Ebaby! Blog

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!

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.

What would you do if your students always came thirty minutes late to class and never did their homework? Well, you might pass it off as cultural or time management problems. On the other hand, you might say, “Who cares why they are late! They should be punished!” I don’t often think about punishing students. I tend to empathize with them.

Most of my students work at least one full-time job and many of them work two jobs. Some of them work a night shift and a day shift. So I find it hard not be impressed by what they do. They are my inspiration. They work so hard and they normally manage to come to class three days a week for two and a half hours.

The problem is that class is four days a week for three hours! And despite how busy they are, I am responsible for teaching them all of the course material. So the other teacher and I decided to “punish” them for missing class. Two days a week, we instituted a half hour homework time after class that is mandatory for students who come late or don’t complete their homework.

The first two Homework Half-Hours went brilliantly. Even students, who weren’t required to stay, decided to stay and work on extra homework or help other students. The time was very productive and I thought they were all very motivated.

But maybe they were just motivated because they wanted to leave! Because last night (which would have been a class followed by the Homework Half-Hour), only three students came to class. All three of them had completed all of their homework and didn’t have to stay after. I can’t help but think that the other students did not want to get “punished” for not doing their work, so they decided to skip class. It was very depressing because we only want to make them successful. And we just aren’t sure how to do that if they are gone so much! I honestly feel like I got punished last night.

It was so exciting as a kid to start summer camp. And let me tell you, as an adult, it is still exciting. This week I joined pbwiki’s summer camp for educators. Pbwiki is a simple place to make a quick publishing, collaborative website. I have been excited about my class’ wiki for the entire school year, but I need more ideas.

So for the next six weeks, I will be going to summer camp along with a thousand other educators. Together we will complete weekly assignments, learn how to maximize our wikis’ features and earn cool free stuff. If you’re interested, please sign up. It should be fun.

This week on our wiki, the students used the wiki to teach the world about English simple past. They even recorded little descriptions of simple past pronunciation rules with example sentences. Besides the recordings, our wiki is pretty simple looking. So I am excited to go to camp and learn how to do more exciting things.