 Hello. This presentation is going to focus on the ESA methodology of teaching. In our teaching methodologies section, we briefly had a look at what ESA was about, but in this presentation we're going to look in greater detail about that particular methodology. This particular methodology is accredited to Jeremy Harmer from his practice of English language teaching book. It's a three-stage methodology, and what we're going to do is to look at the purpose of each one of these stages and some typical activities that take place during those stages. So the first stage is known as the engage, and its sole purpose, as the name implies, is to get the students talking and thinking in English. There is no reason whatsoever when these students come to your class that they should have said a single word of English up until that point in time during the day. So we cannot expect them just to come in and immediately start talking in English. We need to have some activity such as the engage to get them warmed up. There are a number of activities that we can do in order to do this, and what we try to ensure is that these activities involve everyone in the class, that they are interactive and fun. So some examples of these activities, again, that we can play is known as fizzbuzz, and in fizzbuzz what you do is you go around the class, each person saying a number. Let's say we start off between the numbers one and thirty. They just go around the class, each person going through the numbers. In the second round what we do is we ask them for every number that is a multiple of three, three, six, nine, twelve and so on, they say the word fizz, and then in the third round they not only do that, but every number that is a multiple of five, five, ten, fifteen, twenty and so on, they say the word buzz. This really gets them to have to use their thought for English as to whether they say the number, or they say fizz, or they say buzz, or indeed with numbers such as fifteen, whether they say the word fizzbuzz. So it's a very nice activity to get them going. A second idea that we could use here is that we get them to create lists. So we give them a topic, let's say fruit and vegetables, and they go around the class having to produce a list of various things. Another idea may be something like an alphabet game, where they have to create nouns following the letters of the alphabet. So each of these ideas is purely and simply to get the students talking and thinking in English. They are interactive in that the students have to communicate to us. And the third thing we need to ensure is that everyone in the class has said something by the end of our engage phase. The second stage or phase of the lesson is known as the study phase. And really the purpose of this phase is to cover the actual teaching of the lesson and to check understanding of that material. Typically in an ESA lesson the study phase will have two parts. The first phase of the study is to cover the actual teaching component in what's known as the board work. And what we try to do in the board work phase is to elicit to gain information from the students about the teaching point. So this is very different to the normal didactic way of teaching where someone stands at the front and explains the information. In the ESA methodology wherever possible we are trying to draw the information out from the students in this process known as elicitation. Once that information has been generated on the board what the teacher can then do is cover any gaps in knowledge that they are unable to elicit from the students. The teaching point then being complete we can then move over into the second part of the study phase which is to check the students understanding of this information. The second part of the study phase once we've elicited this teaching point from the students is to then check their understanding. Now one question that's often used in classrooms to check understanding is do you understand. Really this is a waste of time because the students will quite often say yes whether or not they do. So in order to check understanding what we have to do is to ask targeted specific questions about the teaching point. So what these questions have to tell us is by answering them the students have an understanding of the material that we've covered in the teaching point. The types of questions that we ask could be for example what are known as gap fill activities so quite often they have a sentence where there is a gap and they have to choose typically a vocabulary word in order to complete that sentence and make it make sense. Another example of an activity might be something like a matching exercise and there are all sorts of things that they could match. For example they might match a word to a picture or they might match a picture to a description or they could match a word to a description itself. So again both of these activities are very targeted in that the students have to be able to understand the material in order to get the answer correct. Another type of activity that can be used here we could describe as word order and typically you will take a sentence and scramble it up and the students then have to recreate that sentence in the correct order to make it sensible. Again this will show understanding of the particular vocabulary or grammar point and so on to the final phase of the ESA lesson which is called the activate phase. What we have done so far if you remember is to engage the students to get them talking and thinking in English where possible we've elicited the teaching point from the students and covered any gaps in knowledge to make sure that the teaching point has been fully covered and then we've checked understanding of that teaching point by asking targeted and specific questions. Usually the types of activities that we've done for the study phase will involve using a single word in order to answer those questions correctly. This however is not how language is actually used. When we use language we always use it in some form of context. So the purpose of the activate activity is to put that teaching material into some form of context something realistic that the students would actually use. Okay so let's look at some typical activities that could be used for the activate stage of a lesson. Remember what we're trying to do is to get the students to use the language that they've learnt in some form of realistic context. So typical activities may include role plays where the students take on the role of a doctor or a dentist or a patient and they actually generate a set of language that uses this particular teaching. Another example that they could do would be surveys where each of the students get up and they go around and they ask questions of all the other students. This type of activity where all students get up and interact with each other is often called a mill drill. The final type of activity that we'll put in here is that the students can have a debate about a particular subject. Now if we think about the activities that we're doing here what we can see as opposed to the study activities where we had targeted specific language each of these activities is actually going to generate different answers depending upon which student we interview or have the role play for. So this is using language in a realistic way rather than just answering a single question. This particular methodology that we've run through this morning is known as a straight arrow ESA lesson. If every single lesson that we undertook with our students was a straight arrow ESA lesson then it is quite possible that the students would be able to predict what is going to come up next and whilst this is good for the lower level students then it could potentially become a little bit boring for our higher level