksheets, one for the student and the other for me. The student’s worksheet doesn’t have my script but only his or hers written in French. They have to translate the idea into English (not word for word). Before acting the parts, we write the new words and expressions, review some grammar points involved in the conversation and make a list of words according to the topic.

I know that some teachers disapprove of using L1 but this method has turned out to be quite efficient as far as my students are concerned. In addition, we generally have lots of fun acting people in various situations. I am convinced that making the students laugh is the key to success in learning a foreign language.

My second student today is Françoise. She’s a friend of mine and started learning English two years ago in order to communicate with people around the world when she visits new countries. We generally review tenses and make a list of vocabulary about a chosen topic. I usually use a Cambridge First Certificate book I am familiar with for exercises. Comprehension is her weak point so every other Tuesday she listens to conversations taken from the Cambridge First Certificate Papers and answers my questions. I also use Cambridge Young Learners Papers for my younger students.

My third student today is called Jeremy. He’s 20 and in second year at university. He wants to work in industry so fluent speaking is necessary. Lots of young people in France have realized that learning English can improve their chances of getting a better job.

Jeremy has been learning English with me for two years - his level was so low that we started from “scratch”! So we had to do basic grammar, tenses, lists of vocabulary. He’s made a lot of progress thanks to his efforts and we are going to prepare for the TOEIC test.

It’s 6.00 and I have finished my classes. Now I have time to surf the net and prepare my lessons for Wednesday, which is an exhausting day. Each lesson is personalized to the needs of my students, and texts, comprehension questions, and role plays are chosen according to their interests and language ability.

Tuesday usually goes smoothly and I find these three-hour and a half classes quite relaxing. That’s why I’ve chosen it for Another day in the life of…

My husband gets home at about 8.00 pm - when he isn’t stuck in a tailback on the Francilienne motorway! Then we have dinner and spend the rest of the evening talking and watching TV until 11.00 pm. Lights out at 11.30 if we don’t fall asleep while we are watching a film!

Find out more about Michèle from her blog speakfrench. And if you're an English speaker living in the Charent Maritime area of France, improve your French by joining her French club!

Acknowledgements

Photos provided under Creative Commons Licence by Lynt and Roboppy via flickr.

Used to Do and Be Used to Doing

In this first article on used to, we look at the difference in meaning between the expressions used to do and be/get used to doing, and the problems which they often cause for learners. Students often get confused about the expression used to – or rather the expressions. The words used to are actually used in two different ways, and are different both grammatically and in terms of meaning. What are the problems which occur?

• Firstly, there’s a pronunciation problem. Students generally meet the expression used to after having learnt the verb use – as in I used the new car for the first time yesterday. Notice the pronunciation of used - /ju:zd/. But in used to, whichever of the two meanings is involved, the pronunciation is different - /ju:st/. Students, who are used to seeing used and saying /juzd/, often transfer this pronunciation to the new form.
• The expression used to do (used + infinitive with to), is generally explained as indicating a past state or habitual action which is no longer true in the present : I used to live in London. I used to play tennis every Friday. (1) The main reason for error here is one of over-extension. Used to is a defective verb, in that it only has one form, the past simple. In particular, it is never used in the simple present. Students however, will often over-extend the form and produce something like *I use to play tennis on Fridays (2), when they mean I usually play tennis on Fridays.
• The next problem comes after students meet expressions like I found it difficult to get used to driving on the right or I’m not used to getting up so early. Here used is a past participle functioning as an adjective. Both structurally and in terms of meaning it is equivalent to accustomed - I’m not accustomed to getting up so early.
  The use of the –ing form after to frequently confuses students. But in these expressions to is no longer part of the following verb – it’s a preposition. This is clear if you replace the verb with a noun - I’m not used to spicy food. And verbs following a preposition in English always take the –ing form : Thank you for coming; he often talks about leaving the country; I’m not used to getting up so early.
  This however leads to a frequent mix-up of the two forms, leading to errors like: *When I was a child, I was used to have a lot of nightmares. Or *I’m not used to live in the city.

How can these problems be avoided? First of all, make sure that you introduce the two forms separately – bringing them both in together for the first time would inevitably cause confusion. However, most textbooks do this for you, presenting used to do at lower intermediate level and holding back be used to doing until later. During the initial presentation, make sure that students understand the difference in pronunciation from the verb use, and the fact that used to do is restricted to the past.

