Dear All,

I have been reading comments about low pay for teachers - especially ESOL teachers - with interest.  It is a common complaint, but the main reason why low pay persists is the attitude of the education system towards the 'cinderella' world of Teaching English, at least in Britain.  As long as ESOL is seen as being on the lowest rung of the educational professional ladder (along with Teaching Assistants and nursery school teachers), the financial rewards will always be out of reach. 

In many cases, educational organisations do not even recognise ESOL as a proper subject.  Rather, it is something to supplement already existant curricula and ESOL departments are not fully integrated into the actual organisations of schools and colleges because they are basically seen as a 'service' department on the same level as the cleaners and dinner-ladies. 

Until there is a change of attitude among those who should know better in charge of the education system in this country, then pay will always remain low, the profession not taken seriously and the chance to develop a career in the field improbably.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Murray 

Hello Amir, I understand vocabulary is just a part of the system, we must remember ‘Words enter into meaningful relations with other words around them…’ (Sinclair 1996:76). So how can we help students learn vocabulary while developing the four skills? any ideas? Elena suggested using a vocabulary notebook.

hello Amir, thanks for your tips; I also use these activities:

classifying words with a positive, neutral or pejorative associationsfinding one word to fit all the gaps in a set of sentences which illustrate a range of meanings of a polysemous word

of course w ehave to think about students level when preparing exercises

Dear all,

I'm teaching English in China. It's great to be here reading all your comments.

Do you think we have different ways to teach vocabulary when we teach English as a foreign language? We also use some of the methods Amir recomended, and I do think they work. Looking forward to reading your ideas.

All the best!

Dandelion

Hello Dandelion, I'm writing from Chile and it's really exciting to share ideas with someone from China.

There's a book I really like : Vocabulary in Use (by Felicity Odell); students enjoy the activities and they really work

best wishes

Carmen Gloria

Hello Everybody,

I am writing from Iran. It's really nice to hear about different views from teachers who come from other countries.

Following you can find some study activities while teaching new vocabularies:

What's your idea? Do you use any other activities?

Best regards,

Amir

Hi all,

I have to agree that vocabulary isn't everything, but at the same time it's also probably the most important aspect for comprehension.  I have my studnets do vocabulary presentations each week, but only after they have investigated the items using the corpora at Tom Cobb's Compleat Lexical Tutor.  I also use quite a lot of blanked KWIC readouts to help them identify collocations and different usages.  They also use the site to create 'multi-conc' multiple concordance readout activities for each other.  I find that this helps them to use context as a way of determining meaning.  I have, by the way, been able to do this with very low language ability students.

regards,
Phil

Hi all,

We don't develop any skills(speaking, reading, listening, reading ) without vocabulary,

" a word was the first "as it was written in Bible -"and then the rest". A word is the main

component  of  speech  and  of other skills.

I try to introduce words ( vocabulary) thematically and drill them through four skills.

 About four skills.

The most difficult skills for teaching are writing and listening.

10 years ago our text-books had no these items. Now they have been included.

What kind of activities do you do for developing these skills?

Hi Fazira, for me the most difficult skill to develop is istening maybe because this skill is not often practiced in schools.

I start with relatively easy exercises to build confidence.

what about you?

carmen gloria

Dear Fazira,

In many ways, writing is the most neglected skill in the TEFL world, as many teachers don't  like to see classroom hours being devoted to what is often ‘quiet time'. Writing, therefore, is often relegated to homework, which in turn is frequently not done and so the skill is never developed.

It is true to say that most students prefer to focus on their speaking skills but that doesn't mean that writing should be ignored. In many ways writing is the more difficult skill, requiring a greater degree of accuracy. When speaking, any misunderstandings can be cleared up ‘on the spot', whereas this is not possible with writing. Speaking, on the other hand, requires a greater degree of fluency as the speaker will rarely have time to think and plan an answer.

Regards,

Amir

Hi Carmen and Amir,

 While developing listening first I work with theme ,if the theme  is devoted to sport, 

I start with brainstorming  concerning  sport  beginning  with general questions ending

with the theme of the text  to be listened and then work with difficult words and grammar

which  the text has.THESE THE ACTIVITIES BEFORE LISTENING.

During   WHILE listening activities questions(who,what,where,when-questions) will be given.

POST listening activities include WHY,HOW questions .

 I agree with Amir that writing is accuracy  which is the most difficult task ,it is the combination

of spelling  and appropriate grammar and lexis and logical successive written ideas.

 Regards,

Fazira

I agree with Amir and fazira that writing is often left as an outside class activity, but, especially with our lower ability students, we have tried to have in-class writing at least once a week.  What we also do is have small groups of three or four working together and then presenting the same piece.  We then mark one, and that mark applies to the whole group.  This means that the groups need to be 'checking' each other and all participating, especially as to start with, at least, we usually choose the weakest student's piece to mark.  The tasks are only short five or six sentence paragraphs, based primarly on Lynn Troyka's RENNS systems.  The class then get an opportunity to produce an in-class second draft which, once again, is marked as a group effort.  We have found that this helps develop organisation and well as fluency.

Regards,
Phil 

Dear Larissa,

Hello,

I agree with you. The ealier the better. I mean we must start to teach writing at an early stage.

Dictation is also a miraculous technique.

Thanks,

Amir

Dear all,

I left a comment about the problem of teaching writing to primary school children in the following link (hope it works). Would love to know what you think!

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009/forum/evaluation-primary-school-ch...

Best,

Silvia

(Moderator of Testing, Evaluation and Assessment)

Ermmm...it is actually reply number 2 in the link I gave you! Thanks! Silvia