What are your 5 best tips for teaching ESL?

[jjmiller]

I am new to teaching ESL. I have taught developmental writing and english in community college. Taught a lot of computer applications classes. But I have never taught ESL. Closest I got was helping with an ESL classroom on rare occasion. So, with a new position, I am now an ESL teacher! Yikes!

If you had to advise a new teacher, with lots of experience teaching in general, what would your best tips be?

Do you HIGHLY recommend I learn Spanish in a heavy hispanic area? Shall I expect that most can speak some english? Or not a good assumption?

How would you advise I teach 20 some students all at different areas of experience with English?

Advice???? What about things I probably haven't even thought about????

THANKS!!!!!
JJ

[gfell]

Some of my best tips are:

• Speak slowly, clearly and without slang. Choose simple words and expressions. I would say: "What time will you go to the TRAIN station" rather than "What time will you go to the station". Try to be super clear in your meanings.
• Continue to get interaction from your students. Don't fall into the trap of just standing at the front of the class and talking your head off.
• Throw in some light hearted humour.
• Avoid using the local language in the classroom. Students come to the classroom and put on their English cap, so try to keep your instructions all in English.

Keep in mind there is a huge difference between teaching adults, school students and toddlers. You will need to adapt also depending on the level of the students.

Teaching English successfully requires truly understanding the mind of your students and delivering your instructions accordingly.

And the biggest tip of all:

OBSERVE AND ANALYSE: After the class, think about your performance, how the students reacted, obstacles you encountered and work on strategies to improve these downfalls.

[waixingren]

The most difficult question to answer that you asked: "How would you advise I teach 20 some students all at different areas of experience with English?"

Ideally, you'd have them all separated into levels. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. One of the methods you could use would be to have the higher level students helping you. Provide the classes with conversation topics to practice speaking with each other--that way the better students can help out the others. Note: this method only works in some classes, it can depend on the differences in levels.