One technique I’ve found effective may seem rather counter-intuitive: encourage them!

This unorthodox teaching idea has recently attracted some welcome attention.. Larry Ferlazzo, the award-winning ESL blogger and author of Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Approaches to Classroom Challenges,  wrote an illuminating post on how he is experimenting with “celebrating mistakes” in his high school ESL class.

While I have never consciously “celebrated” mistakes, I do consistently encourage students to make “good mistakes”, defined as natural errors that we can learn from, so we can continue to improve and new, different, and better mistakes. Creating a classroom atmosphere of tolerance, understanding, and constructive criticism remains a constant challenge.

Yet modern technologies, such as video cameras and smart phones, make video recordings of English language learners an accessible, affordable option. As 21st century English teachers, we can deploy some practical tools in our ESL and EFL classrooms. Videotaping English students certainly helps here since they can watch their own presentations or discussions. Sometimes having students transcribe their own speech yields surprises, but often you don’t even need to resort to such rigorous examination. Students can often see where they have made verb tense errors, searched for vocabulary, or used the wrong word form on their own. Uploading videos to a class website encourages self-awareness and reflection. Seeing, in this case, is often believing.

Further, videotaping student presentations makes our classrooms more democratic since our students can speak – and share their words with friends and relatives beyond the classroom if they choose. Sometimes English language learners, recognizing that they can share their work outside the classroom and reach core peer audiences, will practice more than usual. As ESL students step up their game and perform for the camera, they sometimes make fewer mistakes – and excel!

And if students, as usual, do make mistakes? Let’s call that a learning opportunity. “Don’t be afraid to make a mistake, ” advised legendary  Sony Chairman Akio Morita. “But make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice.” While learning English requires us to be more understanding and patient of “good mistakes”, this quote emphasizes the value of making mistakes – outside and inside our English classrooms.

How many good mistakes must English students make on the road to English fluency? I have no idea, but students will get to their linguistic destination sooner if they start more making good mistakes in our English classes today. Staying silent out of fear of making mistakes almost guarantees students will never become fluent English speakers.

The videotape allows our students to see – and learn – from that bad mistake too.

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Most quality Business English and VESL (Vocational English as a Second Language) programs provide extensive training and practice  in both short and long job interviews. Job interviews are stressful – especially for English language learners.  In fact, many adult, community college, and university ESL programs also include mock job interviews in the curriculum so ESL students can learn how to better answer simple and difficult questions. After all, many career experts recommend native speakers practice and practice again for these high-stakes interviews. It behooves English language learners to practice, practice, and practice some more for job interviews.

During these difficult economic times, however,  Business English trainers, advanced ESL (English as a Second Language), teachers and VESL (Vocational English as a Second Language) job coordinators should focus on an even wider range of interviewing skills. Many people have to interview co-workers, customers, strangers, and even more senior professionals at work. Speaking skills – in particular interview skills – matter.

Informational interviews – where future professionals ask questions to working professionals that hold a desirable position – achieves this goal – and a few more.   Informational interviews deserve far more attention in English language programs, but especially in Business English programs and VESL classes since informational interviews provide practical opportunities to develop business contacts and remain a savvy  job hunting tactic.

A common practice in the United States in many white-collar professions, informational interviews allow students (or individuals seeking a career change) to meet more successful and senior professionals in a field. From scheduling an appointment and preparing questions to  collecting information on common business practices, this professional exercise tests the fluency and language skills.  Informational interviews also expand their personal network of valuable business contacts. Sometimes these 20-30 minute interviews, often at offices, offer surprising insights into the typical work experiences and best workplace practices. Topics can range from the biographic to industry trends.  Best of all, informational interviews can also lead to job leads, internships, and even new jobs.

This real world assignment can work with high-intermediate and advanced Business English clients. In fact, asking clients or students to find, research, and conduct an informational interview requires a certain level of fluency and confidence – outside the classroom. This challenging, authentic class assignment requires English language learners to perform a vital workplace skill, respond in real time to a potential supervisor, and ask appropriate questions.

What are appropriate questions? Here are a few classic informational interview questions:

• How did you first enter the field? Why?
• How has the industry changed since you began your career?
• Can you describe a typical day at work?
• What are some trends that you are watching?
• What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started?
• What question should I have asked that I didn’t ask today?

