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Author Archive
Ok, if you are visiting an ESL site on the internet, you likely have already visited Dave’s ESL cafe. Seriously, I know this site has been in operation for over 10 years and it just keeps growing and getting better.
If you are looking for a job as an ESL teacher, Dave has resources and advice for you. If you want to hire a teacher, you can post your jobs on his site as well, and qualified people will see it and contact you.
His site offers sections for teachers, students, and everyone. Want a grammar lesson? Dave has some for you. Need some tips for your classes, or want to get in touch with other ESL teachers and tutors before you head overseas for a job? Dave had the connections you are looking for.
What sites do you think need to be mentioned on this blog? What are your favorites?
Best of all, when he doesn’t do a detailed job himself, he has many, many, links to send you off to the right place.
I do not know Dave personally, but over the years have gone to his authority site and used many of his resources. I could not justify my writing a blog about ESL tutoring without mentioning Dave’s ESL Cafe.
After a long absence I am back to the blog. In fact, I am piecing together a series of articles for the new esl teacher or tutor. I plan to offer practical advice and information for the rookie tutor or teacher to handle their new esl students individually or in a classroom setting. There is more to teaching than putting together a lesson plan, as you may have or most likely will soon find out. Anytime you are mixing more than one culture together and trying to communicate, there will be complications. These do not have to be negative complications, but a new tutor or teacher would be wise to be aware of them and have a plan to overcome them.
General themes of the articles that you can expect to see here in the coming days and weeks will be “What they didn’t tell you when you signed on”, “Classroom management”, “How to teach”, “Happiness is when we all get along”, and Resources and Checklists.
Hopefully you will tune in to see what I am sharing and please feel free to add your own experiences and advice in the comments.
Talk to you soon!
If you are like me, you are always looking for more ideas for teaching your classes or individual students. I have discovered a new site that is being developed and I want to share it with you. It is quite apply named ESL Handouts. It is a site that asks people to share their ideas and materials with other ESL tutors so we can all increase our resource libraries. The site owner also allows people to post their website links that roughly relate to the topic of education. So, if you are building your own tutoring or teaching business, ESL or other, this way you can get some good materials, contribute your own genius ideas to the world, and get advertising and backlinks to your own site.
The more people to contribute to a site like this, the better it gets, so I encourage you to go there now and see what you can give and take to this site, ESL Handouts.
Today I am going to give a review of an incredible opportunity for ESL tutoring and any other academic tutoring that you would like to take part in. The site www.tutormatch.com gives tutors a chance to advertise their skills and get matched up with clients in their area or even online. You choose what subjects, your rates, and your profile information to share. Interested clients pay you directly through Paypal. Tutormatch takes nothing. They just facilitate the matches.
What is even more incredible about this is that the service is offered absolutely FREE! From the owner herself, Diane , we have the following information:
1. Tutors can sign up for free or for a paid, premium membership with more exposure ($29/year).
2. Basic tutor listing are limited to listing availability for one subject, but premium tutors can list as many subjects as they cover.
3. Students and/or their parents search for tutors for free on the site, and ther is no need for anyone to sign up–just search for a tutor and click “Contact this Tutor”.
4. All tutors get leads from students via email.
5. Tutors can work face to face or online, and they negotiate their own rates and don’t have to pay TutorMatch anything. TutorMatch is not involved after the lead is passed on to the tutor.
Now, this sounds like a pretty good deal to me. For free or a minimal expense you have an opportunity to expand your business to anywhere in the world. Does it sound like a good opportunity to you too? I signed up myself today.
Let me hear your input on this. Take charge of your ESL tutoring business, and have fun!
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As you may have figured out for yourself, singing and teaching songs is one of the easiest and useful ways that you can teach English to children. It works for adults as well, but children are certainly the most receptive to songs. An ESL teacher from Hawaii and New York who is presently working in Japan, named Reannon, runs a blog called “Taken By The Wind.” In her blog, she writes about the power of songs as a resource in ESL tutoring and teaching. She writes, “It’s not so much having a huge knowledge-base of songs that’s important as it is knowing which songs are best used in an ESL classroom. The idea behind using songs in your lessons, is in order to review particular vocabulary or grammar…and not just to entertain or kill time. So before you decide to teach the kiddies a song, ask yourself this: How is this song useful?”
