Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Florida? Are you interested in teaching English in Palm Beach, Florida? Check out our opportunities in Palm Beach, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
Unit three was all about teaching theories, techniques and methodologies. The text started with explaining the different circumstances that English learners have such as being more exposed to the language versus only being able to have exposure in classes. This lead into techniques and methodologies. Some of these included grammar-translation, PPP, community language learning and communicative language language teaching. I learned, without surprise, that it's best to teach using a combination of different methodologies as there isn't just one that is all encompassing and sufficient for effectively teaching English.
The next part of the unit focused on ESA or Engage, Study and Activate, which is a technique of teaching and what ITT uses to base their course on. The ESA technique allows for teachers to be flexible in their lessons and use different methodologies throughout their lessons. Engaging, the first part of this technique, is focused around getting students interested to learn using activities like games and music. I relate it to a warm up for an exercise - you're not introducing new material yet but getting your minds ready to learn new things. The second stage, study, is when the teacher introduces new material and is focused around a particular language point. After the teacher uses elicitation to get a read on what students already know, the teacher teaches the new information and then uses exercises like worksheets in order for the teacher and the students to get a read on what they've learned and understood. Lastly is the activate stage where the students will actively practice what they've learned. In this stage it's important to allow students to be free with their communication. The ESA technique is is flexible in many ways, one being that it doesn't have to be only a three step process in the E-S-A order. There are different ways to use it such as the boomerang technique or the patchwork technique.
This unit was helpful in that it provided ideas and examples for different parts of the teaching techniques. For example, the engage stage of ESA can be done with partner sharing or different games like I-Spy and memory games. The study stage can be focused around different concepts such as spelling or pronunciation, using activities like Hangman or word searches. The activate stage has many options as well including the class building a story or simply having a debate.
The unit wrapped up with information on feedback. Feedback for students is such an important part of the learning process because they won't have a gauge on how they're doing if they don't receive any. Feedback, if given correctly, also encourages students. It's very important to know when correcting a student is warranted, such as when it's a threat that a mistake will be ingrained and become an error to students. It's also important to allow students to correct themselves and each other before the teacher corrects them.
