ESL Teacher Talk – ESL Podcasts for Teachers

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Mark has added some phonics games for students at Fun Fonix.com.
This show discusses MES-English.com‘s curriculum for young learners. This is the second part of teaching without a textbook or teaching oral English only.  For the first episode of this check here.

The curriculum covers core sections:

• content – vocabulary
• target language – phrases, questions, speech acts …
• running content – more lengthy topics
• TPR – vocabulary introduction
• Phonics – phonics, reading, spelling …

Mark covers Units 4-6, explaining what vocabulary he uses for the content section, why he chooses those and how they work to achieve the target language goals for each unit, and how those vocabulary units tie into the target language.  There are also a few ideas for practicing the different parts.
The materials for this curriculum are all available for free from MES-English.com.

• flashcards
• worksheets
• phonics resources
• games
• more …

We’d love to hear how you use you MES-English resources or your own curriculum ideas. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show. You can also just pop-in and introduce yourself. We’d love to know who’s listening.

Thanks for listening!

Game of the Week: Flashcards and Board Games
This is an activity for making a board game more of a conversational activity.  Using a board game for practicing simple vocabulary or one taget language and combining that with another target language to form mini-speech acts.  This is a great activity for changing a board game into a communicative activity and is useful for adults down to elementary school students.  You can make boardgames here and get free printable flashcards here.
We hope it helps.  Happy teaching!

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This show Mark explains some new features to the free word search maker at Tools for Educators.  It really makes a word search a worksheet but keeps it fun.  Matt has opened a new website Kids English Books.com and there you can find simple stories to download or use online.
This week’s show deals with how to explain activities just using English, without translating or using L1.  There are several reasons you might not use the students L1:

• you can’t speak the language
• you have a mixed background class (many L1s)
• your administration forbids the use of the students native language
• you simply decide it’s best for the students

If you fit into any of these categories, this show might be helpful.
Mark and Matt cover ideas on how to get explain games or activities without translating.  There are examples on how to explain some tradition American kids games, ideas for beginner classes, advice on how to strip activities down but still provide structure for learning, advice for more complicated games, higher level students and ideas on how to do this with large groups.

We also briefly cover some of the benefits to using an all-English explanation in your lessons.

A couple games were mentioned in the show: Go Fish and Get Four.
If you have any additions, questions or comments on the show please post them here or over at the ESl teacher Talk forums.  We’re listening!

Game of the Week: What’s your name musical chairs

This week Matt brings us the GOTW.  It’s an interesting twist on musical chairs and provides a fun way to get students up, moving and engaged in the language.  While it sounds like a children’s game, there are a few variations discussed that create some great ways to practice with higher level students and adult groups.  We hope you can use it.
Thanks for listening!

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This show Mark and Matt have a few new things on their websites for visitors. Matt has a new Skidamarink Song up on Free ABC Songs and Mark posted a new book to the Fun Fonix website.

This week’s show covers the ‘do’ verbs. We discuss:

• teaching the concept of ‘do’ as action verbs
• teaching ‘do’ without translation and just working with the English concept
• ideas for practicing ‘do’
• teaching negative and question formation
• ideas for practicing these different formations

A couple MES games were referenced and you can find Big Town cards and Little Town cards on MES-English’s games page.
We’d love to hear how you use you teach ‘do’ verbs or ideas for how you practice ‘do’ verbs with your students. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show. You can also just pop-in and introduce yourself. We’d love to know who’s listening.

Thanks for listening!

Game of the Week: Maze Games
This is an activity from Tools for Educators.  There are maze makers that allow you to make a variety of worksheets in a game type format for you students.  There are content squares, places to ask questions or select from thousands of images instead of text and hopefully a limitless format that will provide both fun and education for your students.

Happy teaching!

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This show Mark and Matt have a few new things on their websites for visitors.  Matt has put up some new videos to match the Dream English songs.  Some of the videos have ‘live performances and some utelize images.  Please check them out.

Mark has added some worksheet makers to Fun Fonix.com.  You can make quite a few custom worksheets using Fun Fonix images. There are game makers, reading worksheets, spelling worksheets and more!

This week’s show covers the verb ‘be’.  We discuss:

• teaching the concept of ‘be’
• teaching ‘be’ without translation
• ideas for practicing ‘be’
• teaching negative and question formation
• ideas for teaching conjugation

We’d love to hear how you use you teach ‘be’ or ideas for how you practice ‘be’ with your students. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show. You can also just pop-in and introduce yourself. We’d love to know who’s listening.

Thanks for listening!

Game of the Week: the Question Guessing Game

This is an activity for practicing yes/no sentence formation.  It goes well with ‘be’ and this episode, but the Question Guessing Game can be used for any yes/no question form-practice.  There are ideas for downloads you can use from MES-English, but you don’t need to prepare any materials if you don’t want to.

Happy teaching!

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This show discusses MES-English.com‘s curriculum for young learners.  It’s the first steps for teaching without a course book or for teachers who are thrown into a teaching situation where there is no set curriculum or textbook.

The curriculum covers core sections:

• content – vocabulary
• target language – phrases, questions, speech acts …
• running content – more lengthy topics
• TPR – vocabulary introduction
• Phonics – phonics, reading, spelling …

Mark covers Units 1-3, explaining what vocabulary he uses for the content section, why he chooses those and how they work to achieve the target language goals for each unit.