The main problem is probably that once used to do has been introduced, there is then insufficient recycling. The structure tends to be forgotten by the coursebook which moves on to other things. This is the stage at which the students start to say I use to play tennis on Fridays. They have remembered the structure, but it hasn’t been firmly enough fixed for them to remember the restrictions. If your coursebook is like this, you will need to add in more recycling activities.

Similarly, when be used to doing is introduced, used to do has often been “abandoned” by the course for some time. Again, students half remember it, and see the new structure as being related. And this leads to confusion with both. Make sure that used to do has been fully assimilated before you move on.

To ensure students understand that to in be used to is a preposition, bring the structure in first of all with nouns – you might use a context of someone who has moved to a new town or country saying things like I can’t get used to the weather / the traffic / the crowds. Later you can bring in examples with verbs – at that point they should have no problem understanding why the –ing form is used.

Once students are confident with the new form, should you bring them together ? I often do so by giving my students a list of sentences with the sort of mistakes which I’ve included in this article and asking them to correct them. If they are able to do so, it shows me that they have separated the two forms mentally, while if not, it gives me the chance for some remedial explanation. Alternatively or additionally I might give them pictures like the following and ask them to produce sentences using used to : She used to be very overweight; He’s not used to using chopsticks etc.

In the next article, Keith Taylor will suggest a way of presenting and practising used to do in the classroom.

Notes

1. This is the explanation usually given and it explains most examples of the structure. But it is not necessarily true. I could say for instance : I’ve always ridden regularly. Even when I lived in the middle of London, I always used to ride regularly.

2. The use of the asterisk before the sentence is a convention used to indicate that the sentence contains an error.


Photos provided under Creative Commons Licence by meltingmama and commonvee via flickr


You may also be interested in...

Thornbury, S. 101 Grammar Questions, Cambridge

Ideas for Conversation Classes

Surfing the net one day, I came across the Internet TESL Journal’s site with its suggestions for conversation classes. It’s a great resource - it gives great long lists of questions you can ask on a wide variety of topics. Some of the questions are really interesting, and should spark off some good discussions. And the list certainly saves hours on lesson planning. However, I think there are a few things you need to keep in mind :

Just ploughing through the questions in T-class mode would be potentially boring and would considerably limit the talking time of each student. The teacher’s involvement would also mean that there was no time for monitoring. Errors would have to be either ignored or corrected and explained on the spot – which would break up the flow of the conversation and lead to an even lower pace for the lesson.

When they're ready they then stand up and circulate - each person only asks the three questions s/he's chosen, but of course they'll be hearing and answering different questions, the ones the others have chosen. When they finish each person reports back to the full class on something like : What was the most interesting (or strangest, or funniest, or most unexpected - whatever) thing you found out? Again, as they’ll all be talking about a different question and answer, the discussion will be more varied.

This frees the teacher to listen to the conversations and reports and to take notes. At the end of the activity you can then provide feedback on their use of the language, focusing on the most important mistakes and errors and also on any useful expressions which you heard students use.

Notes

(1) I think I first heard of this idea, or something similar to it, in a publication by Mario Rinvolucri, but I’m afraid I can’t remember which. I know that it was an activity which involved giving students a list and asking them to cross out the things they didn’t like and work on the rest.

Photo provided under Creative Commons licence by Eastenhuh via flickr.

On-line Tutoring - the Future of ESL?

There has been a lot of talk on ESL websites, forums and blogs about teaching English on the internet, but very little has been written to help teachers get started. Toby Ung runs Online Tutoring World.com, a site which provides a wealth of advice for teachers thinking of setting up an on-line tutoring service. Check out the site and you’ll find not only an extended version of this article, but also advice on technology and hardware, lesson plans for on-line use, and a section where you can advertise your services and find work.

