North Braddock, Pennsylvania TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

UNIT 2 This Unit presents a general look into the most prevalent methodologies for teaching a second/foreign language. It explains differences between acquiring a first language and learning a second/foreign language, emphasizing the need for techniques to invoke students’ interest and motivation toward learning a new language in order to achieve a more effective or successful language learning experience. Hence the unit focuses on 3 main stages necessary for teaching each lesson in the ESL situation i.e. the ESA: Engage – Study – Activate methodology posited by Jeremy Harmer as the most appropriate and useful methodology for new teachers. This method begins with elicitation and initiating simple and fun learning activities to get students interest or involved at the Engage stage, teaching and facilitating practice of new language points, encouraging feedback on new language points learnt at the Study stage; and the last stage, encouraging and allowing students to communicate and apply the information acquired by themselves through the help of some activities, which is the Activate stage. The unit can be divided into 3 main sections. • First section gives an overview of on the types and examples of the ESA • Second section provides some interesting and practical ideas for each the ESA stages • Third section presents a valuable expose on the importance of feedback, the forms of feedback, the appropriate times to give feedback; and introduces Correction as a vital aspect of feedback. This section ends with an elaborate explanation of the various techniques of correction, detailing the necessary conditions for correction such as: who corrects, how to correct, when to correct and what to correct. This is followed by an illustration of the Technique for Correcting Writing by employing the use of codes. The unit concludes with an Appendix that demonstrates how to incorporate the ESA stages into a lesson plan. I find the whole unit very insightful, however, the parts that resonate with me the most are: the Correction Technique for Writing and the Engage stage. of the ESA method. I believe it makes giving feedback very simple and much easier, as the correction codes would serve as quick prompts to students indicating what needs to be corrected, and equally to the teacher when the time comes to explain what is wrong and how it can be corrected. Also, it helps prevent the teacher from always writing all over students’ pages in red ink, in the bid to indicate the need for corrections, as this can sometimes be especially discouraging to the students, which can lead to loss of confidence and/or motivation. In addition, I find the Engage stage of the ESA very useful as it will help get students interested, involved, open and ready for the next stage of the lesson, particularly when it comes to the Study stage.