So I began looking around the internet for interesting comics. I thought of some of the major favorites first, like Garfield and Peanuts, so I focused on those. Read More...
ESL students love cartoons and comics, regardless of their age. Usually when I come back from a break or go into the classroom for the first time that day, at least one or two students will have some kind of Chinese comic book open. It made me think that using comics for an activity would be a really good idea.
So I began looking around the internet for interesting comics. I thought of some of the major favorites first, like Garfield and Peanuts, so I focused on those. Read More...
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There’s a difference between ESL students that can’t talk and those that won’t talk. Students that can’t talk are often younger, or if they’re older, their language skills are just not good. This always baffles me because English has been taught in the Chinese public schools for decades now.
Students that won’t talk, however, often can, and can make some pretty good sentences when they choose to do so. The trick, however, is getting them to do so. So how do you make a student that won’t talk begin talking? Well, I don’t really have all the answers to that. Each day when I teach I run into this problem, although if I’m teaching a class of students it’s not such a big dilemma. If I’m teaching a student one-on-one, or VIP-style, however, this is a huge problem. What do I do for an hour, or sometimes two, when the student will only say one word or one short sentence with each response? Let me show you some things that have worked for me over the years.
I had a class of lower level students this afternoon, oh, I’d say around 8 to 10 years old. There were 11 of them in the class today, and it was getting a bit rowdy at times. It was loud, there was a lot of Chinese speaking going on, and students were up and walking around. To tell you the truth, I really hate this class. I’ve had it about 4 months now, and they’re just rubbish. And the reason they’re just rubbish is because of their behavior. I can’t begin to count how many times I have to say, no yell, “sit down” during each class, it happens so often. Students don’t have their books open, and notebooks are often forgotten at home if they even exist at all. Several students routinely don’t bring a pencil. Well, I was starting my second hour, and I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I decided I would try one of my warm-up games, but with a little twist today to make it seem new, and more exciting. How It Works I write all of the students’ names on the board, numbered down. I then pull out one of my dice. Today it worked well because we had 11 students, so I could add myself and get 12. I used my 12-sided dice which I brought with me from America, but you could easily use two 6-sided dice, or come up with some sort of variation on the spot if you have more or fewer students. I rolled the dice and got a 4, so that was Lily. I moved her name to the center of the board and then pulled up the online-stopwatch. I explained that they would have one minute to write as many words as they could using the letters in Lily’s name. They could only use the first letter, and had to write downward. I also explained that they would get 1 point for each letter, so it’s better to have the longest words that you can think of. After the time is up, I ask them to count their letters and I put them on the board next to their name. Students were getting into the high teens and low twenties on each name, so their words were long. I would usually ask them to say what words they wrote down and then put them up on the board as well, but I was feeling lazy today so did not do that great exercise. It’s a really simple game and we played three rounds. I could have kept going because the students wanted to, but you learn to do a limited amount so students don’t get bored of it. I would recommend this if you need to kill about 15 to 20 minutes of time in your next ESL class. Boy, oh boy, it’s here again. International Women’s Day, which once again is not falling fast on the heels of International Men’s Day, which I don’t believe exists. Oh, wait, Trinidad and Tobago got it started in 1999. I’ve never heard of it anywhere else, however.
I’m not sure if this holiday would be allowed in America. After all, most things have to be equal there, and I’m just not sure it would fly as a sanctioned holiday. But in China it’s all the rage! When I head into work tonight I fully expect to not see most of my female Chinese colleagues. Oh, I’ll see the teachers, all right (you never get out of that), but most of the support staff that have to talk with parents and students about administrative matters, well, they’ll be gone. I remember when I worked at the public schools. On International Women’s Day the female teachers got all day, or at least half of the day after lunch, off. I always felt a bit resentful of that, because the men didn’t get that. It always made me think that this holiday creates a little too much animosity, perhaps much like Mother’s Day does with moms and their children. Anyway, I read in the paper a couple of years ago about some Chinese men in the blogosphere who wanted to get International Men’s Day proclaimed as a real holiday in China. I thought, ‘hey, not a bad idea,’ until I read further and found out that they wanted the holiday to be in August. Well, as a teacher that helps me about as much as an asshole on my elbow, which is to say not much. Needless to say, their bright idea didn’t go through, and I feel that it’s been to the detriment of all ever since. Now, I know women argue that they need the holiday, and I really feel for them that they do the same work for less pay, many times at least. But when I see people not have to work when I do just because of their sex, well, it pisses me off. The only bright spot I can see in this tonight is that maybe some of my girl students will stay home. And, I’ve got another damn Parent Teacher Meeting tonight. Perhaps some of the moms will cancel. Oh wait, that just mean I have to prepare more stuff. Damn you International Women’s Day! Learn More About International Women’s Day Wikipedia Article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day It’s Own Website (go figure) http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp International Men’s Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Men%27s_Day I’ve worked with a lot of ESL teachers over the years, and I’ve seen many things that work, and quite a lot more that don’t. One of the things that I notice a lot is that ESL teachers often seem to think of themselves as jackasses. The way that they carry around so much extra baggage to and from class makes me wonder if they’d be better as baggage handlers at a large international airport.
