Teaching ESL beginners is a challenge. At the same time, it is so worth taking it!
If you are an English (ESL) teacher, the following situation may be familiar to you: a new student starts school (possibly half-way through the year), one who has never studied English and now he/she has to learn it FAST. Where do you begin?
Whether you are a classroom teacher or an ESL teacher, you most likely panic (a little:), even if this is not your first time.
Why? Because no matter how much you learned in your ESL courses, the question still remains, how DO you teach a complete ESL beginner, someone who doesn’t know any language that is used as the main means of communication in a particular country/community.
Well, there is a method to this teaching madness and I hope this article will help you pull your thoughts together.
Before you even begin to teach a newcomer
There is some really basic but very important information that you need to gather before you start teaching any new English learner. It will help you determine the focus and give some valuable information.
I have found that asking the following questions allows me to start painting a picture of how teaching can be best approached:
- Has the student studied English at all? If so, for how many years. (It may mean nothing to his/her communicative ability but they may know some grammar, which is already half the battle).
- Did the student attend school in his/her country? Is there any history of interrupted schooling?
- Does the student read and write in his native language?
- What is the student’s native language like? For example, is the alphabet Latin based or symbol-based? Do they write/read left to right or right to left, etc.? What is the sentence structure? How do they form words, etc.?
- What brings the student to you? This is important to know because running away from war can have a different impact on learning a language and culture than relocating from one Western country to another for parents’ jobs.
- Do the parents speak any English? If not, who would be the contact person?
Many of these are answered during the initial interview, but some of them are revealed over time. Reading the situation is best as well as finding the student’s strengths and weaknesses.
Now that you have gathered your preliminary information, the question still remains:
What do you teach an ESL beginners first?
As a teacher, you are faced with SO MUCH that you need to cover and the overwhelm is natural. But let’s take a step back and think for a moment. When you go to another country, it is important for you to be able to survive, isn’t it? Things like asking and stating your name and age, your address, answering where you are from, where is the bathroom, saying how you are feeling (thirsty, hungry, happy, sad) naturally come first.
Therefore, the natural order of teaching a language follows the path of least resistance, so to speak, i.e. personal information and social interaction first, serious academics a bit later, when the student has their name, address, colors, numbers, and body parts down as well as can generally orientate himself/herself in this new universe they have found themselves in.
I have created a short list of what ESL beginners/newcomers need to know first when starting out on their language learning journey. Here are 7 topics and each of them is broken down into suggested further sections that can be covered in as little as a week or in as long as it takes.
Click HERE to download this free ESL newcomer teaching checklist.
Personal and family information
name, address, phone numbers, age
spelling of the first and last names
answering questions about grade, age, school, teacher and where they are from
family members (words like brother, sister, mother, father, cousin, sibling, aunt, uncle, etc.)
Social interaction
hellos and goodbyes
asking and thanking
introductions to friends and non-friends; handshaking, kissing, etc.
yes/no questions and answers
asking for help
expressing emotions
Classroom and school
items such as books, desks, whiteboard, pens, computer, etcs
Class directions (point to, print, copy, turn the page, etc.)
People who work at school
Places at school (library, cafeteria, gym)
Class procedures (announcements, pledge of allegiance)
School subjects
Time, calendar and weather
days of the week, months, seasons
say and write the date
yesterday, today, tomorrow
what is the difference between a weekday and weekend
telling time as well as concepts such as beginning and end, opening and closing, etc.
Body parts
names of body parts
verbs that are related to the movement and body functions (run, walk, eat, taste, etc.)
clothing can be included here as well
Food
groups of food (grains, dairy, fruits and vegetables, fats and proteins)
foods in each of the above-mentioned groups (no need to teach EVERYTHING because there is just so so much. Food that is common in the students’ country and in their new country are perfectly fine)
breakfast, lunch, dinner and what is typically consumed.
table manners, restaurant manners
Home
rooms in the house
furniture
kitchen tools and appliances
Most likely, you will use numbers, colors, and shapes teaching all of the above concepts. For example, in saying one’s address (123 Main St.), or describing a house (My house is green), or talking about the schedule, days of the week, and places at school or in the home.
Depending on the student’s native language background and literacy in it, the alphabet can be taught right away as well. For Latin-based languages, ensuring that the student knows that the letters and letter-sounds in English are two different things is important. For non-Latin based languages like Arabic, Mandarin or Korean it is important to go over the alphabet carefully and spend a bit more time on it, including focusing on pronunciation.
Finally, teaching a language is not a linear process. In the beginning, it does not happen so that you are teaching just the name of an item. You are giving all the necessary words and tools of the language to the student so they are able to express themselves. So even if you decide that today is going to be a day for personal information, you will still include numbers and body parts and classroom objects and possibly even emotions. What I found works well is to have an overarching “theme” if you will and then go from there.
Hope this article helps you put English learning and teaching in perspective and turn at least a little bit of the overwhelm into a positive experience.
I have also created a printable checklist with the above information so you can print it and readily access it as needed. Just click the image below, enter your information and I will email it to you right away.
If you are ready to have a more consistent plan on what to teach your ESL beginners/newcomers, and activities to implement in your classroom, check out The ESL Teaching Roadmap membership– my three step approach to teaching ESL newcomers and mixed-level classes in middle and high school => The ESL Teaching Roadmap
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