Songs For Teaching

Songs in the Classroom The use of songs in the ESL classroom can be a fun and innovative way of covering a range of English language topics. Songs can be used for vocabulary, grammar, dictation, pronunciation (stress and intonation), phonetics, speaking, writing, listening, integrative skills, and many other ESL points. Furthermore, songs can invite the non-native speaker into the English speaking culture. For instance, pop music gives the learner a taste of what is trendy at the moment. Meanwhile, the lyrics to classic rock songs can give a sense of history and the attitude of the country at the time of recording (for example, “Give Peace a Chance,” John Lennon, 1969). Additionally, children’s songs are crucially important for the young learner as they are an easy way to encourage...  [Read more]

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Teaching Young Learners In the TESOL Course, we have come across the characteristics as well as the techniques of the young learners. In the following, I will try to point out briefly their different characteristics of this particular age group. Teaching the young learners requires different techniques as these children have different characteristics which can be categorized in three groups. The first is the very young ones i.e. from aged 7 years and less. These children have a very limited vocabulary and have not even mastered the grammar of their mother tongue. They have shorter attention span, are very curious, lots of imagination, easily distracted, full of energy and want to do things themselves. With this in mind, the techniques applied are lessons with short stories, rhymes, songs...  [Read more]

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Teaching EFL in a Kindergarten My experience as a bilingual kindergarten (Spanish/English) teacher has demonstrated the ability children have to learn two languages in an immersion program. Through a well-structured program including reading, journal writing and phonics (Aranjo) my students acquired a broad vocabulary and the ability to communicate with confidence to their peers and adults. The curriculum is presented to kids in a fun exciting way including storytelling, song, chants, games, rhymes, movement, dance, cultural lessons and holiday celebrations (Faust). It is essential to commit to the faithful implementation of the English learning program for the minimal 45 minutes a day to provide the consistency and practice needed for their success. Brain research supports the belief...  [Read more]

Teaching beginner students The purpose of this article is to provide information about teaching English to beginner students. For the most part, the topic has been narrowed to young beginners. A person who is just beginning to study English has some disadvantages. They cannot read and study on their own. They will not understand English instructions. They will struggle to twist their tongues around the English sounds. But they have lots of advantages, too. Beginner students bring a very fresh, open mind to English class. They have no base or preconceived ideas about the language and their minds are ready to soak it up! They generally have no fear of mispronunciation. Nor does the teacher have to undo formerly learned bad habits or mispronunciations. They do not ‘face the mental shock of...  [Read more]

  The purpose of grammar translation then is to basically translate between L1 and L2 and vice versa. So, we could take a simple example. Let's imagine that our native language was English and our target language was French and let's assume that we want to translate a document from French into English. Let's take a simple sentence. Here's a sentence in French "Ouvre la fenêtre" and we'll add "s'il vous plaît" at the end. What we want to do is to take this L2 and translate it back into English. Now, if we have a reasonable knowledge of French then we may well know that this particular verb "ouvre" "to open" translates directly and this female form of the and finally the fenêtre "Open the window" and this polite form of "please". This is all very well if the two structures that...  [Read more]

The term materials can apply to virtually anything that a teacher uses to help the teaching process in the classroom. Common teaching materials include items such as worksheets, newspapers, pictures, text books and video recordings. These teaching materials are often classed as either authentic or non authentic depending on their origin and how they are used. ‘Authentic material’ refers to items that have not been designed or adapted for use in an English language classroom such as magazines, newspapers, video clips and song lyrics. In contrast, ‘non authentic material’ refers to anything that has been designed specifically to aid the teaching process such as worksheets, text books and instructional CD’s or DVD’S.  [Read more]

  This presentation is going to focus on the theories, methods and techniques of teaching and we're going to start with a quote. This is an interesting quotation because it contains within it a philosophical argument and it's a philosophical argument in the way in which we learn. Basically, this one is saying that the intelligence of their own children comes about due to a natural process. So this one could be said to be due to nature. This is exactly the opposite of this one, which is saying that they're teaching the environment that we create, creates that intelligence. So this one can be said to be due to nurture and this argument 'nature versus nurture' has been going on for thousands of years. These two viewpoints are two ends of a scale, or a continuum if you like, and every...  [Read more]

  Also in the 1970s la señal came up with a new methodology called "Suggestopedia". As psychological theory was developing, one of the ideas that came up was something called ?the effective filter?. Basically, the effective filter is a barrier to learning. It's the reasons why we inhibit our learning of a particular language. There are two main elements to the effective filter, two sets of factors, if you like, those are known as internal and external factors. The external factors to learning, the reasons why we have barriers to learning, may be just simple things such as external noise. So, people talking to us while we're trying to learn and so on and so forth. Perhaps more important are these internal factors and the internal factors one of the main things here is our previous...  [Read more]

