ESL Teaching Tips

Here are some quick tips for new ESL teachers. This video focuses on developing a workable lesson plan, in this case, I present a plan for what I found to be a fairly successful introductory lesson for both elementary and middle school.

At first, you might be tempted to write out elaborate and detailed plans for your ESL classes, where the lesson plan almost becomes a script to be read, rather than a rough guide.
This kind of lesson plan is nearly certain to fail miserably. Flexibility is critical to a good lesson plan. Repetition and variation is needed to help the students retain the information covered in class.
Try to design a lesson plan in modules, with each chunk being 5-25 minutes. The most important one should come first, and, with a flexible modular design, if the important lesson runs long, one of the latter modules can be eliminated, or covered during the next class.

And remember: languages are not learned by listening to a lecture given in that language; language is acquired by engaging with it, by actively using it.
If you only remember one thing, remember this: Your students should be talking far more than you are.


~Kyle Clements

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Kyle
• Clements
• Korea
• ESL
• english
• second
• language
• teaching
• tips
• help

[sociald1991]

you're great. thanks for making me laugh AND learn.

[theheadlessrabbit]

@sociald1991

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I think that too many instructional videos are dry and forgettable.

I had fun with this one.

[mziwewonga]

awesome vid man made me laugh and it was educational u still in korea?

[theheadlessrabbit]

@mziwewonga

I was only in Korea for a year, I've been back in Canada since late 2008.

Thanks for watching, I hope you found the info helpful.

[mziwewonga]

@theheadlessrabbit Loved the Vid man posted it on my TEFL Facebook page and i'll be referring to it when i land in Korea in April, quick question, who was the lady sleeping over in your death fan vid?

[theheadlessrabbit]

@mziwewonga

She is a friend of mine who I met while I was over there.

[useahammer]

It's good to see someone who knows what he's talking about, isn't long-winded and doesn't come off as a pretentious bullshit artist.

[TeachESL]

I don't have more than about twelves students in a class and most of them are Russian names which I can remember quite easily. But he is right when he says that most of the class time should be taken up by the students talking. Otherwise, I didn't get much from this.

[makeiteasyable]

i have no idea ah..

[WarrivarNeo]

so...fucking...true...in Saigon i did suck for the first few months then i realized exactly what you said in this video...good work man

[49ification]

What a douche.  You give teachers a bad name man.

[almar6100]

@almar6100 oh, he is right about sucking at first. And the name tags. If you tell them to do something, do it. If you give, they will take forever, and then you are finished.

[almar6100]

it totally depends on the situation... once you've taught about 1000 classes, and you only teach a class once every three weeks, you should have no shortage of things to do.

Once every three weeks is easy, now, same students every day for five hours... that's hard,

[TheJeleb]

Okay... so 7 years before I plan on going to Korea, I already know exactly how I'm going to teach my classes, control them and have fun. Great. >_< I better not forget this in 7 years time...

[pr9301]

What a tool.

[derekcalzad]

don't mean to discredit ya or anything. But Jangso and Jongsu aren't common names in a korean class. Usually the students choose an English name or a short Korean name like June. Which will make it easier to remember. You don't need name tags either, just have the students sit in the same seat and make a seating chart during the first class. This will save the time from having to track down missing name tags or the tangled mess of tags for 22 different classes.