When I work, I carry around a bag, but only because I don’t have a desk or space to put my stuff like other teachers. When I did, I used to just carry the book, my notebook, and pen. After a time I decided to add a pencil case in there so that I could put my USB flash drive, extra pens, some dice and coins, and scissors and tape into it without issue. But it took me awhile to learn that. I used to carry around a large plastic box that had lots of scissors and tape and glue and just plain rubbish. And I’ve even been known to carry a large basket to classes with smaller children to use with games. Well, I stopped that a long time ago. It became obvious that I just wasn’t using most of the stuff that I was bringing to class, so I just stopped bringing it. My classes got better. Less is more, after all, and when you limit the amount of junk you’re hauling into class, you’ll be able to free up your mind, and space, for your students. These are what I consider the essential items to bring to class:
Boy, I hate it! That’s how I feel whenever someone brings up the excruciating prospect of attending some kind of workshop, professional development seminar, or idea-sharing session.
Now, perhaps the titles I’ve just thrown out don’t sound that bad, but believe me, when you get into these situations, often taking place in small, cramped, overly-hot rooms, you’ll understand. The ideas are staid, the methodology outdated, and the pacing glacial. And you often leave them more confused and with fewer ideas than when you came in. So what can you do to make these training sessions more pleasant, besides timing your days off to coincide or calling in sick? Well, there are many things you can do, but they might not make you the most popular with management.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are often good ideas presented in ESL workshops and ESL training sessions, but they’re the exception to the norm. Don’t get caught in these draconian get-togethers unprepared; bring work, humor, and patience! Teaching grammar is never the most fascinating thing you could be doing in the ESL classroom, but it’s often necessary. Most of my students groan audibly whenever I point out the grammar boxes in their books, and they immediately go into boredom mode.
This is never good when you’re a teacher, so you’ve got to think of some fun and exciting ways to get them doing grammar. That’s why I came up with quite a few different grammar dice activities. All you’ll need for this is one 6-sided dice and whatever grammar notes you’re teaching. Exercise One Let’s say you’re teaching continuous tense. I’ll explain to the students that this is what you’re doing “now.” After that I’ll elicit some verbs, or use some from the book: 1. Run 2. Play 3. Fight 4. Kiss 5. Jump 6. Poop After that I’ll choose one student to go first (good luck getting volunteers, it’s like pulling teeth most of the time) and they’ll roll the dice. Let’s say they get #3. They’ll have to make a sentence like: “He is fighting the dog,” or “The dog is fighting him now.” Pretty easy, and they have to change the verb to continuous with –ing themselves. Exercise Two What if you’ve got some really low level learners or young children? Well, just do the same thing but with a noun. Let’s take animals: 1. Bird 2. Cat 3. Dog 4. Turtle 5. Horse 6. Elephant Roll the dice and get them to give you a simple sentence, like “I like bird,” or “The dog is black.” They’ll almost never put an ‘s’ on the end, but hey, at least they’re talking! Exercise 3 Those last two were pretty simple Let’s try something a bit more difficult, and maybe fun. 1. Today 2. Yesterday 3. Tomorrow 4. Last Week 5. In 10 Years 6. 100 Years Ago In this example students will have to use ‘will’ for future tenses, and –ed for past tenses. It requires them to be aware of how tenses change depending on what time reference you’re talking about. This is a good one for higher levels, and it forces them to be a bit more creative. Hopefully those games will give you something to try the next time you have a boring grammar point to discuss in class. Like many of the activities I talk about on this site, I don’t do this one much anymore, I did it for about 2 years, and I got bored of it. Still, every once in a while I’ll pull it out, and it’s a pretty good time. I was doing my usual Monday VIP session today. The girl I teach is a teen and her English isn’t that good. The problem is that I’ve got her 2 hours each Monday, and she also comes for 2 hours with four other teachers throughout the week. So this poor girl, whose English hasn’t really improved much as far as I can tell, has to come for about 10 hours each week.