The International Market for Teaching English Online

Learning English on the internet is becoming a popular option for many EFL/ESL students around the world. According to the British Council, over one billion people throughout the world now study English as a Second Language, and as internet communication tools such as VOIP continue to develop, more and more foreign students are turning to on-line English classes. Europe alone accounts for 32.6% of students studying English as a second language, and a high number of online ESL learners are located in France, Germany other neighboring countries. In Asia, the highest number of online ESL Learners are based in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Perhaps one reason for this trend is because of the growing influence of the English language in the region, and also because Asian countries are progressing much faster in building a high-bandwidth broadband internet infrastructure than other countries - including the United States. Another big market is China, which is seen as the largest potential market of English learners.

Setting Up

Online English teachers usually work directly from home, using little more than an instant messaging program, a headset with a microphone and a computer hooked up to the internet. You can download free VOIP software (voice over the internet protocol) and make free overseas calls using software such as SKYPE, Gizmo or Yahoo Messenger. If you have access to cable or broadband connection, you can also include web-conferencing as a part of your online tutorial package.

Marketing

To publicise your services and allow students to sign up, you can easily create your own website using free website building software such as Yahoo Page builder. Additionally, you can find work through sites such as ESLTeachersBoard, findateacher, and Europa. You can also advertise your services as an online EFL/ESL tutor or post your services on my own site, Online Tutoring World.com, for free. EFL/ESL students regularly scan these postings for an online tutor

How much can you charge?

Fees vary greatly by the hour. The minimum fee for teaching English online starts at US$25.00 (individual) or between $15-20 (per person in group classes).

How is on-line teaching different to classroom teaching?

To be effective in teaching English on the internet, it is important to spend about 30 minutes to 1 hour before class reviewing what the learning needs of your students are. Think about your students interests and language learning goals, and how you can adapt what you have towards meeting these needs.

It is also important to incorporate materials that target the four language skills - reading, writing, listening and speaking. While in an actual classroom setting it is easy to simultaneously combine the four language skills, it is more difficult to do so when teaching online. Teaching English in an online learning environment stimulates the students visual and auditory senses, making learning and retention a more efficient and productive process. Writing tends to disrupt this process. Listening, reading and speaking on the other hand can be easily integrated into an online classes. Unless you hold special classes that are solely devoted to teaching English writing and grammar, you can usually set written exercises and long reading passages for homework. At the next online session, you can than review your students homework and go through any questions that your students may have.

Setting High Expectations

Your students may have families to support, they may have an already demanding work schedule or a very busy lifestyle, but language acquisition does not happen naturally and effortlessly. Many students will express a great desire to improve every aspect of their English, so setting high expectations is not an ideal but a must. It may mean that your students need to set aside 20-30 minutes of their time each day to complete their homework; it is difficult, but not impossible. Parallel to providing higher expectations, you should also set aside sufficient guidance and support for your students. This may mean setting aside about 10-15 minutes of your class time to review and talk about any problems that might may have risen.

Online learning can be a productive and rewarding experience both for the tutor and learner. But unlike teaching in a classroom, teaching English online requires that you adapt your lessons, and set high goals and expectations in order to bring out the best in your students.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by niallkennedy via flickr

Teaching Colloquial English : Fruit and Vegetable Idioms

Here's another in our Language Snippets series. These activities focus on idiomatic English and can be used as fillers with more advanced classes. They focus on expressions referring to different types of fruit and vegetables, and you might start with a warm-up to revise as many types as possible. You could : ask students to write down all the types of fruit and vegetables they have eaten in the last week; ask them in pairs to try and think of one type of fruit or vegetable for every letter of the alphabet; or take in pictures of as many types as you can and see how many they can name. After that, use the first activity below, which is intended as presentation of the idioms. The second activity can be used for consolidation a few lessons later to see if students have remembered the expressions.

Presentation activity

Read the examples – each contains an idiom (indicated in italics). What do you think it means ? Complete each explanation by choosing one of the following adjectives :
lively / wrong / perfect / embarrassed / angry / identical / calm / expert

1. Janet and her mother are as alike as two peas in a pod. It’s incredible – they’re completely …………………………
2. David is the apple of his mother’s eye. She’s convinced he’s ……………………………..
3. The project was very successful at first, but then it all went pear-shaped. Everything went completely ……………………..
4. Paul went red as a beetroot when he realised that I’d overheard what he said. He was so ………………………….
5. When the fire broke out everybody panicked. Except Jane. She stayed as cool as a cucumber throughout. She phoned the fire brigade, got everyone out of the building – she stayed completely ………………….
6. If you want to know about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, ask Linda. She really knows her onions. It’s a field which she’s ………………… in.
7. They’re nice kids, but they’re so full of beans it gets a bit tiring. They’re so ……………………
8. Brian went bananas when he found out his son had crashed the car. I’ve never seen him so …………….