These simple questions often provide illuminating glimpses into the professional lives of successful professionals.

I recommend requiring a “trip report” or  a presentation to show the results of the informational interview with fellow Business English students,. This reflective exercise requires students to concisely summarize their interview.  Learning how to conduct an informational interview is a crucial skill that they can use over and over again during their business careers. Many graduate programs strongly recommend (and sometime mandate) their students conduct regular informational interviews.

From my perspective,  adding  information interviews to Business English classes and VESL programs seems extraordinarily sensible.  It also qualifies as an effective use of precious instructional time. Practical and popular, this multidimensional assignment consistently engages students and provides surprising insights in a university setting. I’ve been requiring informational interviews for several years in my university courses for both native and non-native English speakers. Students consistently rate the informational interview highest among the course assignments – and often praise it on course evaluations.

Therefore, I’m quite confident that quality Business English and VESL programs can clearly benefit from adding this real-world, authentic task to their curriculum too.

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How can English teachers working abroad and international English textbook publishers both respect local cultures and create more engaging English classroom lessons? The challenge may be more complicated than you might suspect.

A long, informative, and detailed exchange on a TESOL list serve recently focused on  the peculiar sensitivities of Saudi Arabian students. An experienced American English teacher reported that his Saudi students expressed anger over a paragraph in their writing book. The imported American English language textbook, which has collected considerable critical praise, contained a paragraph celebrating friendships across many countries and religions – including an unpopular democratic rival nation of the Saudi kingdom. Working in a closed, theocratic society where women are banned from driving evidently raises many delicate problems for English teachers, and many EFL and ESL materials must be carefully edited.  Obviously, discussing politics, religion, sexuality, and gender issues is clearly culturally inappropriate and often legally forbidden in this rigid Islamic kingdom.

Without passing judgment for the moment on the Saudi students’ perceptions and religious passions, let’s zoom out a bit. This awkward incident illuminates the need to explicitly tailoring English as Foreign Language (EFL) content to reflect different national cultures. It also identifies a core defect in the many EFL publishers and why so many EFL and ESL textbooks are bland, boring, and heavily censored. Who wants to offend many potential customers and clients by just mentioning a small country’s name?

As I heard explained at two fascinating TESOL workshops for EFL material writers at the 2011 conference in New Orleans, the current practice for EFL publishers is to simply collect all the possible objections, adopt the “red lines” of all countries, and uniformly impose these taboos around the world. The default advice for EFL material writers includes prohibiting not only politics, alcohol religion, sex, and nudity (predictable), but also mention of luck, negative emotions, Israel, gender roles, and pork.

Here are some memorable examples. One EFL materials writer detailed how he had to drop a chapter on bad luck because it implied that God wasn’t in control of events and might encourage superstitious thinking. Another writer told TESOL participants about having to drop a health chapter which included a “no smoking sign” because it implied that smoking was a choice. Another presenter felt proud that he was able to list “negative emotions” such as “bored”, “tired”, “unhappy” when outnumbered by positive adjectives by a 3-1 margin in a chapter on feelings.

Evidently, many educational bureaucrats evidently place creating a “harmonious society” and teaching conformity above actual language acquisition or student expression. Shock, shock. The ban on mentioning Israel comes from – as demonstrated in the Saudi Arabia classroom that sparked this informative discussion among TESOL professionals – the fashionable desire to see a democratic, successful nation abolished among many Arabs. Many British publishers have also found many Arab countries, including several former colonies and a few royal kingdoms the British Empire helped create after WWI,  to be  important, lucrative EFL markets. The predictable result: pandering to local prejudice and the systematic omission of positive references to Israel.

Naturally, printing world maps that ignore the existence of a small country is also an explicitly political decision so the “avoid politics” advice is a tad dishonest here. Further, as the son of a Holocaust survivor, I find the strange belief that every group deserves a nation except Jews pure bigotry and fashionable group hatred. Yet, for worse or for better, this quasi-official ban seems to be widely adopted by many British EFL publishers. (American textbook  publishers, perhaps inspired by a federal law that prohibits honoring the Arab boycott of Israel, don’t appear to follow this particular practice.)

