Teaching Ideas

Tricks o' the Trade

Steven Gershon
Obirin University

Page 1 | Page 2

All teachers who have been in the ELT biz for any length of time end up toting around in their head a well-filled grab bag stuffed with little pedagogic tricks and gimmicks. These are all the useful classroom insights, instincts, reflexes and techniques that are transportable, in one form or another, to almost any teaching situation, almost anywhere.

Some of our grab bag goodies are geared to our own unique teaching style, many of them may be more transferable than we imagined, providing other less experienced teachers, or those who have gotten bogged down with practices that don't seem to work anymore, a fresh way of doing things.

With that in mind, I'd like to pull out of my own grab bag just a few "tricks o' the trade" that usually make my classes run a bit more smoothly. Of course, I should quickly point out that these classroom gimmicks are simple, practical and, above all, obvious to most of you--things you probably already do. Nonetheless, I find that sometimes it doesn't hurt to state the obvious, if nothing more than to satisfy ourselves that we are not the only ones doing what we're doing.

Anyway, here's a peek at a few things (in the form of self-reminders) that I've stuffed into my pedagogic grab bag…

1. Keep a stack of lesson warmers, fillers and enders close at hand

Learning a language is a practical, skill-based endeavor. It's like a sport, involving both mental and physical apparatus--a sort of linguistic athleticism. And when athletes are about to play a sport, they need to limber up, stretch the muscles slowly so they don't pull or tear once the action begins. Students also need to warm-up at the beginning of a class, having come in 'cold' from the L1 environment. Starting straight off with 'the lesson' can be a real jolt to the verbal muscles.

Athletes also sometimes benefit from a sudden "second wind" mid-way through a long endurance event - a boost in energy just when they are about to peter out. For students (and teachers) this is where fillers come in handy--short five-minute activities we can pull out when the lesson is bogging down and the students need a break from the usual work at hand. These can often revitalize enervated (dozing) students and provide just enough of a change of pace to get them through the last 20 minutes of the lesson in a constructive way.

The same goes for lesson enders. These are particularly useful when, as sometimes happens, we come to that point in the lesson when we have 10 minutes left, the previous activity has fully run its course, there's not enough time to do the next meaty activity we had planned, and we don't want to finish the lesson early (especially when the department head is teaching in the next classroom!).

What works as a warmer, filler or ender? Almost anything, as long as it…
a. is short (5-10 minutes)
b. is non-threatening (involving language students feel comfortable with)
c. is fun/and or interesting
d. gets everyone thinking and/or communicating in English

Ones that work for me are: word games like hangman; guessing games like 20 questions or what's my line; a group brainstorm focusing on a single vocabulary item and whatever the students can associate with it; a round of pictionary (with the whole class guessing or in small groups); a short dictation (about me--students are almost always interested in information about the teacher); a tongue twister ("She sells sea shells by the sea shore; the sea shells that she sells are sea shells, I'm sure", etc.); an idiom of the day. Whatever works for you…just collect them, keep them nearby and pull them out when needed.

2. Prescribe a healthy dose of Classroom English

Our ELT comrades who teach in multilingual classrooms in English speaking countries have it easy. When they throw a pair or group task at their students, they can be fairly confident that the students will tackle it wholly in English. The students have to--they can't fall back on their first language when nobody else in the group speaks it. This is built-in motivation for the students to get (and remember) the language they need to do everything in English during a lesson.

We who teach in a homogenous language environment like Japan have to work harder to make sure our students really are using English as much as possible in the classroom. It's easy for them to fall back on Japanese, and often they do, out of habit, embarrassment or plain ol' laziness. However, they also rely on Japanese when they just don't have the necessary English to do what we want them to do.

For me, fixing this problem is, first of all, a matter of viewing all phases of a lesson--not just the tasks themselves--as opportunities to speak English. Secondly, it's making sure the students have or get the "classroom" language they need. And thirdly, it's letting the students know I expect them to use it.

Here's my "bottom-line" list of necessary classroom language:

"Help" English
Basically, these are the expressions needed for seeking some kind of linguistic help?from the teacher or a fellow student--for meaning, pronunciation, spelling, repetition or clarification. Oddly, it's one area of practical English that even intermediate and advanced level students often do in Japanese (or incorrect English), perhaps because their previous teachers have not bothered to make sure they know it and use it. I, therefore teach (and quiz) my students on useful "help" expressions like the ones below at the beginning of the academic year?and force (well, lets say "strongly encourage") them to use with me and with each other:

Could you say that again, please? Can you speak more slowly, please? How do you say ____ in English/Japanese? How do you pronounce/say this word? What does ___ mean? How do you spell ___?

Page 1 | Page 2

<<Back Number | Top | Recent Issue>>