 Hello everybody, it's Lisa here and I'm super glad to welcome you to today's live stream. As you know, we go live every week and there are actually two live streams, one on Tuesday and another one on Friday, so today is my turn and on Friday you will probably see my colleague Linda and today's topic is actually pretty fascinating because it's related to grammar and who doesn't love grammar, right? I think that every teacher is really in awe when we talk about grammar lessons as well as some students, right? And I should say that today's live stream is going to be pretty brief because I'm just going to share my insights from the workshop I took part in last week, so it will take approximately 30 to 40 minutes I should say, however, if you have any questions, it's just can be like 10 minutes extra or something, so stay tuned, but before we move on, my question is where are you guys from? Let me know over the chat box, let's have this brief small talk in the beginning of the session, so I'm located in Yekaterinburg, Russia, it's the rural region of Russia and today is freaking hot, it's just boiling hot, I don't know why, I should say that it's not normal for Russia, although this summer is pretty different from most summers and yeah, it's just super hot, I personally don't like it because I can't go to a lake or I don't know, so I have to stay in my hometown and I have to work, so when it's hot like this, I feel so annoyed because I can't do anything with it, I should stay on one place. Okay, so nice to meet you guys, there are people from South Africa, from Morocco, wow, and from Canada as well, nice to meet you here guys, thanks so much for joining in, yeah, and as for South Africa, is it the winter period now, right, because I feel like it's a little bit different in that part of the world, anyway, so yeah, nice to see you guys, nice to, that's so cool to know that there are people from different parts of the world, and this is the way I understand that we are truly global, and it's just awesome, thanks a lot for joining in, and as I have already mentioned, today's session is going to be really brief because I'm just feeling like I have to share my insights from a workshop from a master class I took part in last week, it was devoted to lesson planning, to grammar lesson planning, and I can't say that everything that I heard there was super new, but still some things are really important to mention, I haven't prepared any slides today, so we will just have a chat, and if you guys have any questions, feel free to ask me over the comments section, and I think that by the end of the presentation, by the end of my talk, I'm going to reach out to you, and yeah, just share my thoughts, and I'll try my best to help you out, okay, and also I would like to mention that if you click on this, not click, if you scan this QR code from the top right corner, you will get to the ITTT's website, and you will be able to get this awesome 30% discount of any TEFL courses, so if you are willing to take a TEFL course, if you want to get TEFL certified, it's actually a great idea, it's a great incentive, I believe, it will save you a lot of money, and yeah, you will probably benefit from it, but that is all for advertising, I know that it sounds a little bit daunting, nobody likes a lot of sales, so that's all, I just wanted to mention that, and let's just move on to the main point of today's conversation, all right, I can see guys that you are talking about your places, about your hometowns, and that it's hot or cold in your locations, so I hope you can have some networking over the comment section as well, that's actually really cool when you meet interesting people on the internet, this is actually what I like to do, I'm a real internet worm according to my boyfriend, okay, so as for grammar lessons, so let me change the banner, and this is the rule number one, which I kind of know, like it's pretty simple and clear, super obvious, that when you start planning your grammar lessons, you have to be aware of the rules you're going to present, however, I know that some people tend to neglect this idea, because like you're experienced, we know everything pretty well, but that's not true, right, sometimes it becomes challenging to explain even easy things, that is why the teacher who worked with us with like ESL teachers and shared his experience about planning grammar lessons, he just highlighted this phrase, this very idea, and I feel like I have to mention it as well, because it's my common mistake to neglect just checking up some rules, some explanations of the most basic things I'm going to teach, and it is actually makes a lot of troubles, it brings a lot of troubles when it comes to real explanation during a lesson, and sometimes, as you know, like something goes just not according to the plan, and usually if I'm not completely sure about some functions or forms, you know, of some specific grammatical points, I get so stressed, and I believe that this is a pretty common situation to many other teachers, and it's not just about non-native speakers, it's about native speakers as well, because grammar is just not something we know how to explain by heart, right, it's just not some common sense, and we have to make our research before going to students and explaining something, but you know, like even if you're not an advanced level, so if you don't have some advanced or proficiency level of English yourself, like being one step ahead of your students is just okay already, just make sure that before you start planning and before you go to the classroom, you check out that you know everything for sure, and the second idea which I really loved was that if you are going to explain some grammatical points, it's like 100% that they are going to be not clear to everyone from the beginning, sometimes it gets boring to get to know some grammatical things, so what helps a lot is if your explanation is sound-biting, so make sure that when you go to the classroom, you have some strategies to explain difficult rules easy and at the same time interesting, so together with the first point, these two things are just something really important and crucial