Hi, when I studied English, teachers used to focus on drilling grammar ; we were also asked to learn new words by heart. which was rather difficult since they were not  in context.

Nowadays, I students enjoy different kinds of activities and methods; they particularly like working with the task based approach.

what about your students? what do they enjoy?

best wishes

Carmen Gloria

My students enjoy describing their favourite movie star or singer or their best sportman and they use all the target language needed for this purpose.

Also they work in groups creating, for example, a brochure inviting foreign people to visit our country.

My experience is that when they do things, they feel they are learning.

We also use a program at school that's called Rosetta, it has the 4 abilities and they really enjoy working with it in the computer room

Hope it's useful.

Hi, Mona !!!! Yes, students in our culture certainly enjoy project work and each memeber of the group has a role so they feel responsible and know what they have to do.

This is an example I took from Stand Out 2

Project: describing someone.

Student 1. Team Leader: See that everyone speaks English; see thay everyone participates/Student 2: Write a paragraph with help from the team./Student 3: Make a family tree with help from the team./Student 4: Make a calendar and a one-day planner with help from the team.

keep in touch

Hi everyone,

Nowadays the project method is very popular in Russia. My students are very interested in doing projects especially International projecrs which give them an opportunity to know more about English -speaking countries, develop their creativity, imagination and information scills. Students learn to carry out investigations.They can work in groups or individually. We use such International programmes as www.scenceacross.org  www.epal.com   www.iearn.org . They are very helpful when we study the topics like "Food", "Climate", "Holidays", "Customs and Traditions" and some others.

I like  Carmen's idea when everybody in the group has his role.

Regards

Larissa

Sorry for making mistakes while printing. The names of the sites are: www.scienceacross.org   www.epals.com   www.iearn.org

Larissa

Thank you Larissa very interesting!!!!

ESOL or EFL

Hi,

I teach ESOL in a small state college in England. A couple of years ago I started asking myself a question whether my classes are still ESOL, or EFL  or maybe they are somewhere in between. My students are from all over the world, some of them know that they'll stay in the UK for good, some of them are still not decided, and there is always a group of seasonal workers. In terms of their needs and motivation they need English for everyday life and to improve their job prospects. Some of them are well educated and aspire to express themselves at the level of their first language. There is always a group of learners who are illiterate or with low literacy skills. In my teaching I use EFL materials supplemented with ESOL activities. And everybody is happy including me. But am I still an ESOL teacher?

Hi lara25:

     With regards to your question #8, what specific theories are you referring to?

Dan Jenkins (Foreign Expert, English Department, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, China)