Stonewall, North Carolina TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

In this unit I learned quite a bit of new information. It covered some of the main methodologies of teaching English. From my own language learning experience I am familiar with some of the concepts, such as the grammar-translation methodology, the audio-lingual methodology, task based learning, and collective learning. Some, however were very new to me, such as the Silent Way, PPP, and suggestopaedia. I found some, like suggestopaedia and especially the Silent Way to be quite unnatural in implementation. After the main methodologies and the pros and cons of each had been laid out, this unit covered a brief section on elicitation, and the importance of eliciting as much information from the students as possible. This information then, about what they do and don't know pertaining to that day's lesson, will be the foundation for the teaching that takes place. Several elicitation methods were suggested, such as fill-in-the-blank style questions/statements, expanding on questions, and using real objects to elicit words and phrases. Finally, this unit covered the ESA, or Engage Study Activate lesson plan. It covered the straight arrow lesson plan, which only involves one of each phase. It also covered the boomerang style lesson plan which involves an engage phase followed by an activate phase and a study phase, and finished with a final activate phase. The final lesson plan covered was a patchwork plan, where all of these different elements can be used together as many times as needed to achieve the lesson goal. The most important factor is that it always begins with an engage phase and ends with an activate phase. One last section covered the difference between mistakes and errors, and some methods of correction. By far I found the section on ESA lesson planning to be the most useful, and I enjoyed being able to put what I learned into practice on the task sheet for this unit.