Something we overlook as native English speakers is the common expressions we use in our daily conversations. To those learning the English language, it can be downright confusing Continue reading
Teaching Fluency
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Category Archives: conversation
An Active Classroom is a Student-Centred Classroom
I hope my title did not conjure images of technology-enhanced learning with visions of smartphones, iPads, and laptops dancing up through the air. On the contrary,
this blog is about students stirring, moving in circles, and engaging in conversation. I’m talking about face to face interaction, where students are talking and listening to each other while the teacher is watching.
In the ESL classroom: LINC, ESL or EAP – we teachers need to have many ideas up our sleeves to make sure students are not yawning but interacting with one another and having fun while learning. Last year in September, I shared two of these strategies. You can read them here: http://blog.teslontario.org/an-active-start-to-the-academic-year/ In this blog, I share another one that I have found students also enjoy: Continue reading
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Back to school: First day jitters for students and teachers
While many of you may already be going into your 2nd or 3rd week of classes, we wanted to share some ideas to get over those first day jitters that so many new instructors and students may be feeling. For more ideas on get-to-know activities, please click on the link to read Cecilia’s blog posted previously: Get-to-know activities in the language classroom
I don’t know about you, but I find the first days of class can be a little scary, yet exciting at the same time. Students probably wonder what the teacher will be like and how they will fit in with the other students. Thoughts such as, “Will everybody be at my level of English?” or “I hope I’m not at the bottom of the class!” are likely common.
But what about us – the instructors? Continue reading
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Learning English through Music
No matter what language you speak, music has a universal tongue, wouldn’t you agree? Its power in bringing people together, no matter what language they speak, is priceless. So, if music has the ability to unite us, why not use it in the classroom to help your students learn English?
I have my kids to thank for inspiring this post, partly due to their love of watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighbourhood every day. You find inspiration everywhere.
On the show they sing the lesson of the day repeatedly throughout each episode. It sticks in your head and is really catchy, and the nice thing is that the lessons are useful for children in helping to problem solve or deal with certain emotions that may arise out of unpleasant situations. Continue reading
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Student-Lead Discussions
During my TESL practicum, I was privileged to work with a wonderful instructor in an EAP class. My practicum supervisor* was great at scaffolding and layering; as the course progressed, each language skill was incorporated into subsequent lesson activities until it all culminated in a final project. The class was in oral skills with the final project being a presentation. Along with using the targeted language from the semester, the presentations also included a focus on appropriate body language, strategies to engage the audience, and the use of technology.
While presentations are common in English language classes, they can be very stressful and time consuming. In order to add variety to the assessments during the course, another activity that was required of the students, and that could easily be adapted for any type of ESL classroom, was leading a discussion group. Not only did we use this in the EAP context, I used the same activity in an EFL class that I taught in Ecuador in which the students were preparing to take the First Cambridge Exam. Here is how I did it!
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Pronunciation: The Oft-Neglected Skill
Diane Ramanathan has been a LINC Home Study instructor with The Centre for Education and Training since Feb 2014. She is also a part-time professor for the TSL program at Algonquin College.
Transcript: Continue reading
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Come Again: You Said What?
Imagine if someone said something overtly sexual or crude to you. What would your reaction be? Disbelief? Shock? Anger? Now imagine that the speaker is your ESL student. Of course, your response has to be different.
Sometimes because of pronunciation or improper word usage, ESL students inadvertently say or write the most shocking things. A while back, one of my students wrote this in a peer review (a student response to a student assignment, in this case an essay): “Your hooker is not very appealing and is unlikely to attract the reader.” Of course, he meant hook. What a difference two letters can make. This situation was easier to deal with because the student had not uttered this sentence aloud to the class. I took him aside and explained the meaning of the word, resulting in him blushing quite a bit.
Sometimes students mispronounce words such as sit, beach, can’t etc. I deal with this issue Continue reading
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Bridging the Great Divide
I have been teaching in an EAP program for the last six years. The goal of our program is to prepare international students for the experience of studying in a post-secondary program alongside their domestic peers. Understandably, competence in their use of English is paramount. However, I am constantly struck by the fact that domestic students and international students, regardless of their ability to speak English well, remain largely separate on campus, both in and out of classes.
My students often comment that they don’t know how to make friends with Canadian students, and they are worried about the quality of their English and how they will be received. In an effort to bridge this ‘great divide’, I recently had the opportunity for my students to participate in a communicative activity that, for a change, did not involve their own classmates. Working alongside a wonderful colleague and professor in another discipline*, I was able to offer my class of twenty students a chance to meet and converse with the very Canadians they had been worried about meeting (and intimidated by) for a long time. Continue reading
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Say It With Confidence!
When we are submitting a cover letter to a perspective employer, we want to showcase our skills and to communicate the fact that we have confidence. In work preparedness classes we promote the idea that confident vocabulary and sentence structure is essential to having our cover letter read. But where is the line between confidence and over confidence, and how do we teach that to our students?
I once received a homework assignment that was a sample cover letter written by a student. The format was good, the sentences well formed, and there were no spelling mistakes. However, a few lines made me wince: “I am brilliant. I am the best person that your company could hire.” This surely was confidence, bordering on hubris, that may in fact have the same effect as grammatical error on the reader of the letter. If I were the hiring manager, I’m not sure I would have read much further. So, where do we draw the line? Continue reading
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Pragmatically Speaking
For the last 8 or 9 years I have been working in programs that deliver language instruction to adult newcomers who have language levels above CLB 7. These people have high levels of education and have been professionally trained. When I first started working with this demographic of students, I struggled with creating content that was relevant for my classes. I found their language skills to be quite good, and I wondered what else I could offer them.
Once I started to get to know them a little better, I came to understand that they were having difficulty obtaining employment. This fact seemed counter intuitive to me because I know that Canada relies on immigration to sustain its workforce. I had been taught that without immigration, Canada’s population would actually decline. So, what exactly prevents them from getting a job? Continue reading
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