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Guide 7
ACTION 2

GENERAL INFORMATION

• Major: English

• Component: Integrator III

• Group: 2nd year

• Room: 1514

• Date: Friday, April 25th, 2025

• Instructor: Lic. Henry Noel López García

INTRODUCTION

For action 2, students are required to analyze the author’s purpose and proposed solutions
related to the problem previously identified in action 1. Furthermore, they will not only
organize the information found in the text to write the outline of their problem-solution
paragraph, but also, they will write the first draft of their problem solution paragraph.
OBJECTIVES

1. To identify the author’s purpose on texts related to the learning problem previously identified
in action 1.
2. To write a list of the solutions identified in the texts read related to the solution of the learning
problem they found in action 1.
3. To organize the information (learning problem, causes and solutions) in an outline.
4. To write the first draft of the problem solution paragraph.

ACTIVITIES

What is the appropriate level of student to teacher talk time?

Although teacher talking time is not entirely a negative thing, an English lesson should be
focused on allowing students to maximize the time they have to use the language. Teachers,
therefore, should try to cut their speaking time as much as they can in class.
There isn’t really a standard ratio of teacher talk time vs. student talk time. Nevertheless, the
ideal amount of time teachers should speak in class is around 20-30% of the entire class time.
This means:
- If your class is an hour long, you only speak for 12 to 15 minutes.
- You step into a facilitator role most of the time and often let students learn by themselves.
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Why is it important to reduce TTT?

Now that you know that there should be more student talking time in your English classes,
let’s look at the reasons why this is key to the success of your lessons.
- By minimizing TTT, you are simultaneously encouraging students to participate in class.
As you create a void for them to speak during the lesson, they’ll realize that they can talk as
much as they want!
- Nothing makes a class more boring and monotonous than lengthy lectures or excessive
comments from the teacher. To avoid this, you can keep your class dynamic and your
learners more involved just by getting them to speak more.
- The more you let your students talk in class, the better you get to know them! You
won’t find out what their favorite dishes are or what their childhood was like unless you let
them share these during class time.
- You can easily check if students have fully understood and applied what they’ve
learned in class when they speak more. Even if you give a comprehensive description of the
present perfect tense, you’ll never know if learners have actually grasped it until they start
making their own sentences (or telling the class about their experiences!) using that
particular grammar concept.
- By speaking more, students can recognize and correct their own mistakes by themselves
or with the help of their classmates. Fixing their pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammar
errors on the spot could make it easier for them to remember rules and improve their
speaking skills on their own.
- Finally, providing more space for student talking time will result in learners having a
sense of fulfillment after each class. A lot of students enjoy having conversations even if
they’re about trivial topics. And, even if they haven’t learned new words in class, they’ll
still be happy that they’ve spent a part of their day practicing English!

What are some classroom strategies to manage TTT?

1. Elicit, elicit, elicit
Instead of providing explanations, one of the best tips for reducing TTT is to let your
students learn by presenting intelligible examples and guiding questions. For instance,
when you teach a grammar concept, you can show sentence examples and ask the class
what they notice about verb forms and other details. This way, they can discover the
answers on their own and comprehend even the most difficult concepts better.
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2. Ask open-ended questions

Encouraging learners to talk more also depends on the kind of questions you use. Asking a
student, “Do you like your school?” will not generate as much information as when you
ask, “What do you like about your school?” Try to move past questions that only require
yes/no or one-word answers, and aim to make queries that demand more information or
explanation from your students.

Find out how to use concept checking questions (CCQs) in the ESL classroom.

3. Incorporate more speaking activities

It’s not uncommon for English teachers to worry about which activities to add to their
lesson plans. If you ever have this dilemma, just remember that anything that gets your
students speaking works.

There are a plethora of ESL icebreakers, games, and conversation activities that you can
incorporate into your English classes, from guessing games to picture descriptions to
debates. You can even add a twist to pronunciation drills by turning them into ESL
pronunciation games or making students give mini-speeches in a fun way by adding
speaking tasks to classic board games like Snakes and Ladders, for instance!

Aside from these, you can always find an opportunity for students to take over the tasks
that you usually do as a teacher. For example, you can have them read the instructions for
an activity or let them answer their classmates’ questions.

Get your adult learners talking through these speaking activities.

