This posting includes links to two videos.
I’m always skeptical when I hear someone claim that something in the field of teaching ESL is the best. But I can say from all my 40 years in the field that this technique is the best for teaching listening for teachers and students in so many ways.
What makes this so special is that we can easily match the students’ interests with their level of listening skills. There is no need to search for a book that might come close to doing that.
The teacher was feeling a bit overwhelmed. He was assigned a Reading course in which summarizing was one of the goals. Where to start? A colleague suggested a rather arduous process of having students identifying and clarifying the topic of the passage. This would be followed by techniques for finding the most important point the author was making for each paragraph. Then they would practice how to identify supporting points. They would practice recognizing key word and practice paraphrasing those. And on and on.
The easy summarizing-skill technique
Here is the basis for this technique: We always have a reason for summarizing specific information from an article. (In real life, and even mainstream academic courses, are we ever asked to just summarize everything in an article?)
I recently started a Facebook group and would like to invite all the readers of this site to join. You can click on the icon on the right column or below.
About this group
This group is for ESL teacher from around the world who would like to discuss methods and techniques that can be effectively used in our Conversation, Writing, Reading, Listening and Grammar courses. We are especially interested in ways to make our lessons more student-centered. Members are encouraged to share challenges that they’ve faced and successes they experienced when trying to meet the goals of their courses and motivating students. In addition to members initiating topics, I’ll include postings of teaching techniques from this blog for possible discussions.
David Kehe
*(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)
Teachers, if you prefer to be the center of attention during a lesson, THIS UNIT IS NOT FOR YOU. But if you to play the role of a coach, setting up the lesson, briefly explaining the exercises and stepping aside to let students engage in assignments allowing you more time to work individually with each student, THIS UNIT IS FOR YOU.
In this YouTube video Engaging, Student-Centered ESL Writing Unit Using Inductive Approach , I describe the unit exercises…
Common Sense Teaching ESL 