Consolidation activity

1. If you are very calm you are as cool as ..... a) a melon b) a cucumber b) an onion
2. If you get embarrassed, you go red as a ........ a) beetroot b) tomato c) radish
3. If you are very knowledgeable about a certain subject, you know your ....... a) potatoes b) asparagus c) onions
4. If children are very energetic, you say they are full of ....... a) beans b) peppers c) carrots
5. If someone thinks you’re wonderful, you are the ........ of their eye. a) peach b) strawberry c) apple
6. If something goes badly wrong, it all goes .........-shaped a) cabbage b) pear c) plum
7. If you get really angry, you go ..... a) bananas b) raspberries b) avocados
8. If you look very similar to another person, the two of you are as alike as two ........ in a pod. a) cauliflowers b) lentils c) peas

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by t-mix via flickr

Further reading 

Webb and Nation, How Vocabulary is Learned, Oxford

(Don't forget that Amazon often have both new and used copies of the books you want at prices much lower than those shown here. Click on the link to check.)

Helping Students with Learning Disabilities : Part Two

For  Part One  of this article, click on the link


So, you’re not an expert but you feel fairly sure that one or more pupils in your class have some sort of learning disability. And there’s no-one you can turn to for advice. What can you do in your classes that may help the learners involved, that certainly won’t make things worse for them, and at the same time won’t hold back the other members of the class?

Luckily, as I said in the first part of the article, many of the strategies recommended for helping students with learning disabilities are no more than good teaching practice – they just become even more necessary in this situation. And some of the more specific action can just be turned into a fun activity for everyone. There is no need for the class to know that activities are targeted at particular student, or to mention the idea of learning disabilities at all. Many of the actions can be introduced just by saying This is something that a lot of people find useful. Try it, and if you find it makes things easier, you can go on using it …
Below are some of the strategies that you can use which are likely to help all your learners. No more than an overview is given here, but these ideas and many more are discussed in the articles and websites referred to in the text and in the further reading section.

1. Create a positive classroom environment which is success oriented and in which what the students can do is more important than what they can’t. For example, when working with children who you suspect to suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), keep activities short, breaking longer assignments down into separate stages which you are sure they can cope with, and deal with one stage at a time. Give positive reinforcement after each stage – possibly just praise, or, with younger learners, a concrete reward such as stickers. Find out if your dyslexic learner has above average abilities in other areas – for example, highly developed interpersonal, musical, or artistic skills and give them a chance to use those skills in the lesson. For more on nurturing self-esteem, see this article by Robert Brooks.


2. If students have behavioural problems, provide clear ground rules stated positively (what you do want the students to do, not what you don’t), reinforce positive behaviour with praise and rewards, and establish clear consequences that will follow if the rules are broken. An excellent source of information on dealing with students with ADD and behavioural problems can be found on the TeacherVision website. Look at the various articles under the heading Teaching Students with ADD/ADHD


3. Provide clear objectives and a clear activity structure for the lesson, and show how these are related to what has gone before in the course. Preview the structure and objectives at the beginning of the lesson, refer to them as you work and review them at the end, making sure the learners understand exactly what they are going to achieve and how. Make sure they understand from the beginning what you expect them to be able to do at the end. They will often benefit from a lesson structure which remains the same each time, so that they know exactly what they are doing and why. The same criteria are important in choosing the coursebook.

4. Consider how much time learners need for an activity. Learners with ADD will need a brisk pace to the lesson, whilst dyslexic learners will benefit from more time to complete activities. This may mean that you have to abandon the lockstep at certain points in the lesson and have students working on different tasks. Consider too how long homework is liable to take, giving different assignments if necessary, and how long students will need for tests. Where the problem is recognised, it is common practice to give students with learning disabilities extra time for tests and exams (this option is also available for students taking Cambridge ESOL exams such as FCE), and if you are working in a situation where you do not want to make the situation explicit, tests without time limits can be the answer.