This is good advice for whatever you teach. If you are running out of ideas or a class is especially difficult, it is tempting to want to talk about anything or teach anything to just fill in time. However, you really do need to stop and consider why you are teaching what you are. Reannon goes through a list of 10 songs that we typically learn as children in our own native speaking culture, but that really do not seem to have a real purpose for an ESL tutoring session. It is important to then collect as many ideas and resources BEFORE entering a classroom or tutoring situation so you can draw upon them when you need to fill in time. She gave a list of 7 children songs that she thinks are relevant and the lessons that they teach. Feel free to borrow these ideas as useful tools for your own resource collection. They are the following:
- The Hokey Pokey (In/Out, Body Parts)
- Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
- The Walking Song (Actions)
- The Rainbow Song (Colors)
- The Colors of Our Clothes (Colors, Clothing)
- The Hello/How Are You Song (Greetings)
- One Little, Two Little, Three Little Fingers
If you are like me, you may not know all of these songs, but understand the idea behind it and can think of others I could use in my own tutoring situations.
I guess one of the main points of all preparations and resources is to have fun and don’t be afraid to get a little crazy. Kids will love you for it, and it will help you be a little more free and creative in all your other teaching exploits.
If you want to follow along with more of what Rannon’s blog has to say, you can track her at http://reannon-takenbythewind.blogspot.com/2008/06/when-wheels-on-bus-have-long-since.html .
By now you may have taken a peek at the You Tube videos and other brief questions and answers that have been posted on this blog, and many of them deal with the topic of teaching and managing children. (If you haven’t looked at some of the other posted materials, I highly encourage you to do so.) A lot of esl tutoring is about teaching children, so it is very important that you prepare yourself for doing this.
Many times people who try their hand at ESL tutoring prefer to work with adults. Especially for the many that have no children of their own yet, the fear of working with energetic and easily distracted students keeps them from realizing the incredible rewards that teaching children can offer.
Once again, ESL guru George Stocker, in his article “Teaching ESL to Children” offers some great tips for that very subject.
When working with children, it may seem that they have no attention span at all. It is important to be patient, playful, and remember that children are NOT simply short adults. Stocker recommends to:
- Involve children in hands-on activities. From my own personal experience working with children, I agree that the best learning takes place by getting the student up and out of their chair—singing songs and playing games.
- It is also important to avoid talking for long periods of time. This is a sure way to put the kids to sleep. When sleeping, they do not learn.
- Keep the children talking to you and others, working in groups is a good idea. If you are in a private ESL tutoring situation, you can still make this work by actively engaging the student in conversation.
- Review. Do this in many ways and forms. Quizzes, games, and other activities can make review seem like fun.
- Make sure that the student feels safe to make a mistake without judgment. This is especially true with cultures that do not allow a student to make a mistake without feeling shame.
If you are a new ESL tutor or one with experience, it is still a good idea to review these tips and analyze your own tutoring techniques to see if anything needs to be adjusted.
Working with children who speak your language is already exhausting, so it is even more of a mental and physical drain to take on ESL tutoring jobs with children. In my own personal experience, however, I have found that ESL tutoring and teaching with children has made me feel rewarded and loved, and made the whole career worthwhile. No one can show enthusiasm and love for your efforts like a child, and you are certain to see amazing progress along the way.
You can read more of Stocker’s article at http://EzineArticles.com/?Teaching-ESL-to-children&id=99735 and get more ideas from his website www.esl-storybooks.com .
I’m a big fan of Super Simple Songs, so I asked them if they’d like to send us some CDs to give away on the show … and they said yes – awesome!
http://www.supersimplesongs.com/
http://www.thedailyenglishshow.com/members
I really recommend these CDs if you teach English to children. If you have a few good songs, I find the whole lesson falls into place. They’d also make a great present for friends with children. Some people don’t have the money to send their kids to an English school, or maybe they don’t have a school nearby – but I think they could learn a lot just listening to these CDs at home.
