Musings of Ms. Volatyle» Musings of Ms. Volatyle

September 13th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: A, An, The

This is a lesson plan for teaching articles that was requested by a reader. Articles are possibly the simplest, yet the most most arbitrary grammar rules to learn. Most languages apart from English do not have articles, and I know most ESL students are completely flummoxed by their need. But well, strange is the English language

Presenting a lesson on articles is not the most difficult of things, anticipating your particular students’ problems is. Considering that there are no articles in Latin, Sanskrit or Persian – the mai-baap (roots) of many modern languages – English teachers, at least the ones interested in etymological mysteries, may wonder where the articles in English language crept up from. I haven’t found a meaningful explanation yet, so if you can give me a clue, fire away in the Comments section.

August 24th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Reading and Cooperation-related Vocabulary

I have been waiting to write this post since the day I presented this lesson. Not because it was a spectacular lesson or even a horrible one, but because presenting it was a lesson in itself. This was the last of all the lessons I taught during the CELTA course at St. Giles International.

One would’ve thought that the month-long somewhat rigorous course would have taught all us CELTAtians enough that we needed to know before we venture out into the world of ESL teaching. umm… apparently not.

Have you ever been in a situation when everything, and I mean Everything, goes against you? You think the heavens have conspired against you and after a series of mishaps/catastrophes, you begin to give up hope in all that is joyous and wonderful in this world. Presenting the last lesson on the last full working day of the CELTA course should have been a thrilling experience. All the ragda was over. No more stressing over lesson plans and assignments, no more rising at unearthly 6 o’clocks, no more late nights, no more no-beer nights!

August 20th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Present Perfect Tense and Present Perfect Continuous Tense

This had to be among the most challenging of all the lessons I presented while I was a CELTA trainee. But it was the one lesson that helped me develop a solid understanding of all the tenses. In fact, just last week, when I had to explain the differences between perfect tenses in the present, past, and future to a new student, I was able to do it without once referring to a grammar book. Aaah, score! You can download the lesson plan at the bottom of this post.

The differences in the usage of present perfect tense and present perfect continuous tense are so many that it can sometimes be daunting for both the ESL tutor and ESL student. In fact, though native English speakers can almost always use the correct tenses during speech, they often fumble while constructing written sentences using these tenses. A lot of writers try to do without these tenses as much as possible, which really constricts their writing.

August 18th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Writing formal letters

This was among the last of the lessons I presented during the month-long CELTA course. I was the first in my group to teach a writing lesson, so I had had no exposure to these before. And the tutors did an input session on writing lessons the morning of, so my afternoon class could not have benefited much from it

Yet, this was also among the best lessons I presented, if I may say so. I think this was primarily because I relied on my own common sense (rather than resorting to looking for sample plans.. ) and my experience as a journalist in outlining the basic rules of succint writing. At the very least, the attached lesson plan is a good guide to teaching letter writing.

I decided to teach cover letter writing to my group of upper intermediate ESL students because a lot of them had told me they would soon be applying for jobs. Once I started analyzing the form of the cover letter, I found that it could easily be divided into the same categories as any decent journalistic report/story – who, what, why, where, when, how.

August 10th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Reading

This one has to be the easiest lessons to plan for – along with listening. Reading, listening, speaking and writing fall in the category of Skills Lessons. Often, you will find students, especially adult learners, insist on learning skills rather than formal grammar. Of course, skills are the most important part of any language because they allow one to communicate with others. But ESL learners often do not realize that grammar and vocabulary (which are language items) are as intrinsic to learning a new language as the skills.

A Japanese ESL student who masters the American accent but forms her sentences using the Japanese form of S-O-V sentences (instead of the English S-V-O) is going to comprehensible, but only slightly. You get my point

{{To download this lesson plan, go to the bottom of the post}} Click here to see the other lesson plans I have posted.

August 7th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Listening

This is the fourth in the series of lesson plans I promised to put up after my CELTA course. Listening lesson are generally among the easier kinds of lessons we have to teach. Listening is part of the ’skills lessons’, along with speaking, reading and writing. The other two kinds of lessons – Grammar and Vocabulary – fall into the Language lessons category.

{{To directly download this message, go to the bottom of the post}}

Generally, Skills lessons are far easier to plan and execute, mostly because students need to do a lot of work themselves and do not need to depend on the teacher for the most part. Of course, the ESL teacher still has to do their part in ensuring the lesson interests the students. Especially in the case of children and teenagers, if the topic of the lesson is not interesting enough, students begin to fidget pretty soon.

I was presenting it to the Upper Intermediate level ESL students at St. Giles International in San Francisco, the same place I did my CELTA course (Read why I chose the CELTA and not one of the hundreds of TEFL/TESOL courses available).

July 30th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Food Vocabulary

This is the third in the series of Lesson Plans I promised to post. This one is to teach Food-related vocabulary to elementary level ESL students. I taught this class at St. Giles International, a very popular language school in San Francisco. We had a cocktail of students from different countries. In this elementary group alone, I had students from China, Korea, Italy, Russia, Thailand, Peru and France. The classes were even more varied at the upper-intermediate level – we had students from Czech, Germany, Siberia, Cyprus and many other countries.

I was pissed that I had to teach Food Vocabulary.. I mean, why not Clothing Vocabulary, or Road Vocabulary – those are pretty much the same everywhere! A pant is a pant is a pant, as is a skirt, a skirt, a skirt – in Russia or Thailand. But smoked fish.. gosh, what if a certain country does not have a smoked fish dish. Or worse, how does one explain the differences between grilling and barbecue – a concept much debated in the culinary world too.

I was even more aware of these issues because I’m Indian – and we don’t do smoked fish, not in the North at least (I think the South does have some smoked fish and meat dishes). But I was just fretting without a cause, coz in the end, all my students knew all the vocabulary! Easy sailing, it was

July 26th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Present Perfect Tense

Here’s the second in the series of lesson plans I promised to post. These are all lesson plans I made during my CELTA course, which I did at St. Giles International in San Francisco. You can see the rest of the lesson plans here. If you want to download the lesson plan, there is a link at the bottom of this post.

So this was the second lesson I presented to my group of ESL elementary students. I didn’t know it then, but I would grow really fond of some of the students in the weeks to come. But on that day, I was a nervous wreck. I was teaching the Present Perfect Tense. I’d heard of the dreaded thing before but I hadn’t really examined it in my life, never having needed to teach it to anyone before!!

July 24th, 2009

ESL Lesson Plan: Useful Verbs

Here’s the first of the lesson plans I promised.

Most people who think of doing the CELTA or similar TEFL/TESOL courses soon find out that a major part of the course involves teaching. And not just dummy students! It’s really daunting to think about standing in front of a classroom of students, all of whom stare at you expectantly, and there’s no way out for you but to deliver. If you think you can wriggle out of the situation without much preparation, you’re either fooling yourself or you’re an experienced teacher. These students will have questions – lots of them. And unless you’ve anticipated their questions and found all the right answers, you’re gonna end up looking like a fool.

So here’s my advice – day one. Just Be. Don’t worry. However much you prepare, the nervousness of that first afternoon facing the students can’t be overcome by anything else.

Since the CELTA is a Cambridge University course and is carefully structured, most schools expect CELTA trainees to present only a simple 20 minute lesson on the first day. You will be given the topic of the lesson the day before. Mostly, the 20 minute lesson is a game like a Crossword puzzle or something similar using the Target Language (TL) which you have to teach your students.

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