Yet rather than focusing on the passionate politics of the Mideast, let’s remember that the largest clients often dictate content in many fields. And governments and their education ministries remain, by far, the largest clients for international educational publishers. In fact, educational ministries– especially in closed, dictatorial societies where teaching critical thinking is more than discouraged, censorship taken for granted, and English often viewed with some lingering suspicion as an old imperial tongue – hold exceptional power to approve or veto EFL textbooks. Focusing on pleasing these clients, many American and British publishers have chosen to adopt all the “red lines” of various cultures. Unfortunately, this current practice ends up imposing the safest, narrowest paradigm on all their international clients – across the globe. The Saudi standard becomes the standard for French, Brazilian, Japanese, and Korean English language learners too.

After all, efficiency matters in publishing too. From a publisher’s perspective, creating one core EFL textbook and making very minor tweaks (usually illustrations) for each region works just fine. The downside, as many of us know from personal experience, is the resulting product often becomes bland, often fails to engage students, and effectively allows the most closed societies to dictate content across the globe. Both English teachers and their students lose access to more meaningful, reflective, and accurate information and wider, more modern and tolerant perspectives.

Yet satisfying student interest is far less important from a global sales perspective than meeting a ruling regime’s dictates to re-enforce local beliefs and uphold the political status quo. These larger concerns translate into many boring EFL textbooks that both pander and overlook local cultures by promoting a one-size fits all English language learners textbook. As of now, many of these well-known EFL titles still manage to sell huge numbers – and avoid dozens of engaging topics that directly relate to students’ actual lives, experiences, and hopes.  For instance, English students in poor Asian, African, and Central American countries currently have to learn about housing vocabulary written from an abstract, universal perspective with examples from London, New York, and Tokyo.  How relevant, appropriate, or accurate will the housing vocabulary be?

Yet there is a better, smarter, and more culturally sophisticated way to both acknowledge the political realities of working in closed societies and create more engaging EFL textbooks that express and reflect national cultures. We could develop more appropriate EFL materials that authentically reflect the actual life experiences and aspirations of English language learners in their current context.  More on that topic in the next Compelling Conversations blog post.

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Inside, the magazine editor describes a “Language of Opportunity” article as “Eric Roth ’84 recounts how his attempt to start a free-thinking university in Vietnam led to the realization that the spread of the English language—in part through his own conversational English primer—may be the more immediate path to freedom of thought and expression in the region.”

Fortunately, the article also provides a larger context of teaching English in a closed (but still opening) society. The writer, Steve Charles, also explores the difficulties of adapting Compelling Conversations , an advanced conversation for ESL (English as a Second Language) students into an acceptable EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbook, and explains how I came to publish two very different English language conversation textbooks. Please note that the original ESL book has 45 chapters, including “Voting”, and the EFL version for Vietnamese English Language Learners has 15 chapters with more vocabulary definitions.

“In addition to teaching at the University of Southern California, the former congressional aide and journalist (Roth) is co-author of Compelling Conversations: Questions and Quotations on Timeless Topics. The book is an alternative text for teaching conversational English as a second language (ESL). It is recommended by a leading trade journal of English teaching professionals.”

The three-page glossy magazine piece continues to provide perspective and illuminate the role of English in the 21st century. “And in case you haven’t noticed, English is well on its way to becoming the world’s dominant language,” writes Charles.

“This is the first time in world history we actually have a language spoken genuinely globally by every country of the world,” writes David Crystal in English as a Global Language. As of 2005, almost a quarter of the world’s population spoke English as a native or second language. It is the de facto language of commerce and diplomacy. More than 80 percent of information stored on the Internet is in English. And while there are more speakers of Chinese, Spanish, and Hindi, they speak English when they talk across cultures, and it is English they teach their children in order to give them a chance in the world economy. More than 20,000 ESL teaching jobs are posted monthly; no longer a fallback, teaching ESL is becoming a lucrative first or second career. Some experts predict that by 2030 more than half the world’s population will speak English.”

Reading those simple, powerful facts about the explosion of English renewed my appreciation for our role as English teachers today. English remains the language of opportunity for millions seeking to study, work, and move abroad.  The article allows me to explain. “I had been teaching ESL to immigrants, and I knew English was essential to their lives in the U.S., but on this trip we saw English as a truly global language. It is the gateway to a modern world, and to 21st century lives. And in countries like Vietnam and other developing nations, English is sometimes the only accessible means to advance yourself.” This insight lead to the title “the language of opportunity”.

