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:
4 Fun Simple Past Activities for Adult ESL
You’ll want to try these four fun simple past activities with your adult ESL students! Whether your students are just now dipping their toes into…
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…
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…
The Past Perfect Tense: A Pain in the Past, but a Necessity for the Present
Some adult ESL teachers might be wondering, “Why do I need to teach the past perfect tense? Can’t I just stick to the simple past…
Conditionals Worksheets: 6 Quick Ways to Make Them FUN!
I was scrolling through a teacher Facebook group the other day, and someone had posted a photo of their student’s answers in a conditionals grammar…
Getting Adult ESL Students to Talk About the Environment
The environment is everywhere in the news. Microplastics in our water. Fast fashion waste filling landfills. Wildfires and extreme weather events. Rising sea levels. Your…
Winter Activities for Adult ESL Students: Why You Need In-Class Snow Days
Winter happens whether we acknowledge it in our classrooms or not. And sure, we could pretend it doesn’t exist because we’ve got Chapter 7 of…
How to Teach Coordinating Conjunctions to Adult ESL Students (Discovery Lesson Method)
Adult ESL students love “and.” They use it to connect everything. Every. Single. Thing. And while they’re technically communicating, reading what they write (or listening…
Are Connectives the Missing Links in Your Adult ESL Writing Classes?
You’ve read this paragraph three times. You’re still lost. The student who wrote it is articulate in class discussions. She participates, she gets the grammar,…
The Emergency Sub Plan for When You’re Too Sick to Think…That Students Love
Picture this: You wake up with your throat on fire, your head pounding, and the kind of fever that makes you question whether you’re still…
Task Cards: Why Aren’t More Adult ESL Teachers Using These?
Gestures: The Secret Language You’ve Been Missing
I’d been teaching Saudi students for almost a YEAR when I finally figured out that they’d been trying to tell me something crucial with a…
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…
Teaching Money and Budgets: The Topic Your Students REALLY Care About
Money affects everyone. How else will we pay our rent, buy our groceries, pay our bills, and pay off our debt? Money affects retirement savings…
Put Cooking Verbs on the Menu in Your Adult ESL Classes
I once had a low-beginner student from Saudi Arabia who lived with a homestay family. He wanted to cook with them—both to share dishes from…
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