for all English teachers. All right, and the next step I would like to take is to ask you a question, so how would you explain, for example, present perfect? Give me some ideas over the comment section, because this is probably the most engaging way how we can brainstorm it and how we can understand the best strategy to plan grammar lessons and to teach them, so let's take like the next several moments to think about the ways we can explain present perfect. I know that present perfect sometimes is really challenging to be explained and students, I think that they are usually like pre-intermediate or intermediate when they face present perfect for the first time, so it might be challenging for them to comprehend at the very beginning, so could you please propose any ideas how we can explain present perfect easy and in a fun way? Okay, so let's have this conversation, right? Of course, just in a moment, I'm going to share my ideas and yeah, I will also let you know like how to explain this grammatical point and that explanation, that strategy will be possible to implement to any grammar point you are going to teach and actually it's also possible to implement this strategy to any other teaching points like vocabulary or teaching some specific things like I don't know when you teach skills as well, so please guys don't be shy, just share several ideas over the comment section and let's try to have like a workshop here, let's brainstorm together, okay? So think of some basic ideas how to present present perfect to ESL students for the first time, okay? And as a hint, just look at this idea here, so normally we would probably present some grammatical points using texts, this is a really basic thing to bear in mind when you plan your lessons, it's extremely important to pick out some real English and as you know, like grammar here is not for opening brackets, right? It's not for filling in the gaps, it's for something slightly more important, right? So how can we use texts to explain present perfect for example, okay? Do you have any idea, okay? I hope you can have this conversation with me, I know it's slightly daunting to like express your ideas when you are here just to listen, but let's try at least like a couple of things to mention, okay? So if you don't have any questions, any ideas, if you don't want to communicate with me, it's okay. I know that it's a little bit annoying probably or stressing, so I'm going to share my thoughts over this problem and actually when it comes to presenting and grammatical topic, in our case it's present perfect, there is a five steps approach to present something, to present a specific point, and let's go from the first step to the last one and I'll explain those steps on the example of present perfect, okay? So usually when we start planning lessons, what we want to do is to create some engaging activity, and actually if you took part, if you have already taken a tuple course, you should know about the ESA strategy and these five steps approach is almost like this, but it's like how to put it correctly, I have no idea, but like there are five steps, but they can be introduced using the ESA methodology in general. So I can see a comment actually, so let me see. Okay, all right, so that's a great idea, thanks a lot Fatima, I think that you have proposed just a great approach to planning a grammatical grammar presentation, however it's a little bit challenging, I should say, so those things are correct, I believe, but they are clear to experienced teachers probably, but not necessarily to students, so let me just share those ideas which are quite simple but precise, and you will probably be able to take this structure and implement it into your teaching, okay? So as I've already mentioned, the first step to take, yeah it's a communicative leading, and on this stage we want to get students into a lively conversation, into an interaction, something like that, but when we talk about presenting present perfect, what type of leadings can we introduce on this point, like here, so we need this communicative leading, but we later on we have to explain present perfect, so what communicative leading can we propose here? Do you have any idea? I have already mentioned before that usually we circle our grammar classes over some specific texts or we can say topics, right? So explaining grammar can't be taken solely, we can't explain grammar without a specific context, so probably it's a great idea and it's a great strategy as well to use some specific topic or pick a text which introduces a topic, all right? So what type of leading could you introduce here? If we know some functions present perfect has, we can actually offer a conversation related to sharing experiences, for example, like we can ask students about their previous experiences, about places they have already visited or something related to their activities that they have already tried, so introducing a grammatical point is not about presenting grammar from the very beginning, it's more about getting, it's more about offering students something familiar and something easy to discuss, so when you start planning your English grammar lessons, don't focus on giving all this grammar from the very beginning, start with something common to your English students, something they can relate to and another thing to mention here in the communicative leading, in this engaging stage, we don't want them to be corrected all the time, so how it might look when you have this communicative leading in your classroom, for example, when you teach group lessons, you offer them some like several ideas to discuss maybe some questions related to some specific topic and then you just monitor the activity and you don't interrupt their lively conversation if they have something at least close to it, right? Of course, it's important to note down some errors, it's okay, but what you have to do on this stage is to note them down by observing and then when it's over, when your students are done discussing and when you're like closing up the communicative leading, you would probably do some quick error correction, but it shouldn't be like to correct everything, to polish