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Unit 3 discusses briefly the most common methodologies, at present. All methodologies presented in Unit 3 have their own advantages and disadvantages, but by analyzing them as a whole one can conclude that students always "need to be motivated, be exposed to the language and have the opportunity to use it[...]". One effective method to accomplish these goals in the classroom is the Engage, Study and Activate (ESA) approach, put forward by Jeremy Harmer. Since this method offers a great deal of flexibility in the planning of lessons, and is also appropriate for trainee and new teachers, this TEFL course is based on the ESA methodology and "all submitted materials must follow this method.".
One of the most important features of the ESA method is Elicitation, which can be described as asking thought-provoking questions in order to involve learners in their own process of understanding and discovering language. Elicitation techniques work on many levels, from getting information about what students already know and need to know, to increasing student talk time and reducing teacher talk time.
There are many elicitation techniques such as the use of real objects, pictures, gap fill, making lists and so on. The common idea is to involve students in the lesson as much as possible. One should use a variety of techniques during a lesson and adapt them to the students' language level as to avoid a potential lack of interest. When eliciting, the teacher should always encourage students with positive feedback even, and maybe specially, when some of the students' suggestions are not what was expected.
As the name suggests, the ESA method should comprise all three main components:
Engage: the teacher tries to get the students to think and speak in English as much as possible
before moving on to the next phase of the lesson.
Study: the students are focused on the construction of the language. The teacher provides
exercises for practice and study of specific features of the language, reviews the answers
and goes over any errors.
Activate: the teacher provides some activities where the students are encouraged to communicate
freely and to use all the language they know.
Note that elicitation is present in all three components.
All ESA lessons should start with an Engage component and close with an Activate component. In between there can be multiple stages and subdivisions, which makes for three main types of lesson sequencing, from the simplest to the more complex:
Straight Arrow: E => S => A
Boomerang: E => A1 => S => A2
Patchwork: E => ...any other ESA sequence ... => A
One can immediately see that these lesson sequences and the fact that each lesson can be more heavily focused on one component or another empowers every teacher with a great amount of flexibility to cater each lesson to the specific needs of their students.
Unit 3 provides a few examples of lessons that follow each of the previous sequences. It also complements those examples with quite a few specific ideas for each of the three main components, which make this document a good starting point for planning a particular lesson.
Unit 3 closes by discussing in detail correction techniques. In my personal view and experience, correction techniques are closely related to elicitation techniques as they are the second half of the virtuous cycle of communication and goodwill relationship that every teacher should try to establish with every student. As such, and as stated in Unit 3, "the ability to correct is a skill that takes time and experience to perfect.".
"To err is human"(1), and no more so than when a human is trying to learn. In fact, one might say that making mistakes is one of the most important aspects of the learning process and that the teacher should welcome their students' mistakes as a stepping stone on which to build upon. However, the improper or excessive use of correction may compromise the students' motivation and engagement, so I believe that a good teacher should always focus more on self correction and apply any other correction techniques parsimoniously. In particular, to correct in a positive and effective way, a teacher must be aware of who should correct, when, how and what to correct.
(1) Totally unrelated, but I also really like the following variant: "To err is human, but to make a really big mess you need a computer".
