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Can such a system work? Can you remove materials and textbooks from a classroom and still expect the students to learn? Not only is the answer ‘yes’, but a whole group of ESOL teachers also believe this is the best way to learn/teach.

Teaching unplugged

This week, I’ve been caught up reading articles from Scott Thornbury’s excellent ‘Teaching Unplugged’ website. In it, he explains – with the help of some friends – a teaching pattern that is unabashedly contrary in a world that is bursting at the seams with textbooks, theories and technology. It is a style “unburdened by an excess of materials… a pedagogy grounded in the local and relevant concerns of the people in the room.” Until I read this, I had no idea that other teachers were thinking the same as me on a wide scale.

It all starts with the article ‘A Dogma for EFL’, published 10 years ago, high on inspiration and determination, and the foundation for a style that is actually “a state of mind.” If you haven’t read the article, stop listening to me droning on and go read it!

Naked teaching

From there, it is a natural step up to the idea of teaching unplugged. Live, raw, naked teaching. Not literally, of course. That would be disturbing. But naked in the sense of not over-planning, not over-preparing, not micro-managing. Letting the learners lead with their own ideas and conversation. Using language because you want to talk, not because of some abstract goal. There’s a lot more to it, but the key principles can be found in the 10 guidelines defined in Scott’s article Teaching Unplugged (Or Dogme with an ‘E’).

Rule no. 1: There are no rules (except these 10)

In summary, those 10 principles include the idea that teachers only use the materials that can be found ‘on location’. It requires using your own knowledge and the experience and personalities of your students to teach.

A second idea that I am particularly fond of is that the teacher should sit down when the students are sitting. Symbolically, it takes away the ‘authority figure’, and replaces him with just another person. Someone to converse with.

Grammar should emerge from the lesson, not be inputted into it. Topics for discussion and questions asked should be real, not artificially construed to achieve something. The final point also rings clear and true: teachers should not be boring.

Dogme and teaching

I think this approach is best summed up by ‘Luke’, a contributor to the Teaching Unplugged website. When talking about whether this type of lesson can be carried out in the real world, he poignantly stated that “there’s one caveat here – you do have to be interested in people to teach like this!”

So, that’s been my week, pretty much! Reading about Dogme and thinking of ways to implement it more fully into my lessons. Has anyone been using this style? Care to comment?

This issue of fluency was recently addressed on the BBC’s Learning English website. Susan Fearn gave a thorough and useful answer to the question of how to become fluent.

Conversation and listening

Included in her advice was the recommendation that the student takes as many opportunities as possible to converse with native speakers and other fluent English learners. The pressure on the student to raise their game to meet the level of the others is beneficial.

Imitation and conversation

Her second point was to mimic native speakers, particularly the stress and rhythm of words and sentences. This means the student has to pay attention to notice the patterns of other speakers and imitate those. Filler sounds and meaningless utterances are other ‘native tricks’ that are used to achieve fluency – things like ‘erm’, or even the over-used but often pointless ‘kind of’.

Conversational skills are another vital step on the road to fluency. Keep the other person involved with questions, summaries, and recognition. In other words, you need to:

• Listen
• Imitate
• Have confidence

How to teach fluency

A suggested teaching method for students who don’t have much time/opportunity to converse with native speakers is the following:

1. Set a listening task for homework (the BBC’s 6-minute English is ideal)
2. The student must give an extemporaneous presentation of the material in the next lesson
3. Ask comprehensive and reflective questions
4. Read a small portion of the script together – check for stress and intonation
5. Follow up with conversation on the subject of the audio-text

When you can have fun speaking English (despite mistakes) and really make it your own, then you’re well on the way to fluency.

There was, for example, the lesson wherein I finished the assigned material with 25 minutes still to go. Then there was the lesson where I could not for the life me make the students understand the rules to a simple word game. Then there was also that lesson where I… (ad nauseam)

What is a bad lesson?

Good question. In this context, I’m thinking particularly about lessons that start off well enough – good lesson plan, good attendance, good atmosphere – but seem to go off the tracks. We’ve all been there (it’s not just me, right?!) and felt the sinking feeling as you lose control of the class.