students. So what Harmer did in his ideas about ESA was to generate two other types of ESA lesson that we can use to try and generate a little bit more interest. So the other two types of ESA lesson that we can follow the first is known as a boomerang lesson and the second is known as a patchwork lesson. And what we're going to do is to have a look at those other types of ESA lesson in a little bit more detail. So what we'll do now is to go through each of the types of lesson to see how they are created. The straight arrow as its name implies is just running through each of the three phases E, S and A in a straight line. The second type of lesson is known as the boomerang and as the name implies what happens in a boomerang lesson is that we send something out to start with and that comes back to us. So a typical example of a boomerang lesson would be something like this. We always start whatever type of lesson it is with an engage phase that's to get them talking and thinking in English. But from the boomerang lesson from the engage we then move directly into an activate activity before we have studied any of the language. What is likely to happen here is that the students are not going to create the perfect language either in terms of their vocabulary or in terms of the grammar. So this is going to indicate a gap in the student's knowledge. What we can then do knowing what that gap in the knowledge is is to study that particular gap. And once we've completed that we can then reactivate in the second activate phase to see whether they are able to use that knowledge. In the patchwork ESA lesson really all we can say here is that we're going to start with an engage phase we're going to end with an activate phase and really anything we like can happen in here in terms of the A's and the S's and the E's. So in the patchwork lesson what we're doing is putting together all of these different components E, S and A in no particular order. What we'd like to do now is to have a look at actual examples of each of these three types of lesson so that you get a clearer idea of what they might involve. So now an example of a straight arrow ESA lesson. For our engage phase what we're going to do is get the students a video of animals and they are going to say what they like about those animals and try to create a list of some more. So remember what we're trying to do here is to get the students talking and thinking in English. We're using a typical engage activity which is to create a list and we try to make sure that all the students have been involved in some way in creating those lists. Moving on to the study phase the first part is going to be the board work and the teacher is going to try to elicit from the students what each of those animals can and can't do. Typically what the students will say is just single words so run, jump, fly etc. What we would then need to do is to make sure that each of those things are put into a sentence. So for example what we will do is to run through each of the animals and get the students to tell us in full sentences what it can and can't do. This will be covering the actual grammar point that we're trying to cover and so what we then need to do is to make sure that the students understand this particular grammar point and we can cover that with the use of worksheets. So for example we may have a gap fill and we may have a matching activity on that particular point. Go on to the final phase of the lesson which is the activate. What we're going to do here is to get the students in pairs to create their own super animal and once they've drawn that particular animal out they're going to write a number of sentences to tell us what it can and can't do. After that they're then going to present that information to the rest of the class. Our next example is going to be that of a boomerang lesson and remember the structure typically is something like this. So again we're going to start with an engage phase and for our engage the students are just going to have a discussion about jobs, what happens at interviews and so on and so forth. So during that engage phase what we would hope to do is to elicit some useful language about jobs and interviews and the types of questions that are being asked. Then we're going to move immediately into an activate activity and this is going to involve a role play. So we'll break the students into pairs one will be an interviewer the other will be an interviewe and they'll generate the language that that role play will produce. What the teacher can do whilst that is taking place is to go around and make a note of any mistakes in either vocabulary or grammar that are taking place. What you can then do in the study phase of the lesson is study in the board work taking your cue from what happened in the role play then we can study that particular language and grammar which will be helpful for their role play later on in the lesson. So the students will cover any useful language and grammar needed for that particular role play. Once that has occurred we can then do worksheets. Those worksheets will be to check their understanding of that particular language and then finally we can repeat the role play as our final activate activity perhaps swap down the interviewer and the interviewe so they get to play a different part but what they should now be able to do is to make use of this language and grammar in their second role play. Hopefully what we will show the students is that there is a gap in their knowledge in this first one and that they can then use that language in one. So a boomerang ESA lesson is very good for indicating a learning need and showing that that learning need has been covered. Our final example is going to be an example of a patchwork ESA lesson and remember we said the form of this particular lesson will start with an engage as always it will finish with an activate and there will be some variation of E, S and A within the brackets here. So we are going to generate our patchwork ESA lesson as follows starting with the engage the students are going to look at holiday photos and talk about what they like and don't like from what they see. From that we are going to move directly into an activate phase and what the students are going to do is to make comments about holiday brochures and try to act out a role play between a travel agent and a customer. As this is taking place the teacher will be moving around and looking for gaps in knowledge in terms of their vocabulary and their grammar and these things are then going to be covered in the first study activities. So in the board work phase of this study activity the teacher will cover any gaps in knowledge indicated by that first activate activity. What the students are then going to do is to move into a second activate and here they are going to use the information from the study activity and they are going to try to create their own travel brochure. Again once the students have created that travel brochure we are going to move into the next phase which is going to be another engage this time about a slightly different topic so this time the students are going to be asked what they like about particular radio or TV adverts. So we will get the students to tell us which particular adverts they like and why, which ones they find amusing which ones generate their interest and from this we will move into another study phase where the teacher is going to cover the types of language that is generated by those types of advert. What we are going to do to finish the lesson off is a final activate activity where hopefully we are going to bring everything that we have covered so far in the lesson together and the students are going to create their own TV advert and they are then going to present that to the rest of the class.