STUDY PLAN

How to Teach English For Different Learning Styles

You come into class to teach a lesson on the simple present tense, or maybe it’s a vocabulary lesson or conversation practice. You follow your textbook and give great examples to illustrate your points and have plenty of practice worksheets – but no matter what you do there are always two or three students who just don’t get it. What is going wrong? Why aren’t you getting through? The answer may well lie in your students’ learning styles.

Learning styles have been studied for decades and there are several models that have been proposed by various researchers. While the finer distinctions are still debated, most authorities in the field generally agree upon four basic learning styles: auditory learners, visual learners, kinesthetic learners, and tactile learners. There is a great deal of overlap between the kinesthetic and tactile learning styles, and they will be treated together here.

As a teacher, what do learning styles mean for you? First of all, you need to find your main teaching style. Whether you lecture or do role-plays or worksheets, you need to figure out your own style so that you can supplement it to fit your students’ learning styles. Of course, in order to supplement you need materials and activities. You need flexibility and ideally you want to add some fun. That is where English games come in. The variety of games, as well as their integration of different ways of learning makes them the perfect supplements for you your usual teaching style.

Auditory Learners

Students who get a lot out of lectures, verbal explanations, tapes and oral instruction are generally classed as auditory learners. Language games for this type of learner are mainly listening based. They include games that involve repetition, dictation, and listening for clues.

Recitation games – These games are any games that involve students repeating language they have had demonstrated or written down for them. Chinese Whispers, Jazz Chants, and Karaoke Night are good examples of these kinds of games. Karaoke Night is an especially good game in Japan, where most students will be used to the idea of singing for workmates. It’s not unusual to have a student ask you for help with preparing a song in English for a business party.

If you are you teach adults who are more conservative, use a variation of Jazz Chants with a short rhythmic dialog and a metronome, or hand clapping, and emphasize the fluency practice. You might also teach a lesson on the history of jazz in the United States. That kind of lesson works very well in classes where students are studying English as a hobby, or for travel.

Listening games – EFL Students studying English in their own country often express concern that they can understand their teacher but not other native speakers. In the language classroom you can practice listening by using tapes or videos with short dialogs for listening games like Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt, which involves trying to locate the necessary vocabulary words on multiple tapes at different listening stations.

There are also Cloze Passages where the students listen to a prepared tape while reading a transcription and filling in any blanks with words they have just heard, and Jigsaw Listening. Jigsaw listening is also an excellent team building game, as the teams send representatives to different listening stations, and then try to reconstruct the story when all the listeners have returned to the team. These kinds of games also help students learn how to make use of TV and radio broadcasts in English to practice on their own.

Quiz and story building games – Quiz games like Jeopardy, grammar knockout type games and listening memory games are great for auditory learners of any level, since you can go from basic questions like spelling and definitions, to more challenging ones like asking for a word to be used in a sentence, explanation of grammar rules, or cultural trivia.

Another set of games to teach auditory learners are story and sentence building games like Madlibs, either the store bought variety, or homemade, where the students fill in words to make funny and nonsensical stories. These types of games require excellent listening skills as the student keeps track of what will be required in the next turn, plus they usually end with a verbal recap of the finished story or sentence allowing students to check their understanding.

All these games are included in the English Language Games Digital Book for adults, a gold mine of games and activities for teens and adults!

Visual Learners

Visual learners prefer to read silently and make good use of any illustrations that go with the text. They will generally prefer you to teach with written instructions and will benefit from you acting out situations, watching a demonstration or presenting scenarios in videos. If you have a student who seems to retain what they read better than what they hear then that student is a perfect example of someone who prefers visual learning. There are many readily available language games that work with this kind of student, as well as helping non-visual learners make the most of visual cues that can help them with learning and using English.

Board games – There are plenty of commercial board games that can be used in the classroom, but you can also make your own. “Folder games” involve making a game board, often based on commercial boards, and using them to practice grammar, vocabulary, phonics, and spelling. The boards can be laminated onto a manila folder and then the pieces and cards needed for the game stuck in a baggie stapled to the inside. Grammatical Chutes and Ladders, Parts of Speech Path Finding (based on the Candy Land Board), and A Day in the Life (based on the game Life) where students participate in mini-role-plays generated by the roll of the die and scenario cards are all fun to play. The boards should not be decorated in a childish way, since that will turn off your adult students, but they can still be colorful.