5. Students with learning disabilities are often highly sensitive to noise and other distractions. Reduce these as much as possible, for instance by placing the learners close to the teacher and the board rather than at the back of the room where they can see and be distracted by what else is going on.

6. Use a multi-sensory approach to learning. This may be as simple as reading aloud the explanations or homework that you write on the board, but you can also use multi-sensory activities which present or practice language through audio, visual (non-verbal) or kinaesthetic channels. For example, to teach spelling kinaesthetically, cut an old towel (or other piece of rough material) into rectangles about the size of half a mouse pad and stick each rectangle on stiff card. Ask the students to learn the word by writing it with their finger on the cloth. If they have difficulties forming the letters, help them by guiding their hand – in large classes this can be done as pairwork, with the learners without disabilities acting initially as the guide. Again, no-one needs to know why roles were allotted as they were, and this is an activity which can help more than just the students with learning disabilities. As someone with a predominantly kinaesthetic learning style, it’s a way of learning foreign language vocabulary which I find useful myself.

7. When creating handouts, make them as “reader-friendly” as possible. Use text styles which are as easy as possible for students with dyslexia to read. Choose “non-curly” fonts such as Arial or Verdana and use large print; avoid italics, underlining or using all capitals - which obscures the shape of the word making it less easy to identify. Pastel coloured matt-finish paper creates less glare than white gloss paper, and dyslexics often find it causes less visual stress. The visual stress and reading difficulties caused by glare, also called Meares/Irlen syndrome, is a problem that many non-dyslexic people also share. It can be reduced by coloured filters – sheets of transparent coloured vinyl - which are placed over the text. Different people will find different colours most helpful. You can find out more – and see whether you yourself might benefit – on the Dynamic Vision website. In addition, this article by Mario Rinvolucri talks about how the use of the filters might be introduced into the EFL classroom, and also gives the address where they can be obtained.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by szlea via flickr.

FURTHER READING

In addition to the references given in the first part of this article, other useful sites include :

Dyslexia

http://www.tefl.net/esl-articles/dyslexia.htm
http://www.dyslexia-teacher.co.uk/t6.html
http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/learning/dyslexia.shtml

ADD /ADHD

http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/learning/teacher.shtml
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/sep06/mart04.htm

General
http://home.iprimus.com.au/rboon/LearningDisabilities.htm#educationmanagement
http://www.tesolgreece.com/nl/75/7503.html

See also...

Delaney and Farley, Special Educational Needs - Into the Classroom, OUP

Helping Students with Learning Disabilities : Part One

If you look at the literature on learning disabilities, you’ll find statistics like “one in ten children are estimated to suffer from some form of learning disability”, “15% of Canadians are affected by learning disabilities”, “one in six children suffers from dyslexia”. The figures are obviously contradictory, but it’s equally clear that whatever the truth, a high number of people have some sort of cognitive disorder which affects their learning.

It's not surprising then if, every so often, we suspect that one of the learners in our classes may be failing because of a learning disability. And yet it is a topic which, as far as I know, is rarely covered on TEFL courses, meaning that EFL teachers are largely unprepared to help students with these problems.

In these two articles I want to look first of all at what we mean by a learning disability, and secondly, what practical measures we can take to help these learners achieve to the maximum of their, often very high, ability. And many people with learning disabilities are high achievers – Richard Branson, Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Jamie Oliver to name but a few.

What comes to mind when you hear the term “learning disability”? Dyslexia, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder perhaps? And how well do you really understand these terms? Dyslexia, for instance, is an umbrella term which covers a variety of more specific disorders, and two dyslexic people may well have quite different problems.
All together over sixty different learning disabilities have been identified – and this, for the ordinary EFL teacher is the first problem. Most of us will never have a really in-depth understanding of the field, and are unlikely to be able to diagnose learners’ problems with any real degree of accuracy. We may have a general feeling that “something’s not right” and feel that a student demonstrates various general indicators of dyslexia, ADHD etc, but diagnosis is the work of experts. Not every learning problem is a learning disability. For example, as the Helpguide website points out :

“ If parents or teachers have a personal style at odds with the child’s style (such as a highly structured, visually organized adult and an energetic, kinesthetic child who learns by doing, not by seeing), the mismatch may appear to be a learning disability in the child.” 

