One of the beauties of teaching adults English is that they are more than students. ESOL students are wives, fathers, business professionals, and hospital workers. So unlike their youthful counterparts, adult ESOL learners need to learn English for a variety of contexts, including work. I vividly experienced an ESOL learners’ work context this week: the hospital.

What I thought was a little stomach ache turned out to be appendicitis.  Suddenly, I was being rushed into an operating room and having my appendix removed. Before I got cut open, I learned a little bit about how hospitals work and about the profession of hospital transportation. Most of the hospital transportation people that I met were intermediate English language learners. They graciously pushed me around the hospital. Literally. There job, as far as I could tell, was to push people’s beds from one location to another.

I was so delighted by their conversation skills and medical knowledge. They were so comforting: “Don’t worry the CT scan won’t hurt.”  And so polite: “May I take that cup from you?” The ESOL Hospital Transportation staff were so well versed in how to take care of a patient and the English vocabulary you need to do so.

And it got me thinking about their language acquisition. How had they learned the medical terminology? Was it on the job training? An English class? If it was a general ESL class that helped them, I bet they really paid attention to the polite forms of speech. As a teacher, I know, I don’t really pay that much attention to my students’ work life. But I am going to start bringing in readings from occupational contexts and making a point to link class learning objectives to work. All of my students work, so it seems stupid that I wasn’t integrating their work life into class. In most cases, to be successful at work they are going to need specific English skills. I want to help give them that knowledge so that they can become the knowledgable, polite, professional, and friendly English language learners that helped me at the hospital.

Throw away whatever you have planned for today! Unless you have something Halloween-themed planned. You MUST take advantage of the holiday today and use it to introduce your students to a little bit of culture and fun!

Since it is such short notice, I am going to give you three good links to websites where you can download Halloween-themed worksheets and activities for free.

The first link is to ESL-Kids. You might not teach kids, but this website lets you create a worksheet, flashcards with pictures, word finds, bingo, board games and more. Just pick the Halloween vocabulary theme and select the exact words you want to use and print it out. Awesome!

The second handy Halloween resource is from English Raven. There you can find cards to play fun Halloween role-play activities and more word finds and flashcards.

The third website has reading activities that students can do online, but you could also modify and print them. In fact, the page has a lot of Halloween resources. Maybe because it is titled ESL and Halloween.

If you don’t have time to print out any of these handouts or games, consider handing out candy (a Halloween tradition) or doing something with scary stories. You could make one up as a class. You could read a scary story as a listening activity or students could write their own. No matter what you do today, don’t forget that it is a holiday…so have fun!

Do you remember what it was like the first time you taught a class? Were you scared? Were the students wonderful or less than endearing?

Being a new teacher is hard. One of the best things to do is reflect. New teachers need to spend a lot of time reflecting on what works and doesn’t work with students. Even experienced teachers need to do that! But new teachers have so much to think about as they begin to guide students’ learning. And hopefully lead to their success.

If you want, you might share your experiences about when you first started. Leave a comment; I would love it. Otherwise, I have been reading two wonderful blogs by foreign language student teachers at the University of South Carolina (read this one or this one). As an adult ESL teacher, it is wonderful to hear their fresh perspective and hear about teaching in a wildly different context, like a bilingual Kindergarten.

So really this post is a “shout out” to the students at SC who are putting their stories out there for us to read about. It’s great!

Should your ESL students sound like Brits? Should they sound like Americans? Or does their accent even matter? Recently, I have been working with students on their pronunciation and it has really made me think about what our pronunciation goals should be. Most often, students want to sound like native speakers. Most learners will never get there. And they don’t have to!

I try to make it clear to my students that our goal is comprehensibility and intelligibility. I want people to be able to understand what they are saying. But I don’t see the need to linguistically hide their colorful backgrounds (like the one in this picture).

Accents are wonderful and beautiful. Sadly, in some situations you may be at a disadvantage if you have an accent. But I hope that in the future accents won’t hinder. If anything they should be looked at positively. It shows that someone knows two or more languages.

Still, I am not trying to make a political stand by telling students that they shouldn’t try to sound exactly like a native speaker.  I just would rather have them be understood (which requires using the correct intonation and stress), than know how to say individual English sounds. Honestly, the rising intonation in questions like this one is more important than the American r.

I am not alone in this thinking. The movement towards teaching larger pronunciation rules (called Suprasegmentals)  instead of little sounds is very popular in pronunciation teaching. But it requires teachers to explain that sounding like a native speaker isn’t that important. Which some students just don’t want to hear!

