Teach English in Yunjiakou Zhen Zhengfu - Xining Shi

ESA METHODOLOGY FOR TEACHING This methodology is accredited to Jeremy Harmer, from his Practice of English language teaching book. This is very popular methodology that most teacher use when teaching students foreign language. ESA is very important when it comes to teaching, because it keeps student interested, motivated and eager to learn more. ESA stands for engage, study, and activate. Jeremy Harmer came up with tree type of lesson and used those tree stages engage, study, activate different ways on his book. Those lessons are Straight arrow lesson, Boomerang lesson and Patch work lesson. We are going to look at the purpose of those tree stages first, and understand how to use them on tree different lesson. Let’s understand about those tree stages, engage, study, and activate first. ENGAGE PHASE: Purpose of this stage is, get the students talking and thinking in English. . For example, show them a picture and let them talk about that picture to have them general talk about picture. Ask them what they like, what they don’t like or what they think about picture. Other examples could be music, magazine, weather, story, TV events, etc. Next stage is study stage. Let’s understand about study stage. STUDY PHASE: This stage is focus on language learning. New information or a revision of previously learned information can be included. The teacher can use variety of styles to present to information focusing on grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. This stage has a two parts. First part is, Elicit to gain information from students to get teaching point. For example, Board work. Second part is asking targeted specific questions about the teaching point. These questions will tell us students understanding of the material. For example, matching exercise could be good. Write some fruit name and draw picture of fruits, and have them match the name and pictures. Last stage is Activate. Let’s understand about activate stage. ACTIVATE PHASE: Purpose of activate activity is to put teaching material into some form of realistic context. Use and practice of the language from the study phase. Exercises and activities are designed for student to use English in communication. For example, survey could be used. They go around and ask the others questions. Another example could be role-play. Students take a role of Dr. and other could be a nurses, or teacher and student to generate a set of language to use for this particular teaching. Jeremy Harmer uses these different phases with tree kind of lesson in different order. Those lessons are straight arrow ESA lesson, boomerang ESA lesson and patch work ESA lesson. Let’s understand about straight arrow ESA lesson first. STRAIGHT ARROW ESA LESSON: It is basically build/prepare language before asking students to use it in their own communication. Lesson can be presented in the ESA order, using the straight arrow method. An example of this kind of activity could include: Engage: Teacher and students look at a picture of football event. Students will explain what the activity, which is participating, what the rules or goals seem to be, etc. Study: The Teacher introduces football event vocabulary for the students, demonstrating correct pronunciation. Activate: Student write a story about the picture, including dialogue between the sport participants. Different examples could be used as weather, sports, music, TV events, Picture, story, games, etc. for ESA lessons. This procedure may work at low levels, but it might be boring for higher level students. J. Harmer came up with boomerang ESA lesson and patch work ESA lesson to have options for higher level students. Let’s look at how boomerang ESA lesson works now. BOOMERANG ESA LESSON: Main idea is, experiment/ use own language resources first, and then learn how to build on and improve that, and then reapply with either same or relatively similar activity. Order of boomerang ESA lesson is, engage-activate-study-activate Engage: Student and teacher watch TV interview and whole class talks general about interview and how they feel about. Activate: Students role-play for the class. One of the students is interview, and one as interviewee. Each pair role play for the class, with teacher taking notes about any mistake and grammar used. Study: Teacher talks about common mistakes from the interview and ask the student write a sentence correctly. Teach student correct grammar and vocabulary from the mistakes. Activate: Student will perform another practice interview, and use correct grammar and vocabulary they have learned. Boomerang ESA lesson designed for to use engage and then directly go to activate activity to get students more interactive and learn from each other. Let’s look at patch work lesson to see how that works. PATCH WORK ESA LESSON: Patch work lesson don’t have particular order. We can say as Engage ( ) A. It can be anything between. Let’s look at one of the typical Patch work lesson to see how it’s really working. Engage: Extract of Elvis Presley songs. Ask student what they know about Elvis Presley and what do you like to know. Have them general discussion about Elvis and his song. Study: Pre teach useful languages about his life and Graceland, etc. Check their understanding. Engage-2: Read the full text for comprehension. Study-2: Comprehension questions Activate-1: Write a short biography on board for Elvis. Study-3: Cover common errors from activate one. Activate-2: Get students in pairs. Have them write a biography without mentioning the name of the person. Have them read to class the biography they wrote. Ask class to guess that person. In conclusion Straight arrow lesson is most common lesson using engage, study and activate phase in order, and it’s very good for low level students. Boomerang lesson and patch work lesson good for higher level students. They can be used many different ways and in different order. , it’s very important to learn this language teaching ESA methodology for teachers. Teacher will have benefit learning this methodology. They will be equip, productive and effective teacher. Students will have benefit learning language fun and productive way.