ESL Teacher

Although I now teach in a mixed-culture ESL classroom, I’m still always on the lookout for newspaper articles that are relevant to one of the countries of origin of my students. As I often have a large proportion of Korean students in my class, I tend to use interesting (and often quite unusual) stories about happenings in Korea – it helps the quiet Koreans have something to tell the rest of the class about, and my other students are also usually interested because Korea has such a different culture to theirs.

Recently, for example, I used an article about “smile training” that was a great success – I’d already heard from some of my students that their companies had given them special training on smiling at their customers. And this week I found an article about the pretty inappropriate behavior of Korean politicians which also amused both parts of my class. But in the past I’ve also used stories about famous pop stars in Colombia (and of course the famous (and beautiful) Shakira was included there) and the lack of small talk in German companies; the key is just to pick something that is unique and therefore interesting for most of the class.

One of my favourite games to play in the ESL classroom is a form of “Pictionary” - not least because I can’t draw to save myself and it makes the students laugh.

Coming up to Christmas, I like to teach a fair bit of Christmas-related vocabulary, both for activities we will do in class as Christmas gets closer and because students seem to be motivated by it to understand Christmas songs and perhaps simply because it’s a fun topic.

So once I’ve done some work on Christmas vocab, the best way to revise it is to use a drawing game. I’ll demonstrate the first one by drawing (badly, of course) a simple object that they have recently learned. The first student to guess the correct word (and spell it correctly, if necessary) can be the next to draw. I’ll show them a word (with the difficulty level of the word dependent on the student) and get them to draw it. If necessary, they can check with me first that they’ve understood the word. When a student guesses what that is, then they can take the next turn drawing, and so on, with some teacher intervention if it looks like the same people will always be guessing and drawing.

Alternatively, in a bigger group, you can arrange the class into teams and rotate who will be drawing through the groups, and when another group guesses it they can score a point. The main objective is to increase the students’ exposure to this vocabulary, and of course to have a bit of pre-Christmas fun.

A real bonus about ESL teaching is the ex-students who keep in touch with you. I left Japan more than five years ago but I still have some Japanese students who keep in contact with me, which always puts a smile on my face.

Today a Christmas card arrived from a middle-aged woman who I taught in Japan - I remember her so well because she’d spent a year living in Australia before I met her, so she was always keen to talk about her experiences Down Under. I found a thick envelope in my letter box with a card and a gift of a Christmas-themed scarf in really pretty colours. Aren’t I lucky? I think there aren’t too many jobs in the world where satisfied customers still send you gifts five years on.

A fun way I like to review new tenses and also get the lesson off to a relaxed start is to play one of my favourite games – a version of the true/false game. Whichever tense you’ve just been studying, you can adapt the sentences to suit. Here’s how it works:

1. Write five sentences on the board. I always like to write personal sentences because I like to involve my own life in my teaching, so I might choose topics like what I did on my weekend, or my plans for the holidays, depending on the tense I want to practice.
2. At least two of these sentences should be lies. I never tell my students how many are true and how many are false, because then at some stage they can just use a process of elimination.
3. Ask the students to work in groups to decide which sentences are true and which aren’t. They should write down their decision so that they don’t change their mind when they hear what other groups say.
4. After they’ve all decided, ask the groups to tell the class which sentences they think are true and which are false, and write this in a table on the board next to the sentences, so you can see what each group decided.
5. Finally, spill the beans! I usually start with the sentence that everybody guessed correctly (one point for a correct guess) and then jump around to make a bit of a cliffhanger about which group guessed the best. When the sentences are false, I get them to speculate why. Throughout the game they’re using the target tense without even knowing it’s a tense revision!

As an extension, you can also allow students to ask you questions during their decision-making period. I always say that I’ll answer any question but I don’t promise to tell the truth, so they have to try and figure out if I’m giving them a real answer or not. It’s a lot of fun!

When I first arrived in Perth two years ago, I needed a little extra work to pay the rent. I remembered an ad I’d seen for online English teachers and got in contact with the company, and I was soon spending my evenings on the telephone to students in Japan, running half hour conversation lessons with them and picking up some decent pocket money.

In principal, the online or telephone English learning idea is mostly about making money, but then again, a lot of ESL education is focused on the bottom line, isn’t it? Matching up students somewhere – anywhere in the world is possible – with native speakers, wherever they’re living, and setting up short one-to-one lessons – is what these schools are all about.

On job boards like Dave’s ESL Café job list, you can still see ads for these kind of jobs. The pay may not always be great – although that probably depends on the cost of living where you are at the moment – but it can be fun work and a nice way to get a bit of extra cash together.

I ended up having quite a few regular students and discovered that yes, it was possible to build a great teacher to student relationship on the telephone or on Skype. Just a couple of these students also had a web-cam and that certainly enhanced the experience even further. Of course, Skype or other internet communication capabilities depend on the internet speed where the students and teachers are located, but it’s certainly possible in many situations. I’d recommend it to ESL teachers who might be wanting some part time work or just some extra cash; I had a lot of fun.

I mentioned one of my favourite ESL tense review memory games a while ago, and now that the Christmas season is upon us I’m reminded of one of the funniest times I’ve had playing this game.

I was teaching a Cambridge preparation course in Bratislava, Slovakia, and we had a two-week break over the Christmas and New Year season. At our first lesson back, I wanted to ease them slowly back into the idea of studying and I had them all stand up in a circle in the middle of the room (an almost empty room, as this school provided chairs but no desks!).