4. Organize pair or group work

If you have classes of two students or more, you can make your lessons more interactive by
letting learners practice or do activities with their classmates. You can make them role-play
as a pair or group, for instance, or set up interview or presentation activities that they can
do with a partner.

Checking Understanding
Concept checking is checking the understanding of difficult aspects of the target structure
in terms of function and meaning. Concept checking is vital, since learners must fully
understand the structure before any intensive practice of form and phonology is carried out.
- Ways of checking understanding
- Concept questions
- Some examples
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- Learning to construct concept questions

- Conclusion
Ways of checking understanding
Concept checking is normally achieved by the use of a set of questions designed to ensure
comprehension of the target language, raise awareness of its problems, and to indicate to
the teacher that the learners have fully understood.
The question 'Do you understand?', or the remark 'OK?' do not achieve any of these aims,
and are unlikely to receive a truthful answer from all the learners. Concept questions are one
way of checking understanding, but are often used in combination with other methods, often
visual, depending on the nature of the target language involved. Here are some other
methods:
• Time lines to establish tenses. Time lines are not a substitute for concept questions.
• Truth lines to establish probability e.g. must be / could be / might be / can't be.
• Reality lines to establish degree of reality or imagination e.g. conditional sentences
• Clines to show grades or scales e.g. yellow-amber-orange, frequency adverbs
• Pictures to distinguish between similar objects e.g. cup / mug, lane/ road / highway
• Discrimination to check function and register e.g. Do I say 'hey!' to my boss?
• Negative checking e.g. Do I say 'I were'?
• Translation (where appropriate and possible).
• Extensions to consolidate understanding. Homework often reveals lack of
understanding, as do guided practice exercises.
Concept questions
Concept questions themselves are often difficult to construct since they involve clarifying
function and meaning using simple language but not the target language itself.
Apart from their classroom value, thinking of good questions also helps inexperienced
teachers to understand the complexities of form, function and meaning, and to practise
grading their language. Some basic tips for good concept questions are:
• Make sure the questions are simple and that no difficult language is required to
answer the question. Yes/no questions, either/or questions and simple 'wh' questions
are particularly effective
• Don't use the new (target) grammar in your questions
• Don't use unfamiliar vocabulary
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• Bring out basic concepts such as 'time' and 'tense' in your questions
• Use as many questions as possible to check various aspects of the language and to
cover as many learners as possible.
How to Minimize Using L1 during Group Classes
Teaching any foreign language can be both fun, motivating, and at the same time quite
challenging. The challenges for the learners are to overcome the language barrier and
communicate fluently, for the teachers — to make sure the learners acquire the knowledge
and skill set necessary to reach a level of coherent and cohesive speech.
One of the biggest challenges though is the usage of L1, or in other words, the interference
of the mother tongue in the way of learning a new language.
Why students shift to L1
There are several reasons why language learners resort to their mother tongue when in a
foreign language classroom. One of them is that they don’t feel confident enough to use the
foreign language in communication due to limited vocabulary or structural resources. They
are afraid to make mistakes, to sound funny, and it doesn’t matter what age we are dealing
with. This is a human feature not to want to be wrong.
Another reason why students shift to L1 is simply to clarify and/or check the information.
When dealing with abstract vocabulary patterns and certain grammatical structures, learners
feel the need to make sure they had fully comprehended the matter at hand and double-check
it in their mother tongue.