Well, after a while you want to give her a break and do something fun. That’s why whenever I start a class I always put up a list on the board of things that we’re going to do in the class. I always ask them what they want to do, and I always put some things I want to do up a well. You’ve got to put some fun things, like games and videos in the list as well. What is it, already? So we were doing descriptive adjectives and one of the things in the book was to do the following activity:
Pretty easy, right? Well, we just happen to have a lot of American magazines in our teacher’s office (thanks you) so I grabbed a handful and we got to work. We ended up cutting out three pictures each. I labeled mine with a name, a job title, and a short sentence on what they looked like or had with them in the picture. I then wrote three questions and answered them as if I was that person. Here is my model:
Do you like music? Yes Do you like ice-cream? No Why is there a tongue on your shirt? I’m with the band, mate. Why are your eyes red? Don’t be a wanker! Remember, humor is important for an ESL teacher’s sanity. In the above example I also used a painter and for fun, a dog I named Gus. Well, the activity went over well, she liked it, and most importantly, it killed time. I’d say we spent about 25-30 minutes on it in total, from presenting the idea to her to her and I reading each other’s characters off. It was pretty fun and I highly recommend this simple, easy, and slow ESL grammar activity. I love guessing games in the classroom, and my students really get a kick out of them as well. There are many different guessing games out there, and they all pretty much rely on one student saying things to make the others students shout out the answer. Sometimes they can use gestures and other body language techniques, but it almost always relies on talking. After all, that’s what ESL learning is all about.
Well, I tried to come up with a different approach to that. I thought it would be interesting if you took that usual guessing game format, but changed it up a bit. What if, for instance, the students couldn’t talk? That sounds kind of weird since most of their parents want them to study English so they can speak it. Well, perhaps it is my way of sticking it to ‘em. How It Works Anyway, that’s how I developed Guess the Animal, and here’s how it works.
Easy to Make Lots of students really get into it, and it’s quite an easy game to make. If you don’t want to pay for a copy from my website, I would highly encourage you to go and find some common animal pictures, like elephant, cow, or monkey, and put them into some type of Word or Excel document. I have mine nicely formatted, and I think that’s worth the time you’ll save in doing that and tracking down all the pictures. Still, doing it yourself surely has its benefits. Either way, I really think you should try this game with your next class, regardless of their level. I’ve done it with very low level students and vey high level students, and they all love it. Getting students to do handouts isn’t always easy, but it’s a pretty good way to kill time. And remember, when you’re an ESL teacher, it’s all about killing time. So, that’s why I want to tell you about a great handout today, and one that I’ll give you for free.
I made this handout from another handout that I thought was boring. Like many handouts you’ll find on other websites, this one had a good idea, but the implementation just wasn’t good enough. So I took it, opened it in paint, and began changing it around. The result is a pretty good new handout that many classes of mine have liked. I’ve done it with lower level students, about eight years old, but it really works well with teens. It’s a writing exercise, but students will need to read their work. It’s also pretty funny, and the students are laughing quite a bit. How It Works How it works is students choose 1 of 8 different scenarios. These can be like “Why were you playing computer games on Monday morning,” or “Why were you kissing that frog last week?” Students have to write a short story, about 5 sentences, telling why they were doing that. I draw a scale on the board from 1 to 10, 10 being the truest, and 1 being the least true. This will give the students a way to vote on one another’s stories, and it makes it a lot more fun, too. I always start by giving an example. In this case I’ll do “Why were you eating rubbish in the park last week?” “Oh man! You saw me? Let me explain. You see, a couple of weeks ago my dad lost his job at KFC. Now he can’t bring home any free food anymore. And just last week my mom got hit by a car and broke her leg. Now she can’t work! So we don’t have any money, and I have to look in the rubbish bins for food.” I’ll usually get a 1 to 5 on that, depending on the class. Then I’ll take a different approach. “Oh man! You saw me? Let me explain. You see, last week there was this big crocodile, and it ate my leg! Yeah! Now I can’t work, so I have to look in the rubbish bins. Oh, this leg? Well, it’s wooden!” That will also get me a 1 to 5 depending on the class, although usually it will be a bit lower. If you’re looking for a fun ESL activity that will take 20-40 minutes, this is one you should definitely try. |
Greg Strandberg
From 2008 to 2013 I was an ESL teacher in Shenzhen, China. I've worked in public schools, training centers, and one-on-one as a tutor. Categories
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February 2016
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