It doesn’t matter whether the language teacher is a native speaker or not. If the content teacher is a confident language teacher as well, then you don’t even need two teachers.  Many non-native teachers are teaching English.  The teacher just needs to be proficient in the language to be a proper model for the language and to get the information across to the students.  After all, the main point of the lesson is the content.  If the content teacher isn’t  getting the content across, then we really have a problem.
The reason for having the language teacher in there to assist the content teacher is that often the content teacher isn’t competent in handling language related issues and vis versa. If one can do both jobs, then you’d only really need the one teacher.

Eric - Thanks for the nice comments. It’s good to hear that people like the show and think it’s helpful. Most of the time we’re just talking to the dark …

While I have only been able to teach one course this way, the results were quite satisfying.

Several international undergraduate students enrolled in a summer program at UCLA and took their first credit courses. The course, The History of American Movies, meet twice a week from 1-5 PM MW. Our small class of 8 students meet 9-12 on those same mornings, and we went over the readings and the movies in greater depth. This sheltered approach provided a safety net for the former ESL students who were more than a bit nervous about enrolling in mainstream college courses in Los Angeles. The international class included students from Japan, Korea, France, and Israel. We learned a great deal, and all the students received a B or higher in their first American university course.

This unorthodox teaching approach can create wonderful classroom experiences, even if the instructors disagree a bit. Further, this type of teaching could help dramatically reduce the drop-out rate for former ESL students in mainstream college and university courses.

As ever, your podcasts provide practical information for both ESL teachers and language learners.

I’m wondering what you think about having to have a native English speaking in the class for those content lessons. Is it possible to do this with a non-native speaker? I also would love to hear what you think about any available texts for teachers.

Regards,
Nicole Long
Korea National University of Education

Patrick, I wish I had access to Englipedia back when I taught in the JHS system in Japan. You’ve obviously put in a lot of work and effort.

For a major assignment, we are supposed to design a ‘unit of work’ - Following is what is required for the assignment:

‘Unit of work

The unit of work will consist of the following components. If you would like to modify these, please negotiate with your tutor and note your modifications on the title sheet of your assignment.
A brief profile of the group of learners. The learners might be actual – ones with whom you are currently working, or with whom you intend to work in the near future, or with whom you have worked previously. Or they might be hypothetical, in which case you will need to use your commonsense and imagination. Try to choose a group of learners in which you have a particular interest: young children, adolescents, adults in workplace, community, tertiary or vocational programs. Include in your profile any student characteristics which need to be taken into account when designing your unit of work.
A discussion of any contextual factors which need to be taken into consideration either with regard to the immediate context or the target context.
An overview of the unit of work (including aims/outcomes), using a format which indicates the main components and how they are related.
A more detailed outline of 3-4 lesson plans (covering a range of macroskills if possible).
An indication of where assessment and evaluation procedures might be included within the unit of work.
Any other points you feel you would like to include to help the marker understand how the unit of work is organised and how it would work (for example, whether you would be team-teaching and if so, what roles different people would be taking within the program).
It is intended that the unit of work should be a practical, useable document which you might be able to implement at some stage (for example, during a practicum). Even though in your particular case, you might not program in terms of ‘units of work’, it is a useful exercise to go through in terms of planning beyond the level of the individual lesson and seeing how different aspects of a program can work together in an integrated way.’

What do you mean by ‘units of work’?

I (we) will definitely try to toss some ideas around, but first I need to know what it is

- Mark

Happy teaching,
Mark

I will continue to listen and learn from this site.

Regards

Your idea for a text-less plan of attack sounds like a fun topic to discuss. We’ll see what we can do.

We’ve already finished up the podcasts for the rest of this year, so hopefully we’ll be able to do it at the beginning of next year.

Thanks for listening,
Mark

I am wondering if you would consider doing a podcast on how to plan/teach when there is no textbook–a sort of basic survival teaching guide when there is no framework. It would be a good addition to your already high quality set of podcasts (and there might be a bit of self-interest vested in the topic as well).

Cheers.
Phil

Email: escapethegray[at]gmail[dot]com

The ultimate test should be this instead. A teacher will have his or her teaching contract renewed or not based on how effective he or she can impart knowledge to the learners (in this case corporate students) so that they can perform better in their work. If the students cannot increase his work efficiency, then fire the teacher (or better yet, sue the teacher for wasting the student’s time and money)!

Sincerely,
Kenneth K
MBA and TEFL certificate holder

Maybe someday I’ll be able to get a board together and posted …

If you do make your own board, I hope the activity goes over well.

Happy teaching,
Mark

I think there’s good points to both doing your course before-hand or after you’ve taught for a while.

If your position will be as an assistant teacher, I would say wait and get some experience first. It will make the course easier as well as more interesting. I think you’ll get more from it and the information will seem more valuable.

If you are going to be the main teacher somewhere, you might want to take the course first. Your probably going to get a position with little direction and a lot of responsibility. You will definitely benefit from some background knowledge and training.

I hope that is helpful and thanks for listening.

Happy teaching,
Mark

Just discovered your podcast and downloading episode after episode now - they are a bit adictive!

Do you guys recommend completing TESOL/TEFL certificate before you start teaching English overseas?

