Where To From Here? Teaching the Advanced ESL Student

Congratulations! You’ve been assigned your first advanced class, something you’ve wanted to try for a long time. And you’ve had your first class session. Students were bright, engaging, and participated enthusiastically. Their English is strong and confident. So what is the problem?Well, their English is so good—fluent, correct, even precise—that you aren’t quite sure what to teach them! You suspect that many of them know English as well as you. That might actually be true in some areas for some students—having formally studied English for many years, they might have a more precise understanding of grammar, for example, than the teacher, who relies more on native-speaker intuition-- but there are still some things that most advanced students can learn in an ESL class.HOWTO: Teaching the Advanced ESL Student
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Pronunciation/Accent ReductionEven fluent ESL students can usually use some work on their pronunciation. Have students do individual diagnostics by reading a passage while being taped. In this way, you can find common as well as individual concerns for the whole class. Focus on larger issues that might impede comprehensibility, such as faulty intonation patterns (such as failing to use rising intonation for questions) and stress (failing to reduce structure words and giving all words the same stress in a sentence). These are usually of more concern than relatively minor issues of individual speech sounds.
2Writing and Composition SkillsFocus on writing beyond the college essay, which the students may have been studying for years. Instead find out what careers students would like to hold after school, and focus on some of the writing they are likely to encounter in the workplace: memos, reports, analyses, and recommendations.
3Grammar, Editing, and ProofreadingAs with pronunciation, even fluent ESL students will differ from native speakers in issues of grammar and editing. Have students start a portfolio, analyze their own writing in terms of the corrections you make, and from this they can create an inventory of their personal trouble spots, which may include word endings, such as “-s” and “-ed.” Have students then get into the habit of trading papers with a peer and proofing for these errors or make two or three passes looking for the problem areas in their papers before handing them in.
4Reading, Inferences, and Academic VocabularyAdvanced ESL students often have good reading comprehension skills, especially at the surface level; what they often lack, however, is understanding inferences or the underlying meanings. These underlying meanings are critical to comprehension as a whole. For example, a story I like to teach for inferences is “Reunion,” by John Cheever, a story of no more than several pages in which a boy calls his estranged father and asks to meet him at Grand Central Station for lunch as he’s heading home, to his mother’s, for summer break. The father meets him at the station, proceeds to take him to several restaurants where he gets into arguments at each with the staff and gets kicked out; they return to the station so the boy can catch his train, the father now in tears. The boy vows never to see his father again as he boards the train. ESL students are invariably confused by the story and why the father acts as he does, while adult native speakers are usually aware of a number of implications: the father is drunk, was drunk when he met his son, gets more so as the afternoon wears on; he is an alcoholic, in fact, and the story makes a powerful statement on how substance abuse can destroy families.
Giving students a reading like this and discussing it—why is the father acting this way? Why does he keep going from restaurant to restaurant? — can help students spot these unstated suppositions and develop their inferential reading skills.
5Academic Listening and NotetakingEven native speakers can struggle with academic listening and notetaking skills and must be trained in them. There are textbooks that build exercises around lectures from places like NPR, National Public Radio, on topics such as the ethics of stem cell research. I don’t advocate necessarily using such a text as the core text—few texts at this level can meet that role—but a chapter every week or two is a good supplement to the class. Or the instructor could also download a lecture from the web and develop her own exercises.
6Study of Idiomatic LanguageEven advanced ESL students can use some work on idiomatic language. This doesn’t mean the relatively rare “colorful” language such as “raining cats and dogs,” but the way that words tend to combine: “process cultivated over time,” “ongoing awareness,” and “insightful change of behavior” all occurred in one paragraph of an academic text opened at random. The class can spend some time each session or each week going over the idiomatic language that occurs in course reading.
7Fine Tuning of Cultural UnderstandingOften ESL students need to develop their understanding of the everyday life and behavior of their new culture, often having lived here a short time and learned English somewhere else. Again, by “culture,” I don’t necessarily mean the big celebrations, like Thanksgiving, which students generally do learn about, but the everyday patterns of behavior that are so “minor” that they can go unnoticed. A Chinese student once expressed surprise, for example, that Americans, when exiting a building, generally turn back to see if anyone is behind and will hold the door if so. Similarly, recently a German student told me how shocked her husband was when, at a working lunch, an American colleague rose, went to the buffet table, came back with a plate of food, and continued with the meeting while eating. These behaviors may seem “natural” to most Americans (indeed, I am typing this article in a cafe, with a plate of food), and not worth discussing, but because people from other cultures are surprised by the behaviors, they are not “natural” but cultural. It is for this reason that novel habits students notice in their new countries should be discussion and writing topics.
8History of their New NationAmericans are notorious for their lack of understanding of their own history—fitting for a people obsessed with youth. But anyone who lives here should understand, for example, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement and their long-term effects. Even relatively recent history, such as the Vietnam War, was a watershed event, creating a permanent distrust in leadership, among other effects. Without understanding the Vietnam War, it may be hard to understand contemporary American life.
9Films and BooksBoth film and books are ways to simultaneously develop language and cultural understanding. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, is a powerful novel on the American experience and generally recognized as one of the great American novels. And it is also manageably short, at fewer than 200 pages. A new movie version is currently being made, so studying the book and then the film could be a core learning experience.
10Resume and Job Interview PreparationFinally, advanced ESL class is a great opportunity to work on resume and job interview skills. Some students are unfamiliar with the job hunt process, having come from cultures where people don’t compete for jobs as they do in the U.S. but rather are placed in them according to skill and education. Explaining the process, showing model resumes, and practicing interviews can be a big help to ESL students.

