TEFL / TESOL Blog


5 Creative Ways To Diversify Your ESL Lessons


9th September 2021

Instructing English to novices (who have next to zero knowledge of English) can create difficulties in the minds of new TEFL instructors. These difficulties become more problematic when they don’t know their students' languages. Learning another dialect can and ought to be engaging. Having a variety of teaching styles along with the strategies is effective to deal with diverse ESL learners.

Monotony fetches boredom and this is not a constructive thing for a skilled ESL instructor. Implementing different ESL activities and assignments will keep your ESL students motivated by creating an ultimate learning environment that stimulate learners to outshine.

As an ESL educator, you need to have a set arrangement for your teaching lessons while switching up your teaching style. Moreover, not all schoolchildren have the same learning style. Therefore, being flexible with your EFL lessons will let diverse types of students benefit and flourish.

5 Creative Things For Diverse ESL Learners

Encourage Active Learning

Most teaching English educators have formed at least one lesson and later, unfortunately, the children either didn’t get it or wouldn’t contribute. Indeed, it can be thought-provoking to keep schoolchildren engaged and actively tangled. This can be seen more for students who struggle with learning, speak English as a second language, or have trouble concentrating. In these situations, incorporating active learning strategies is the solution. Consider these aspects ---

  • Group learning
  • Case-based learning
  • Group discussions and talk-and-turns
  • One-minute papers and one-sentence synopses
  • Demos and memory matrixes

Gross Motor Games

Looking for ideas to add some enjoyment to the classroom? Including gross motor movement can be a different and motivating way to engage students. Every class has some learners who try to avoid answering questions at all costs and if you make a game out of it, unexpectedly everyone wants to answer. It’s generally best to start with a student or two, who’s more comfortable speaking. When their peers see how much fun it is and all they have to do is answer a simple question and your classroom will be filled with enthusiastic hands.

Implement Total Physical Response (TPR)

Total physical response (TPR) is an incredible way to teach English to both adults as well as young learners. TPR is a technique that commends using your body along with facial expressions to relay meaning. TPR is so effective that everyone can understand some sort of convinced gestures and expressions. For example, when using TPR to teach “dog,” you might show certain gestures to imitate and you could demonstrate the action.

Promote Project-based Learning

Try to consider project-based learning (PBL). It helps students to understand what is being taught through hands-on methods. It includes various activities where kids work together to solve real-world problems by coming up with solutions together. Including real-world scenarios that make the material more relevant, 21st-century skills, student-focused activities, the academic content itself, etc. is a great idea to introduce PBL.  Some suggestions included a skit, papers, or visual presentations.

Integrate Ed-tech and Adaptive Learning Tools

One more idea for discovering various creative ways to teach ESL students is to integrate ed-tech and adaptive learning tools. There’s sufficient technology out there planned with certain types of learner in mind. You may try incorporating these tools:

  • Peardeck – Different presentations like the Newsela Daily Deck, designed to make news articles communicating
  • Plickers - Free card activities for formative assessment
  • Wordsinasentence.com to support students understand vocabulary in perspective
  • Classcraft for game-based classroom management opportunities
  • Book Creator as an alternate assessment
  • Google Keep for electronic note-taking

Nevertheless, it’s comprehensible that you may feel overwhelmed if you don’t know how to teach English to novices! Just like with any class, while teaching beginners, you’ll need to consider your teaching objectives as well. However, keep in mind that most new TEFL teachers with the TEFL Course in Bangalore program will possess teaching approaches along with fresh ideas. Thus, try to approach the class with endurance, confidence, and some handful of ESL activities for teaching beginner students will help both you and your students be successful.

 

Written By : Sonal Agrawal    Share



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