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No matter what the focus of a lesson is, grammar, vocabulary or function, when teaching new language students should always be exposed to it, understand its meaning and formation, and be given the opportunity to practice it. Teachers should tailor ESA lessons specifically to each class, though boomerang or patchwork lessons are more often used for lessons focused on function.
Receptive vocabulary is comprised of words that one knows but cannot use or perhaps recall on one’s own, while productive vocabulary are works that are both known and can be readily used. Learning these terms was great because living and teaching English in Japan I experience these types of phenomenon in my daily life. I am able to understand, whether written or spoken, more Japanese words that I can command and the same goes for my students with English.
The ease of learning vocabulary will depend on a few things, like how similar new words are to words in the students’ native language or English words that they already know. A teacher should choose appropriate language for students that they would use in their daily lives and should make sure that it is clear enough for the language level of his/her students. It is crucial to keep meaning, usage, pronunciation and spelling in mind when teaching new words. There are many techniques for teaching vocabulary, such as the use of flash cards or pictures for the Engage phase of a lesson, matching activities or crosswords for the Study stage, and role plays for the Activate portion.
The grammar that different levels of students should learn is more rigidly mapped out. The main things students should walk away with are meaning, formation, proper usage, and the difference between the written and spoken forms. Some techniques for teaching new grammar are pictures or question and answer activities for the Engage stage, drilling or sentence scramble activities for the Study phase, and role playing or story building for the Activate stage.
The last area of focus when teaching new language is function. Agreeing, disagreeing, inviting, refusing are some functions of language, and whether language is technical, polite or formal are examples of different types of language. This comes across as a very important part of language learning to me because I see my students using proper grammar in the wrong situations all the time. For example, they may try to call me over to them by saying, ‘teacher, come on’. While this sentence makes grammatical sense in the spoken language, it is not appropriate for the classroom and could come across as impolite. My students may understand the meaning of that language, but not its type.
Boomerang and patchwork ESA lessons are mainly used to teach function. From the example lesson in the unit, all of the phases seem to be quite communicative, having the students discussing things with one another, listening to audio clips of target language and role playing with one another.