Causes of a bad lesson

There are too many possible reasons to write down here but I would imagine the most common reason include:

• Poor time management
• Planned activity ends too early
• Planned activity takes too long
• The activity is just not effective/interesting
• Lesson material that is too difficult for the students
• Materials that are too easy for the students
• Instructions for an activity not being properly understood/explained

What to do if a lesson turns bad

Thorough lesson preparation can usually stop lessons from turning sour, but that doesn’t help when you’re actually in the pickle. So, a few ideas to help you if your lessons go bad:

1. End the activity – if it’s not going well, or if it’s going too slowly, don’t be afraid to end it. The key point is to ensure the focus language has been understood and can be used
2. Explain again – you may find that your lesson is going badly because your students don’t know what to do. In this case, time-permitting, you should explain things again more simply, more clearly, and with better examples
3. Change the lesson – particularly if you find the planned material is too difficult/easy, you should just change what you had planned. How can you do this on the spot? Always have some games or activities in mind, or simply move on to a future lesson. You can always review the material for the planned lesson at a later date.

You might also just want to take a few minutes to compose yourself. If the lesson feels like it’s slipping away, think calmly about the focus of the lesson and take the best course of action. And, remember, a bad lesson doesn’t mean you are a bad teacher!

TEFL.net lesson plans  – A nice variety of materials, and a worksheet generator.

Teaching English – British Council’s well-developed site for teachers includes a nice range of lesson plans and activities.

The Internet TESL Journal – ITESLJ gathers a whole heap of lessons and worksheets together one page. Check it out!

BBC World Service English lessons – Worksheets, audio and visual aids and other resources available on one page. This site is well worth using.

Using English .pdf lessons – Over 150 lesson plans ready to use in PDF format – that’s not to be sneered at.

TEFLtastic worksheets – Alex Case’s blog has a disorderly and sometimes rather strange collection of worksheets, but it’s worth checking if only for the sheer variety on offer.

One Stop English lessons and worksheets – Vocabulary worksheets are One Stop’s forte, but you’ll find other lessons here too. Access to some lesson plans requires registration.

ESL About – The lesson plans here are rather bare bones, but useful all the same. Impressive range of Intermediate and Advanced lessons.

ESL Flow – Hundreds of PDFs for beginner and intermediate level learners. The worksheets are quite primitive, but they are useful for adapting into lessons.

Simply ESL – Well laid out, professional site. Strong focus on young learners. Recommended.

With all these sites for lessons plans, there’s no need to plan your own lessons ever again (joke)! Please leave any other recommendations in the comments below.

Vocabulary and meaning

Vocabulary, the stock of words at one’s disposal, is inevitably tied into meaning. Teaching a new word, then, involves demonstrating meaning and nuances through context.

If your students just lazily look up every unknown word in their dictionaries for translations into their own language, there is bound to be confusion. Rather, you need to show them how a word is used in a variety of contexts. Dictionaries aren’t all bad, of course, but the best way to build useful vocabulary is through use.

Pronunciation

A second aspect of teaching vocabulary is pronunciation. Students must be able to pronounce a word clearly for effective usage. This includes old-fashioned repeat-after-me techniques – repeating the word, either on its own or in a contextual sentence – until pronunciation has been mastered. Teaching correct stress and intonation is vital here.

Form

Finally, we have to teach form. Is its form irregular? Does the word take on different meanings in different situations? Is the written form different to the sound? You also need to teach words that are commonly used with the target word, such as prepositions, or use in phrasal verbs.

Top tips

• Ask questions or give example sentences with the required word missing in order to elicit the word from your students

• Keep a record of new words in order to check retention (make sure your students are doing the same)

• Demonstrate meaning through context, or use simple definitions or explanations

• Best of all, get your students to make example sentences using the word

• Synonyms and antonyms are a quick and easy way to teach meaning

• Asking just one student for a definition of the word doesn’t mean that everyone has understood it – use the board to demonstrate proper usage for the entire class to see

Handoutsonline.com

With a yearly subscription fee of just $22, and more handouts than you can shake a textbook at, Handouts Online is a premium resource. It has not only handouts but fully devised lesson plans – perfect if you are in a rush for a quick lesson, or you need some exercises to drive home a grammar or language point. Well categorized into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced sections, with a separate area for Flashcards. I highly recommend this site – give their free downloads a try at least.

