ESL, EFL, ESOL teachers live in the reality of their students’ everyday lives. With our students we rejoice when there’s a holiday – just as much as they do – especially if it’s a beautiful spring day!
Liberation Day!
April 25 is one of those special days! Today we recall how precious the gift of
British POWs near Nettuno, south of Rome, 1944
freedom is: 2o1o makes the 65th anniversary of the overthrow of the Mussolini government and the beginning of the fall of the Nazi regime in Italy. Today we remember all those who fought, suffered and died for the liberation of Italy from tyranny.
As the President of the Republic laid the wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier, The Altar of the Country, at Piazza Venezia in the heart of ancient Rome this morning, we remembered all the victims of that horrible occupation and war: the foreign soldiers who sacrificed their mind, bodies and lives that the Italian people might be free, the Italian Resistance movement, the many civilian deaths, victims of atrocities, friendly-fire and bombings.
World War II – Echoes in Everyday Life
The Ardeatine Cave, Rome
But World War II is not just a memory in a history book – the scars of that bloody war are still with us: every year many unexploded ordinances are still being unearthed; whole sections of cities have to be evacuated as the deadly bombs are diffused and removed. And here in Rome and its environs we have the sharpnel walls of the buildings on Via Rasella, the Ardeatine Caves where the horrific massacre ordered by Hilter of 335 Italians was carried out in 1944 and many military cemetaries to remind us of the horror of aggression and war – and the cost of our freedom.
ESL, EFL, ESOL Lessons Bringing in History with Social Media
On YouTube there are several videos of actual footage from the WWII period that bring those past events to life again and commemorate the value of freedom.
Here is one with US General Mark Clark who explains the hardships of the Italian campaign and dedicates a documentary by John Huston to the memory of all those who fought for freedom.
For classroom discussions, teachers can talk with their ESL, EFL, ESOL students about their families’ memories of these events and the value of freedom. They can write in their e-notebooks or publicly blog about those family stories and the liberties that they are now enjoying.
In our modern consumeristic world, we have perhaps gotten a bit soft. We take the freedoms we have for granted…. we forget the liberties we now enjoy were bought at a horrific price: the lives of thousands of people who sacrificed what was most precious - their lives - so that we may be free.
And you, my reader - what days do you want to remember and thank those who sacrificed their lives that we might be free?
Happy Liberation Day to all – may we also prize and protect our freedoms from any tyrant….
What does an ESL lesson plan for kids, a birthday, age, Rome and social media have in common?
Well, you have probably guessed that ESL/EFL lesson plans, whether for children or adults, need to teach about age and birthdays – they do go together.
In early ESL/EFL lessons for beginners teachers introduce the language for asking “how old are you?” with the verb “to be” construction for these questions and answers – so loved by children and abhored by many adults. Later, as ESL/EFL students progress we can tie age in with birthdays, especially for children who love to celebrate that special day.
Birthday Grammar and Vocabulary
Both age and birthdays are great to introduce or review:
the cardinal and/or ordinal numbers,
days of the week,
months of the year,
capitalization of first letter for days and months,
the correct pronunciation for the year
correct word order for questions and answers with the verb “to be”
the question word “when”
the different ways English speakers speak and write dates, e.g., the 21st of April, April 21, 21 April
prepositions of time: in April, on Monday, on April 21
the past of the verb “to be”, as in “When were you born?” “I was born on …”
the verb “to be born”
Rome in an EFL Lesson?
But in the title I mentioned Rome and social media…. how do they all fit together in a lesson?
Bringing the city of Rome into the ESL/ESL/ESOL lesson adds a touch of history, especially during the month of April. Why? …because April 21 is the birthday of Rome. The ancient city, also known as “Caput Mundi/Head of the World” is 2,763 years old – for extra practice have your students say that number outloud!
There are many stories about the birth of Rome that, depending on the age and level of the ESL/EFL students, are very interesting. I find that a favorite with my older kids is the story of the she-wolf and the abandoned twin brothers. The mother wolf feed the infants and kept them from starvation.
However, the kids decided that instead of doing something on Rome they would make a video for one of the little sisters of a classmate. It is a simple animation – but it accomplished its purpose! They students really enjoyed the process, laughing and giggling as they chose the music and camera movements, wrote the script - and then shared it with their parents and other class members…. And I don’t think these EFL students will forget this language or the Happy Birthday song anytime soon!
