The Single Most Important Thing you can do to Help your ESL/EFL Students

Before I actually learned Spanish I spent a couple of years in high school learning about Spanish. I was required to commit grammar rules and vocabulary to memory; both were forgotten as soon as the test was over. I read passages of text out loud with the fear of mispronouncing a word hanging over my tongue like a cleaver. Somehow I managed to stumble through them gracelessly without actually having my tongue split in two, but I never learned to love the language.

Years later I attended an intensive program in Mexico for several months over the summer to get over my fear of not being able to learn Spanish. I then enrolled in the second level of Spanish at my university and I started to develop the one thing I never developed in high school, a love for all the things that had been created in Spanish. I soon began buying CDs of artists I had been exposed to in my classes; I made my monolingual father sit through Mexican soap operas and I began reading books by Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez in their original language. I began spending many hours enjoying Spanish that my teachers never assigned or graded; I did it because I wanted to, because I was fascinated by the magical things Spanish was able to show me about the world and I learned fast.
I have seen the same things happen with my most successful ESL and EFL students; something in English catches their attention and it becomes a part of their lives. Sometimes it is something I have shown them but most of the time it is something they have found themselves that grabs them and won’t let go.

Students who actively listen to music in the language they are learning, watch movies, play video games, socialize and read do better than those who do not. As a teacher, there are many things I can do to spark and foster an interest in all things English.

1. Encourage students to do what they already do in their first language but do it in English.

First, I ask students to do things they already do in their first languages, in English. For example, if they love a certain kind of music I either ask them to find something similar in English or I show them something I know about that is similar. Then I ask them to pick out lyrics they like and vocabulary they don’t know to share with their classmates. This is different for each person so instead of having everyone in class do the same thing, everyone is exploring something different. This in and of itself starts to make the class more diverse and engaging.

In order to better help my students (and because it is fun) I try to expose myself to all kinds of different things I could show to my students.  I watch short animated films, read short stories and poems, listen to different kinds of music, read lots of books, and generally keep my eyes and ears open for cool, interesting things in English.  For some inspiration on where to get started, check out the following resources:

• Beyond YouTube: 11 Places to find Great Videos for your ESL/EFL Classes
• 5 Ways to Use Music in Your English Class Even if You Can't Sing
• 27 Short Stories you can Read for Free Right Now
• 100 Most Popular Poems
• Level Up Your English Skills: 14 Great Video Games that can Teach you the Language

2. Get Your Students Out of their Comfort Zones and Speaking English with Actual Human Beings who are not you.

I require them to step out of their comfort zones and seek out opportunities to use the language they are learning. One of the most common complaints I have heard is that students study English for years but still can’t speak. This is largely because students are rarely asked to speak freely about topics they are interested in, especially outside of class.

Speaking assignments outside of class can be tricky because they are difficult to monitor and grade. I get around this by not being too picky. The idea here is to get students out talking to people, not to monitor their accuracy and use of appropriate vocabulary so if they do it, I give them credit for it.

I usually ask them to go out and find another English speaker and talk to them for at least 30 minutes every week. I usually leave it up to my students to find this other English speaker. So far they have contacted old friends from high school or elementary school and done video chats, rounded up their brothers, sisters and parents, found exchange students, and gotten together with their classmates. Some resources they may be able to use are:

• MeetUp.com- many cities have meetup groups and a lot of them are geared around language learning.

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• The local community – If you are teaching in an English speaking community you can ask your students to reach out to people in it and set up language exchanges. 

• On-line language exchanges - I haven't yet tried this but it looks like a great way to practice speaking.  The first place I found doing a quick search is italki.com

3. Get Out There Yourself and Fall in Love with All of the Cultural Things English Has to Offer

So, what exactly should you the teacher do to help students love English? Start exploring the many many cultural things English has to offer yourself, then bring what you love (or what you think they will love) in to class with you. Encourage students to do the same and show them how to search for things in English. Ask them to bring what they find to class with them to share with their classmates and watch class get a whole lot more interesting and relevant to them. Fall in love with English yourself, your enthusiasm will be contagious. If you love something, others can’t help but be curious as to why; they may just follow you on your language obsessions and even discover some of their own.

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Things that Make People Fall in Love with a Language

• music – almost every student who comes into your classroom already listens to some kind of music and the chances are some of it is English. Encourage them to listen to that music in a more focused way to learn vocabulary, grammar structures, fluency or pronunciation from it. Introduce your students to new genres of music. We all get stuck in music ruts and many of our students are only exposed to music that is on the pop charts today. Most of the time when I choose one of my favorite songs to play for my classes, they have never heard of it before and many times they enjoy it.

• Movies – Just like music, everyone watches movies and lots of those movies are in English. Encourage your students to turn those subtitles to English or if they are ready, turn them off altogether. 

• TV shows – TV shows are like movies light. If watching a 2 hour movie is too much, how about a 20 minute TV show? My Japanese students loved Glee and How I Met Your Mother for example. I don’t recommend playing these shows in class but what a great homework assignment. If you hook a student on a TV show, that could be many hours of listening practice a student looks forward to doing.

• Novels – OK, I admit it, I love books and I want everyone else to love them too. I briefly got to be a librarian and my greatest joy was to find just the right book for just the right person. It is kind of like match making, and when I help a person and a book connect, I feel like a hero.

• Poems – Poems are great, they are kind of like word paintings. Most people try to read poetry the same way they read a book and they get frustrated. If you can show students how to read a poem as if they are looking at a painting or a photograph, they can fall in love with poems and poems can be great teaching tools.

• Video Games – I personally don’t like video games but so many of my students do and who am I to judge? Work with your students to help them find video games that require the use of your target language. If they get hooked on a video game that requires them to use English, that could represent countless hours of English practice. 

• Human Connection – I still get a thrill out of speaking Spanish to actual human beings. Being able to connect with people was after all why I started learning the language in the first place. It wasn’t my love of the subjunctive that brought me to class, it was my love of understanding and being understood.

• Short Videos – Anyone who has disappeared down a YouTube rabbit hole knows how addictive short videos are. Once you get hooked on one video it is so easy to move on to the next, pretty soon you have spent the whole afternoon watching 5 minute videos about cute cats or something. Imagine if your students were doing that in their target languages, they would be expert listeners in no time. 

• Anything they already love in their first languages. If they love cooking or motorcycles, encourage them to learn more about it in English. This is totally practical because even though I have no interest in “chassis” and would probably never use that particular word in conversation or think to teach it, someone who loves motorcycles probably would.

What languages have you fallen in love with?  What made you fall in love with them?  How are you helping your students to fall in love with English?  Leave me a comment below, I love hearing from you!