(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!
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
This is the perfect activity for integrating four skills into one activity. And it culminates in a writing task in which students focus on controlling their grammar and on their sentence style. It’s also one in which students can practice those two aspects of writing without having to spend time thinking about what to write.
These fluency activities can be used throughout a term when instructors would like to have students work on their grammar in a writing context and/or when they would like to add some group work in their writing classes. Also, it’s a good lead-in to teaching paraphrasing skills.
Common Sense Teaching ESL 