The article also describes the educational philosophy behind Compelling Conversations .

“Combining his teaching experience and his liberal arts background, Roth collaborated with his mother, Toni Aberson—an English teacher for 35 years—to self-publish the first edition of the book. Dedicated to his father, Dani Roth—who spoke six languages and “could talk with almost anyone”—the book provides an alternative to “presentation-practice-production” approach to language learning, instead using quotations, questions, and proverbs to prompt conversation.”

“Some [quotes and questions] will have students roaring with laughter, while others require careful introspection,” wrote a reviewer (Hall Houston) for the ESL journal English Teaching Professional. “They are highly effective for promoting student discussion.”

 “In the classroom and in the book we try to create a space that’s tolerant and rigorous at the same time,” Roth says. “The focus is on learning by doing, and we want to give people room to make good mistakes—errors that help us learn. When people expect themselves to be perfect, they go silent.”

Most of the book’s prompts ask for recollections or personal opinions.“Whatever perspective you bring to the book, I want you to find validation in some great thinker, that it’s okay to see things that way. That gives us all the freedom to be ourselves and less of who we think we should be, or who we’ve been programmed or conditioned to be.”

You can read the entire article here.

 Like many other English teachers – of all kinds – I feel rich in life experiences, but we seldom get recognized for our hard work.  We also also clearly make significant contributions to our grateful students and larger, positive global trends. And recognition feels good.   Therefore, I’m grateful that Wabash College,  a small Midwestern college in a small town, taught me  to “disagree without being disagreeable” and see the big picture.

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Marcus Cicero, Roman statesman and orator

How do potential English teachers gain the experience and knowledge to become successful English teachers? The answer is both more complicated and simpler than many people believe.  The internet provides exceptional opportunities for potential English teachers to become autotelic (self-directed) learners. Following your own interest and creating your own educational program has never been easier.

The cult of paper continues to reign – especially in educational bureaucracies. Perhaps this remains the largest discrepancy between ESL and EFL faculties. In immigrant-friendly societies English as a Second Language (ESL) instructors usually have been formally trained in actually teaching ESL learners. Many English as a Foreign Language (EFL)  instructors, in contrast, are enticed to pursue teaching English while traveling abroad as a means of earning some extra cash. While some of these impromptu instructors are confident, worldly, intelligent, and often become outstanding educators in their own right, more often they are less-than-successful, holding to the assumption that teaching is easy, and teaching English even easier.

As the Bulgarian adage goes, “Many learn to walk by stumbling.” Over time and after several awkward classes, some instructors grow through experience, becoming better, more effective teachers. A key fact remains the ability to zoom out and reflect upon an English lesson; what worked, what didn’t work, what could be done differently, etc. By reading and reflecting, and then developing Personal Learning Networks, some “instant English teachers” can become stronger and smarter classroom guides.

Further, the reality remains that too  many education classes  bore students,  obsess  over  theory, and neglect teaching any practical instruction techniques. Plus, these formal certificates and advanced degrees can become rather costly and do not guarantee success in the actual EFL classroom. Combined with the reluctance of so many private English language schools to spend money on professional development and pay higher salaries for more credentialed teachers, many EFL teachers choose to find their own paths to becoming outstanding instructors. Teachers’ conferences, professional seminars, carefully observing successful English teachers, and finding a mentor are all beneficial for English teachers, both novice and experienced, trying to learn how to better instruct their students.

While it is obviously possible for EFL instructors to be hired in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and many other countries without a strong background in teaching, I still recommend that most EFL and ESL instructors get more training and share teaching experiences – for your students sake and your own pursuit of excellence.

Yet this professional development does not have to be sanctioned by any formal educational institution. As the great American historian Henry Adams observed, “”They know enough who know how to learn.”

The best thing that I can advise ESL instructors is to create a PLN, or Personal Learning Network, as it has become the fashionable rage among many English language and trainers around the world. Here are some links for insight into becoming a more learned and practical English teacher, all 100% free internet resources that I personally follow and have learned from over the years.

