(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)
(This is a revision to an earlier posting: Enjoyable and Effective Awareness Activity for Changing ESL Students Classroom Behavior)
Most ESL students don’t do goofy things just to irritate the teacher. Usually, they are unaware of how they are coming across or unaware that they are acting differently from the other students or even what is expected of them. These are some of the habits students tend to bring to our classes:
An effective approach to circumventing these habits is one in which students become aware of the effects these habits have on the teacher and other students. In this post, I’ll explain how programs that I’ve taught in were able to help students see how their behavior is viewed by others. Not only was the process enjoyable for the students, but also, we noticed far fewer students engaging in these behaviors.
(This posting includes a form which you are welcome to use with your students.) *
This posting is discussed on my YouTube video ESL Writing Class Activity: Fun, Lively and Productive
This is a paragraph that a student secretly wrote to describe one of her classmates. All the students are circulating around the periphery of the room, reading description hanging on the wall with no names on and trying to determine who is being described in the paragraphs. Each student seems very focused on reading the descriptions, searching for the classmate who is the object of the description but also looking out of the corner of their eyes to see what kind of reaction others are having to the description that they secretly wrote. There is energy in the room, a lot of interacting and a lot of laughing.
In brief, the steps for this activity are:
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
At first, this pair-work activity looks like it’s about getting students to talk a lot by filling information in a chart. But that’s not the most important value of it.
Yes, students will talk a lot during this. But by including a short pre-exercise, they will see how they should ask clarification questions when they need more information or if they didn’t understand. Asking clarification questions is the strategy that they can use in future conversation situations in and outside the classroom.
In this activity, the students will be filling in information about a class schedule. They’ll need to listen to their partners tell them the name of courses, days, times and room numbers. They’ll have many chances to ask questions, especially if they don’t understand.
Common Sense Teaching ESL 