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Are You Boring Your Students? How to Turn a Snore Fest into a Barrel of Fun!

You ask your ESL class a question, and you’re met with a room full of blank stares. You call out a student’s name, but getting an answer from him is like pulling teeth. You notice that someone in the back is actually dozing off (ouch!), and as you walk towards the back of the room, you catch another student texting a friend on their phone…

Finally, to add insult to injury, another student is watching a video on their iPod. If there were a sign over your classroom door, it would read “Entering Dullsville.”

 

While the above description is clearly an exaggeration, every ESL teacher at some point in their teaching career has had to deal with unmotivated students, boring course material or quite honestly been bored themselves with what they have to teach. So, hop onto our express train and leave Dullsville for good!

How to Turn a Snore Fest into a Barrel of Fun

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Don’t Let Yourself Get Sucked In by Boredom

When there is something that you don’t like to teach, whether it’s the Past Perfect, or Reported Speech, or any other grammar point you absolutely must cover, your students will most likely notice it, unless you do something about it and make the topic fun for the whole class. If you have taught something a million times, like the Past Simple, teach it differently every time! Use different flashcards, different exercises, different games, just make sure there is something different, that way it is less likely you will feel bored and by extension neither will your students.

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Put a Crazy Spin on It

Kids love it when you pull something crazy, but teens and adult learners also enjoy seeing things that they wouldn’t normally see in a classroom. Say you want to practice making predictions with “will”. What if you were to suddenly put a crystal ball on the table and tell students what the future holds for them? Your crystal ball need not be made of crystal – a volleyball or even a balloon will do, and add to the zaniness. Crazy props are very effective in engaging students.

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Put on the Theatrics

While you’re not required to go into full costume (after all you’re teaching ESL, not putting on a Broadway show!) it does help tremendously to do voices, make faces, and show off your more theatrical side. Do accents and change voices when you read dialogues, or even use funny characters – give them your best Eliza Doolittle impersonation and show off your Cockney accent as your students do a shopping role play with you!

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Make Them Move!

The second you see your students settle in for a nap, make them stand up! Young learners can engage in an active TPR activity. But don’t be afraid to get adults out of their seats, as well. Make them walk around the classroom for a role play, or simply get them to come to the whiteboard. You may need a bulldozer to get some teens out of their seats, so try with small actions first, like handing out worksheets, then gradually move on to a greater physical commitment. It is essential that you make your students get used to moving around the classroom from Day 1.

