Teach English in Taizi Zhen - Binzhou Shi

As we all know students will be eager to learn and be more active during the class if they are properly motivated and interested in the lesson. There is no better way to motivate and engage students to learn a new lesson than the ESA method. ESA method is very useful for students as well as for teachers. With ESA method teacher can present a lesson to the class in a variety of interesting ways. ESA method has 3 stages: Engage, Study and Activate. ENGAGE Engage is the first stage and in this stage, teacher can use different kinds of methods to inspire and engage students to learn new lessons. If students think the lesson is boring, or teacher just started lesson without engaging them students would find this kind of learning wrong and they will quickly get bored. Teacher should encourage students to talk and think on English language about the topic, or some of their personal experiences that could fit in the topic. Teacher talk time in this stage should be minimized so that students would be free to talk as much as possible. This could be done with some interesting story, game or even a popular song. Teacher could also use pictures, short movies and ask questions that are associated with the lesson. This stage shouldn't be that long (maybe 20% of class) that is more than enough to engage students and get them ready for the study stage. STUDY After successfully engaged students, teacher go to next study stage. When students are engaged, interested and familiar with the topic, teacher slowly start to present to them new content. This could be done in many ways: text, missing word game, song lyrics, and many other options. Presenting new knowledge is important and it's the key for students to understand new language and content. After quality and interesting presentation comes repeating and going through content few more times. If some students have difficulty to understand this or make mistakes, teacher should correct them and explain to them why they are not right and how to be sure that they won't make that mistake again. Students after this study will have all the needed knowledge for the next stage, where they will confirm and further enhance their knowledge, ACTIVATE The last stage is activate stage. In this stage, teacher gets students talking with new words as much as they can. Students can say something about themselves or things they do every day, but using words they learned in the previous stage. Students talk time in this stage should be maximized, while teacher should only talk at the beginning of the stage to explain the rules if there is some game or activity that suits this stage. Games teacher could use at this stage are discussion, role play or any other game or task that will make students think and talk on English, using as many new words as possible. For teacher this is also good feedback to see if students understood the lesson and if there are some mistakes that need to be corrected TYPES OF ESA LESSON All of those 3 stages of ESA method are equally important and we can't leave any of them out, but it doesn't mean that it always has to be 3 stages. For example, we can have 3 engage stages 1 study stage and 2 activate stages. They don't have to be in the same order as well, we can have E1, A1, E2, S1, E3, A2 ESA LESSON. The only rule is that we start with engage stage and finish with activate stage. There are so many ways we can organize our ESA lesson, but there are 3 main groups we can classify. Straight arrow- is the simplest of all 3 ESA types. It literally follows the ESA pattern. Firstly, teacher engage students, after that, they study and activate through games or activities. This type is simple so it is good for simple and easy lessons it's not suitable for some complex or complicated lessons. Boomerang- could be used for some more complicated lessons. Boomerang lesson would look like this Engage, activate 1, study, activate 2. In the first activate stage,teacher should think about a possible problem that can come up so they could be dealt with in the second activate stage. Patchwork- is the most complex of all 3 ESA types, teacher can rely on this type when a lesson is so complex and teacher know which one of many stages to use. In patchwork type there is plenty of engage, study and activate stages that can improve knowledge of students and can make the lesson easier to learn and understand. The main rule is the same as for ESA method, begin with engage, have as many steps between as you want, and finish with activate stage. CONCLUSION ESA method is good for teachers as much as it is for students and can help both of these 2 groups to complete their goal easier. For teacher, ESA method helps to keep lesson organized, and as well as keeping students concentrated and engaged, especially for new teachers. Esa method makes lesson easier to understand for students, engage stage get them interested and ready to learn, study stage learn them new content on interesting way and activate stage help the practice and fully understand the lesson. ESA method is a win-win method. Reference: Linda Dunsmore. ESA Methodology - What Is It and Why Should You Use It in the Classroom? 31 August 2018 https://www.teflcourse.net/blog/esa-methodology-what-is-it-and-why-should-you-use-it-in-the-classroom-ittt-tefl-blog/ Accessed 21. March 2019.