ELT in Brazil

A guest post by Eloísa De Benedictis, one of my student teachers

Hey, you! Trying to learn English, hum? Yeah, I know what you’ve been through. I know how hard it is to learn a new language, even with everything that language schools say about it. Of course, it can be fun – sometimes -, but we have to agree that it is not easy and that it takes effort. Here are some tips on what you can do that have been helping me during my process.

First things first, find someone who speaks the language you wanna learn to practice during your day-to-day life. Talking about yourself and things you always do or know a lot about is usually easier. Therefore, it’s a great opportunity to gain fluency and try to expand your vocabulary.

My second suggestion is something I’m sure you have no excuses for not trying: when watching a movie on TV, change the audio to the language you’re practicing to test your listening skills. If you want to challenge yourself even more, change the subtitles as well. That way, if you miss something, you have visual support!

Last but not least, travel somewhere you can practice if you have the chance. There is no better way to learn a language than to be immersed in its culture, getting to know the people, and be practicing 24/7.

Something important: as different people, we learn differently. That means that what worked for me could or could not work for you. But, after all, what do you have to lose?

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This text was written by Elô at the end of the following writing class cycle:

Lead-in: Tell students that, as successful language learners, they probably have some tips and tricks to share about how to learn English. Tell students to think about and write down three tips they’d like to share. When students are done, have them share their tips with each other and write these on the board. If teaching 1-to-1 or a pair of students, add your three tips to the board too.

Brainstorming: Have students talk about the tips on the board and expand on them. Encourage students to add details to the tips/strategies. Listen in and take notes to give students feedback.

Planning: Ask students to choose three strategies/tips on the board as their favorite ones. Do not allow students to pick the same tips as their peers. When they are done choosing, tell students they are going to write a blog post entitled How to Learn English using the tips they selected. If you see fit, ask students to write the topic sentences for each of the body paragraphs.

At this point, the class was done and students wrote their texts between classes. On the following class:

Designing criteria: Ask students what they think are the key characteristics of a good blog post about how to learn English. Allow students some time to chat and then help them systematize. Make sure they add at least two descriptors for each of the following categories content, format, language. For reference, we had

Content	(1 = Needs work / 5 = Excellent)
Text proposes insightful suggestions Suggestions are practical and effective
Format
Text has a catching intro Text is fun and interesting Strong and effective topic sentences Text feels conversational
Language
There aren’t any grammar mistakes Language feels natural Language is rich and appropriate

Peer feedback: Students exchange texts and give each other feedback based on the criteria they created. Teacher gives students feedback based on the criteria too and helps with minor mistakes (spelling, grammar inaccuracies, etc.)

Editing: Students edit their texts at home and send the final version to be published in the blog.

In hindsight, it would have been better to change the order of things a little. If I were to do this lesson again, this would be the order I would choose:

Lead-in, Brainstorming, Planning, Designing criteria, students write their drafts, Peer feedback, Editing, Publishing.

This way students would have the success criteria in mind before writing their drafts, which I believe would have helped them with this task.

What do you think? Would you teach this class? What would you do differently?