At my house, we begin every Thanksgiving meal the same way. Everyone at the table has to say one thing that they are thankful for. It usually goes something like this:

“I am thankful for the food.”

“I am thankful for being alive.”

“I am thankful for having wonderful family.”

“I am thankful for work.”

And on it goes. It takes a while to go around the Thanksgiving table. We usually have fifteen people for dinner and each person must say something unique.

But I realized I could do something like this in my ESL class to teach Gerund as well as the real meaning of Thanksgiving. (Believe it or not Thanksgiving isn’t all about food.) Gerunds look like verbs, for example being, but they act like nouns. So in our “I am thankful for…” examples we have two gerunds. We can see from the examples that gerunds are in the same place as nouns and that they really do act like nouns.

So you might want to use the “I am thankful for…” as an introduction or as practice in your next gerund lesson.  Students could even use this as a writing prompt. It will bring in a little bit of culture and a little bit of fun to a traditionally boring grammar topic.

More on gerunds here: Gerund Summary with lots of quizzes, Printable Gerund Board Game, and more Gerund Quizzes

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.

“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!

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!

ESL students spend a lot of time online and it can be a great opportunity for them to meet native English speakers. I mean, 85% of American college students are on Facebook and the majority are active members. Our ESL/EFL students could be meeting a lot of Americans online.

But more than the obvious social benefits, social networking can improve students’ English. Just look around English, baby! and you can see how social networking lets learners experiment with language in a friendly, communicative setting. Still, not many people are convinced that social networking can or should be integrated into the classroom. It’s a nice extracurricular activity, but most teachers can’t see the teaching potential.

Well, the truth is social networking is great reading and writing practice! And I am going to take advantage of that in my ESL class. I am integrating social networking sites into a reading strategies lesson. One important reading strategy is inference. Inference means interpreting beyond what is actually written and making bigger conclusions. Look around any social networking site and you’ll find there is a lot to infer. People say one thing, but they mean another. My students are going to use this handout that I found online. The handout wasn’t developed to be used with social networking profiles, but it helps students separate what people say from what they mean. And it seems to fit perfectly with the activity. Students will write a few quotes from a profile and say what they think they mean on the handout. Then, they will write a paragraph about what they think about the person.

Here is an example of inference from lastbreath. His profile was the first one I read today. He says, “Things I Like: romantic dinner” He means, “I like romance. I want romance.” He says, “Favorite Movie: romantic and romantic comedy” He means, “I am a good boyfriend and I really want romance ,” and maybe, “I want a girlfriend.” You could even infer things from his screen name.

The point is that as teachers we need to monopolize on our students’ free time. They spend a lot of time online and an English social networking site will really help their English. It will improve their reading skills and maybe it will make it easier for them to make inferences.

This is just one idea. And we need to think of more ideas because online social networking is a great way for ESL students to practice reading and writing.

YouTube in the classroom. Recently, I observed a class that used YouTube and saw a conference presentation by two ESOL instructors, John Armbrust and Alexandria Cesar, entitled: “YouTube: U Trouble?”

Both of these experienced have shown me the possibilities of YouTube in the classroom. While John Armbrust and Alexandria Cesar initially saw some problems with YouTube, their ESL class ended up developing a great way to evaluate YouTube videos for use in an academic setting.

Once we have some guidelines, YouTube can be integrated in so many ways. Armbrust used YouTube videos to enhance readings in his grammar class. Students read from a book, listened to a recording of the passage and then watched a YouTube video on the topic. What an exciting idea!

We just have to get over the fear of inappropriate content on YouTube. For your next unit, explore the possibility of YouTube. There is so much good content and the films are so short and easy to find. They can be perfect!

But before you let students do anything with YouTube, make sure you give them some guidelines. Some very clear guidelines, otherwise you will end up with a catastrophe like the first time I had students use YouTube. I ended up with a very sexy music video on our class wiki. Let me tell you, even though the student wrote a nice paragraph about the music, the YouTube video was not appropriate. That time YouTube was U Trouble. But Armbrust and Cesar have proven that it doesn’t always have to be like that. You just have to be very clear with your students.