Teaching adult ESL with no materials or time?
Here’s what works when nothing else does.
Most recent posts:
- Your Adult ESL Students Have Gaps and That’s Completely Normal
I need to tell you something that might make your day easier. You know those gaps your students have? The ones where you’re teaching present perfect and suddenly realize half the class is shaky on simple past? Or you’re doing passive voice and someone raises their hand to ask what a past participle is? Those… Read more: Your Adult ESL Students Have Gaps and That’s Completely Normal - I Found My Old Gratitude Post…And Then I Found What Came After
I’ve been going through all my blog posts, fixing where images exploded into huge sizes and formatting got weird after I changed my site theme when I found this “gem” from September 2017: “3 Ideas for Inspiring Shared Gratitude in the Classroom.” I cringed while reading it. Not because it’s badly written or because the… Read more: I Found My Old Gratitude Post…And Then I Found What Came After
Older Posts:
Participial Adjectives: 2 Tests to See if They’re Sneaky Verbs
“Teacher, I am very exhausting today.” I looked up from my desk to see Maria standing there, clearly tired. She meant exhausted, of course. We’d…
4 Strategies for R/L Pronunciation That Don’t Involve Parroting
“And then,” my professor paused dramatically, “the Muslims were playing in the streets! Everywhere! They were playing in the streets all over the country!” Everyone…
My Bad! Teaching Apologies: Adult ESL Apologizing Role-Play Activities for Real-Life Situations
Apologies can be uncomfortable, right? Different cultures apologize differently. Some are known for apologizing for everything (looking at you, Canada). Some barely apologize at all….
The Task Card Library: Your Secret Weapon for Success in Your Adult ESL Classroom
I once taught multiple classes at the same time with students at completely different levels in each class. It was a bit of a nightmare….
Teaching The Present Progressive Tense: Because the Past Tense is So Yesterday
So you’re teaching present progressive? As a native English speaker (if that’s what you are), you’ve been using this tense your entire life without thinking…
6 Fun Simple Present Activities for Adult ESL
Why is the simple present so danged hard? For reasons I still can’t fully explain, my students almost always struggled more with the simple present…
2 Vocabulary Games That’ll Get Even Your Skeptical Adult ESL Students Excited
The first time I announced we were playing SWOOSH!, my student Saleh crossed his arms and said, “I didn’t pay for this class to play…
How to Stop Homework from Devouring Your Time
Stacks of homework papers used to sit on my table, glaring at me. Menacing little goblins. A good teacher would have graded all that already,…
All About Me Worksheets: Why Starting Slow Gets You Further Faster in Adult ESL
I’ll never forget walking into my first intensive English program and watching experienced teachers hit the ground running on Day 1. Syllabus distributed, attendance checked,…
Three Grammar Games Guaranteed to Get Them Speaking
I’m standing outside my classroom door, pretending to check my phone while I eavesdrop on my adult ESL students, and I hear Subin telling Ahmed,…
6 Exciting Subject-Verb Agreement Games & Activities for Adult ESL
Subject-verb agreement has a reputation for being dry, tedious, and the grammatical equivalent of watching paint dry. And if we’re being real, that reputation is…
Short I and Long E Sounds: 4 Engaging Activities for Adult ESL Pronunciation
Look, we all know why we teach Short I and Long E sounds. Nobody wants their students accidentally talking about going to the “b*tch” when…
3 Ideas for Inspiring Shared Gratitude in the Classroom
Have you ever worked at a place where people had genuine (not coffee-induced) smiles in the mornings? Where people asked about your weekend and listened instead of…
Linguistic Investigations: Teaching Students to Teach Themselves
I’ll never forget watching “Layla” lean over a pile of sentence cards, using her finger to separate them and making that little clicking noise in…
Why Your Adult ESL Students Need Reflective Writing
I don’t remember why I asked the question, but I’d written it on the board: “What’s the most terrible sound you’ve ever heard?” Amara raised…
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