Kaka, Arizona TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

This section introduced various teaching methodologies, including the one that is the focal point of this course, Engage-Study-Activate. THe main idea of each step is as follows Engage: Get students into the `English thinking` mode by using light and interactive games, activities or media (videos, songs, etc.). This helps students warm-up and create a more relaxed and enjoyable atmophere for them to work on the language. Study: New concepts and grammar are introduced here. This is the time for students to learn and therefore, tools such as gap fills, word searches, etc. are used in an attempt to have them practice. This stage is the most `educational` of the 3. Mistakes and errors should be addressed and corrected before moving on to the activate stage. Activate: Students freely and creatively practice previous language knowledge along with they functions/grammar they have just learnt. This stage is focused more on fluency and is for students to actually implement what they have learnt. Therefore one should not interrupt the flow of the activity to correct mistakes. All important comments should be saved for the end where the teacher can present feedback to the students. This unit also covered corrections. There are 3 main ways of correcting students Student: Have student analyze their own mistake in order to discover answer themself. Helps to better ingrain the correct form into the student more than if the teacher were to just give the answer. If student is clearly struggling then the teacher may give them a hint or move on and address it later to avoid to much class time from being taken up. Student-student: Have students think of problem and correct answer instead of teacher just giving it. Same idea as above accept they are thinking together to figure out the error. Having a peer correct and help you is still probbaly more memmorable than the teacher. Teacher-Student: Should be avoided if possible, because it doesn`t allow students time to think and reflect, chich will make it less likely for them to remember the mistake and more likely for them to repeat it in the future. But in some cases this avoiding this may prove rather difficult. The last part talked about coming up with a grammar key for students when corecting their work. This helps to shorten the amount of time and writing needed to identify and notify a student of a mistake. Also makes the corrections neater and less intimidating. When accuracy is the focus of the activity, corections should only be made on spot if: The mistake is in reference to the language point taught It is being constantly repeated by students and so has the risk of becoming ingrained Considerably impedes understanding.