  Just to finish the sectional materials, we'll have a look the difference between what are called authentic and created materials. Authentic materials, as the name implies, are actual materials that are created for any reason outside of the classroom. So examples of authentic materials would be things like newspapers. Those are generated for the general public and they're certainly not generated for the use in the classroom. However, they can be used within the classroom other ideas would be things like songs and poems and even things such as brochures and magazines and indeed menus from restaurants. So these are materials that all can be used within the classroom but they have not been created for that purpose, whereas creative materials, as the name implies, have been produced...  [Read more]

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  The term materials can apply to virtually anything that a teachers uses to help the teaching process in the classroom. Common teaching materials include items such as worksheets, newspapers, pictures text books and video recordings. These materials are usually classed as either authentic or non-authentic depending on their origin and the ways they are used. Authentic materials refer to materials that have not been designed or adapted for use in an English language classroom such as magazines, newspapers, video clips and song lyrics. Non-authentic materials on the other hand are anything that has been specifically designed to aid the teaching process such as worksheets, text books and instructional CD’s or DVD’s. Are you ready to live and teach abroad? Click here...  [Read more]

Learning modes: Young learners vs. adults he role of a teacher is a vast and varied one and there is a considerable amount of factors that will affect this role. One of the main factors that really effects how and what we decide to teach is the age of the students. For instance you could not walk into a classroom full of eight year old primary school children with the same lesson plan designed for teaching a group of 3rd year degree students. Other then the differences that would occur in academic ability, between these two groups, people of different ages have very different needs, competences and cognitive skills. For example, it is through play that much of children's early learning is achieved. (1) ‘The physical, socio-emotional and intellectual development of children is dependent...  [Read more]

  So, let's have a look at a typical receptive skills lesson. The main focus of this lesson is going to be reading, although there will be some listening involved as well and it?s going to be a patchwork ESA lesson. As a patchwork lesson, it will start off with an engage and this engage what we're going to do is to play an extract about Elvis Presley and it's going to be an Elvis Presley song and we can ask the students if they know who it is and if they know anything about him can help generate the interest in this. We can also ask them what they'd like to know about it. What we can then do is just to introduce them to the text but they're going to read the detail later on but just at this stage we'll do a quick skimming or scanning exercise to find some information from that...  [Read more]

  There are two issues that need to be stressed when working with the international phonemic alphabet. First is the fact that we are no longer concerned with how a word is traditionally spelled. Additionally we need to stress that we are only concerned with the sounds needed to correctly produce a word. So rather than numerous spellings, which can often be pronounced in different ways, we have one symbol representing one sound. Once we can isolate a sound, rather than juggling various spellings, we can work with our students on how to say that sound. Doing that successfully is related to manner and place of articulation, which will be covered shortly. To get a better understanding of the phonemic alphabet, let's take a look at our chart. In the bottom half of our chart we have our...  [Read more]

Teaching methodologies in the "Super-learning" class “Super learning” (SL) is an accelerated learning technique and a fast-growing business, with varying results. Lessons usually last a whole day, and the course is often concentrated into a weekend. Some courses are based simply on suggestopedia, promising - but not always delivering - great results: “learn French in five days”. However, some successfully combine suggestopedia with other teaching methods to deliver good results. SL is designed to aid the learning process by removing learning barriers, stimulating both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, as well as activating some of the intelligences not normally represented in a traditional course. The classroom environment is set up to facilitate subconscious learning, as...  [Read more]

Cebu is a city in the midst of overwhelming growth that blends its ancestral heritage with a modern business edge. Standing as the country's top business and tourist destination, Cebu was crowned as the Queen City of the South. Finding its own place under Cebu's friendly skies, business and leisure coincide together with office buildings and beach resorts. Cebu is an elongated island some 250 kilometers from North to South and 45 kilometers across at its widest point. It is central to the Philippine archipelago and some 600 kilometers south of Manila. This location combined with a sheltered deep water harbor has made Cebu the base for most of the country's domestic shipping and the gateway to the central and southern Philippines. The island's area of 5,000 square kilometers supports over...  [Read more]

Bilingual Education versus English Only Models Over the years, many debates have arisen in regards to second language instruction (L2), giving prominence to two main models: English Only versus Bilingual Education. English Only uses solely English as the medium for instruction, whereas Bilingual Education, as its name implies, uses both English and the student’s native language. While there are several aspects to the debate, this paper will briefly cover a certain few: cultural sensitivity, accuracy, and segregation. Proponents of the English Only model claim that the use of a student’s native language creates a “cycle of native language dependency,” meaning that the student, to some extent, gets “tethered” to his native tongue. Using solely English in the classroom, advocates...  [Read more]