(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
An important ingredient for making pair work activities successful learning experiences would seem to be active involvement on the part of both members; and it seems obvious that certain tasks would produce more involvement than others. In fact, research has been conducted on the type of communication present when pairs are involved in one-way and two-way tasks.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching a conversation class is that when you teach your ESL students conversation techniques, you get to hear them talk about their culture, their experiences, opinions and dreams.
A student-centered approach doesn’t mean the teacher just puts students in groups, gives them a topic and tells them to talk about it. It doesn’t even mean that the students are put in pairs (Student A/Student B), given two different “information gap” papers and told to complete the exercise by talking.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) *
This posting is discussed on my YouTube video: Why is this comma here?
During a teacher-training course that I was teaching for American college students who wanted to teach ESL, we were discussing where to put commas. Several of the students said that they decide according to their breath. As they are re-reading something that they had written, if they stop to take a breath, that’s where they put a comma. Wow!
Slow reading because of translating
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)
The other day, Mari, an ESL student of mine, asked me if I could help her with an article that she had been assigned for one of her courses. I could see that the article would be quite challenging for her. And I couldn’t help but notice that she had covered the article with translations. It was obvious that she had little confidence that she’d be able to understand any of it unless she translated almost every word, even words she actually knew.
As mentioned in a previous posting • Purposeful reading: Students read faster if they know what they are looking for. , if student know the purpose of a reading assignment, they tend to read faster because they don’t get bogged down in trying to understand unnecessary details and vocabulary. Also, they are more likely to become tolerant of ambiguity. Included in this posting is a unit (an article and study guide) that begins with a focus on the reason students would read the article.
