Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Presentations in a language and with concepts that you don't understand. Wow! Will any of it be valuable? I don't know!
Do they really understand...? I don't know!
Most of my students don't seem to "know" what they are saying. Yet I hope they are learning.

How do you teach English as a foreign language? It’s not something I paid much attention to at the University of Hawaii, Hilo, where I completed my Teaching Credential. It wasn’t on all those Praxis Tests that I had to take either. I had no reason to study the topic. Now I wish I would have.

So now I am really focusing on it. It’s amazing how being in front of 25 second graders, 25 fourth graders and 23 sixth graders who all don’t speak English very well will get you to focus. One, I want the students to learn English. Two, it makes me feel good when I have successful lessons and see progress.

Here’s the thing, though. I want to teach them something meaningful along with the grammar, vocabulary and all that other stuff. Of course, those of you who know me know I want it to be ecologically based. But how do you teach ecology in English to students who are limited in their English abilities? Likewise, how do you use ecology to teach English as a foreign language?

So relying on my excellent training at the University of Hawaii, Hilo, I just went for it. That has worked a little. Instead of “Old Mrs. Brown has a lot of bananas in her basket but doesn’t have many vegetables.” It’s “Tree frog lives in trees and in ponds.” The kicker here is that I’m not sure that they really know what they are saying.

My goal was to have them learn a little bit about ecology and Taiwan plant and animal life. They could use Chinese language books and Chinese language in the class but they had translate it into English and give an English presentation. This had limited and great success.

I have a new project coming. For the next two weeks we have a project. The six graders study and make “something” out of a “7-colored bird” also known as a Babet. The fourth graders are doing Siberian Huskies and the second graders doing Stag Beetles and other beetles.

This is all in the blind for me. But the one common thread or rope is “Classroom Management.” Without control of my classroom, well, everyone knows that a fun time will not be had by anyone and not a lot of learning will be accomplished.