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/ – Larry has become a living legend among American English language and social studies teachers for his ability to find, analyze, and describe the best sites for educators. I learn every time I allow myself the pleasure to explore his “best of” series of links.

http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/ – Tech savvy, energetic English teacher trainer Shelly Terrell.

http://theedublogger.com/ – The Australian education blogger Sue Waters.

http://evridikidakos.edublogs.org/ – Teaching with technology creates new possibilities and Evridiki Dakos  has established herself as a leading expert, especially for teaching English to children. Check her creative blog out!

http://kalinago.blogspot.com/ The always informative ELT specialist and conversation enthusiast  Karenne Joy Sylvester.

Bottomline: Do yourself a favor, check out these outstanding EFL and ESL experts, and become an autotelic English teacher.

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As readers of this blog know, I have given several presentations at CATESOL conferences on “Informational Interviews: A Practical, Multi-skill Activity for High Intermediate and Advanced ESL Students.” Based on my six years of assigning both undergraduate native speakers and international graduate students at the University of Southern California to conduct informational interviews, this presentation demonstrated how this one presentation assignment can lead to an entire month of engaging, demanding, and career-focused lessons for advanced ESL students. Students expand their vocabulary, write questions, conduct an off-campus interview with a working professional in a field of interest, and share the career advice they collected in a short oral presentation. It’s a challenging, satisfying, and popular assignment in my oral skills classes.

A small vocational college in Los Angeles, CES College, asked me to share the exercise with their faculty last week.  Would middle-aged immigrants in blue collar jobs find this exercise worthwhile? I’m quite confident that immigrants would learn from all steps of the exercise, and expanding their social network beyond relatives and friends remains essential. Mechanics can interview mechanics and car repair show owners, and construction workers can interview construction workers – or managers. The proof, as the cliche goes, will be in the pudding and let’s see what happens with their students in the next six months.

Would this exercise work in an EFL context? I’m not sure. Many American universities can count on alumni to help their students in their job search, and granting an informational interview is a relatively easy way to contribute. Many American professional organizations also encourage their members to both assist and recruit students into the field. It may be difficult in many cultures for a younger person with less status to directly contact an older professional to seek career advice.

I do know, however, that many American colleges and graduate programs train their students to go on informational interviews to gain more detailed knowledge of their prospective careers. As in so many other areas of American life, white collar professionals have far greater access to both more information and stronger personal networks. This assignment brings a best practice outside of the elite circles.

Informational interviews can also be used with high school students as they begin to focus on their career ambitions. Here is a short list of additional links that I found last night as I prepared my presentation. The links are loosely organized from the most general sites that explain the concept to general audiences in simple English to professional documents for more specialized, often graduate-school audiences. Adult and community college ESL programs would probably find the earlier links more helpful than the later ones. As ever, use or lose.

Quintessential Careers emphasizes the importance of informational interviews in short, clear, and informative articles. High intermediate and advanced ESL students should be able to handle the vocabulary.
http://www.quintcareers.com/informational_interviewing.html
http://www.quintcareers.com/information_results.html
http://www.quintcareers.com/informational_interview_questions.html

University of Notre Dame Informational Interviewing – This six-page guide provides excellent step by step instructions for students needing assistance with locating individuals, asking interview questions, writing thank you notes, and professionally networking.
http://careercenter.nd.edu/assets/488/informational_interviewing_guide_8.16.pdf

Case University, also recommends their undergraduate students go on informational interviews during their junior and senior years.
http://studentaffairs.case.edu/careers/alumni/network/sample.html

Cornell University Law School recommends informational interviews too.
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/careers/students/explore_options/informational_interview.cfm

Finally, here’s a 13-slide PowerPoint presentation titled “Networking and Informational Interviewing: Nuts and Bolts” by Scott Turner from USC Marshall School of Business, one of the world’s top MBA schools. Although I’m biased as a USC instructor, I think this presentation captures the practical possibilities of information interviewing. Many Marshall instructors advise MBA students that they should always be networking and conducting informational interviews during their graduate studies.

Given the difficult economic climate in many countries, I would suggest that it behooves more ESL and EFL teachers and tutors to consider adding informational interviews to their oral skills courses for their high-intermediate and advanced students.