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Keep Your Students on Their Toes

Get your students used to not knowing what you’ll do next. Sit down for one activity, but then stand up or walk around the room for the next – walking from the front to the back is also the perfect way to let students know that the back of the room is not the place to snooze. Raise your voice suddenly! Change pitch! Clap your hands to get their attention! Use gestures as much as you can, and use sounds to keep them alert. A quiet classroom where the teacher sits at her/his desk for the duration of the class is the perfect setting for a snore fest.

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Use Their Interests and Preferences

You wouldn’t talk about President Obama’s foreign policy with preschoolers, right? And with that kind of topic, you won’t hold your teens’ attention for long. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that all adults like to talk about “adult” things! They come to ESL class to learn English, not for a history lesson. However, some adults may be interested in business topics or current events. So, make sure you find out what they are really interested in and what their preferences are. Do they want to learn English in a relaxed environment, or they want to talk business?

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Polish What’s Dull Till It Shines

Quite often the problem is not us or our students, but the rather dull coursebook. You will probably agree that there is no one pointing a gun to your head, saying that you have to follow the book and each activity as shown in the book, right? One of the best things you can do is adapt and change some of the activities, dialogues and exercises in the coursebook, or replace them with others that will get the job done, but not put your students to sleep in the process.

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Imaginative materials: teaching with newspapers

Teachers rarely have access to whole class sets of newspapers. Here are six ideas for things you can do using a single copy of a newspaper.

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1. Just one GW
   Teachers rarely have access to whole class sets of newspapers. Here are five ideas for things you can do using a single copy of The Guardian Weekly in class… though they do involve cutting up your precious copy!
   
2. "Have you heard the news?"
   Cut up and distribute different mid-length stories to pairs who should then think about how they could retell their story in the most exciting, interesting way if they met their friends at a party. You could offer input on useful phrases, intonation etc. and discuss what makes one motivated to listen to a story. Ask them not to simply recite the facts.
   
   When everyone is ready, they stand up and mingle, buttonholing others to tell their story, starting, "Have you heard the news?" Listen and join in, encouraging lively interaction by dropping in a few phrases such as "No! I don't believe it!" and "Really? What happened?"
   
3. Notes and Queries
   Read out a good question from the "Notes and Queries" column (e.g. "Why do we have noses?") and give the class 5 minutes to discuss and come up with the most amazing explanation they can.
   
   If you do not have access to a copy of The Guardian Weekly you can see this section online at:www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/
   
4. Scrunched-up stories
   Choose and cut out a number of longer stories (at least half a page). Scrunch up the pages into a ball so that it's impossible to read everything. Give one of these text-balls to each group, who can look all round it but may not touch or open it. Their task is to guess what the story is and write a one sentence summary of what they think their article is about. Collect these summaries in, then redistribute them. Groups now look at different texts around the room trying to work out which summary goes with which text. If you wanted to, you could then un-scrunch the texts and find out how well the learners guessed the full stories.
   
5. Headline gaps
   Cut out a number of headlines (you'll need at least one for every 2 learners). In each one choose an interesting word to remove (e.g. "Hunting is good for trees, bad for _____ "). Glue the gapped headline at the top of a piece of paper with two columns. The pages are now passed around class. In the first column pairs should write their best guess at a possible word for each gap; in the second column they write a funny possibility. At the end compare answers and choose the best or funniest choices. The class could go on to predict the contents of the articles and maybe read a whole article of their choice.
   
6. Around the walls
   On separate strips of paper write questions about facts that can be found on the odd-numbered pages of the newspaper e.g. "Who came third in the Grand Prix?" Pin the whole pages on the walls around the room. Hand out one question to each pair, who must now tour the room, find the answer, return and tell you - for which they receive a new question. Keep score if you wish.

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