It was early in my teaching career, and I had recently started teaching for the first time in Asia. My students were a total pleasure to work with. But I wondered what they were looking for in me, their teacher. The director of our program seemed like a thoughtful Asian man, so I believed that he could give me some insights. I wasn’t disappointed. What he told me seemed so simple, but the more I thought about it throughout my teaching career, the more impactful it became. Also, when I reflected back on the characteristics of my favorite teachers in the past, his insight was spot on. Here is w ..read more

In the documentary, Becoming, about Michele Obama, Michele is asked about feeling invisible. Her description made me think more about how many of our ESL/International students probably feel invisible in classes, on campus and in society, and how we can help them. My personal experiences with feeling invisible are quite trivial compared to what some of our students experience, but a recent episodes gave me a bit of a taste of how it feels. I was talking to a colleague (we’ll say his name was Ben) outside the library when a young woman whom I didn’t know walked up to us with a smile on her fac ..read more

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)* At first, this pair-work activity looks like it’s about getting students to talk a lot by filling information in a chart.  But that’s not the most important value of it. Yes, students will talk a lot during this.  But by including a short pre-exercise, they will see how they should ask clarification questions when they need more information or if they didn’t understand.  Asking clarification questions is the strategy that they can use in future conversation situations in and outside the classroo ..read more

In Part 1 ( • Entering a Lesson with Predictions (Part 1: Pre-Listening Activities) , I introduced how we can help student to focus on a particular day’s materials and to become personally involved in its content. We can do it through a “prediction process.” I also described two prediction activities as entries to listening activities. In this Part 2, I’ll share two sets of “prediction activities” as entries to speaking/discussion activities. In the first one, the prediction activity is indirectly related to the speaking activity. In the second one, it is directly related to what they wi ..read more

                                          Integrating the four skills (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. T ..read more

It mat come as a surprise to any number of teachers to realize that most students do not view their ESL class as the number one preoccupation in their lives. Students come into the class with a myriad number of matters on their minds: weekend plans, family problems, the test in the next class. To foster a classroom atmosphere conducive to students’ leaving behind their outside world and to their focusing attention on the lesson at hand (not to speak of their becoming personally involved in the subject material!) can be an exacting task. Many of us as teachers have seen the otherwise well-plan ..read more

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) * For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings” (#1 “For More Happiness, Keep Your Good News Secret for a While.”)  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: Categories > Reading > Short-high interest Readings. Here is the fourth article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also inc ..read more

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) * For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see    “Introducing Short, High-Interest Readings ” Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: Categories > Reading > Short-high interest Readings. Here is the third article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included are three optional exercises: True-False Questions; Parap ..read more

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) * There has been a consensus among the many professionals that I have asked that dropping the final consonants on words causes the most communication breakdowns. I’ve had to decipher things like: “I cou-n do my homewo cu I fe si.” (I couldn’T do my homeworK because I felT sicK.) “Do you wan ah to chew a new topi?” (Do you wanT uS to chooSE a new topiC?) If we just respond by asking, “What did you say?”, the speaker will merely repeat what s/he had said, perhaps a bit louder. I developed a set of exercises ..read more

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) * For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings” (#1 “For More Happiness, Keep Your Good News Secret for a While.”) Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: Categories > Reading > Short-high interest Readings. Here is the second article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included ..read more