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| While many may debate different approaches to teaching English as a Second Language, few would dispute that learning is most effective when students have some connection to the material they are learning. If students have little or no connection to the content of the lessons, students become bored and distracted and the energy level in the classroom hits bottom. At Learning English With Laughter, we prepare Culturally Sensitive Curriculum. Daisy explains, "we have a base curriculum which covers all of the necessary grammar points that you would expect to find in any ESL program. Where our curriculum is different, is that the lessons are based on material familiar to student's culture. For example, in Eastern Europe, everyone skiis, and many of the lessons have examples about skiing. In Brazil, nobody skiis, but everyone is crazy about soccer, so we use example about soccer and stories about Pele." This is a significant departure from many ESL textbooks, which sell internationally, yet have a 'one size fits all' approach. "We find students are very irritated by small things like flags. Students don't want to see a Union Jack or a US flag," says George, "they want to see their own flag. Another example, is hats. In Eastern Europe, when you say hat, it automatically means a fur hat, because everyone owns a fur hat. In other parts of the world, it means a straw hat or a baseball hat." Pedagogically, it makes sense to involve students in the material as much as possible. "Especially with small things like flags. It annoys students before they even start, when it can be the other way around," says George. "If students see their own flag or other cultural icons, they you have students interested and relaxed and on your side. " The individualization and cultural adaptation goes deeper than changing flags and giving examples from student's cultural according to George, who prepares the graphics for the textbooks. "In our Chinese children's books, the stories are of course about children, and the graphics are of Chinese children, rather than of Caucasian children." "Our whole approach to teaching is based on this idea," says Daisy. "If students are involved and having fun, they learn faster and retain it. Students should leave the classroom feeling positive, at least and if you can get them involved and laughing, then they look forward to coming back, and learning English becomes a positive thing, whereas so often it is negative and boring. Students have these kinds of feelings about learning English because they have had the traditional 'chalk and talk' approach. Our curriculum is a radical departure." George continues, "All kinds of studies show that lectures are probably the least effective way of teaching, and anyone that has been in a classroom can tell you that." Attitudes to grammar are very different in different cultures as well,
especially for children. "We believe children pick up grammar contextually, buy listening and repeating, imitating and playing role play games. This is reflected in our Children's storybooks (http://www.esl-storybooks.com) which don't have grammar but have creative writing and thinking." In Hong Kong, parents insist on grammar starting at a very young age, and so the Learning English with Laughter curriculum for Hong Kong is grammar based. Learning English with Laughter has prepared Culturally Sensitive custom curriculum for China, Hong Kong, Brazil, The Czech Republic, the Ukraine and Tibet (Dharamsala). To discuss culturally sensitive custom curriculum, please contact Learning English with Laughter by email at learning@efl-esl.com. |
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People may be wasting their money by buying bottled mineral water. A study commissioned by Australia's Weekend Australian newspaper reveals there is little difference between tap water and bottled water. Chemists from Sydney's University of Technology analyzed the tap water in three Australian cities, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, as well as various brands of mineral water. Their results showed that the bottled water tested was no cleaner than tap water. The research leader, Dr Grant Hose rejected the idea that bottled water was purer than the tap variety. The Weekend Australian reports him as saying, "Tap water is as healthy for you as bottled water - it's no different." The research also indicated tap water may be better for your teeth as it contains fluoride, which is excluded from most bottled water. A huge difference highlighted by the study was the relative price of mineral water. The newspaper reports the leading Australian brand, priced at $1.60 a litre, is "209,333 per cent more than tap water, which in Melbourne costs 0.075 of a cent per litre". WARM UPS 1. CHAT: Talk in pairs or groups about Evian/ Perrier / tap water / water / fluoride / wasting money / value for money / . To make things more dynamic, try telling your students they only have one minute (or 2) on each chat topic before changing topics / partners. Change topic / partner frequently to increase conversation. 2. WATER BRAINSTORM: Spend one minute writing down all of the different words you associate with the word 'water'. Share your words with your partner / group and talk about them. 3. VALUE FOR MONEY? Many people buy mineral water believing it is healthier than tap water. Mineral water is certainly more expensive. Are expensive goods better than cheaper or free alternatives? In pairs / groups, discuss which you would choose:
4 . OPINIONS: Talk about these with your partner.
