Charleroi, Belgium TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

If a person wants to learn a language, first he or she has to be exposed to it, then he or she has to understand its meaning and its structures, and finally they have to be able to produce or practise it. And when we teach a language, we teach its grammar, its vocabulary and its functions. Foreign language teachers need to focus on the meaning, use, grammatical forms, spelling and pronunciation - all are equally important and one should not be neglected at the expense of the others. I have learned the terms 'receptive' and 'productive' vocabulary. I have also learned the importance of the engage and activate stages when teaching vocabulary. It's useless to just present students with words and say, ok, that's it, now you know. I find the use of 'patchwork' ESA structure to teach grammar extremely useful. The reason for this is probably the fact that I was educated in the system in which the teacher played the central role, the teacher was the manager or controller, but I can see now, and I know from my own experience, that students learn far better when they can see what kind of mistakes they make. Comparing is very, very useful, and these mistakes are rarely repeated. It is impossible to teach language functions without the activate stage, and it is so useful to have 'boomerang' ESA structure so that students can compare the new language functions to the ones they used before. It is so important to engage and activate students, and it is so wrong to just present the material and expect they will earn and memorize everything on their own. They have to actually use the language in order to be successful.