Teaching Different Styles of Learners

Different learning styles create different opportunities for learning success.  If we accommodate for different learning styles, we not only increase engagement with learners, but we also increase the amount of variety in our lessons.  Here are some great links to resources on different activities for different styles of learning:

ESL Learning Styles: 9 Ways to Teach Tactile-Kinesthetic Learners

Let's Get Physical - Warmers Involving Movement

How to Teach English For Different Learning Styles

6 Different Types of ESL Learners and How to Teach Them

More Warmers, Ice-Breakers & Lead-Ins

Find the link here:
LINK

For more great ideas, visit: http://teflgeek.net/

7 Teaching Ideas

BusyTeacher.org has some great lists of different teaching activities and ideas.  These are easy, creative, and require little preparation.

Link HERE

Fruits and Vegetables - A Warmer / Icebreaker

Here is a link to aFruits and Vegetables warmer I've often used with new groups...

Listen to the News

News & Headlines Listening Tasks

News can be a great way to bring authentic listening into the classroom.  Some great places to find News to use in the classroom are:

VOA - Voice of America

BBC - BBC Learning English

BBC - News Headlines

Krashen’s (1981) theory of Comprehensible Input offers that for language learning to occur, sufficient input (at a level that can be understood) must be received by the learner.  Nation & Newton (2009) extend this idea specifically to listening via his approaches for Meaning-Focused Listening.  The acronym “MINUS” can be used to test the conditions for meaningful listening.

M – Meaningful: Is the input a piece of meaningful communication?

I – Interesting: Does the input contain information that will prove interesting to the learner?    

N – New Items: What learnable language, ideas, skills or text types (LIST) will learners meet through the listening experience?

U – Understanding: Can the learners understand the input? How is understanding assisted (e.g. controlling the level of difficulty, scaffolded learning)?

S – Stress-free: How is stress and anxiety controlled?

Nation & Newton (2009) 

Two methods of in-class listening are proposed below.  These methods meet MINUS requirements.

KWL (Know / Want to Know / Learned)

KWL is a reading (input) comprehension established by Ogle (1986) that seeks to aid understanding.  Firstly, prior knowledge is activated.  Then, students highlight set goals for comprehension (identifying what they would like to know more about).  Finally, students identify what they have learned.

Find the File HERE

Information Transfer – News Grid

Information Transfer (IT) tasks have been identified (Palmer, 1982) as an effective method for gauging comprehension as they force learners to change the form of the input they hear (or read).  A second advantage of IT tasks is that they can be much easier to create than sets of comprehension questions.

Find the File HERE

Krashen, S. (1981). Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Ogle, D.M. (1986). "K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text." Reading Teacher, 39, 564-570. K-W-L Reading Method.

Nation, I.S.P. and Newton, J. (2009) Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking. New York: Routledge. 205 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-98970-1

Palmer, D. M. (1982). Information Transfer for Listening and Reading. English Teaching Forum 20, (1), 29–33. 

The Big Board

In any language class, the presentation stage of a lesson is key to effectively illustrating to learners important language features.  There are many ways to do this:

• PowerPoint
• Graphics

But my personal favorite is the trusty (and dusty) blackboard.

However, for something that is often the focal point of a lesson, we can sometimes find ourselves not giving sufficient planning to it.  What follows is a few key guidelines I use for developing my boards:

• N - Neat: Make sure your board is not overly cluttered
• I - Informative: The board should hold the relevant information
• C - Color: Effective use of color can clarify and interest
• E - Easy to Understand: Learners should be able to quickly comprehend the board

Here is a sample board I used for a recent lesson on the present perfect.

Now, once the board is set for class, we can use it for the presentation stage of our lesson.  However, simply ending there and erasing might be a waste.  I like to have my learners interact with the board and add either examples of the target language or what what they perceive to be relevant information.  In this way, learners engage with the board and become involved in the presentation stage of the lesson.

Songs for Grammar

I've always been a fan of using either songs or movie clips so show language in context. If you can use clips that relate to your learners' own lives (e.g. movies or songs suggested by them) then it adds even further interest and motivation to the learning of language/grammar. However, one of the big obstacles with using songs is of course the difficulty in actually 'hearing' the lyrics. We've all heard those songs in which we mishear lyrics - Hendrix: "Kiss this guy"... Therefore, lyric videos are a great way to overcome this as they display lyrics within the video. If you search Youtube for "official Lyric Video" you can find some amazingly produced example of lyric videos. Anyhow, here are some great examples I've found and the grammar/language they could be used to highlight:

 The Summer Set, Boomerang - Second Conditionals

 Tegan & Sara, I was a Fool - Simple past

 P!nk, Just Give me a Reason - Present Perfect / Present Perfect Progressive

 Taylor Swift, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together - Past tenses, Present Progressive

 I've used such videos to do the following:
  Focus on Changing Tenses - for example, in the song "We Never Ever Getting Back Together", have students focus on why the tenses change (i.e. showing how past actions can affect present states)
  How many? - Have students spot incidences of target language (i.e. how many times are 2nd Conditionals used in "Boomerang"?)

 Larry Ferlazzo's great blog also had a post on Lyric Videos