ESL.about.com

If only for the sheer volume of its contents, this site gets an honorary mention. Kenneth Beare is the main man behind this site, and you have to admire his ability to come up with endless lesson plans, tips, and advice. Very useful site when looking for ideas for your lessons, or when you want to clarify a grammar point in your own mind.

TEFL.net Teaching

If you’re looking for a last minute lesson plan, which really is when the internet proves to be the most valuable teaching tool there is, then TEFL.net’s Teaching section is a godsend. The worksheet generator is a very useful tool, but there are also many preset lesson plans and materials.

These are the main sites I use when planning lessons, but I’d be happy to hear your suggestions. Leave a comment below!

Making use of film

My fellow jobs.ac blogger, Catherine Armstrong, recently wrote about the same subject in the context of university lecturing. There, Dr. C gave us several very practical tips.

1.      Get your students to make notes or fill in a questionnaire while watching

2.      Get each student to find a specific piece of information in the film

3.      Discuss the use of film in class

4.      Leave time for discussion afterwards

DVDs in TEFL

Over at ESL-Galaxy, Futonge Kisito has written an article on the use of video. The tips there include:

1.      Turn off the sound and get students to create the dialogue

2.      One section of students can describe what is happening to another group

3.      The ‘what happens next’ game

ESL Galaxy also has a number of useful worksheets on using certain films in class, including Rush Hour. So, yes, Jackie Chan can teach English.

Music videos

A fellow teacher recently told me how he was using music videos in class to draw out opinions and teach adjectives. School children love music videos (generally), and it really engages them when you use something as engrossing as visual images in the lesson.

It’s wise to use video with caution in the classroom, of course, and not to display anything that might be deemed offensive. DVDs are not at an alternative to traditional methods of instructions, but it can be used to good effect in the right situation.

Learning should be fun, certainly, and your style of teaching should be easily understood (not to be mistaken for simple), but the students are there to study a foreign language – that takes a lot of hard work. I previously wrote about the importance of grammar, which I think is necessary, but often taught badly. Now I’m telling you to get them writing.

Why we should write

Many scholars argue that writing is one of the foremost ways to encourage learning and to aid memorization. I’m not a scholar so I wouldn’t know, but I do know that writing tasks get your students thinking. It will help your students to make long sentences, analyze and improve word order and other grammatical functions, and help them to use their own minds – to think in English.

For example, I recently had a class where the task was to write a short speech. Plenty of time was needed for the learners to create their discourses, but the results were outstanding. Also, the fact that it was a speech (on a topic of their choice, I might add) gave them opportunity to read out their text in front of the class.

Other uses

Writing can be used in other ways. Get your students to make notes, at the very least, on what your teaching. This could include things like new words, ideas, or phrases, or even memory aids.

The benefits, then, of good, old-fashioned writing are:

• Improves spelling

• Improves handwriting

• Chance to formulate long sentences

• Improves grammar

• Makes things more memorable

• Writing can be referred to later on

Anything to add? Let me know!

Why we use grammar

Jim Scrivener, in his book ‘Teaching Grammar‘ (2003, p. 1), rightly points out that grammar is ‘a living resource that gives us the ability to communicate our ideas and feelings… Grammar only makes sense if you can use it’.

With that in mind, memorizing countless tenses and teaching lists of verb forms and irregularities is not going to be an effective teaching method. Instead, teach your students something practical and then show them how grammar works inside that to give it meaning and structure.

Have you ever taught grammar?

Take, for example, the ‘present perfect simple’ tense. It sounds intimidating. I would argue that – unless it is relevant to an upcoming test or part of the curriculum – even calling it the ‘present perfect simple’ is unnecessary (especially so in conversation classes, where reciting experiences or past actions is necessary, but where grammatical knowledge is not paramount). Show them, rather, what you can do with that tense and how to use it in day-to-day English.

The four steps

Jim Scrivener wrote about four essential steps to learn grammar effectively:

1. Notice – regularly point out uses of a certain item in various and numerous contexts and situations

2. Understand – teach the form, meaning and uses of an item so that students know how it’s made

3. Try – let them practice using the item. Mistakes are natural, but repeated use and correction will give them a clearer understanding.

4. Use – Help them to make the item part of their language ‘repertoire’, something they can use comfortably when needed.

I’m grateful to Jim Scrivener for his invaluable advice, and I’d recommend his book ‘Teaching Grammar‘ to any teacher, especially those with limited resources available to them.