every mistake, it's not about it, so communicative leading is just to make sure that your students feel comfortable and they are acquainted with the topic, so that's probably the most important part to remember. And then when we are done with the engagement stage, we move on to the pre-teaching stage. Again, if you are familiar with the ESA strategy, this is where the study phase begins, so you pre-teach some vocabulary to a text or to an audio, for example, if your lesson is circled around an audio, for example, or a video, so you pre-teach some vocabulary and what's next. You can also offer some games related to vocabulary so that it's not that boring to memorize vocabulary or to drill vocabulary, so it should also be interesting for your students. And what's next? So if you have some specific text, the next point of this study stage would be reading for gist. So now please let me know, do you know what reading for gist is? So what type of reading is it? Have you ever tried to read for gist yourself? Like if you're an ESL student yourself or if you, I don't know, if you study something before presenting, for example. So are you familiar with the idea of reading for gist? So let me know over the comments section. Because this stage is extremely important, but sometimes when teachers are not that experienced, they simply ignore it. However, reading for gist is not just an activity, but it's a really great skill and strategy to learn for your students. Because for example, when you prepare your learners for some tests like IELTS or maybe some Cambridge exams, reading for gist is something super necessary to master. So let me know, what is reading for gist? So if you hear this question, please right now have this, just drop down several ideas. Yeah. All right, so here is just this idea highlighting the summary of the text. I should say that it's not about the summary, it's probably about understanding the general idea. So reading for gist is not when you, after that, you are able to explain briefly like what it is about and what was the first step, the second and so on. So it's just about understanding the general idea of the text. Probably it's about what is the main topic of the text, what happened in the text. Yeah, so something like that. So it's not about some specific details, it's just for understanding the idea. Right. And when you are done with this part of the study stage, you move on to the next one, which is pretty obvious if we take the previous one. So it's reading for detail. When your students are familiar with the specific text, when they have already taken this first time reading and got acquainted, yeah, that's right. So reading for gist is the same as skimming. That's true. So the next point would be to read for detail. This is usually something students try to do from the very beginning when they see the text for the first time. But it's actually always better to pre-teach this skimming strategy because skimming is crucial for like as a skill. Not every teacher teaches that. However, when it comes to real life experiences, reading for gist, so being able to skim texts is actually super important and super helpful. So when you teach your students, make sure you like at least attempt to explain what skimming is. And when you are done with that, you will move on to reading for detail. Okay. So when you are done reading for gist, the next point would be reading for detail. And reading for detail is just opposite to reading for gist, right? Yes, it's about finding some main points related to the text. Usually for this stage, there are some, for example, if we take textbooks, you would probably find some special questions to check out while reading or there could be like a true or false activities. So something like that, what helps to get the most important details out of the text. And yeah, the very last point to take would be the communicative follow-up, which is an opposite idea to the communicative leading. But communicative follow-up will be filled in, will be stuffed with those points you just introduced to your students. So for example, let's come back to the idea of presenting present perfect. Let me share my screen right now, because I have like something to share with you, something to show you. So I have this example from actually that workshop I visited last week. So here, yeah, let me just zoom it in if I can. So here you can see this text, which is taken specifically to explain the idea of present perfect. And students are introduced, students are given with this text about the most successful twins. It's an engaging topic. And what you do before reading is introducing some lively conversation, provoking to answer some questions, right? Like, do you know who twins are? Do you know any twins around? So something related to the specific point from the text. It's usually topic-based, not grammar-based, right? Although we want to explain grammar. When we introduce the topic, we would probably give this topic-based activity rather than grammar-based. So when you are done presenting this very topic, you move on to the study stage where you pre-teach some vocabulary. So probably the text contains several words which might be unfamiliar to your students. And here you want to make sure you explain every difficult phrases, words, etc. This is like some pre-teaching activity. And then the main study stage would be to read the text itself and to get exposed not just to vocabulary, but to grammar as well. So this very idea is actually called a guided discovery. It's when students discover some specific grammatical point, not knowing that they are actually exposed to it. But if you, for example, read this text, you would notice that there are places where present simple, not present simple, past simple and present perfect are combined. So this is the general strategy. What we want to do during this grammar presentation, we want our students to have this guided discovery. We don't want to give them everything. We don't want to explain everything from scratch at the very beginning. What we want to do is to help them to discover step by step. So that's probably the most fascinating insight I got from