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| Let us know -- send your article or idea, feedback, suggestions to info@efl-esl.com | ||||
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Teaching ESL to children |
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| Don't forget to visit our new site ESL Storybooks -- http://www. esl-storybooks.com ESL Storybooks carries a complete line of ESL textbooks for Children aged 8 - 12. Featuring adventure themes, each storybook set includes a Teachers Guide, Student Storybook, and Creative Writing Workbook. |
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| Teaching Young Learners | Children's Storybooks | |||
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Louisa Walsh of Global English offers some guidance
It is true. Some people just have a real knack for teaching young learners. Possibly they already have children of their own or else they are blessed with an affinity for youngsters and endless patience! Regardless of your own attitude to teaching this age group (I'm speaking about 4-14 year olds here, rather than teenagers or kindergarten age learners) you will probably find yourself in front of a young class at some stage in your career. Difficult and challenging they may be but get it right and they can be the most enthusiastic and rewarding of students. Here Louisa Walsh gives provides some pointers. Keep it fun, lively and simple. You could take a project based approach so one theme is exploited in lots of different ways over a series of lessons. (See an example below or a project based set of lessons.)In this way the vocabulary is reinforced and repeated in a variety of different tasks so they do not get bored. Variety is the key and with the very young, lots of short, simple, activities are best suited to their attention span. Keep your learning aims very simple and build in plenty of child-friendly practice tasks to allow them to practice your target language again and again. For the practice tasks, think of the things children like doing anyway and incorporate theses activities into lessons. These could be singing, colouring, or working in small groups to produce a poster, for example. Use children's love of rhyming and chanting to teach such things as numbers and the alphabet. The great thing about really young ones (say 4-12 years old) is that they are generally less inhibited about using another language and so you can get them to speak quite early on. Think 'how can I make this exercise more appealing?' This could mean adapting existing exercises to become more child-friendly. For example, a common way to test reading comprehension is through responding to true or false questions. Instead of having them write or tell you the answer, consider making one end of the room the 'true' side and the other the 'false' side so children can move to the appropriate side when asked. Alternatively, students can make their own 'true' and 'false' cards to hold up in response. Children learn when they are engaged and many respond well to physical and visual stimuli. The possibilities for adapting tasks so they become more engaging for youngsters are endless. Use your creativity! While it might be tempting to bring in an English teen magazines for your group of 13 year old Spanish girls, don't. Most material meant for English children will be unsuitable for their foreign peers. This includes all but the basic rhymes and songs, most cartoon strips and other reading material. Instead, choose course books and resources specially designed for young foreign learners of English which will have material 'graded' for level and age. These resource books are fun, colourful and child-friendly. Even so, I would 'dip' into theses books rather than follow them slavishly. While very young children may not be reading or writing much, I would always try to make sure, where appropriate that they have some access to the written version of any vocabulary introduced. It is handy to build up a reference for later use and helps them to become gradually familiar with these words in written form. Always build in plenty of revision tasks. These can be game or quiz based in nature to keep the fun element going throughout. A project example: Here is just one example of a project based lesson spread across a few lessons. Students will need to know numbers 1-5, 'big', 'small', 'he/she/it has' and some basic colours for the following: Project: Monsters. Objective: To learn body parts and to understand instructions relating to body parts, number and colour. 1. Think about the basic body parts to be introduced, maybe 8 items altogether (the face items, legs, arms, shoulders.) 2. Touch each part of your body and get the all children to repeat the name. Do this several times. 3. Touch each body part but do not say the word, get all children to say the appropriate word as you touch the corresponding part. 4. Test retention by saying 'touch your head.touch your toes' etc. to the class. All class members touch the appropriate part. 5. Repeat the above with individual children rather than as a class 6. Children in pairs - 1 says 'eyes', 'ears' and their partner touches, then change around. 7. Hand out a picture of a monster with colour coded instructions written underneath e.g. He has blue eyes. Read them aloud. We would not necessarily expect students to read but they this helps them to become familiar with the written forms. Students colour in the monster according to the written and verbal instruction. 8. Teacher has a picture of a monster previously drawn. Now, do a picture dictation. E.g. my monster has got a big head and 3 eyes etc. pausing so children can draw as you speak. Children compare their monster with yours to see if it looks the same. 9. Written work: Children match the picture of the body part to the written word. 10. Get children to draw their own monster. They take it in turns to dictate it to their partner. 11. Sing head, shoulders knees and toes. This is just a rough outline of a small project based lesson/lessons. There are other activities which could include putting students in small groups to make their own composite monster/funny person by assembling an array of previously cut out heads, arms etc. and sticking them on a paper for a wall display. They could carefully copy the words 'arms' and 'legs' etc to label their work of art for a wall display. Alternatively, students could make a play-doh monster in small groups, name it and introduce it to the rest of the class. Prompt by asking questions about their creation. After taking such time and trouble to create and name their own monster, they should be bursting to tell you about it - and hopefully using all the wonderful language you have so patiently helped them to master. Further resources and ideas: http://www.longman.com/young_learners/teachers/ Look at the monster/bodypart handout here. This can be incorporated into a bigger lesson (or lessons) on body parts Also, http://members.tripod.com/~ESL4Kids/ Global English students - Look out for a young learner's competition in late November when we will be giving away a set of young learner course books and class cassettes to a lucky winner. Like most TEFL courses, Global English courses are geared towards young adults and upwards. However our courses do contain some very useful information on young learners and the methodology introduced on the course can be easily adapted to suit all ages. For more information on our courses, click here |
Our storybooks for children are appropriate
for beginner students age 6 to age 12 and have been developed
in response to requests from organizations in several
countries. Our books feature exciting adventure stories to encourage children reading and comprehension of English as a second language. Each Storybook set includes a Student Workbook, Storybook and a Teacher's Guide. The activities in each workbook varies in order to provide choices to teachers looking for material to meet the needs of their students. Features:
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