Picture games – These games include anything played with pictures as their main starting point. Playing games with picture flashcards, or adapting Jeopardy to use picture prompts is one example. Another one that is a lot of fun with advanced students is picture captioning or comic strip re-writes. If you use comics from different countries, you can get into some very sophisticated discussions about what constitutes humor in different countries. Many students get to a certain level of advanced English, and then plateau. One reason for this is that they have a difficult time taking their English outside of academic or basic survival situations. Studying humor through these visual games can help to bridge that gap.

Reading games – Reading is an essential skill for all students and will work especially well with visual learners. Language games like Reading Treasure Hunts with color-coded pencils, where the students look for particular parts of speech or vocabulary, teaches skimming as well as reviewing grammar and/or vocabulary. Ten Important Sentences with Watermelon, where teams send a representative to put sentences in order, helps with summarizing, working under pressure, and team building. This game has the added bonus of fitting tactile learners as well.

All these games are included in the English Language Games Digital Book for adults with 175 games and activities with printable appendix of ready-made accessories!

Tactile and Kinesthetic Learners

Tactile and Kinesthetic learners are often the students who just don’t get what you’re trying to teach in a traditional lecture or worksheet based lesson. Kinesthetic learners take in information best when they use their whole bodies to complete practice exercises. Tactile learners are also physical learners, but they are more likely to learn things form model building and hands on instruction.

Interestingly, there was a study done in the late 1980s (Reid, 1987) that found the self-reported preference among English Language Learners for language lessons was Tactile/Kinesthetic by a wide margin. This just goes to show how important it is to try and integrate more physical and experiential elements into our English lessons.

What makes a game kinesthetic or tactile? Look for games that involve whole body responses, or have the students touching and moving things around as part of the game activity. Games with these elements are associating physical activity and touch with specific meanings. They can be divided into three broad groups: Touch Games, Spatial Games, and Craft Games.

Touch Games – The most common games involving touch are those based around having real items inside a bag, so that students have to touch the items and then perform certain tasks. These tasks are what differentiate the level of difficulty. The easiest version simply has students identify the objects that they touch in the bag. This is often a vocabulary game. To make it more difficult, the students have to describe what they are feeling, while the rest of the class tries to guess what it is.

Spatial Games – These games involve rearranging items or people and can be both kinesthetic and tactile. They include traditional games like charades and less traditional games, like Population Punctuation, where all but one person in class has a card with words or punctuation on it and the one person who is ‘it’ tries to arrange the people at the front of the class so that the cards make a correctly punctuated sentence using as many people as possible.

Craft Games – Any game where the students have to actually assemble something, like Lego Negotiations where students have to negotiate with other teams for certain pieces to create their Lego creature according to the directions they’ve been given. This can be done with home made tangrams if you don’t have access to Legos. Map drawing is another good example, and it can also combine elements of auditory learning since the teacher will tell the students what to draw on their map.

Variety Brings Success Language games are the single easiest way to address different learning styles in the classroom. By putting students at ease, and stimulating their senses, you create a wealth of learning opportunities. These opportunities aren’t just for learning language, but also for broadening the students’ learning styles to include those that aren’t the first choice.

Will paying attention to learning styles solve all your classroom problems? No, of course not. But using games to diversify your teaching style will allow you to reach more of your students more effectively than ever before. It will cut down on boredom as it increases student interest, and it will give students essential practice in integrating different learning styles into their own style. Students will be doing more than just expanding their English when they play games. They will be expanding their minds.

 

1. Choose 5 to 8 idioms that may be easily grouped

   Most idioms fall into simple categories, like idioms with animals or parts of the body. Choose 5 to 8 from any category, for example idioms with time. If you choose more than 10, you’ll only succeed in overwhelming your students, and they won’t remember any of the idioms they saw in class. So, to teach idioms with time, you may teach the 8 idioms found in this worksheet called Time Flies When You’re Having Fun. Before presenting the idioms, make sure students understand that they are usually used in spoken English, and rarely in written form, with some exceptions (they are widely used on the Internet, in blogs, ezine articles, etc…but students must understand that their use is informal).

