As ESL Teachers, we are all trying to be effective -- that is, convey what we know to our students. After reading several blogs and bulletin boards online, I found many different points of view on what is effective teaching, which I have tried to canvas here.



Often effective teachers have difficulty explaining to others what they are doing. It's a special skill to know how to encourage and teach people in a way that they respond to ... and each person is different!

As any teacher who has spent any time at all in the classroom will tell you, every student is different and what works for one group of students doesn't always work for the next. We all learn in different ways. Some of us are visual, or more kinesthetic while others may be more auditory learners. Some may prefer learning in a group, others one on one, and still others, watching and then going home to try it alone. As a teacher its important to be sensitive to our students and understand that the learning curve varies from one student to the next and there are so many variables to consider in the ways that we learn. The important thing is we want our students to have fun and feel good about just getting out there and trying it. As teachers we will continue to develop these skills and will find more success at teaching with certain techniques but know that this technique won't always work, so having other ways of showing your students will enable us to reach a greater majority of our students. Also, as teachers we sometimes get stuck in a mode of teaching that it can be refreshing to visit other classes as a student, which can helpful in revealing how you learn and teach.

Here are some pointers and suggestions for teaching effectively:

For the first time in American legal history, a "spammer", or sender of junk e-mails, has been jailed. Jeremy Jaynes, 30, was sentenced to nine years in prison for using false Internet addresses to send millions of e-mail advertisements. He is said to have sent ten million unwanted mails a day; thousands of innocent, unaware people fell for his fake products and services, which included the usual variety of pornography and Viagra-related goods. He is reputed to have earned up to $750,000 per month. Jaynes was considered to be a big fish in the spamming world, one of the world's top ten spammers. His lawyers are appealing the sentence, which they say is far too harsh and doesn't fit the crime. They contend that even though the profits from his shady business afforded him a luxury mansion in Virginia, Jaynes is really a philanthropist who built homes for poor people and donated money to charities. Despite ripping off millions of people, he told the court he "didn't intend to cause harm to anybody". In his defense he said: "I can guarantee the court I will not be involved in the e-mail marketing business again."

1. CHAT: Talk in pairs or groups about: spam / e-mail / Internet / pornography / Viagra / big fish / luxury mansion / charities.

For more conversation, change topics and partners frequently.

2. SPAM BRAINSTORM: Spend one minute writing down all of the different words you associate with the word "spam". Share your words with your partner / group and talk about them.

3. SPAM LAWS:

1. How much spam do you receive every day / every week? What kind of spam is it? Do you read it? How do you deal with it? How does it make you feel? What would you like to say to the spammers?
2. Brainstorm all the different kinds of spam (e.g. Viagra, dating agencies, free credit cards, "I need to deposit $25,000,000 from my deceased uncle's will into your bank account".)
3. In pairs / groups, make a law that deals with spammers. Decide what kind of sentence you would give to the various types of spam that were brainstormed above (e.g. two years in prison for a Viagra spammer .)
4. Change partners / groups and compare your laws and sentences.

4. OPINIONS: Talk about the following opinions based on the news article.

1. Nine years in prison for a spammer isn't long enough.
2. Education is the key to stop spamming. If people didn't buy the stuff, spam would disappear.
3. Spam doesn't harm anybody.
4. Software companies should make better software to block spam.
5. Many people do not realize their e-mail address is as important as their home address.
6. Old people are easy targets. Spammers should get heavy prison sentences.
7. I'm worried a virus from a spam mail might infect my computer.
8. Dangerous criminal gangs are behind a lot of spam. It is as serious as drug trafficking.
9. I want to know what happens when spammers start spamming mobile phones.
10. Why is it called "spam"? Seems a stupid word.
    

As many of you heard, we have just returned from McLeod Ganj, near Dharamsala, in northern India . This is the Tibetan enclave where the Dalai Lama lives.

Getting there is physically demanding, for it's a long way from the gentle West Coast of Canada. McLeod Ganj is a former hill station which the British army maintained for defense of the north west part of India . When China invaded Tibet , the Indian government gave the Tibetans land there to establish an enclave. This is where the Dalai Lama lives. Today, there is a steady stream of refugees arriving from China. Most of these new arrivals are young people or children, who cannot get an adequate education in their homeland. Although these young people arrive with nothing, no possessions, and usually no family, they are loved and welcomed. This is part of the Tibetan way of life.

We taught there for a month, to get a sense of what was needed in their textbooks. In that time, we were amazed at the joy and enthusiasm of the students. Our classes were getting three hours' of English instruction per day, five days a week. It was obvious that they did a lot of homework, too.

These were English students like we had never seen before.

Most days we went back to our hotel and prepared more work for the following day on our old lap top computer. As we expected, we had to make many changes in our books to accommodate this unique culture.

We have been home for just over two weeks, and already have the first part of Book 1 ready for proof reading.

We will be very happy and proud to have our Learning English with Laughter books in use by the many thousands of exiled Tibetan people in India .

William Bradridge, Course Director of Global English (www.global-english.com), shares his experience of what works in the classroom.

How do I get students interested ?
How do I keep them talking ?
I'm stuck for ideas, can you help?

Just three of the many questions we get from new or existing teachers every day.

Addressing all aspects here would be impossible, but I have condensed some of the bigger ideas into my personal top 5, which I hope are useful to you new and existing teachers everywhere.

1. Engage your students from the first and link this to your lesson theme
This should get all students involved and communicating and set a strong context for the rest of your lesson. E.g. planning to practice question forms in English? Find out what they know by having them guess the famous person in your picture by asking 'yes/no' questions.

2. Plan plenty of pair and group work activities
This ensures students get plenty of practice time and it probably means you as the teacher are not talking too much. As a new teacher, a common mistake is to 'tell' everything and so dominate with too much Teacher Talking Time (ttt). Cut it down! You rarely need to say as much as you think.

3. Stuck for an idea for a whole lesson
Find one strong communication activity and build a lesson around it. I love an exercise from Pair work 2, (Watcyn-Jones, Longman). Person A has floor plan of a living room filled with furniture, B has a blank floor plan of the same room with the furniture printed around the outskirts. Working together but without showing their respective plan, B has to draw the furniture in the room so it matches A's complete picture as much as possible. If you don't want to buy the book, you could do something similar by having students sketch out floor plans of their bedrooms. As a starting point for this lesson, teach prepositions of place , such as 'next to, in front of' etc.

4. Use 'real' objects
If you are setting up a shop or restaurant role-play, bring in a table cloth, shop items etc. It helps set a strong context and most students respond well to visual stimuli. Start collecting
English leaflets, application forms, tourist brochures, song tapes and jazzy pictures now.


5. Create a real reason for students to communicate
Don't fall into the trap of saying 'now class, discuss animal cruelty'. You'll probably be met by complete silence. Instead try one of the following techniques to get students talking:

a) Create a 'gap' so that 1 person has information which their partner needs to know, such as in the pair work example at 2.

b) Use consensus seeking activities. Get students individually to select and rank items from a list in order of importance. These could be items to take on a desert island such as a tin opener, water and matches etc. Alternatively, they could be tourist sites from a London brochure. In pairs, students then have to try and reach a consensus, justifying and agreeing on a new ranking together.

c) Create mini-debates rather than whole class debates, as students generally feel less inhibited speaking in small groups. Give students time to formulate their arguments beforehand: 'John and Anna, you believe circuses are cruel, but Alice and Paco, you believe they are great fun. Write down 4 reasons to support these individual views.' Afterwards, they can debate.

Visit Global English online at
www.global-english.com

ESL Bingo