Teach English Better

Possible Solutions

The following suggestions are proposed to make any English program that relies on ESL course books more effective. First, if an ESL course book is to be used, outside reading materials will need to be added to the curriculum. This would greatly increase and develop the student’s English language ability. In language learning, reading is considered one of the most important lessons for the learner. Researches in extensive reading have shown many beneficial effects on students. When learners read, they not only learn new words, but they can also develop their synaptic knowledge as well as general knowledge of the world. Other recent studies have also shown that students who participated in extensive reading increased gains in the areas of vocabulary knowledge as well as in reading comprehension and reading fluency . One possible explanation for the increase is that students acquire new words incidentally through reading thousands and thousands of words every day. Learning vocabulary this way may be considered more effective than rote memorization because through reading interesting texts, students learn new vocabulary and review old ones. By increasing the amount of reading, especially reading for pleasure, it can increase both vocabulary knowledge and reading rate, both of which are an important part of reading comprehension.  Those who take TEFL jobs abroad must be aware of this, or their English teaching careers will languish.
Outside reading materials could also enhance ESL student motivation especially if they find the reading passages from the course book too easy or uninteresting. After all, the students who are using these ESL course books are young and they should be gaining knowledge from their readings, not just coming to class to practice English. With the use of outside reading materials, the English teacher can also design many different activities for the classroom. For example, if the class is reading a short story, the teacher can use class discussions as a form of conversation practice. Teachers can also have students do different kinds of presentations based on their readings. These activities would be more challenging for the students than the question and answer activities found in most ESL course books.
Another suggestion is to add grammar studies to the language program. A grammar textbook contains detailed explanation of grammar rules and offers more practice questions than those found in a typical course book. The ESL or EFL teacher can plan and devote part of the class time each week to teaching new grammar rules. This would not only help with student’s writing, but also in other areas as well such as speaking. The sooner we can get our students to use more correct English, the more confidence they will have. All of the activities above would make the classroom more interesting in which the students are more involved with the activities rather than just listening to the teacher and doing questions and answers from the course book.  This applies whether you are teaching ESL in Thailand, Japan, China, Argentina, or Egypt.

Conclusion

Using course books has its share of benefits and advantages such as having a well organized content with a consistency in the topics and genres for the four skill area (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Teachers who adopt a course book may also find it easier to teach ESL since most of the preparation, including the types of activities, audios and in some cases, achievement tests, are already done by the publisher. This would be a great help to those inexperienced teachers who are just getting started with teaching. However, nothing in the world is perfect and teachers need to somehow solve the issues and problems that may come with ESL course books. These issues and problems may include finding ways to motivate students and teaching students academic skills not found in the course books. In this sense, the teacher’s job is not as easy as it seems. Many hours of planning and developing other activities are still required, but these planning and development will benefit both the student and the teacher by making the classroom activities more fun, more interesting, and result in more learning.
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