English Script:
http://thedailyenglishshow.blogspot.com/2008/06/show-758-monday-9-june.html
英文スクリプト＋日本語訳＋番組詳細
http://tdes.blog120.fc2.com/blog-entry-219.html
Show 758 Monday 9 June
The Daily English Show
http://www.thedailyenglishshow.com/
Duration : 0:8:56
Okay, here's the situation. I work at a school where I teach ESL 1, 2 and 3, and the 2s and 3s have a regular English class on top of ESL. I'm trying to figure out what literature I can use to prepare the 1s and assist the 2s and 3s so that they do pretty well in their English classes. What I need are the names of literary texts that have worked with ESL students. Any suggestions? I want them to be interested and mostly get practice at literary analysis and comprehension.
Thanks
There is a great textbook, Inside Out/Outside In, that is a collection of (mostly) short stories (a few poems are included, as well), and all are by American authors including such writers as Amy Tan, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Kurt Vonnegut, and a wide variety of others.
It has the stories and numerous activities like you would find in a lit class. I find it a great introduction for my high intermediate/low advanced students to reading creative writing in English. They get lots of factual reporting in their reading classes, but this is the one time that they get lit.
Many of the stories also give chances to discuss American culture and history and how it changed during the 20th century.
Most of my students love it, but they are adults in a community college, so different from your students.
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I am looking for supplementary BOOKS and materials (although web sites and other recommendations would also be welcome) to bring more INTERESTING grammar practice into a few of my younger classes. Titles / Authors / Publisher information as well as why you would recommend it would be most welcome. Advance thanks.
I'm a speech-language pathologist who works in Taiwan, so probably greater than 80% of my students are ESL as well as having language learning deficits in both Mandarin and English. The sources I use most are:
www.superduperinc.com
www.linguisystems.com
For specific books and games, some of the best are:
http://www.superduperinc.com/B_Pages/bk309.htm
http://www.superduperinc.com/F-G_Pages/gb347.htm
http://www.superduperinc.com/F-G_Pages/gb61.htm
http://www.superduperinc.com/B_Pages/bk298.htm
http://www.superduperinc.com/WXYZ_Pages/wcm4010.htm
http://www.superduperinc.com/F-G_Pages/GB167.htm
http://www.linguisystems.com/itemdetail.php?id=480
http://www.linguisystems.com/itemdetail.php?id=280
http://www.linguisystems.com/itemdetail.php?id=271
http://www.linguisystems.com/itemdetail.php?id=523
http://www.linguisystems.com/itemdetail.php?id=113
I only included links for younger kids, but these companies have resources for all ages through high school. Both have fabulous catalogs, so you might want to request those. Best wishes to you!
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My friend (not a teacher by trade) is teaching an ESL class in Korea. Does anyone who teaches ESL have any advice or specific websites (please include URL if possible!) that she could read today to help her feel more prepared to start her class tomorrow? Here are a few facts:
* This is not bilingual education – it's an immersion class, and she does not speak Korean.
* She will be handed the curriculum tomorrow morning before the class starts, but does not have it in hand to prepare from ahead of time.
* Until she starts, she won't even know how much English the kids already know.
* Students will be upper-elementary/early middle school age.
Icebreakers & other first-day activities are especially helpful, but would love to see any suggestions for any creative and fun stuff.
She'll be great once she gets started, but she's nervous about what to do on the first day and how to fill the time after introductions.
Thanks in advance for your ideas!
Here's some info that might be helpful
http://www.eslcafe.com/
The First ESL web site and one of the best.
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/esl.html
AWESOME SITE
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~leslieob/pizzaz.html
Has good teaching suggestions
http://iteslj.org/links/TESL/Lessons/
Good lesson plans
The first day is always pretty scary…Good luck!
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