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Adding a homework assignment that requires ESL students to go the “ideas worth sharing” website at www.TED.com accomplishes all these goals. For the last four years, I have asked both college and international graduate students to select a short TED.com video, watch it, and prepare to share their impressions in class.  Since many students have evolving English language skills and the course is an advanced oral skills class,  they just take notes. What’s the title? Where was the lecture given? Who gave the lecture? Date? How did they open the presentation? Was their a significant quote? What sources were orally cited? How would they rate the video on a scale of 1-5? Why did they choose this TED video? Why do they recommend we watch it too?

Students will often watch several TED videos before choosing a favorite one. This advanced ESL homework assignment seems to capture their imagination as they explore the TED website. The next day, students discuss the TED video that they selected in small groups of four. Afterwards, I ask for “brave volunteers” to share their impressions – i.e., review – with the class. Usually everyone wants to present so we extend the lesson to a second class where I videotape all the presentations. The class sessions are always illuminating, engaging, and surprising as I learn more about students, their interests, our evolving world, and their English language speaking skills.  This democratic speaking skills activity creates an atmosphere where “everybody is a student,  and everybody is a teacher.”  Result: the entire class creates compelling classroom conversations!

As the old American cereal commercial used to say, “try it – you’ll like it” – at least with more advanced English students!

For ESL teachers who want a more formal assignment, you can also use this more detailed worksheet.

http://www.compellingconversations.com/worksheets/ted-video-summary-and-commentary.pdf

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This question remains the billion person question! English language learners across Asia – in China, Thailand, and Vietnam – and the entire globe – confront this profound problem. As somebody who has only taught English for a limited time in a developing Asian country and has never had the pleasure of teaching English in China, I have to admit that I am not completely sure. I will, however, try to answer to the best of my ability.

Clearly, this challenging question illuminates both the deep desire of many Chinese to speak with native speakers – and often hope to sound like native speakers. At the same time, many experienced EFL teachers and linguists often emphasize that students need  “realistic expectations”  for themselves, and English language learners don’t need to sound like native speakers to speak with native speakers. The rarity of native speakers may also indicate some official ambivalence about closing societies opening up. The good news, of course, remains that advanced technology, provides dozens of options that simply didn’t exist 50 years ago for English language students.

As English teachers working in China are keenly aware, China remains a relatively closed society where officials maintain a strict censorship policy. Surveys often place China among the ten least internet friendly nations. In this context, it’s almost impossible to disassociate English from some broader cultural associations and ambitions.  A few older Chinese officials may even still view the presence of native English speakers with some suspicion in more remote, backward rural areas.

Yet during both the successful Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo, the  national Chinese government strongly promoted the study of conversational English so more Chinese could help international tourists feel comfortable in China. The exponential growth of English, as the lingua franca of the business world, across the major cities of China has been amazing in the last decade. The Chinese government has clearly endorsed the widespread learning of English among children and adults in both urban and rural areas. The opportunity, however, to actually hold conversations in English often remains limited.

So what is to be done? We can’t let the ideal become the enemy of the good. English language learners have many choices today to hear excellent examples of English spoken. Students can listen to podcasts and available quality English language radio programs, speak English on Skype with English tutors, and watch hundreds of fine American, British, and Australian films. Many of my Chinese students tell me that they joined conversation programs like English Corner to practice simple conversation, and some language schools have afterschool English clubs. Bolder students might try forming friendships with native-English speakers on social media sites. Today a billion people who have never personally seen a native English speaker can still listen to the authentic voices of native-speakers in more ways than ever before… even if there’s not a single native speaker in town.

I also suggest EFL teachers create speaking opportunities both in class – in small groups or pairs – and consider adding speaking elements to homework assignments.  Fluency, after all, requires practice and speaking English – even to a fellow Chinese, non-native speaker – will develop their evolving English speaking skills. Practice may not make perfect, but it will push students to make real progress.

Let’s help English students get into the habit of asking and answering questions – to the best of their ability – about topics they care about in English class everyday. How? Focus on student interests. I’ve had considerable success, for instance, using Being Yourself from Compelling Conversations with intermediate and advanced students because so many students find themselves fascinating.