To be sure you have diagnosed a learning disability correctly, you really need confirmation from an professional.  But most of us are not so lucky. If you are working in the private sector, you are unlikely to have the necessary help and back-up of a learning disability expert. Even worse, in some parts of the world the concept of learning disability may not be recognised at all, and even when it is, the education system may not provide the means of dealing with the problem. And if the system doesn’t recognise the problem, then neither will the students themselves – or their parents if they are of school age. This is the situation in which students will start to get “labelled” – as “lazy”, “badly-behaved” or “stupid” – and to believe it themselves.


Luckily, there is a lot you can do without having specialist knowledge – and without necessarily having to mention the idea of learning disability to either the institution where you are working or to the students themselves. Many of the strategies that can be used to help students with learning disabilities are, I feel, just general principles of good teaching – they just become even more necessary than usual with this type of learner. We’ll talk about those in the next article, but in the meantime there is a wealth of information on learning disabilities on the web. You’ll find some of the most useful general articles listed below, while others which focus specifically on teaching strategies will be listed in the next article.

In general terms, a learning disability is a neurological malfunction which may create problems with tasks such as focusing and maintaining attention, text-deciphering, interpreting and organising information, remembering verbal information and many others. One article which gives some excellent visual examples of what it means to be dyslexic and to try and read a normal text can be seen on the ETNI website. Because of these problems, the learner will consistently underachieve academically – that is, underachieve in terms of what their general level of intelligence, be it average or high, shows them to be capable of.

However, given this, what are the warning signs that a student may have a learning disability? There are too many to list them all here, but in summary, they may include :

• reading and writing problems - generally poor reading ability, tendency to reverse letters (ie reading saw for was, or writing d for b), poor spelling etc.
• auditory problems - including excessive sensitivity to noise, or difficulty paying attention when spoken to.
• spatial problems - difficulty in following instructions, or differentiating right from left.
• motor problems - such as extreme clumsiness.
• memory - such as difficulty in memorising information.
• organisation - may have difficulty organising belongings, following a schedule etc.
• social - may not use eye contact, may have difficulty reading body language or facial expressions, and experience social isolation.
• attention - may have a short attention span and be easily distracted, and have difficulty conforming to routines.

Two articles which include fuller descriptions of the symptoms of learning disorders can be found here and here.

If you’re working in a part of the world where learning disabilities are recognised, and if you’re in the state system, you may well have someone on the staff who is an expert – or at least the possibility of referring the student to an expert. In any case, you will be able to sound out the opinions of other members of staff who have taught the student to see if they agree with you, and to see if they think referral is necessary.

See here for Part Two of the article.

Acknowledgement

• Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Kevin Zollman via flickr.

Further reading

• For a detailed and very useful account of the problems caused by, and the signs of, various learning disorders, see these excellent articles by Christine Root and Pearl Pirie
• Follow these links for specific information on dyslexia, on indicators of dyslexia, and on ADHD
• Kormos and Kontra (eds) Language Learners with Special Needs: An International Perspective Cambridge

Another Day in the Life of ... : The ELT Industry in Malaysia

Have you ever thought that one day you might like to get out of the classroom and do something different? Emile Alexander Dodds has done just that and in this, the next in our occasional series Another Day in the Life of … he explains how he has combined his TEFL skills with his IT knowledge to move, at least partially, into the area of e-learning. Emile lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and runs the website Road to Grammar in his free time.


Every day in my life is different, so I’ll tell you about today.

I drag myself bleary-eyed out of bed at 6:45 a.m. and by 7:30 I’m in my Jeep heading to work. Traffic in Kuala Lumpur can be vicious, so I wake up quickly and concentrate on not hitting the motorcycles that weave in and out of the lanes in front of me.

Work starts at 8:15, but there’s always time for coffee and breakfast first. We’re out of ground coffee so it’s Nescafe again – yuck!

With ten years in the ELT industry under my belt, I have moved on from teaching. I am now a Product Development Manager at an e-Learning company. It’s a grand title but in reality I do everything under the sun – from programming and design to editing and meeting clients. And, yes, I still teach as well, on programmes we run for unemployed graduates and also inhouse in several call centers.