Here’s the simple video (not exactly competition for the Oscars… but a great learning experience):
ESL/EFL Lessons with a YouTube video can make our classes much more interesting and memorable for our students.
First of all, videos provide ESL/EFL learners with real-life English. The English is spoken at normal speed and uses vocabulary and sentence structure that native English-speaking people employ.
Moreover, good YouTube videos are free to access, short in duration and therefore, much easier to plan into an ESL/EFL lesson – and planning is important if we want to make sure we incorporate the videos into the overall class objectives.
A Sample ESL Lesson Plan for a YouTube video
As I noted in a previous post, it is important to prepare our students for the material they are going to watch. We need to give them background to what they are going to watch so that they can put it in context and link it to what they already know in their own language, as well as what they have already learned in their ESL/EFL/ESOL classes. Remember we want to stretch their English – not overwhelm them with unrelated information or grammatical and lexical material.
For this reason, it is very important that we preview the video first. We know our English learners and we know which lexical expressions or grammatical structure could be too challenging for them.
The basic ESL/EFL lesson plans have 3 parts: Preparation, Presentation of new language material, Application – and that is the organization I will be following in this lesson plan for this YouTube video.
The YouTube video I’ve chosen is called “Break Up”. It has won several awards and was produced in 2007 for the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions. It appears to be a story about a romantic relationship that is coming to an end… but is it? It brings in the some of the vocabulary and body language of dating… But it is more…. Read the shirts of the man and the woman. What is the real story here?
With a general group of ESL/EFL learners, we could use in lessons dealing with vocabulary dealing with relationships. With business ESL/EFL clients the video could be incorporated into a training with dealing with communication skills and body language. These are just some ideas; there are many other ways that this video could be tied into a lesson.
ESL Learner: upper-intermediate to advanced Class time: about 90 minutes Material Needed: YouTube video, video player or computer large enough for your ESL learners to see and hear.
Preparation
Questions you could ask ESL/EFL learners
In your country/culture:
- How do young people date? (you might need to explain ”date”.)
- How did you first meet your boyfriend/girlfriend or wife/husband?
- Did you go out to eat in special places? Who paid for the meal?
- Do you feel that men understand women? How or How not?
- Do you feel that men listen to women? How or how not?
- Do women understand and listen to men? How or how not?
Presentation of new language material
New vocabulary in context:
Prepare your ESL students for the English language they are going to hear by either explaining or having exercises ready for them to do. Some words or phrases they might have difficult understanding could be the following:
“I just put down a mil on a TV commercial just to talk to you.” What does “mil” mean here?
“We don’t even hang out in the same places anymore.” What does the phrasal verb “hang out” mean?
“You can’t tell me you missed the billboard in Times Square?” What does the verb “miss” mean here? “Billboard”? What is that?
“Coupons, you want coupons.” What are “coupons”?
“Let’s just hug.” What is “hug”?
“I’m out of here!” What does the idiomatic expression”to be out of here” mean?
“Let’s be like the old days.” Old days? What does this expression mean here?
The Video “Break Up”:
Show the introductory part of the video. Stop, check for oral comprehension, answer any questions students might have.
Continue showing video, stopping and checking for comprehension as needed. Then show the video all the way through from start to finish.
Application and Follow-up questions
who does the man represent?
who does the woman represent?
what does the woman want?
what’s the man’s reaction?
what’s her main compliant?
what does he know about the woman?
how does he think he can make her happy?
what is her reaction to his suggestions?
As a customer do you want to be in dialogue with your service and product producers?
How do you let your service and product producers know what you want?
Why do you start using a service or product?
Why do you stop using a service or product?
There are any number of questions, role plays, etc., that you can could use here in the application part of the ESL/EFL lesson…. How would you apply this video?
There are a number of ways you can bring your ESL, EFL, ESOL lesson into the real world of native English speakers. One way is by using social media as content.
What do I mean by content?
Content is the actual linguistic material that we present to our students. Many language institutes use language textbooks that present the target language in a systemic manner. However, it could be that these texts do not incorporate examples from the internet, i.e., new media or social media. So when possible it is a good idea to bring in social media to supplement the textbook.
(It is important for non-native ESL/EFL/ESOL teachers to be aware of the fact that a high percentage of native English speakers use the internet and social media daily in their lives – and this use also has significant influence in their use of language – therefore, the need to expose our students to this use of English by mother tongue English users.)