The instructions were for them to tell us something they did in the holidays, so it was really just a basic past tense review, as well as being a good warm-up and welcome back to school. The main rule was their sentence should use a verb that hadn’t yet been used, and when they repeated the sentences of the students who came before them they couldn’t make a mistake or hesitate longer than three seconds, or they would have to sit down. And the last student standing would win.

The first couple of students told fairly normal things, as far as I can remember. Then we got to Martin, a smiley computer programmer. After reciting the sentences of those before him, he added, “I killed a carp with a hammer.” Carp is a traditional Christmas food in Slovakia and families like to buy a fresh (living) one, have it swim in the bath tub for a few days and then prepare it for Christmas. Martin’s job was to kill theirs and he’d used a hammer. Eek. Of course, I then had to hear this gruesome sentence repeated over and over as each student added their own sentence. “Martin killed a carp with a hammer” (giggle, giggle). It made me squirm so badly to picture poor carp, but everybody else was just laughing so much that even I ended up joining in.

Whether they want to or not, I always figure it’s part of my job to teach students about other cultures – or perhaps teach is the wrong word, I want to say that I help them learn about other cultures. In my multicultural classroom here in Perth, where I might have students from eight or nine different nationalities and three continents sitting together, they’re all keen to learn about other ways of life and I’m more than happy to facilitate it.

One activity that’s always a lot of fun is to divide the students into groups according to the continent they come from. Usually I’m trying to separate them all so the element of surprise when I ask the Asians to sit at one table, the South Americans at another and the Europeans at yet another already gets them intrigued.

Next, I give each group a blank piece of paper (or two) and ask them to draw each other’s continents. So the South American team have to draw a map of Asia and a map of Europe, trying to fill in some country details and get the basic shape right. It’s important to give them a time limit because some students who have a good geographical knowledge could otherwise spend hours getting things accurate.

One usual result is that the maps each group draw are utterly different. It’s fun to compare them. Then you can break up the class into mixed continent groups and get them to explain the geography of their continent to each other, or segue into many other kinds of activities – for example, reviewing spelling and pronunciation of nationality adjectives. Whatever you do, keep it light and fun so nobody feels bad about not having the knowledge – focus on acquiring it now because the local experts are all there.

I’ve had great success of late by inviting guest speakers to visit my ESL class. Students love the chance to speak to a “real” native speaker – apparently teachers don’t quite fall into this category! – and if you set it up well with an interesting activity to match it can be something they talk about for weeks.

If you’re living in an English-speaking country like I am, it’s absolutely easy to find a guest speaker – I’ve used several of my friends who happen to have interesting careers that are relevant to parts of my current Business English textbook. And the speakers themselves get a lot out of it by having a class full of students so genuinely interested in them – plus I always get them to each write a short thank you note to the speaker and handing over a collection of these is always fun.

So I think the key points when you’re preparing for a guest speaker are:

• Incorporate an informal small talk and introduction session at the start to make both your speaker feel relaxed and at least some of the students to have the chance to talk one-on-one with them (they’ll ask more questions later then). I usually put on some cookies and drinks and monitor it to make sure at least four or five students have the chance to talk to the guest speaker.
• Give your students an activity to do connected to the guest speaker’s presentation. For example, I had a guest speaker who had worked in many different countries and the students needed to try to note down an outline of her CV – where she had worked and when.
• Get them to brainstorm possible questions before the guest speaker even arrives. I like to collate the questions and then write them out on a page to give to all the students, and then if they get shy there’s a question in front of them to fall back on.

I love teaching students in the lead-up to Christmas, and wherever I’ve been teaching I always like to tell them all about Christmas in my home country, Australia. I’ve got a few favourite activities that I have to admit to using year in, year out because they’re always such a success. You could adapt them to reflect your own nationality and customs at Christmas time:

• Australian Christmas quiz: I wrote a multiple choice quiz of about a dozen questions about typical Australian Christmas customs, with a lot of funny answers thrown in (you’d be surprised how often students pick the wrong one!) – about the food we eat, the songs we sing and what temperature it is on Christmas Day, to name a few
• Australian Jingle Bells: Instead of teaching them a normal Christmas carol – many students know these already – then I use the funny version someone wrote about Santa “dashing through the bush” in a “rusty Holden ute” instead of a sleigh. There’s also a version of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” featuring Australian animals that is a lot of fun, and easy to do even with beginners because there’s so much repetition.
• Kris Kringle: Getting students to pick names out of a hat and then finding a small (anonymous) gift for another class member is a lot of fun – I usually set the value limit small at $5 but brainstorm with them about different ideas on how to get an interesting present for a low price. And just to be safe I usually bring a spare gift or two so nobody misses out if a student is sick or forgetful!

I know that you can’t stereotype nationalities because even with general traits, there are always many exceptions to the rule. But when it comes to being on time to class, I can certainly give a few stereotypes that ring true in at least 90% of my experience.

In Japan, nearly all the students came on time – sometimes high school teenagers were late, and some people arrived really early – but in general being late was pretty rare, and only a matter of a couple of minutes.

In Slovakia, there is no stereotype. I remember an 8.00am class I had in suburban Bratislava. One guy would be there at twenty to eight when I arrived. A woman usually showed up at ten to. Probably nobody arrived at exactly eight. And then the rest would stream in at any time up to nine o’clock.

In Germany, my students were the epitome of punctuality. At first, I wondered if the students were all meeting somewhere nearby at a prearranged time and then coming to class at the minute before the starting time in a large group – but I soon learned that they are just all absolutely punctual. And I have to say, as a teacher, that makes life really easy.

In Australia, I teach students of many nationalities. But it’s usually true that if some of the students are late, it’s rather likely that it’s the Brazilians. They tell me they work on Brazilian time and that’s a lot different to Australian time. What can I say?