This morning I have a meeting with my boss, who has come down from the head office with a voice recognition software development package. Voice recognition is an important part of software for ESL learners and we want to move towards a more natural interaction between student and computer. If this software looks promising, we’ll hire a specialist programmer to work on it for us.

We plan to spend several hours looking at the software but…disaster! My boss has brought the software on DVD and our computers only run CD-ROMs. For a high tech organisation, that’s pretty embarrassing! We agree to meet next week instead and I spend the rest of the morning sorting out the mini library we have at our learning center.

In the afternoon I’ve been roped into helping out with a booth we will run at an upcoming exhibition. The name of the exhibition is ‘ICT in teaching’, or at least that’s how I would translate it. After so many years in Malaysia, my Malay is not bad although it could be better.

This is the day before the conference proper and of all things, there’s no air-conditioning in the conference hall! It’s November, but in Malaysia that doesn’t mean it’s cold. The tropical sun is burning down the same as it does every day of the year. Carrying boxes back and forth and putting up banners, pretty soon I’m absolutely drenched in sweat. I’m helping a Malaysian girl and an Indian girl. While they complain about the heat, they don’t seem to sweat like I do! To console myself, I wonder how they would deal with the weather in my native country, Scotland.

I should go back to the office, but I’m drenched in sweat; I’m going home early to take a shower. I’ll be at the exhibition for the next two days and I’ll be teaching Communication Skills for the next two days after that. I expect the teaching will be more enjoyable.

Back at home, I have time for my hobby – working on my websites. I have just revamped my ESL website, roadtogrammar.com. Later, I’ll be having dinner with my girlfriend. As a lawyer, she works longer hours than me and will probably leave her office at about 9:00. I’m looking forward to seeing her, but first I’m going to sit down and write about a day in my life…


Acknowledgement

Photos provided under Creative Commons Licence by peter.macdonald via flickr

Using DVD and Video in Your ESL Class - Part Two

In this article Keith Taylor continues his overview of useful ways you can exploit DVD and video in the classroom.

Have you ever wondered how to use video in your ESL classes, without just sitting your students down in front of the screen and hitting 'Play'? Here are five more activities for you to try.

1 Vocabulary in context

Choose a scene (no longer than two or three minutes) with some dialogue rich in vocabulary. Make a worksheet with ten to twenty words that are used in the scene, or that describe the scene in some way. Give the worksheet to each pair of students and have them discuss some possible contexts in which the vocabulary might appear in a movie. (Giving students the context of the movie as a whole can make this task easier). Play your chosen scene once, asking students to listen for the contexts in which the vocabulary is used. Pairs can then compare their information and report back to you.

2 Subtitles

A big advantage of DVD over video is the subtitles feature. Playing a scene with subtitles in the students' own language or in English is good for building confidence. Try playing it with the sound down first, letting them read the subtitles, then with the sound up, again reading the subtitles, and finally with the sound up and the subtitles turned off. Keep the extract you use to about two or three minutes.

3 News

If you have access to TV news in English, record a news story with plenty of visual footage. Play it with the volume off and have your students discuss in groups what they think the item was about. Then give them a pre-prepared list of vocabulary, containing words essential for understanding the story. Using this list and what they have seen, students reconstruct the story in pairs and report back to the group. Don't forget to play it with the volume up at the end, so that students can compare their version with the original.

4 Cultures

This activity could be used in a conversation class about cultural differences. Find a short extract which shows a typical aspect of British culture, or American culture, or any culture you want to focus on! Have students discuss the differences between what they see and their own culture. Students do not necessarily need to understand the dialogue for this -- the visual aspect of the cultural scene is usually enough.

5 Voices in my head

Choose a short scene with some interesting and expressive dialogue between two or more characters. Show the scene normally and check students' comprehension. Put your students into groups, so that you have one group for each character in the scene. Their task is to imagine what is going on inside the head of their assigned character. Play the scene again, several times if necessary, for students to "get to know" their character, and have them work together to imagine his/her thoughts. Finally, play the scene once more, hitting "Pause" after each character has spoken, at which point the groups say what their character is thinking.

A short video sequence with a clearly focused activity is an effective and motivating way to bring variety to your ESL classes. Your students will go away with more than if you sit them down in front of the screen and hit 'play'.

