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Methodologies - Grammar Translation, Audio – lingualism, Presentation, Practice and Production, Task-Based Learning, Communicative Language Teaching, Community Language Learning, The silent way, Suggestopaedia, The Lexical approach. Engage, Study and Activate - Elicitation: Real objects (realia), Flashcards/pictures, Drawings, Ask for the question, Gap-fill, Lists, Follow-on questions, Concept descriptions, Mime, Definitions. Engage This is the sequence in the lesson where the teacher will try to arouse the students' interest and get them involved in the lesson. If students are involved and interested, they will find the lesson more stimulating and fun, thus reducing inhibitions and leading to a more conducive language learning environment. Activities and materials which tend to engage students include games, music, interesting pictures, stories etc. If possible, language used here should link in with language used later in the lesson, though this is not essential. The Engage phase of a lesson should be considered a ‘warmer’. In essence, the aim is to warm up your students and to get them thinking and speaking in English as much as possible before proceeding to the next phase of the lesson. You do not want to ‘teach’ them anything in the Engage stage as the aim of this stage is simply designed to 'engage' them. Study These activities are those where the students will focus on the language (or information) and how it is constructed. These activities could range from the practice and study of a single sound to an examination and practice of a verb tense. Study stages usually start with elicitation. You should always elicit as much information as possible from the students first, which would form the basis of your board work. This would then be followed by the presentation of the language point, and drilling exercises to ensure correct pronunciation (if required). After the language point has been covered, exercises (often worksheets) are given to the students to check their understanding and to reinforce the material. As a class, you will then review their answers to the exercises and go over any errors. The students may work in groups studying a text for vocabulary or study a transcript to discover style of speech. Whatever the method, Study means any stage where the students will be focussed on the construction of the language. Activate This is the stage where the students are encouraged to use any/all of the language they know. Here students should be using the languageas'freely'andcommunicativelyaspossible. Thefocusis very much more on fluency than accuracy with no restrictions on language usage. Typical Activate activities include role-plays (where students act out as realistically as possible a dialogue between two or more people e.g. doctor and patient), communication games, debates (with higher-level classes), story writing, etc. All three ESA elements need to be present in most lessons to provide a balanced range of activities for the students. Some lessons may be more heavily focused on one stage or another but all stages should be included wherever possible. To say that all three elements need to be included does not mean that they always have to happeninthesameorder. Insteadwecanvarytheordertogiveusgreaterflexibilityin the content of our lessons. We can even have multiple stages per lesson which might look more like EASASA. Even a further subdivision within each stage is possible: E1, E2, A1, S1, S2, A2, S3, A3, for example. In terms of order, the only real rules are that all lessons should start with an Engage stage and finish with an Activate stage. Giving Feedback: Having stimulating activities isn't much use to the students unless they are provided with some kind of feedback as to how well they have done, or which answers they have correct and which are wrong. Theaimofgivingfeedbackistoencourageself-awarenessandimprovement. Byproviding ongoing feedback you can help your students to evaluate their success and progress. Feedback can take a number of forms: going through activities checking students' answers, giving praise and encouragement, correcting, setting regular tests, having regular group discussions, individual tutorials, etc. The type and extent of feedback depends largely on the following factors: - Individual students - Cultureandtheexpectedroleoftheteacher n Thestageofthelesson n Thetypeofactivity When giving feedback on oral or written work, always be on the lookout for positive points to comment upon even if mistakes have been made. Be positive. Ways of giving positive feedback can range from an informal 'well done', publishing good written work around the classroom, using it as a model, to using a grading system. Make sure that feedback from an activity is clear and audible so students have an opportunity to correct their own work. Teacher – student correction This should be the last resort. The other two methods allow the students to identify the problem and correct it. If the teacher corrects straight away, then the students don't have to think about the mistake and work out why it is not correct. Therefore they are less likely to remember it and are more likely to continue to repeat the mistake in the future. What should the teacher correct? It can be difficult for teachers to know exactly what type of mistakes to correct. Generally we can say that for activities where accuracy is the focus (the study stage) correction is more vital than for activities where fluency is the primary objective. Thatdoesn'tmeantosaythatwewillcorrecteverysinglemistake/error in the study stage and never correct in the activate stage. There are three occasions when it is relevant to correct: 1 The mistake is with the language point we are teaching. 2 The mistake is being regularly repeated either by the student or other class members and so risks becoming ingrained. 3 The mistake seriously impedes understanding. When one of the above mistakes/errors is made the teacher can indicate that something needs correcting by repeating it to the student with a questioning tone, asking if they think it is right, by saying “again?”, by having a puzzled expression or by putting it up on the board. Putting it on the board is probably more useful for more complex mistakes as it allows all students to focus on the mistake and think aboutit. This technique also allows the teacher to highlight on the board the type of mistake and where it is. Remembernevertojumpintoastudent'sspeechtocorrect. Waituntilthestudent has finished speaking or until the end of the activity to avoid interrupting the flow of the activity, whichever is the most appropriate depending upon the type of task (for example it is better to correct mistakes from role-play at the end of the activity, so as not to break the flow). Bear in mind that corrections should reflect the stage of the lesson. For example, it would be appropriate for more correction during a study phase, when the students are learning new concepts. During engage and activate stages however, we would want to encourage as much communication as possible, so correction should be kept to an absolute minimum. Leave the students to get on with it!