Top 10 Ideas for teaching ESL to Beginners

In this video, I give the 10 best tips for teaching ESL or EFL to beginners. So if you're feeling lost on how to teach beginners English, continue watching this video. ------- • Check out this blog post for ESL Lesson Plans for Adults, Beginners & Advanced learners: https://eslspeaking.org/make-your-life-easier-esl-lesson-plans/ • Want more tips on how to instruct a class? Watch @etacude https://youtu.be/lkw2PtVpCJM?si=91L6JaZl_-gFY8eY • Watch my ESL Classroom Management video here: https://youtu.be/c2Q6JaN5vJ8 • Read my book: ESL/EFL Teaching Methodology and Practice here: https://amzn.to/43KwEet • Join Jackie's email list: https://eslspeaking.org/subscribe/ • Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAb9LpA9eTtwdSlo91c03Mg/join ------ https://www.facebook.com/eslspeaking https://www.pinterest.ca/eslspeaking/ https://www.instagram.com/jackie.bolen/ https://www.tiktok.com/@englishwithjackie?lang=en #teachingenglishwithjackie #classroominstruction #teachingtips -------------------------------------------------------- Transcript: Here are my top 10 ideas for teaching ESL or EFL to beginners. Number one is build confidence. If someone is a beginner, in a new language, chances are they are not confident. They feel nervous, kind of unsure, uncertain, and they really don't know how to communicate in English. Number two is focus on vocabulary. Studies kind of show that you need to know around 1,000 words to kind of be able to have a basic conversation in another language with somebody. If you can help students get to those first 1,000 words in your class, you've done a good job. Number three is teach reading skills. Reading skills are key because this enables students to kind of do some self-study at home. Of course, they can watch videos, or they can listen to podcasts, that kind of thing, but if they want to learn vocabulary, if they want to use a textbook, if they want to kind of dive deep into grammar, they need to be able to read well. The fourth tip for teaching beginners is to focus on student talking time, as opposed to teacher talking time. You as the teacher are probably already quite good at English. You really don't need to practice. It's your students who need to do the speaking, so whatever you do, put students into pairs, into small groups but think about how they can be talking and doing as much in English for most of the class, as much as you can. The fifth tip is to use questions and answers. In many English classes for beginners, it's often like the teacher asks questions and the students answer questions. What's your name? My name is Tim. How old are you? I'm seven years old. Where are you from? I'm from Busan. And the teacher just does questions, and students do answers. But also get students to ask you questions back. Conversation is a two-way street. The sixth tip for teaching beginners is to teach follow-up questions. Use the five W's and the H. Who, what, when, why, where, and how. And then each question that I get my students to ask their partner, I always a require them to do a follow up question. For example, if they are asking someone, what's your favorite food. Someone says my favorite food is pizza. I would make them ask a follow-up question, for example, what kind of pizza. The seventh tip for teaching beginners is to focus on classroom language. I teach my students things like, may I go to the bathroom. Number eight is to mix it up a little bit. I like to put students in different pairs and different groups for each class because maybe you've had this experience before, you're partnered with someone who's either way better at English or way better at another language, or way worse than you. In either case, it can be boring, it's a bit of a struggle. The next tip for teaching beginners is to review. I would way rather my students know a few things very well and they kind of take it away from my class and they will never forget it. This could be vocabulary or some grammar concepts, as opposed to just like powering through a textbook in its entirety and students kind of know a million things, but they can't actually have anything that they know know, kind of at the level of just like automatic inside their brain. The 10th tip is to give very simple instructions. The challenge should be the English, not in understanding the instructions to an activity or game that you're doing. I also use ICQs, which are instruction checking questions and so then I ask students some very simple questions about the instructions that I've given. For example, how many people on your team, three. Timestamp for teaching ESL to beginners video: 0:00 Intro 0:09 Build confidence 0:33 Focus on vocabulary 1:06 Teach reading skills 1:30 Focus on student talking time 2:00 Use q&a's 2:31 Teach follow up questions 3:05 Classroom language 3:22