Keith Taylor is the founder of http://www.eslbase.com, providing free resources, information and advice for TEFL teachers, as well as the latest job opportunities and a directory of TEFL courses worldwide. He also maintains the eslbase language exchange, an easy way to practise any language online.

TEFL jobs, TEFL courses and ESL resources from eslbase.com

Notes

• Article Source: ezineArticles.com Reprinted with permission.
• Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by balcony via flickr

Further reading ...

Using DVD and Video in Your ESL Class - Part One

DVDs and videos can be used in the classroom for more than just listening comprehension. How? In this first of two articles, Keith Taylor explains.

Have you ever wondered how to use movies in your ESL classes, without just sitting your students down in front of the screen, hitting 'Play' and sitting back to watch?

Here are a few ideas to get you started, using very short movie extracts to present and practise new language and develop communicative skills.

1 No picture

Choose a short extract (2 or 3 minutes) with plenty of sound effects. Play it with the screen covered or turned away from the students, and ask them to write down what they hear. If two of the sound effects are birds singing and a baby crying, you could use the extract to present or practice any of these language points (and I'm sure you can think of more).

Some birds are singing / A baby is crying
Some birds were singing / A baby was crying
It must / might / can't be birds singing or It must / might / can't have been birds singing
I heard some birds singing / I heard a baby crying

After playing the extract, have students compare what they heard in pairs, and then elicit the language from them. Remember to show the extract with both picture and sound at the end of the activity to satisfy the students' curiosity!

2 No sound

Here's the opposite idea. Show a short extract (again, 2 or 3 minutes is enough) with a lot going on, or where the characters convey a lot of emotion in their expressions, but play it with the volume off. Students can then do one of the activities below without having to worry about understanding dialogue:

• Describe what happened using narrative tenses
• Describe the scene
• Anticipate dialogue or reactions
• Arrange a cut up dialogue which you have given them.

Finally, play the extract again with sound. Having done one of these tasks, your students will be able to fit what they hear into a context much more effectively than if they had viewed the extract initially with picture and sound.

3 Jigsaw viewing

You may have done jigsaw reading activities in your class, where students have half the information, and share what they have read with another student to recreate the whole story. You can also do this with short video sequences in a number of ways:

• Half the class watches with no picture, then the other half with no sound (you'll have to take half the students out of the class in each case). In pairs they then question each other to recreate the scene.
• Half the class have picture and sound, the other half just have sound. You can do this by sitting students in two rows, back to back, so that only one row can see the screen. The half who only had sound then question the other half.
• One student listens with headphones, while all the others view without sound. The student with headphones questions the others to recreate the scene.

4 Viewing on rewind

Choose a short sequence with a lot of action. For example, a woman enters an apartment, picks up the telephone, listens, looks terrified, runs out of her apartment and down the stairs, and runs off down the street. Movies are, of course, a great source for this sort of material. Play the scene backwards to the students (DVD gives more flexibility than video with the speed of playback) then have them reconstruct the story in chronological order, using narrative tenses, or future tenses, or whatever you want the linguistic focus to be. Finally, play the sequence normally so students can compare it with their version.

5 Pause / Freeze Frame

If you use pictures in your classroom for introducing new vocabulary, or for describing people and scenes, you can add a new dimension to this with the pause/freeze frame button of your video or DVD player. Hit pause when a character has an interesting expression on his or her face, is about to react to something or answer a question, or when there is a lot of colourful new vocabulary on the screen. Have students describe the character/scene, or anticipate what the character will say or do next. Release the pause button to allow students to compare their ideas with what actually happens.

Video is a motivating and effective way to bring variety to your ESL classes. Using short, sharp sequences with a clear linguistic focus, your students will go away from your class with much more than if you sit them down in front of the screen and hit 'play'.

Keith Taylor is the founder of http://www.eslbase.com, providing free resources, information and advice for TEFL teachers, as well as the latest job opportunities and a directory of TEFL courses worldwide. He also maintains the eslbase language exchange, an easy way to practise any language online.

TEFL jobs, TEFL courses and ESL resources from eslbase.com

Notes

● Article Source: ezineArticles.com Reprinted with permission

● Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by superciliousness via flickr