my workshop, from the workshop I participated in. So when you are done with the guided discovery with this reading part, the last thing is the communicative follow-up. And as for the communicative follow-up, you would probably need to have some other questions which are related to the text itself and the grammatical things in the text. So usually, if you use some books or ready-made lesson plans, it contains something related to both grammar and vocabulary. And you can just use it and organize in the way you need it. But most of the books, most of the course books, they are actually built on this very strategy. So what I would suggest here is that when you plan your grammar lessons, don't plan from scratch. Try to focus on taking some specific course book which is corresponding your students' needs, their level, and so on, and just take some of the best activities from that course book. So as for me, when I plan my grammar lessons or whatever lessons, the first thing I do is I go to the teacher's book which is usually together with that course book I use with some specific students. So for example, when I prepare for exams, I take those specific books and then check teacher's books for activities and guidelines for teachers. It's super convenient, super easy, and the thing is, you are a teacher, you are not a methodologist, you don't write books, and probably you are not the best person who will build the most outstanding grammar lesson just because it's how it works. So make sure you choose the most interesting content, the most appropriate activities, and you should be good. And the last point I would like to mention as well is that when you guide your students from the first like leading activity to the study stage and then to the engage stage, what you also have to do is to remember about eliciting. So guys, let me know, do you know what eliciting is? What is the strategy of elicitation? Have you ever heard of it? Have you used it in your classroom? So let me know. And as for eliciting, I should mention that if you take a TEFL course and when you start going from methodological part to some grammatical aspects, the final step would be to create a lesson plan. And our tutors at ITTT, they would like to see if you know about the strategy of elicitation or not. If you are able to use this strategy in your lessons precisely or not, because it's super important and it's a great strategy to not to test but to teach students. So it is specifically to guide students through different challenging parts of your lessons. Okay, so let me check the chat box. Okay, no comments on the eliciting strategy, so aren't you familiar with it? Let me know. Because eliciting is also super crucial and it's something interesting to implement in your teaching. Okay, just another moment. All right, so as for eliciting, it's the strategy when you actually ask questions. Yeah, right. So I'm not sure how to pronounce the name correctly, but Jeter introduces this eliciting strategy precisely. So it's yeah, when you elicit something from your students, you provoke some reaction. You ask questions when they ask questions, right? So you don't give direct answers, you just provoke your students thinking. This strategy is super important to make sure that you guide your students, not give them like everything they want. Because what you want to do as a teacher is to build this understanding when they create some rules and some knowledge on their own with your help. Yeah, awesome. Thanks guys. So you actually know about eliciting and it's super cool because this is the strategy we want to use when we teach grammatical points. That's correct. Yeah, and the very last idea I would like to share which actually impressed me a lot was this thing. It is called the 3F rule, where the last F is not actually F. So it's a deep tone, right, pH, but it sounds like F. So when we guide students from the first thing to the very last one, in terms of a grammatical aspect, what we want to explain, what we want them to unravel is form, function, and then phonology. If form and function are pretty clear and obvious, because it's something they come up with, not come up with, it's something they kind of notice when working with text, for example, phonology is something ESL teachers often neglect. And this is also a great misunderstanding, I should say, it's a great mistake doing as a teacher. Even if you are not a master of pronunciation or absence, phonology is still an important part to teach, even if it's not that connected to grammar itself. So if we, for example, take this example of present perfect as a grammatical point, how can we teach it from the phonological aspect? Do you have any ideas, guys? So let me know as well. What can we explain using this present perfect when we have this grammar lesson related to present perfect, and when it comes to phonology? What is so necessary to explain here? Okay, let me know. Do you have any idea? Yeah. And actually, here is a slide of this eliciting strategy. I don't know why I haven't showed it yet. But yeah, when when you start presenting the grammatical point itself on the study stage, you would use eliciting a lot, because you don't want to give out all of those cards in the beginning at the beginning, right? So you want your students think and provoke thinking. Okay, so what about phonology? What can we teach in terms of phonology? Okay, so does anyone have ideas? Okay, so all right. So as for phonology and present perfect, for example, we would probably use contractions or, for example, connected speech to explain some some phonological issues which might happen which might happen when we use present perfect. So generally speaking, the very last point, which is phonology, is still crucial when we work with grammatical aspects. So when you have your study stage and when you guide your students in this discovery, make sure you also explain how it sounds, because grammar is not something living on paper. When we work with written texts, it's pretty simple and clear how to use it, just implement this rule and that rule and you're good. But when we start using some specific grammar in speech, it's extremely different and