Thursday 15 September 2011

3 Keys to Success in ESP Teaching

The three keys to success are ...
  • the student - what they bring, and are willing to bring to the lesson is so important. They have to understand that they need to bring their work to English and take their English to work.
  • the teacher - we might not be subject specialist but we are language specialist. We can help them to improve their English but they will need to help us. Remember they should know what things are they might not know the English, that is where we come in, but really our job is to develop the enabling English.
  • the materials - we need to make sure it is relevant, interesting and motivating.
SOme of the ideas I showed you in the session include.

SMS Text Speak-
GIve students sentences in text speak
FYI
BTW
CU L8R
W8 4 me
etc
ask them what it says, then ask them to write it in full English.

Dictionary Race
Give students some of the technical vocabulary.
Give them a dictionary or the internet.
Tell them they have xx amount of time to find the definitions.

Functions Consequences
Give students a problem. ask them to think of advice.
get them to write the advice under the problem then fold the paper over so they can't see the problem but can see the advice.
pass the paper on to the next student... who reads the advice; and then tries to refromulate it, saying the same but with a different form, they then fold the sheet over so the first person's advice is hidden and pass it on again.
Keep going until they have written 4 or 5 things. Then they open up the sheet and try to correct what has been written.

Word of the Day
Teacher gives each student a word at the beginning of the lesson.
Students don’t show each other the word.
Give students time to look up word.
Student has to try to use the word as many times in the lesson.

The other ideas were all taken the Oxford for Careers series and involved getting students interested and motivated with quirky but thought provoking activities.

Enjoy your ESP
 

No comments:

Post a Comment