Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Baimao Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Linyi Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
When teaching a lesson the students should be involved as much as possible. An extremely useful technique to encourage students to respond during a lesson is elicitation or asking thought-provoking questions. Elicitation gives students more time to talk and reduces teacher talk time. This is an important part of the ESA or Engage, study, and activate method of teaching English as a second language. Asking thought provoking questions with relevance to the student will give the student the confidence and self esteem to be an active learner. There are many examples of elicitation techniques. The first example is Real objects (Realia). The teacher shows a real object to the class and asks what it is. For example, the students could be shown pictures of different animals in the zoo and respond to those pictures by being asked what the a nimals have in common. A second example would be Flashcards/pictures. They can be used to prompt students to think of more obscure words. The Flashcards/pictures can be commercially produced materials to pictures from the internet. A third elicitation involves giving the answer to a question on the board and ask for the question. Fourth are lists. With lists you can elicit any vocabulary word. The students can help create a list and then write the words they give you on the board. Fifth includes Follow-on activities. The teacher asks a targeted question prompting for a particular type of answer.Then the teacher follows with a second question. An example would be "What is your favorite animal?" "and follow up with "What about this animal do you like?" The sixth elicitation technique to be mentioned is concept description. In concept description three circles are drawn: small, medium, and large. These are used to describe objects in relation to each other. An example would be to give the students verbs or adjectives to be described this way.The seventh and final technique to be described is to give a simple definition of a word. One thing to remember is that definitions should be prepared in advance and not on the spot. To conclude, in my opinion, elicitation is an important learning technique. It helps the student to be involved as much as possible. Elicitation is asking thought provoking questions. It encourages students to respond and participate during a lesson. Students have more talking time and in turn teacher talking time is reduced.That is the goal of the ESA or Engage, study, and Activate method of teaching English to non native speakers.The examples of elicitation techniques are: Real objects (realia), flashcards/pictures, giving the answer to a question on the board and let the students find the question, lists, follow-on activities, concept description, and finally giving the definitions to words. When you do give the definitions make sure you plan ahead and do not wait until the last minute. As teachers we want students to feel comfortable to participate in the lesson we are teaching. Elicitation is an extremely important learning technique that can be used to achieve this goal. Elicitation builds confidence and self esteem questions can be geared toward the learners experiences.
