Grammar glee? Yeah, I’ve got it. My students? Not so much. So when I overhear adult ESL students telling each other how much fun my grammar class is and how much they learn, YES, my head fills the doorway. The secret? Just play a grammar game! Our adult ESL students want opportunities to talk, especially …
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Future Progressive: Elevating Adult ESL Students’ Communication Skills
The future progressive is the future! Are you ready to take your adult ESL students’ communication skills to the next level? Teaching the future progressive tense, a crucial aspect of the English language, can help them do just that. The future progressive tense is used to describe actions that will be in progress at a …
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Teaching The Present Progressive Tense: Because the Past Tense is So Yesterday
So you’re going to be teaching the present progressive? As native English speakers, it’s easy to take our knowledge of grammar for granted. We may not explicitly know the rules, but we’ve been using the language for so long that it feels natural to us. However, when it comes to teaching grammar to adult ESL …
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Practical Pet-Themed Activities for Adult ESL Classes: Tips and Ideas
Are you ready to add some excitement to your adult ESL classes? Look no further than our furry, feathered, and scaly friends! Incorporating pet-themed activities into your lesson plans is a surefire way to engage your students and make your classes a hit. Not only are pets a common topic of interest for people of …
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One Fun ESL Speaking Game for Adults
Beginner-level adult ESL students LOVE to play games, but their low English proficiency can seem limiting when you’re trying to come up with something engaging but practical, fun but not a time-waster. (Don’t teach beginners? Keep reading because this game is easily adapted for all levels!) Playing the ESL speaking game I have…Who has…? is a …
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Two Engaging Multi-Level Vocabulary Games for Adult ESL
Adults love vocabulary games as much as children do, but unlike kids, they tend to want fun and educational games. Adult students have limited time, and they’re usually paying for their English classes. They prefer games that give them English practice, but they’re not likely to object to prizes! ^_^ Still, you might run into …
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Brushing Up on Dental English: How Role Plays Can Help Adult ESL Students Prepare for a Trip to the Dentist
A trip to the dentist can be a nerve-wracking experience when you speak the same language. Now imagine sitting in that chair when you don’t speak the same language as the dentist! (Been there, done that; not fun!) Not only do you have to worry about the potential pain or discomfort that may come with …
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Everyday Role Plays Perfectly Tailored for Adult ESL: 3 Easy Steps
Everyday role plays are essential for our adult ESL students. Teaching adult ESL, especially in an Intensive English Program, means teaching more than the four language domains and more than the culture of the country your students are studying English in. It means teaching them how to do life tasks such as getting an apartment, …
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3 Practical & Fun Telling Time Activities for Adult ESL
Is telling time really that important? With a clock on every phone, why do our adult ESL students need to know how to ask for the time? Even if we HAVE a phone on us, sometimes we need to ask what time an event begins or ends. Sometimes Google DOESN’T have the answer, and navigating …
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The 5 Best TH-Pronunciation Activities for Adult ESL
Why do we need TH-pronunciation activities? The voiced TH and the unvoiced TH are two of the most difficult sounds for many of our adult ESL students because these rare phonemes simply don’t exist in many languages. /θ/ is even rarer than /ð/. Imagine going your entire life never making a specific sound and then …
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Improve English Pronunciation with 4 Strategies to Overcome Strong Accents
Your highly-motivated student is eager to talk and capitalizes on every opportunity to speak. The problem? You can’t understand what she says. Bigger problem? Neither can the rest of your class! Time to tackle English pronunciation challenges! The Otherwise Perfect Student No One Understood “Shimin,” a 19-year-old, started in our lowest level class, but it …
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Create Listening Labyrinths Using Minimal Pairs: a Step by Step Guide
I love to create listening labyrinths because they make fantastic informal assessments of students’ ability to discern the difference between two sounds. The icing? Students love them! Let’s say you have students who often use a short i sound when they need a long e sound (and vice versa). Here’s what you do: Here’s how to create listening labyrinths. Before …
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