sometimes we just have problems, right? So make sure that you still point out some phonological aspects as well. Okay, so that's pretty much for the grammatical strategies for that's all what I wanted to share. That's about my experience from the master class I took last week. But if you guys have any questions on grammar, on how to create lessons and I don't know what else, how to plan grammar lessons or whatever, just let me know over the comment section. I'll try my best to answer, okay? And let me just stop screen sharing, okay? So let's have a quick chat related to planning grammar lessons. So if you have any questions, just feel free to ask me. And I just want to remind one more time that the strategy that I have just shared is kind of a basic one. And if you aren't familiar with it, you can actually take a tuple course, the most basic tuple course, for example, because those strategies are introduced in the tuple course really well. And as for the ESA methodology, I personally learned about it when I took the tuple course with ITTT several years ago. So it really helped me to understand like, it helped me understand how to organize my lessons more or less precisely, because before that, I just had no idea how to teach grammar at all. But it's actually not that scary. That's a great point. Okay, so I should say that I am a little bit tired speaking. It's been like 45, 48 minutes already. All right, and there is this question. Okay, just one second. Okay, so inductive, okay, just one second. Inductive and deductive strategies are like opposite to each other. It's obvious. But when you teach grammar inductively, it's probably more related to theory than practice. And deductive methods, they are about provoking students thinking, and then trying to practice it. That's actually how I understand that. But I should say that this very idea of teaching grammar inductively or deductively is really specific. And probably, it's not the best approach to bear in mind when you plan your grammar lessons, because there are so many other ways how to do it easier. So to me, it's probably too challenging to consider teaching inductively or deductively. So it's just a matter of your preference probably. If you want to present grammar theoretically, then focus on the inductive method. And if you want your students to think and come up with some ideas related to grammar themselves, the deductive method would be your choice here. Okay. All right. And the next question is actually really good, because yes, teaching grammar, if you want to teach English in China or in any other countries around Asia, for example, TEFL certification or TESOL, for example, are really important because they are needed when you apply for this work visa. But I should also mention that every country has different rules and different policies. They also change a lot, especially after this pandemic situation. So those policies in China has changed already. And before deciding anything, try to Google and try to check out those governmental sites. And actually, if you're interested about teaching in China, I should recommend one of my previous live streams. It's been done a couple of months ago. Let me find the link, because it's super, super helpful. Okay, where it is. Okay. So just one second. I'm going to drop the link over the chat box. So here, if you follow the link, you will see the YouTube video from our ITTT channel. I did a live stream with my friend who has been teaching in China for seven years already. And he has been there since the beginning of this pandemic. And he didn't leave the country. And he has a lot of interesting and up-to-date information related to China. So if this location is interesting to you, make sure you watch that live stream, because I should say that all questions, all necessary questions are answered in that video. Okay. And speaking of TAPL course, yeah. So for some countries, not just for China, TAPL course is really important in terms of visa application. Okay. All right, guys. So do you have any further questions related to today's topic or maybe to TAPL? If not, we can actually wrap up, because we've been online for 55 minutes almost. But before we go, I just want to, yeah, no problem. Thank you for asking me, actually. So before we finish, I would like to invite you to my Facebook group. So I created this Facebook group to build this teaching community. And if you are interested to keep in touch, if you want to ask some further questions, you can just join in the group. And when you have your questions in mind, just feel free to ask there. I also try to share some useful content from time to time, but I don't really have time to do it. I'll try my best to get more or less consistent. And also, I would like to share some good news about myself. Recently, I've created an Instagram profile specifically for advertising my teaching services. And it's actually getting really nice there, because I get impressions and news. And some people ask me about teaching them. So if building your online teaching business is something interesting to you, you can also join in my Facebook group. And like, I am going to share my insights about this business, about this activity I'm doing. Yeah. So, and by the way, I also have done a lot of live streams related to online teaching. And if online teaching fascinates you a lot as myself, make sure you check out those live streams either on Facebook, on the Facebook group or on our YouTube channel. Yeah. I'm not a professor, but thanks a lot for your kind feedback. Yeah, I hope to see you guys once again next week. And yeah, what else? If you still, if you are still interested in taking a tuple course, just feel free to check out courses on the tuplecourse.net website. If you have any questions about tuple certification, maybe some specific courses, you can also ask me when you want. I'm open to communicate over the direct messages. So if you want to communicate with me sometime, just feel free to do that. That was a really productive live stream today. Thank you so much for joining in. And I hope to see you next week guys. So enjoy your day. Have a great week ahead and bye-bye. See you next week.