Bottomline: adding short, meaningful conversation exercises to every English class should help EFL students gain the confidence and experience they need to hold real conversations. English students may not have a chance to speak with a native speaker today, but we can help make sure they can create a real conversation when they talk with native speakers tomorrow… or the year after tomorrow.

Yet I’m confronting this billion-person question from the perspective of an American college professor who has taught dozens of Chinese students at an elite university. What advice do other English teachers, especially teachers who have taught in rural, relatively isolated areas with few native speakers, have? Are there some low-tech solutions that I’ve overlooked?  How would you answer this billion-person question?

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Getting students to speak can be a challenge, especially in ESL courses focused on academic writing. Flexibility remains essential.

How does one, for instance, teach the difficult task of writing formal academic definitions in a communicative style? The challenge becomes more difficult if the “high intermediate ESL” class is really a broad multilevel ESL class. Just presenting the standard “term+ class + distinctive feature” formula used in academic writing from the dense textbook won’t work. Defining “erosion”, “enamel”, “folk art” and “network” – the academic writing textbook examples- seems too difficult – and can be a tad boring.

I recently faced this awkward situation. Putting aside the textbook for a day, we took one step back to take two steps forward. We also created a lively ESL vocabulary lesson almost by accident as I redirected the two-hour class toward a communicative ESL lesson.

Students, working in small groups, created a large list of places where people could live – a house, a dorm, a cave, a castle, a duplex, a bungalow, a trailer, a penthouse, a cottage, a villa, a tent, etc. The students further refined the list in small groups, and then focused on describing four types of housing. Students were also asked to think about potential users, applications, materials, and advantages of different types of housing. The ultimate goal would be giving formal sentence definitions that could be expanded into extended definitions.

Given the mixed level, I also allowed the “high-intermediate ESL” students to verify their answers with both electronic and online dictionaries in their groups. By allowing the English students to authentically generate the vocabulary lists in a communicative fashion, the English students seemed both more actively engaged and appeared to enjoy a vocabulary lesson that could have been on the dreary side. They exchanged ideas and clarified the definitions. They also gained far greater comfort in the original task of writing definitions while expanding both their working and academic vocabulary.

What is your dream home? Real estate ads often ask this question. Our class explored a different question. What is a house? Our vocabulary activity lead to some good discussions and concluded with each group briefly offering sentence definitions to describe a wide variety of housing. The relative clauses might have been long, but they were clear and detailed.

Bottomline: exploring interesting topics, evoking student experiences, and requiring students to speak in small groups can work even while working on difficult writing tasks. Score another one for communicative teaching methods!

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Housing comes in all shapes and sizes

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Fluency requires practice. Our students also know that speaking English can be both satisfying and stressful. Therefore, we require speaking activities in class – and strongly suggest ways to speak more out of class. Our students want to be fluent, but they often hesitate to practice their speaking skills. Many students do not want to risk making mistakes, being misunderstood, and feeling awkward. Some prefer to silently take notes, and speak as little as possible in their English classes. We have all probably faced this situation.

Yet, as far as I know, there is no magical shortcut to fluency except practice. Our English students must practice speaking – in pairs and in small groups – even if it feels awkward. “Practice makes perfect” goes a popular proverb. Although perfection seems like a dubious ideal, practice certainly makes progress. And our students want to make meaningful progress in their speaking skills and gain greater fluency.

That’s why creating a comfortable class atmosphere remains essential. One effective way to reduce grade anxiety or classroom stress is to clearly emphasize that some activities will focus more on fluency” and other speaking activities will focus more on “accuracy”. For instance, including one casual fluency activity per class helps students simply exchange ideas and engage in low risk, safe communication between themselves.

Speaking exercises can be added across the ESL curriculum. You can often drop a short communicative exercise even in acadenuc writing classes. Fluency, after all, requires practice. Casual, ungraded classroom conversations also increase student confidence and create a more lively ESL classroom.

Asking students to reflect and share their experiences as an English learner can often lead to fascinating conversations and compelling essays. Here’s a favorite fluency activity called Learning English that I’ve used with both intermediate and advanced ESL students in both oral skills and writing classes. When I taught advanced ESL at Santa Monica Community College, I often used Learning English to introduce their first essay. Students often responded with enthusiasm. Perhaps your English students will too.

Ask more. Know more. Share more.
Create Compelling Conversations.

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