The materials for this curriculum are all available for free from MES-English.com.

• flashcards
• worksheets
• phonics resources
• games
• more …

We’d love to hear how you use you MES-English resources or your own curriculum ideas. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show. You can also just pop-in and introduce yourself. We’d love to know who’s listening.

Thanks for listening!

Game of the Week: Dubbing Movies

This is an activity for older students, possibly upper elementary school students, but good for young adults to adults.  It’s good practice for creating dialogs and natural conversation speed. If you have movie fans in your classroom, it should go over even better!

Happy teaching!

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Welcome back for Season 3 of ESL Teacher Talk!  If you’re new to ETT, then … just Welcome! 🙂

In Season 3 we have a new co-host, Matt of Dream English.com.  With Matt and the other ETT co-hosts, we hope to cover some smaller areas of teaching English.  We will be focusing on teaching specific grammar points, how we teach them, how we explain them, and how we practice them.

We will still have a Game of the Week with each episode as well!

But for the Season 3 premiere, we get to know a little about our new cohost, Matt, and Matt has some really cool things on the web for you.  Matt is the creator of Dream English.com which has songs, flashcards, chants, and supporting teaching materials for teachers to effectively use music in your lessons.

That’s not all, Matt also has a site called Free ABC Songs.com where you can find traditional English songs that you can also use in your lessons or with your own children!

There’s also a section in the podcast that introduces a cool new site, 123 Listening.com.  This is a collaborative effort between Mark’s site, MES-English.com and Dream English.com.  It has free listening tests, test audio and worksheet makers where you can make your own listening tests.
We’d love to hear how you use you music in your classes or any questions you might have about 123 Listening.com, Dream English.com or Free ABC Songs.com. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show.  You can also just pop-in and introduce yourself.  We’d love to know who’s listening.
Thanks for listening!

Game of the Week: Spiders and Candy

This was a game originally developed for 1 and 2 years old.  However, after a few years of using this game, Mark has tried some variations with older students and adults.  It was very successful and Mark explains what to do.  It can be used with small classes of any age but for older students it can be adapted for larger classes.  You can find printables for this game at the games section of MES-English.com.  There’s also a written out explanation of the game there as well.

Happy teaching!

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This is the end of Season 2 here at ESL Teacher Talk.  This week we talk about the communicative approach.
We cover:

• what the communicative approach is
• the theory behind the communicative approach and what it’s supposed to do
• the 5 main points of the communicative approach
• how the communicative approach can be used in your lessons
• what are the main benefits, claims, and criticisms of the method

We’d love to hear how you use the communicative approach. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show.

Thanks for listening!  and we’ll be back soon with Season 3!

Game of the Week: Two Stories

This a communicative game from http://bogglesworldesl.com.  Two students are given articles.  The students read the articles themselves.  Then, they retell/summarize the information to their partner.  At the end. there are some follow up questions for each article to measure how well the information was exchanged.

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Total Physical Response (TPR) is a methodology made famous by James Ashner.  It’s teaching style based on kinestetic learning.  Teachers speak and students respond in some manner physically.

We cover:

• what TPR is
• the theory behind TPR and what it’s supposed to do
• how TPR can be used in your lessons
• what are the main benefits, claims, and criticisms of the method

We’d love to hear how you use TPR. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show.

Thanks for listening!

For more indepth information on TPR see Learning Another Language Through Actions by James Ashner or check out his website at http://www.tpr-world.com/< Game of the Week: Treasure Island

This a game posted at MES-English. You can use it to practice various tenses, ‘There is …/ There are ..’/ various motion verbs/passive tense and more.  Mark also mentions a variation on working with story telling and sequencing events.  It’s a simple single sheet game and very versatile.  It can be done as a pair activity or as a group activity.  For more information check out the Treasure Island page at MES.  Here is the game board.

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This week’s show we welcome John Marks from www.eltgames.com and www.langwichscool.com and we discuss exam preparation courses.

In this show we discuss some ideas on how to organize and exam prep course, what are some key points to include, how to maintain motivation, some ideas for the interview sections and more.

Mark avoids teaching test prep courses like the plague so if you’d just like some great tips on how to encourage students not to seek test prep lessons, this show is also for you 😛 .

John writes some ESL cartoons/comic strips which John also makes available for download and use in your lessons. Those can be found at Langwichscool.com

ELTgames.com is another site run by John with materials for different levels with games, group work and tasks for students and another section with communication activities.

If you have any comments or questions, post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show.

Thanks for listening!

Game of the Week: Rotating Interviews

This is an activity that would work well in exam preparation course and for regular lessons as well. This would work best with intermediate to advanced students, but adjustable for students levels. Some students become interviewers and other students are the interviewees. It’s a good activity to get students up and moving.

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This week’s show is almost the end of our teaching methodolgies series. Today we offer … Suggestodepia
We cover:

• what suggestopedia is
• how does a suggestopedia lesson run
• the principles of the method
• what are the main benefits, claims, and criticisms of the method

We’d definitely like to hear what you think about the method. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show.

Thanks for listening!

Game of the Week: Guess the Question
A simple warm-up activity reviewing question formation for older children through to adults. You simply need a piece of paper, some students, and you the teacher just need to prepare some structure. It’s a good activity for pair work or group work.