Committed to learning After 20 years in the EFL classroom, I still learn new things all the time. Certainly, here in Japan, the students are completely different than they were back in 1989; in those days, they all sat up straight, had their hair braided back and always made an effort (or pretended to, anyways) [...]
Posts Tagged ‘young learners’
Bring Language to Life in Your Classroom (by Karen Frazier)
Whenever I teach, I do all I can to present language so that it comes to life for the students. As an English teacher, I instantly become an actor in order to convey meaning for any new language being taught. I recall the first time I was teaching in a classroom in Taiwan, where every student [...]
Thoughtful language practice
I’m always looking for ways to add a “thinking” dimension to class activities, and if I can do that with a lot of speaking, and reading, and writing practice then I’m a happy teacher indeed!
Bringing Happiness to the Classroom (by Vladimira Michalkova)
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful. – Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama A real authentic smile of a student is worth every single minute you spend on giving them a reason for it.
Teaching High Level Kids (by Randy Poehlman)
Teaching high-level children can be a challenging endeavor, fraught with various drawbacks and difficulties for a teacher. Students who are returning from an English speaking country, who have become bilingual through intensive children’s language programs, or those who come from a household where two or more languages are spoken require a program tailored to their [...]
The iPad in the ESL/EFL Classroom (By Kevin Cozma)
Are you an EFL/ESL teacher? Have an iPad? Want an iPad? Have 10 minutes to kill? Read on.
How to plan an exciting EFL museum trip (by Lesley Ito)
As a teacher in an English language school with a strong cross-curricular focus, I always try my best to bring authentic materials into the classroom. Humans learn more when they can experience the real thing, instead of just looking at pictures of it in a book. Of course, it is not always possible to bring [...]
Proactive Discipline–Tend to Your Garden (by Eric Kane)
Creating a positive learning environment with few discipline problems is a goal of any teacher. We all want to give our young learners the best opportunity to succeed, but sometimes we forget that building this type of environment, much like tending to a garden, takes planning, effort, consistency and a fair amount of time and [...]
The “Reading Pictures” Strategy (By Naomi Ganin-Epstein)
It’s Wednesday, 11:00, just a regular day at the high school. Two English teachers are sitting in the teacher’s room marking exams during their “free” period. Every now and then you can hear each one exclaim (or mutter, as the case may be) “How could he have possible written THAT?” or “How in earth did [...]
Rice in Japan and Rice Around the World (by Bob Middleton)
Bringing food topics into the language classroom is one way to stimulate language learning as well as hungry appetites. 9 and 10 year old students in the 5th grade of our elementary school in Japan take part in an 8-hour lesson on varieties of rice in Japan. This Japan-unit is later followed by a similar [...]