Telling jokes and language-specific humour is another reason why L1 can interfere with
communication in a foreign language. There are certain things that will just not sound the
way they do in a foreign language, so it is quite common for students to shift to L1 in these
cases.
The last but not the least reason is that the students are just not interested in the class
How to Minimize the usage of L1
Create a trustful environment: When students feel safe in the classroom, in terms of not
being judged and teased, they are much more likely to do their best to use the target language
instead of L1. We can achieve this by, for instance, not commenting and correcting each and
every mistake the students make. Instead, we might want to ignore some of them depending
on the target at the moment of teaching and give the students a chance to practice fluency.
This will make the students feel more confident and the fear of being wrong will gradually
disappear.
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Show the progress: Showing the progress students make during the course can also be a
great motivator for them to gain confidence in their learning and using the language. This
can be done by tests, spoken productions, role plays, timed talks, competitive games, etc.
Basically, anything that will show the students where they were and where they have reached.
Positive comments on successful spoken production will create a feeling of achievement and
the students will want to do more.
Adapting the language: As it is well known, different language competency levels need
different types of challenge. We, as teachers, sometimes get too excited and fail to grade our
language for a specific group of students (A2, B1, etc.). It is equally bad using too challenging
language with low-level students and giving less challenge to learners of higher competency.
Low-level students feel like the language is too difficult for them which results in
demotivation, whereas higher-level students get bored. In both cases, it is quite likely for
them not to take the class seriously and relax.
Body language: Having good acting skills is a great asset if you are a teacher, especially
when teaching low level students. There are lots of instructions that can be acted out
completely through body language, miming, gesturing, using keywords and demonstrating.
In this case even learners at the lowest level will have no difficulty in understanding what the
task is. If the task is something that is done regularly, instructions can be gradually be put
into sentences as the students will already be aware of the procedure and will have a chance
to focus on the language itself.
Provide the language: As long as students resort to L1 when having difficulty in the foreign
language, it is a very good idea to present the key phrases that should be practiced in advance
by eliciting, handing it out, etc. This is more of a controlled practice task; however, it makes
sure the student assimilates the language the teacher aims for at a particular session. Later
on, this language can be taken away from them for more independent practice. By this time,
the students will have had enough exposure to the target expressions and will easily use them
in free production.
Flashcards: Students have different needs, competencies and characters in group classes. To
meet them all and make certain that both the skills and the language are exercised properly
is quite a challenging task. So, why not use the knowledge we have about the students to
make our life easier? Pairing up students with different learning styles can work here. There
is always ‘a chatter’, ‘a silent one’, ‘an initiator’, ‘an interrupter’, ‘a rule breaker’ in all
groups. Flashcards can be very handy here to organize them accordingly. If the ‘rule breaker’
is the one who is always using L1, why not to appoint him as the ‘police’ to penalize any L1
usage and urge the group to use the target language. Why not give the ‘summary’ card to the
‘silent student’ as the first one who will finalize the points of the discussion and report to the
class. Why not to assign the ‘initiator’ to come up with 2 or more solutions/opinions about a
topic. In a word, we can think of many more roles and tasks to match everyone’s
personalities.
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Lack of Teacher Training