In choosing real content from the internet, including that of social media, in goes without saying that we need to be aware of the ESL/EFL level of linguisitic development that our students have obtained – and then s-t-r-e-t-c-h them a bit to the next level in each lesson.
10 Steps to Using Social Media or New Media in an ESL/EFL lesson
Here are 10 steps that will help us in using social media, such as blogs, podcast, websites, videos, etc. in our lessons:
We need to go over the internet material first.
We need to choose topics that are of interest, professionally or personally, to our students.
We need to check the material we have chosen for level of grammar, new lexical items that our students could have difficult with, e.g., phrasal verbs, idiomatic and/or colloquial expressions, puns, etc.
We need to look at what background information we may need to provide, such as explaining particular cultural modes of behaviour, history, etc.
If it’s an audio or video we have selected, in addition to the above, we need to assess the speaker’s speed, clarity of pronunciation, as well as clarity in the audio reproduction. (What might seem like clear audio to native speakers can be full of distracting noise for ESL/EFL/ESOL learners.)
We need to organize our ESL/EFL lesson plan so that we have an introduction that prepares the student for the topic and linguistic input they will receive and connect it to their own work or lives so that it is meaningful for them.
We need to prepare them for the new lexical and/or grammatical input with pertinent exercises.
We need to monitor input, adjusting the material depending on the students’ reaction as they read, listen and/or view.
We need to follow up the use of social media with exercises that will help them apply the language that they have learned to to their own situation.
We need to incorporate the new lexical and grammatical material in the following lessons to help the students remember it and use it.
Using social media or new media in the ESL/EFL classroom makes the lesson more real and interesting for students, but it will only help their progress in learning English if we take the necessary time to prepare its use in our lesson plans.
How do you use social media in your classroom or lives? Post a comment and let me know. Or if you are not an ESL/EFL/ESOL teacher but you produce material on the internet – how can you make your material more ESL/EFL/ESOL-friendly?
“Yes! Yes!” Patrizia* responded. “She showed me how she has to type in… Oh, what is it? a 100 letters? Oh, I don’t remember, … and then the other person sends back a message… just like with the sms – only now she’s chatting with a girl in England! “
Patrizia, one of my business English clients, was keen to know about Twitter. Her 15 year-old daughter, who is studying English in an Italian school, was using it to “tweet” with others - in English!
Patrizia was delighted that her daughter felt confident enough in English to try to carry on a conversation with a native English speaker. Now Patrizia wanted to learn how to use social media, too.
The personal and professional world we live in is increasingly using the social media to network with people around the world. Nevertheless, some of my students were familiar with these new media, many had only heard of them, and most did not use them.
However, their children were using them – and these parents wanted to know more: they wanted to know what their children were getting into. Using social media became a hot topic for discussion. But to fully understand social media and to use the new CMC (computer-media-communications) lingo, there is nothing like actually rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty….
So, I suggested that it might be a good exercise to use these new media as tools in learning English. For example, why not create a blog which we could use for their writing exercises? This idea went down like a cold shower on a cold morning.
My clients/students’ coolness towards these new means reflected a number of causes: some felt that their English language skills weren’t adequate enough to write comments on other people’s blog, let alone write a post themselves. Others had heard of local negative news coverage of Facebook which left them feeling very leery of getting involved. For others, Twitter was an unknown entity and its 140 character count too limiting for their vocabulary and grammar capabilities. A few had commented a few times on blogs in their own language but had been ignored by the blog writer and other readers. In general, they felt ill-at-ease with these new media and how to communicate with them.
So I came up with the idea of “E-notebooks” for each student.
An “E-notebook” is a joint electronic website where students can keep and monitor their English language learning efforts: written work, as well as audio and video recordings. It is a joint electronic website because both I, as their instructor, and they, as the learners, have full access to their individual sites. It is a site that they can access either in class or from their own computers.
Here is an “E-notebook” from one of my Giovanni students. He has given me permission to show it to you. Take a look at it. It is a tool where teacher and student can note areas to work on, as well as improvements. How do you think he handled his qualms about writing a post?
In another post, I’ll describe to you how I set up the E-notebooks for each student and how we use them in an ESL/EFL/ESOL lesson plan.
But for now: How do you feel about using social media, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, My Space, etc.? Do you think that it is important for parents to be familiar with exactly how the new social media function in order to be aware of what their children could be getting involved with? If you use social media, which ones do you use and how has they enriched your life?
Till the next post, enjoy using social media in ESL/EFL/ESOL lessons,