Interested to hear your thoughts… Keep up the good work!

Regan
Western Australia

I still do informal oral evaluations and check up on the homework and class exercises. That is all it takes to know who is going forward.

I did like the idea of having a standard questionaire with many questions on increasing difficulty, to be given every 6 months or year. Each semester, the students can see how many more questions they can answer, than the time before.

ESL Teacher Talk podcasts is a great, great program for a niche audience. We appreciate you.

I started with letting them just play RPS, using “Ready, Set, 1,2 3″, and they really got into it. Then I brought in the pattern we’ve been practicing, “How are you?” and “I’m …” I gave each kid a few flashcards of feelings, and they had to answer with one of their cards. I was really impressed that they all remembered their expressions (tired, sad, good, ok, hungry etc). The ‘loser’ had to pass over one of his cards.

In the end we practiced counting as we counted how many cards each kid had left when we stopped. It was really great because my shiest girl, who is usually in tears at the end of a lesson because she can’t keep up with the others, had the second highest number of cards and was really happy!

Thanks!!

I only found your podcasts recently (got an ipod for Christmas!!) and I really enjoy them!

Looking forward to more!!

Of course, if you don’t have the right music for the age/level you are working with, none of that matters. I think/hope we’ve made some of that “right” music with Super Simple Songs or you can find lots more out there from some of the artists Devon mentioned as well. I am a big fan of Sue Schnitzer and use her songs a lot in my classes. (http://www.weebeemusic.com/) Her early albums in particular have a lot of useful material for young kids.

Thanks again…..looking forward to the next show!

Thanks…I enjoyed it!

Eric

I’d like to hear some ideas about using music and songs in the classroom. I know the standard gap-fill exercise, and then another thing I do is cut up the lines of the song and have the students try to reassemble them while the song plays. Are there any other ways to use songs in English teaching?

I listen to the podcast and find it quite informative! I think both of you give useful and insightful information and I appreciate both of your websites and this pod cast, so many thanks to both of you.

As for future shows, I would like to listen to some shows about “selling the games” to the students to help get them into the games and some discipline issues for large classes.

Anyways, I thought that an interesting topic would be something along the lines of curriculum planning. Something I’ve witnessed (and experienced) a few times is that an organization will hire/invite a teacher or volunteer teacher after assuring them that they don’t actually need qualification or experience teaching ESL (or anything, for that matter), and then places them in a school or situation where they’re suddenly the “expert.” Afterwards, they may be provided with materials, but no actual curriculum, and then must spend a lot of time getting to know the level of the students, trying to find out what they’ve been learning recently, and coming up with an interesting way to teach new stuff. This is aggravated a little bit by the fact that the class sizes might be larger than the teacher is used to seeing, or that they have to start teaching the very next day, or that they only see each class once or twice a week. I don’t know how many teachers in this situation listen to your show (you’ve got at least one though!), but it would be nice to hear how other teachers who have a) been teaching longer or b) dealt with this challenge in a successful way, have been able to come up with a curriculum. Or at least it would be interesting to hear how your experiences have been similar/different. This is all coming from China, by the way, and has been my experience in two different cities. I mean… that was all just one reason it’d be a cool topic… just general advice/stories/examples/whatever would be fun too.

I’d also like to hear a show on the so-called “conversation class,” which is sort of related, where schools/mothers/training centers/what have you tell a teacher simply to talk. About things. And then leave you to your own devices. Because “the students rarely get to talk to foreigners.” I know that in small groups or students who are there voluntarily, this can be a really fun class, but in, say, large high school classes, it’s possible to lose track of the… goal(?), I guess, for a number of reasons. How do you approach classes like this, and what lessons have worked well? Anything you’d recommend against?

Well, there’s my input. Maybe you’ve discussed these already and I’ve missed the shows? In any case, fun podcast, thanks for it!

Just like you said, it gets people talking active and did I mention talking?

This is one of my ace-in-the-hole games, but I have a few more original games that you might be interested in at www.mes-english.com/games/gamestoplay.php

Happy teaching,
Mark

Since it worked well with the kids I took it to my adult lesson and tried it there. It worked wonderful there too.

So, I took it to the Japanese junior high I teach at. I used it in all three grade levels this week.

The first round took a little extra work to get the students playing. The JET and I had to go around and just verify that the students were taking all the cards as points, and not giving their point cards away when they lost. But after a round where everyone used just one word, we moved into the lesson and then played the game again later in the lesson. This is what we did:

For the first year students we practiced “She likes/wants/plays _____” Second year students we practiced, “You have something to ___________.” and with the third year students I was able to get them to enjoy a full class. I wanted to use this only as a warm up in the class, but for the first time this class was trying so we just changed the rules and did it again.

I’ve been struggling with the third year students all year, but this game got everyone talking and enjoying themselves. That actually goes for all the grade levels, everyone was talking. The students who usually don’t say a word tried and in a few cases won!

THank you eslteachertalk.com!!!

It was very interesting to hear about Jake’s China work experience. I have always thought about it but always thought that the pay was a lot lower than Korea. I guess that it was very little before and it depends on where you are in the country but how does it compare to Korea now?

Good show guys,

Livinginkorea

Thanks for listening,
Mark

Cheers,
Austin