“I don’t like the way it sounds,” my student proclaimed after listening to a recording of himself. I had to tell him that I felt the same way about mine.  It’s a little weird to put your voice out there. It can be so much more personal than the written word. But I want to talk about how much more powerful the spoken word can be.

So why do I say that? Because after a certain point in school, some people say fifth grade, students traditionally need to “read to learn.” In other words, they need to be able to read well in order to access the knowledge of math, science, history or even English. By using podcasts, products like Read Please (a software that reads text aloud) and other audio, we are allowing low-level readers to access high-level information. For example in my class, Mario was able to listen to his peers’ stories and edit them for content, which developed his writing skills, without having to struggle with the reading. But even better than traditional oral input, these high tech options allow students to go back and relisten to difficult/complex parts of a reading and make sure they understand what is being said. In essence, students get to learn more content. While this won’t specifically enhance their reading skills, it will build their understanding of the world. Then, they have more to build on when they read.

On the web, audio can be put in everywhere. It is good for directions and introductions, like on my class website. It can help students understand what to do without requiring them to understand written directions. So for all the teachers out there working with low-level readers or building web content for ESOL students, don’t forget audio. It is priceless!

I am working with several teachers who are in the process of putting their course materials online. The question that keeps coming up is how much should I write and what will students actually read? One teacher has opted not to use any introductory text or conclusions. Sometimes, things don’t even have directions. On the other end of the spectrum, one teacher has written paragraphs and paragraphs. She has decided to make the introductions long so that the instructions and introductions are in and of themselves reading lessons.

We have tested both options with students and neither seem perfect. Like everything in life (and teaching), it takes a perfect balance. So if you are putting your courses online, my recommendation is to make it concise. If it is too long, students just won’t read it. If it is too short, students won’t know what to do.  It seems like simple advice, but it might take some experimenting with your students to find the right amount of text for your class website.

Here’s a thought: vocabulary words sent to twice a day in a nice little text message. As a teacher, it seems perfect. I get to catch my students during their social time and focus them (for just a second) on learning. The text message gives them a nice bite-size chunk of learning. There have been several research studies, like “Using mobile phones in English education in Japan”, that show text messages can help students learn vocabulary better than traditional methods.

In that study, students said they liked receiving the text messages, but I just don’t know. I guess, if it helps students learn more while “studying” less, then of course they would like it. But for those students reading this…should your teacher send you text messages? If you say yes, I am going to start doing it to my students.

I love my work and my students. And, of course, my friends in Portland. But I am ready for some change. So for the 2009-2010 school year, I will be moving. I am not sure where I want to teach. All I know is that I want to experience something new and exciting.

My hope is that some of the students or teachers here could tell me about some great foreign schools or wonderful countries to live in. Ideally, I want to teach small classes (no more than 30 students) and live in a warm location (Portland rain is a bummer). But those are my only requirements. So do you have any ideas? Who knows I might end up being your teacher!

A few hundred other educators and I have spent the summer doing wiki summer camp. A program put on by the PBwiki team to help educators better use wikis in the classroom. It has been so exciting; read my first rave here. Well, this week was the end of camp and besides my cool new badge, I got a lot out of camp.

One of the most helpful pages was a list of some wonderful web tools to use in the classroom.  I really loved Go animate! There, you can make really cool animations that can be easily exported anywhere. Read an explanation and see an example from summer camp here. I am so inspired and simultaneously intimidated by it. I also loved bubbl.us. You can make very good flow-charts and visual aids and again easily save and share them. Like this one, describing my family and what my sister and I inherited.

These are just two of the fun things I learned during wiki summer camp. You can view my final project here and see some of the other cool gadgets in action.  Also look around the camp site at some other people’s work. I found it totally inspirational!

Cake and tears don’t usually go well together. But sometimes things aren’t purely sweet. Last week was the last ESL class of the year for me and my students. It was definitely bittersweet.

Students brought three cakes, two pizzas, Somalian food, Mexican food and chips. It was a huge amount of food for the ten of us! But the students wouldn’t have had it any other way. They are so generous and caring. Everyone was so excited to celebrate.

Sadly, their caring nature didn’t mean they could pass the tests. And before the party could start, we had to tell the students who had passed and who had failed. In our department, their grade is based solely on three final exams. So it can really be a surprise.

And it was hard for some of them to enjoy the good company and food after crying.  I don’t know, I love all of my students and I wish we could have all been joyous together. Maybe next year. This year our end of the year party was a bit of a flop. I don’t like to see tears!