Strategies for Teachers: The Power of Preparation and Planning
Preparation and planning are a critical component of effective teaching. Lack thereof will
lead to failure. If anything, every teacher should be over prepared. Good teachers are almost
in a continuous state of preparation and planning. They are always thinking about the next
lesson. The impact of preparation and planning is tremendous on student learning. A common
belief is that teachers only work from 8:00 – 3:00, but when the time for preparing and
planning is accounted for, the time increases significantly.
Make the Time to Plan: Teachers get a planning period at school, but that time is rarely
used for “planning”. Instead, it is often utilized to contact parents, conduct a conference,
catch up on emails, or grade papers. True planning and preparation occur outside of school
hours. Many teachers arrive early, stay late, and spend part of their weekends working to
ensure that they are adequately prepared. They explore options, tinker with changes, and
research fresh ideas in hopes that they can create the optimal learning environment.
Teaching is not something you can do effectively on the fly. It requires a healthy blend of
content knowledge, instructional strategies, and classroom management tactics. Preparation
and planning play a critical role in the development of these things. It also takes some
experimentation and even a little luck. It is important to note that even well-planned lessons
can quickly fall apart. Some of the best-conceived ideas will end up being massive failures
when put into practice. When this happens, teachers have to go back to the drawing board
and reorganize their approach and plan of attack.
Six Ways Proper Preparation and Planning Will Pay Off
- Make you a better teacher: A significant part of planning and preparation is conducting
research. Studying educational theory and examining best practices helps define and shape
your own teaching philosophy. Studying the content that you teach in depth will also help
you grow and improve.
- Boost student performance and achievement: As a teacher, you should have the content
that you teach mastered. You should understand what you are teaching, why you are teaching
it, and you should create a plan for how to present it to your students every single day. This
ultimately benefits your students. It is your job as a teacher to not only present the information
but to present in a way that resonates with the students and makes it important enough for
them to want to learn it. This comes through planning, preparation, and experience.
- Make the day go by faster: Downtime is a teacher’s worst enemy. Many teachers use the
term “free time”. This is simple code for I did not take the time to plan enough. Teachers
should prepare and plan enough material to last the entire class period or school day. Every
second of every day should matter. When you plan enough students remain engaged, the day
goes by quicker, and ultimately student learning is maximized.
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- Minimize classroom discipline issues: Boredom is the number one cause of acting out.
Teachers who develop and present engaging lessons on a daily basis rarely have classroom
discipline issues. Students enjoy going to these classes because learning is fun. These types
of lessons do not just happen. Instead, they are created through careful planning and
preparation.
- Make you confident in what you do: Confidence is an important characteristic for a
teacher to possess. If for nothing else, portraying confidence will help your students buy what
you are selling. As a teacher, you never want to ask yourself if you could have done more to
reach a student or group of students. You might not like how a particular lesson goes, but
you should take pride in knowing that it was not because you lacked in preparation and
planning.
- Help earn the respect of your peers and administrators: Teachers know which teachers
are putting in the necessary time to be an effective teacher and which teachers are not.
Investing extra time in your classroom will not go unnoticed by those around you. They may
not always agree with how you run your classroom, but they will have a natural respect for
you when they see how hard you work at your craft.
- Strategies for More Efficient Planning
- The first three years of teaching are the most difficult. Spend lots of extra time planning
and preparing during those first few years as you are learning the nuances of teaching and
sequential years will become easier.
- Keep all lesson plans, activities, tests, quizzes, worksheets, etc. in a binder. Make notes
throughout the binder according to what worked, what did not, and how you might want to
change things.
- Every idea does not have to be original. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The Internet
is the greatest teaching resource ever made. There are lots of excellent ideas from other
teachers that you can use.
- Work in a distraction-free environment. You will get a lot more accomplished when there
are no other teachers, students, or family members around to distract you.
- Read the chapters, complete homework/practice problems, take tests/quizzes before
assigning them to students. It will take some time to do this upfront, but reviewing and
experiencing the material before your students do will ultimately protect your credibility.
- When conducting an activity, have all the materials laid out before the students arrive.
Practice the activity to ensure that each works correctly. Establish specific procedures and
guidelines for students to follow.
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Teaching with Limited Classroom Resources

