ESL/EFL Teaching Tip: Considerations for Pre-Intermediate Levels

This is Paul, a teacher here at Rennert International, sharing a few ideas about what Pre-Intermediate level students need to focus on most in the ESL.EFL classroom to improve their language skills.

Transcript:
Hi, my name is Paul and I am a teacher here at Rennert. I am teaching Pre-Intermediate which is level 3 at Rennert. One of the things about teaching level 3 is that the students at this point have a bit of vocabulary under their belts and they are becoming fluent, but something that they really need to focus on, something they really need help with is accuracy. So, for example, with Korean students sometimes it's a case of learning something new or perhaps unlearning something that they've already learned—something that they've learned in English, but isn't necessarily the most natural way to say it. An example of this is when we have the phrasal verb come up "I look forward to something". Very often when I asked Korean students what it means most of the time their response is expect, but we all know that is not what it means if you look forward to something. Or for example with Spanish speakers, if anybody's studied Spanish, the verb tomar, which means to take, is a very versatile verb and can work in a lot of different situations; it collocates with a lot of different words. Another typical example of a problem that might occur in a Pre-intermediate class with Spanish speakers is that you have a lot of direct translating, which can happen with a lot of different students not just Spanish, and for example they will use the word 'take' in a lot of different examples like, "Do you want to take a coffee?"; "Do you want to take lunch with me?" and even though it is not an impeding error, you know, you understand what they want to say, but it isn't exactly natural. So, that's something that we have to usually focus on in Pre-Intermediate classes.

[chrisbarnes]

Does anybody have any suggestions for online resources to help students learn in an organized manner? Especially grammar (subject-verb-object, plurals, “to be” verbs, etc) I’m looking for structure/logical order, exercises, etc.