2. 2

   Introduce idioms in context, never in isolation

   Some ESL teachers simply go over a list of English idioms and their definitions or explanations. However, to ensure that students not only understand them, but also learn to use them, present idiom examples in context, for example, in simple conversations where the meaning of the idiom is clear. To introduce the idiomto give someone a hard time, present a conversation like this one:

    

   – Juan: Hey Sarah, you look sad. What’s up?
   – Sarah: Well, I didn’t play very well today during volleyball practice, and my teammates were not very understanding. They said I was clumsy and had to focus more on the game. They said a 5-year old girl played better than me.
   – Juan: Oh! I’m so sorry they gave you such a hard time.

   Ask students to guess or figure out the meaning of the idiom. Correct as necessary. Ask them to provide other examples of what it means to give someone a hard time. Then, move on to another conversation for another idiom.

3. 3

   Students create conversations using idioms

   Remember that the goal is to get students to not only understand idioms, but also learn how to use them effectively. Divide the class into pairs. Each pair of students gets one or two idioms to work with. They must write a conversation and use this idiom in it. Walk around the classroom to assist students and check for accuracy.

4. 4

   Students act out their conversations

   Each pair stands before their classmates and acts out the conversation they wrote. This way they not only practice using the idiom phrases, they hear other examples from classmates, other ways in which these idioms may be included in conversation.

5. 5

   Practice with games and activities

   The worksheet for Time Flies When You’re Having Fun provides a matching game and a gap-filling exercise. There are plenty more worksheets like these at BusyTeacher.org’s Idioms worksheets section.

6. 6

   Use real life, authentic material

   Show students how some of these idioms are used in the media, in newspaper and magazine articles, and in songs, cartoons, videos, advertisements, etc…Thanks to the Internet, all you have to do is Google an idiom, and you’ll find plenty of sources! If you Google, “gave him a hard time”, you’ll run across a Daily Mail article that states voters gave a British politician a hard time. You don’t have to read the entire article, just the headline and the basics will do for students to see how this idiom is used in a newspaper headline.

    

   How to Teach English Overseas and Travel the World

    

   Everyone knows somebody that has taught English in a foreign country. Teaching English overseas is a fantastic way to see the world, gain valuable work experience and immerse yourself in new cultures.

   It’s one thing to visit a foreign country, snap a few photos of its landmarks, drink its local beer, sample its cuisine and head back to airport. It’s a completely different experience to actually live abroad, riding local transit to work every day and having daily routines.

   So how does one go about teaching English overseas? To answer this question, we turn to fellow travel blogger Nomadic Samuel to learn about his experiences teaching English abroad.

   Teaching English Overseas – 5 Questions with Nomadic Samuel

    

   Before we get started, please introduce yourself and tell us about your recent travels

   My name is Samuel Jeffery. I’m from Canada but I’ve been living overseas now for six consecutive years. I have a travel blog that documents all of my adventures and misfortunes. I’ve recently completed a two year backpacking trip across South America and Asia. I’m now based in Asia, once again, working on several different projects.

   Oh, I almost forgot – I’m a HUGE Chicago Blackhawks fan! 
   **Cam here – we’ll try not to hold that against Samuel, but no promises!**

   

   Q1 – You have taught English as a way to help fund your travels around the world. What do you like most about teaching English overseas?

    

   I love being able to stay in one particular place and really get to experience what it is like to be a part of the local community. I often forge friendships and relationships with locals which affords the opportunity to have highly personal encounters. For example, when I visit one of my favourite restaurants, I can interact with the server by name and they’ll often remember some of my favourite dishes.

   When I’m backpacking, I’m constantly stimulated by moving on from one place to the next, but I sometimes feel as though I’m not getting to experience a place fully before I move on.

   I’ve come to discover that I really enjoy teaching and it allows me to save up quickly for my next adventure. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to work and live abroad and I never take that for granted.

   

   Q2 – Can you walk us through a “day in the life of an English teacher”. Share the good, the bad, and the ugly!

    

   A typical day can vary wildly depending on where you are teaching and what level. I’ve had experience teaching kindergarten all the way up to mature adults.

