Education Commons^™

Exploring The Teen Efl Classroom: The Students, Their Teachers, And The Tangles Of Dealing With Discipline And Motivation, Anna Burbridge

MA TESOL Collection

This paper discusses specific elements of teaching teens in an EFL context, in particular the areas of teen motivation and discipline. This was a teacher’s development project involving six teachers (including the writer), and lasting for one semester in a Brazilian bi-national language institute. The project was built on videotaped class observations, readings, group meetings, and journal writings. The result was a deeper reflection into the developmental stage dubbed “teenhood”, followed by subsequent considerations of motivation and discipline of teen groups, the role of the teen teacher, the importance of knowing and connecting with the inner teacher, and practical implications …

Language And Cultural Learning Through Student Generated Photography, David M. Cosgrove

MA TESOL Collection

This paper examines and discusses the unique teaching context and the inherent problems faced by foreign English teachers in the Japanese University System. It contains a personal account of the process the author went through to develop a new and interesting curriculum to overcome these problems. This curriculum is based on student-generated photographs of their lives and is an effective method of both language learning and culture learning. Included in the paper is a step-by-step course description of twenty-four lesson plans based on the photographs.

Connecting Language And Culture Through Storytelling: A Materials Development Project, Sarah M. Anderson

MA TESOL Collection

This materials development project presents a Total Physical Response Storytelling (TPRS) unit created around an authentic Mexican legend. The author wrote and taught ten mini-stories in preparation for using the legend as the main story of the unit.

The author first discusses the theory behind the TPRS approach and its effectiveness in regards to language teaching and learning. An overview of how the TPRS process works, including examples specific to the author’s teaching context, is also described.

The paper then presents the rationale and design of the project itself. The author incorporated an authentic legend with the intention of connecting …

Publication Projects With Esl/Efl Students:A Handbook For Teachers, April A. Minerich

MA TESOL Collection

This paper is based on my experience teaching courses in which students created publications. I frequently teach both newsletter classes and memory book classes to students of other languages who are studying English in an intensive program. I have also taught classes in which ESL students produced student directories. I have participated in developing cookbooks. I also publish student work in certain classes that I teach.

It describes the process I use to do publication projects. I include theory to support the soundness of this idea in ESL/EFL instruction. The strategy for implementing the class is described. It then moves …

“Making Teaching Lexis And Structures To Adult Efl Learners More Effective Through Creating A Learning Community And Fostering Some Specific Learning Skills.” (A Curriculum For A Short-Term Development Course For Non-Native Speaker Efl Teachers), Oleksandr Klyevanov

MA TESOL Collection

Nowadays, EFL teachers are exposed to a large number of different approaches to teaching English. All of them, no matter how much they differ, focus on the objectives shared by all teachers regardless of their theoretical background, namely teaching lexis and structures. However, some approaches ignore what I have come to believe are necessities: creating a learning community, teaching strategies for retention and recycling lexical and structural items. By learning community I mean a group of learners who are focused on learning the target subject of knowledge, who expend their energies on learning, who feel secure being together and working …

Dictation: What And How Students Learn From It, Marilyn C. Fisher

MA TESOL Collection

In the cycle of preferred English language teaching techniques, dictation is currently out of favor. Today, anything inviting the term “old-fashioned” is passed over without consideration as to what qualities made it popular in the past.

This paper reconsiders the merits of dictation use in the classroom, pedagogical theory, and supportive research, and the author’s experimental work with student group dynamics centered on dictation exercises.

My own classroom research shows interesting ways students catch or miss language clues and meaning in dictation exercises and how their minds are directed to analyze the incoming language both during the exercise and after, …

Well Begun Is Half Done: Preparing For The Start Of A New Class, Stephanie C. Downey

MA TESOL Collection

This paper explores the critical learning moment that occurs on the first day in a new language class as the individual students, group and teacher interact for the first time. It states that the first day can influence the entire direction a course takes and asserts that the learner, the group, the teacher and the cultural context are key variables that determine how the first day turns out. It argues that by being aware of the impact each of these variables has on learning, the teacher can direct the emotional, mental and social energy of the group positively and create …

Using Innovative Language Learning Methods With Mombusho Textbooks, Janet Melinda Beane

MA TESOL Collection

This paper shows how chapters from two different textbooks at different levels might be taught using several different methods. The paper begins with a discussion of my reasons for choosing this topic and goes on to lay out what I feel a method needs to consider in order to be a good method. In the next section, I go on to introduce various innovative language teaching methods such as ALM, TPR and the Silent Way. For each method I include a short section of background information including the principles and techniques of each lesson. Then I contrast a typical lesson …