My TESL Journey

Over the course of my practicum, I had the opportunity to observe 3 sessions of 4 different courses, totaling 12 sessions of ESL courses.  These courses ranged from about 10-18 learners and most of the students were from Japan or China, though there were multiple other countries represented in these courses.  Most of the learners were between the ages of 18 and 40. Most of these courses were based upon English for Academic Purposes and ranged from verbal communication to reading for context. The learning outcomes for all of the courses were similar as they focused on being able to effectively communicate either orally or through written text, as well as being able to evaluate and interpret information. Observing my sponsor instructor taught me about the importance of using textbooks as guidelines while not relying to heavily upon them. The instructor also clearly gave learners time to interact with materials, particularly reading materials. When using materials, the inst...

Real Talk 2 - Authentic English in Context Throughout my experience teaching ESL to adults, I interacted with a number of strong resources to help with instructing. The resource I chose to discuss is Baker and Tanka’s Real Talk 2 - Authentic English in Context, a textbook and audio recording set that my sponsor instructor uses to plan and organise lessons. This textbook focuses on using authentic situations to help learners learn to communicate through speaking and listening and the audio files provide examples of different types of conversational situations. The textbook was published 2007.  Throughout my interactions with this resource, I realized it provides many serious benefits to the planning and organizing of lessons for ESL learners, however it faces some drawbacks as a result of its age and the rapid change in vocabulary that is present in contemporary society.  Despite some of its drawbacks, the ease of use, benefits for lesson planning, and learning takeawa...

This was my last lesson with this class and it went way better than I expected. This lesson put my creativity to the test. I really pushed myself to come up with a fun and creative activity that would fit in with the content of the listening activity as well as fit the course outcomes. I was not sure about the activity until I met with my sponsor instructor and he gave the green light on the whole thing.There were many difficulties to deal with related to the audio recording and the difficulty level of the audio recording, however some improvisation made this activity work out in the end.  Overall, I would say this activity was a success, however, in the future, I would consider finding another audio recording that met the same requirements or attempt to find a re-recording that was at a slower pace.   Another activity that went very well but that I would alter in the future was the warm-up review.  The warm-up review was successful in getting the students sp...

This afternoon was the 4th 2 hour lesson that I taught during my practicum and I only have one more after this. Today, I have a great deal to reflect on because I got the chance to teach two lessons with essentially a lunch break in between. It gave me great perspective as to what it would be like to teach English as a second language full-time, and I have to say, I loved it! While teaching always has its ups and downs, today was a very rewarding day. I finally managed to get my timing just right during this lesson as well as mixed up the groups and pairings throughout the lesson so that learners got a better understanding and perspective during the discussions. This is always something that I intend to do during my lessons, however I often found it difficult because of timing, but this time because the timing was on, everything else fell into place.  I also used the learners names more and more as well as feel more comfortable working with the learners and knowing what the...

Summaries and thesis statements, what an adventure! I have to say I was not very confident going into this lesson. It was a lesson taught to a class that I had never taught, a topic that was never really clear for me to begin with and I was being observed by more than one person. I found that my voice projected better during this lesson compared to usual, and the learners were extremely engaged and asked many thought provoking questions. These questions kept me on my toes and helped me learn how to better explain some terminology. Additionally, the learners struggled with a task that involved locating the thesis statement of a piece as a class. After more discussion of terminology, the learner were better able to find the thesis statement as a group. Overall, I think the process of finding thesis statements went well, however in the future I would work more on discussion of terminology and the general look and placement of thesis statements.  I still tend to overplan my less...

Another great lesson yesterday! A lot of things went well and as always there are some areas of improvement. Last lesson, I had reflected about getting to know the learners better so that I can make sure to use their names properly in class. I managed to do this and was able to use the learners names more during the lesson. During the class, the learners participated in a role-playing exercise in which one learner represented a parent and the other, their adult child. The story of the role-playing exercise was based upon the adult asking their parent if they can move back in. The learners were given a chance to write scripts for their role-playing assessment but conversation was meant to happen as naturally as possible. I was happy to see that many of the learners barely used their scripts and the conversation that took place was natural and flowed freely. I am still having issues with timing. I am used to working at an elementary school where learners like to get work done as ...