   A typical day teaching adults would involve having to wake-up very early in the morning to teach classes before that adult goes to work, with classes continuing until midday. The afternoon is free with several more hours of classes in the evening.

   When I’ve taught children in a public school the hours are usually the standard nine to five schedule. I’ve found that working in a government position allows me to experience more reasonable working conditions with less teaching hours. I wrote an article about the pros and cons of teaching different ESL age levels.

   I’ve been most happy in situations where the students are well behaved and eager to learn, which is a wonderful experience. On the other hand, when you have a challenging and unmotivated class it can be torturous.

   Personally, I’ve found the majority of my students and classes to be excellent. When I’ve had problems it’s mostly been with administration and other co-teachers. During my first year in Korea, my contract was not honoured properly and I wasn’t assertive enough, at the time, to properly deal with it. Now I’m far more selective about where I work and when something regarding my contract or working conditions is not being met I deal with it immediately.

   

   Q3 – If our readers are interested in teaching English overseas, where should they start? Are there education or work experience requirements?

    

   If you’re interested in teaching overseas, I would suggest you start researching where you like to go. In certain countries one can teach without a degree, and in others it’s a requirement.

   Application procedures and Visa processes are quite different depending on the country. Generally speaking, taking the time to do a bit of volunteer work related to teaching ESL and investing in a TESOL or TEFL certificate are going to make one more desirable to companies and institutes overseas. A TESOL/TEFL certificate, in many cases, actually qualifies one to earn a higher monthly salary, which is well worth the tuition.

   The website most recognized with ESL teachers is called Dave’s ESL Cafe or simply ESL Cafe. It has numerous forums that cover everything from expat activities to finding jobs all over the world. I’ve personally used it to secure teaching positions overseas.

   Another option is to go with a recruiting service, such as Footprints, that helps place teachers all over the world taking care of the small details. Using a recruiter is a good way to find your first job, but for those with experience it’s best to try and find jobs directly from an oline job board or by using personal connections.

   For anybody seriously considering teaching English overseas, I would say – go for it! It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.

   
   Q4 – Do teaching assignments dictate where you will travel next, or do you look for teaching opportunities after you have arrived in a new country?

    

   I’ve always taught in South Korea, where securing a Visa is bit of a cumbersome process. I’m not only limited to a certain school, I’m also not able to change jobs freely without obtaining a release letter, which is typically not granted.

   Moreover, the entire Visa process is completed externally. Hypothetically, if I was unhappy with my current position I’d have to leave the country and return with a new Visa for another specific job. However, the perks of teaching in Korea include big ticket items that many other countries do not offer, such as free housing and return airfare.

   For those looking at flexibility and a decent salary, Taiwan is another great option. Not only can you arrive without a working visa, you’re also able to change jobs. Although airfare and housing are not typically provided.

   

   Q5 – Can you share some tips that might help a first time English teacher? What should a newbie look for when researching teaching assignments?

    

   My number one suggestion for someone interested in teaching English overseas is to be very flexible and patient. It can be intimidating getting up and leading a class for the very first time and/or dealing with cultural differences in the classroom. But if you are confident and patient, you’ll become a natural in no time.

   I would also highly recommend obtaining a TESOL or TEFL certificate. You will have an opportunity to plan lessons, learn about culture shock and go through a practicum with real classroom experience. It can make a world of difference if you arrive somewhere new with some experience under your belt.

   I wrote an article entitled 4 tips before signing an ESL contract that offers the following 4 pieces of advice:

   1. Don’t believe everything your recruiter tells you
   2. Confirm your living conditions with photographs
   3. Don’t settle for anything less than what is stated in your contract
   4. Have a back-up plan

   The more preparation and research you do before heading overseas, the less likely you’ll have a bad experience or a dud school. It can be exciting to be offered a position, but accepting your first offer is not to one’s advantage. 
   **That reminds us of our Number One Rule for Travel!

   Working conditions such as overtime, salary, holidays and housing are the most important things to consider. As mentioned previously, I would suggest starting at ESL Cafe to find more regional/country specific information and to search the job boards and put out lots of inquiries. If you’re persistent enough, you’ll find an ideal position.