How to inspire English Language Students!

How to Inspire Your English Language Students - Awesome Lesson Plan Ideas

Lesson planning is one of the most important things you can do as an EFL teacher.

There have been plenty of horror stories from teachers who took a teaching job abroad, with no formal training and little in the way of support from their new school. They were thrown in the deep end; expected to teach a classroom of students without a curriculum, never mind a textbook.

Those teachers quickly learned that they would have to start planning lessons. Fortunately, there are lots of resources on the internet to help. This is one of them.

Here are some tips for creating awesome lesson plans that will engage, inspire and motivate your students. And make your job a joy! These tips can be tailored to your students’ level too.

Useful Lesson Planning Resources

The wonderful thing about the TEFL community is how generous they are with their knowledge and experience. You don’t have to go it alone and create incredible lessons entirely from scratch. There are lots of wonderful websites providing free templates and plans that you can tailor to your classes. Here are some of our favourites:

·       English is a Piece of Cake

·       English Banana

·       Fluent U

·       TEFLicious

Outline the Goal of Your Lesson

Before you dive into planning it’s important to settle on a few goals for your lesson. Here are some things to consider:

·       Will you be teaching absolute beginners or students with some prior experience of the language? Make sure your lesson is appropriate for their level of understanding.

·       Is the focus on writing, reading or speaking? A combination of all three? Does the school have a preference?

·       Are you teaching alone or will you have support from a co-teacher (who can translate the rules of games etc)?

·       How will you measure progress?

·       And are you prepared for students who learn at different speeds?

Two Ways to Spice up Dull Lessons

Keep the students entertained and coming back for more.

Fun and Games

Language games are a fantastic learning tool for students of all ages. They’ll add an element of fun to your lesson that students will appreciate.  

Games can serve as a great warm-up at the beginning of class or a nice way to sum up what you learnt at the end. You can use games to practice conversation, test vocabulary and grammar, improve reading comprehension and so much more.

There are hundreds of games you could play, but this list is a great starting point (and other teachers are sharing their favourite games in the comments.

Interactive Media

We live in a digital age. Pen and paper are no longer enough to sustain the interest of students. Incorporating video games, smartphones/tablets, music and film into your lessons can be a great way to combat this.

This is called Computer Assisted Language Learning. It may not be feasible to create an entirely interactive classroom (it can be costly or the school may prohibit it) but it’s certainly possible to introduce at least some interactive elements.

Video games allow students to learn while they play. Apps offer a multitude of ways to learn. Online visual dictionaries help students remember words. The list goes on...

We hope our advice has provided some food for thought and inspiration for future lesson plans. Have any tips of your own? Share in the comments below!

This is a guest post by Mark at icaltefl.com. He asked me if he could write this article about how to inspire English Language students which I thought would be a great idea for my blog! There are lots of great tips in this article! I hope you like it as much as I do :)