Dickson City, Pennsylvania TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

The main difference with regard to student learning for the productive activities -- speaking and reading -- is the fact that to do them well requires preparation. For listening and reading, these can be done spontaneously and there is more room for error. With regard to porductive activities, the success or failure of them relates to how the receiver perceives what is written and/or said. Even within this context, writing is the more difficult of the two productive components of English as it requires proper spelling, grammar, word chjoice, and punctuation, and quite frankly there are so many rules relating to the above, that without intensive reading and much writing practice, it can be very difficult to master. Teachers have many options with regard to teaching reading and writing, but given the rigor involved with learning either well, need to first be sure that the students feel a genuine need or utility in learning them well. Good lesson planning and the use of the ESA structure, as reviewed in prior lessons is critical to this. Also, a differentiation should be made between accuracy and fluency activities with regard to the learning of these two productive skills. In speaking, fluency may be more important -- meaning less of a focus on perfect grammar, vocabulary usage, etc., and more a focus on activie practice of speaking. A good way to start in Engage activities is to have students do 3-by-3 drills with rgard to pronunciation of vocabulary: teacher pronounicng and the entire class repeating three times, then calling on three successive students by name to pronounce; as this gives everyone a chance to pronounce words without the fear of making errors. Also, when preparing students, or allowing students in pairs or groups to plan (in Activate stage activities) a speaking activity, allowing the students to speak English without interrupting to correct mistakes is key. Corrections and feedback can be provided afterwards. Also, for such exercises allowing students time to rehearse in groups is also quite useful as they are preparing "a product." For writing, accuracy may be more important than fluency. A written product, any written product, can be seen as refelctive of general knowledge and/or level of education and so should be as acccurate as possible. While teachers are often reluctant to provide time in class for writing and review of writing, this can be quite important as written homework assignments - often based on the fact that they can be difficult to master - are ignored or not completed by students. Revieiwing specific vocabulary for written subject matter (i.e. a business letter, an e-mail inquiry, etc.) and reviewing -- and having students make use of -- specific grammar structures for their written products can be a good way to have the students engage get solid writing practice. And again, extensive reading that exposes students again and again to correct usage of grammar, syntax, piunctuation, and vocabulary helps greatly. One good idea can be having prepared cartoon boxes with speakingn bubbles that get passed aroundin small groups, and after one students enters the dialogue for ine bubble, the page is folded and the next student enters the dialogue for the next. This can then be read aloud in its entirety at the end -- and be quite funny and interesting for the students. Also, TEFL learning ganmes that make use of writing and speaking like Jeopardy, Crosswords, or Twenty Questions can be useful.