Esl Classroom Quotes

They met at the high school up on 131st. At night there were adult classes. He was working on his GED and she taught ESL to Dominicans and Poles in the classroom next door. He waited to finish the course before he asked her out. Earned his certificate and feeling proud and it was one of those moments that make you realize you have no one in your life who cares about the occasional triumph. He'd had the thought of getting his GED in the back of his mind for a while. Tended to it like a candle flame cupped in his hand out of the wind. He kept seeing the ads on the subway--Complete Your Studies at Night on Your Own Terms--and was so happy to get that piece of paper that he said,

commit suicide, commit grand larceny, commit adultery. Thus, commit does not mean just “do or make” but “do or make something negative.” An ESL student who learns that commit in commit a murder means “to do or perform an action” might attempt to make the following seemingly logical combinations: commit a joke on someone, commit the housework, commit a lie. The problem—a huge problem for nonnative learners—is that commit does not collocate with joke, housework, or lie.

Learning a second language entails learning numerous aspects of that language, including vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, composition, reading, culture, and even body language. Unfortunately, traditionally vocabulary has received less attention in second language (L2) pedagogy than any of these other aspects, particularly grammar. Arguably, vocabulary is perhaps the most important component in L2 ability. For more than 2,000 years, the study of a foreign language primarily entailed grammatical analysis, which was practiced through translation of written work (Hinkel & Fotos, 2002). As a result, vocabulary has been academically excluded from or at best limited within L2 curricula and classroom teaching. A perusal of ESL textbooks quickly reveals a lack of focus on vocabulary. Unlike books in French, Spanish, or other foreign languages, there are no vocabulary lists in the lessons/units or vocabulary index at the back of the book. Exercises practicing vocabulary may be found in reading books, but such exercises are rarely found in grammar books, speaking books, listening books, or writing books in spite of the importance of vocabulary in these areas.

In Tinkham (1993), two experiments compared the learning rates of the same ESL learners who were learning semantically related and then semantically unrelated target vocabulary items. Results of this study showed that the learners were able to learn the semantically unrelated target items much more quickly than they could do with the semantically related items.

In a longitudinal study, Kelleen Toohey (2000) observed a group of children aged 5–7 in kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 in Vancouver, Canada. The group included children who were native speakers of English, as well as children whose home language was Cantonese, Hindi, Polish, Punjabi, or Tagalog. All the children were in the same class, and English was the medium of instruction. Toohey identified three classroom practices that led to the separation of the ESL children. First, the ESL children’s desks were placed close to the teacher’s desk, on the assumption that they needed more direct help from the teacher. Some of them were also removed from the classroom twice a week to obtain assistance from an ESL teacher. Second, instances in which the ESL learners interacted more with each other usually involved borrowing or lending materials but this had to be done surreptitiously because the teacher did not always tolerate it. Finally, there was a ‘rule’ in the classroom that children should not copy one another’s oral or written productions. This was particularly problematic for the ESL children because repeating the words of others was often the only way in which they could participate in conversational interaction. According to Toohey, these classroom practices led to the exclusion of ESL students from activities and associations in school and also in the broader community in which they were new members. Furthermore, such practices did not contribute positively to the children’s ESL development.

Jed Fernandez is also excellent for classroom teaching. Teachers can engage students in a classroom vocabulary or grammar review. Jed Fernandez is suitable for intermediate and advanced esl learners. It can be used to energize a dull class, to review work that was done or simply as a reward for good classroom work. Have fun teaching and learning English. jedfernandezimages.blogspot.com