5 tips for engaging ESL lessons

How can we make sure our lessons are always perfect? Well, we actually can´t, but there are some things we can do to improve our performance as teachers and make our lessons amazing! In this video, I´m sharing 5 tips for engaging well-structured language lessons.

1.Have clear lessons aims
Having a clear learning objective assists the teacher in the basic course design. It's essential that a lesson is tailored to achieve detailed lesson objectives, so the students know what is expected from them and what they should be able to achieve by the end of the lesson (or the week etc).

2.Check your instructions carefully.
Giving clear instructions to students can ensure that learners fully comprehend what they need to do in each part of your lesson. To instruct clearly, you can use instruction-checking questions (ICQs), repeat your instructions slowly, demonstrate the activity if necessary (or get students to), do the first sentence yourself, get the students to feed the instructions back.

3. Use the right scaffolding techniques
Scaffolding is the term given to the provision of appropriate assistance to students in order that they may achieve what alone would have been too difficult for them. Make sure you guide the students through the process of learning, explaining, modelling, doing examples together etc.

4. Have realistic expectations
Human beings are different and the same person can react differently to a task depending on loads of factors happening around them. Often a teacher will have a great lesson plan that gets recycled over and over., so remember to not expect the same results from different students, as this would be both unfair and unrealistic to learners and would lead to a lot of frustration for everyone.

5.Increase STT
Some teachers are afraid of the silence of their learners, thinking that they either don’t care or aren’t listening when in actual fact, their learners are just processing what is being said. The temptation is to fill that silence with chatter, but to the learner, the effect is one of overwhelming, indecipherable noise, which they struggle to understand. The second results in students switching off, thinking they are hearing a lecture. The other reaction is one that can be viewed as a form of arrogance, where the teacher has a need to control all aspects of the class. Let your students talk!!!! And if you feel you really need to talk non-stop, create your own Youtube channel!
Teachers should always ensure that there is a balance of teacher vs. student talk and plan activities with student communication in mind.

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Note: My playlist "Teacher Training" was created to share lesson ideas and activities with Language Teachers but note that I´m not (yet) a certified Teacher Trainer myself. I´m a Trinity College London accredited English Teacher trying to help my colleagues save time when preparing engaging lessons! Feel free to suggest topics for my next videos.

[justteachmethod]

😱 I was heavily pregnant on this video ❤️ Here I share 5 tips you need to know to teach engaging memorable ESL lessons!

[angelstutoringservices]

Great tips! They are essential in making sure students are able to master the objectives of each lesson. As a tutor I always spend 1 week on a concept to make sure my students are comfortable with the concepts

[jaliladalal]

Hello teacher,
Thank you very much for this useful content. I have a quick question for you. May I know if it's still okay to rely on some coursebook (say English File or Interchange)?
I am a newbie and preparing lessons from scratch is very challenging (especially that I teach a lot of students).

Thank you very much

[samish]

It was hard to understand what you were saying to be honest. I'm a native speaker from England. Your accent was difficult to understand. Thanks