Thousands of teachers across the globe teach in very humble classrooms that have nothing
except blackboards, chalks, and tables, sometimes nothing at all. Obviously, it is, difficult to
teach with enthusiasm in such classrooms in this modern age; however, there are teachers
who know how to cope with this situation as they have no other option but to devise their
own ways and methods to adapt to the situation. Today there are various skills and techniques
that can help teachers work effectively without all those materials that “modern classrooms”
are equipped with. In this article, we are going to explore some useful tips and ideas that
teachers can follow in order to teach well in very traditional settings.
- Have friendly rapport with your students: When the teacher is liked and admired by his
students’ chances are, his overall teaching practices will effectively work. in a friendly
atmosphere, students will surely try their best to interact actively with their teacher and will
compete between each other to respond and show their talents; the teacher in this atmosphere
is required to give chance to every student to participate without forgetting to respond to their
answers with positive feedbacks to encourage them. This will certainly smooth the process
of teaching and learning and it can all be done through simple activities like mini-talks and
discussions that will enable students to improve their communicative skills.
Among other things that can help teachers create this friendly rapport, we can cite:
-Warm greetings at the beginning of every session.
-Eye contact with a smile makes students feel more relaxed and comfortable.
-An audible clear voice that captures the attention of all the attendants.
-Addressing pupils by their names and never ever call someone by a name that he/she
dislikes.
-Reward students who excel in tasks, projects, and tests with prizes or extra marks.
These above tips should all be adopted by teachers regardless of what type of classrooms
they teach in, but are strongly needed in teachers who lack basic school materials in order to
shift the focus of all the class to the teacher’s talk and explanations and to each student’s
contributions.
No photocopies: Many schools today lack photocopiers especially in the so-called “third
world”; therefore teachers are required to look for other ways to solve this problem, and the
best thing to do is to prepare large flip charts and tape them on the blackboard for the whole
class to see, students then can copy the exercises or whatever is in the flipchart in their
notebooks, It’s like having a worksheet in one’s table and copying from it.
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Not enough textbooks: For those of you that have textbooks, but not enough to give to each
student, group activities are a great way to get around this. However, when doing group
activities, make sure that each student in the group has a clear role so that you don't end up
with the smartest or most hard-working student doing all the work and the rest of them just
following along. An example of this could be having students read a text from the book
together, then one student narrates, two students act it out, and one other student writes new
vocabulary from the text on the board and defines them for the rest of the class.
No textbooks at all: If you have no textbooks at all, you'd better learn some chalkboard
management skills - and quick! Everything you are writing on the board will go into your
students' notebooks and in turn become their textbook. Make sure you clearly label items and
write anything that might be helpful for them to study at home on the board. Personally, I
like to use different colors to signify vocabulary and grammar and format each lesson exactly
the same so that students can easily look up a grammar point or re-read a dialogue later on
as a textbook would.
You have books, but only one of each: If you only have one copy of each book, one solution
is to do a layered lesson of creating a different lesson for each book. This is time-consuming
when planning but highly effective. Make a worksheet with vocabulary and reading
comprehension questions for each book, then break up students to complete them in groups,
pairs, or individually. When they finish, bring the class back together and have each group
give a short synopsis of the book and share what they learned with the class. You get students
practicing reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and spending most of the lesson actively
engaged.
No CDs with practice dialogues: If you don't have access to pre-recorded dialogues or
listening exercises, consider making them yourself. One option would be to simply read and
act one out yourself, changing your place and voice slightly to signal a change in speaker
(which I'm sure your students will be amused by). The other option would be using your
laptop or phone to record you and another person speaking before class. Make sure that if
you choose to record your own practice dialogues, you have a way to play them out loud -
classrooms may not have CD players, speakers, or even computers for your use.
No Visual aids such flashcards: Using visual aids is a great resource but sometimes schools
do not provide this type of useful material. EFL teachers can help students learn more quickly
by taking advantage of pen and paper to draw graphs or charts, maps and sketches, pictures
of people or animals, stickmen drawings, objects, flags, symbols, icons and other useful
images. These can all help to make a lesson more interesting and give life to the words you
are teaching. In fact, it can be easy to present new words with just a pen and paper, through
mime or simply using objects found around the classroom.
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Even if you only have half an hour to prepare a lesson, there are probably items to hand that
you could use for visual aids. You could use the objects in the classroom, such as tables and
chairs, the features of your face or emotions and characteristics. You can also display a lot
through mime and acting.
Encouraging Reluctant ESL/EFL Learners to Speak in the Classroom
EFL learners’ reluctance to speak English in the classroom is a problem commonly found in
EFL contexts. Consequently, students have fewer opportunities to learn from speaking than
the more oral students. Research shows that they develop more negative attitudes to school
and are likely to lack motivation to put more effort in it (McCroskey & Richmond, 1991).
For other students, working with students who are reluctant to maintain and extend
conversations also limits their opportunities for language use.
Reduce the Level of Task Difficulty
From Nation’s point of view, if students do not know enough, they will not be able to perform
the task well, and this is one of the causes of students’ unwillingness to speak. The following
techniques are practical in dealing with the problem:
Give Students More Time to do Tasks
This can be done by giving students more preparation time. Alternatively, allow them to
perform oral tasks without time pressure (Ellis, 2005) by giving them enough time to plan
for and perform a task at the same time.
Bring the Tasks within Students’ Experience
According to Nation (2000), teachers can create recalling and sharing-experience
opportunities for students to make use of their background knowledge and experience in
doing the tasks. Key oral skills and strategies should be pre-taught in preparing students for
communicative tasks. Also, it is advisable that teachers grade the difficulty level of oral tasks
to suit their students’ communicative ability.
Allow Students to Collaboratively Solve Communicative Tasks (Nation, 2000)
When organizing pair work and group work, make sure that every student’s participation is
necessary for the task to be completed. It is best if each participant has “unique, essential
information” or distinctive role to play (Nation, 2007).
Provide Students with Task Guidance
Nation (2000) suggests providing this kind of support through repeated input, guiding
questions, multiple choices, and so on.
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Attend to Individual Students’ Needs and Ability

In a class of heterogeneous communicative ability, the teacher should not expect every
student to perform at the same level. Likewise, different kinds of tasks can be devised to suite
different levels. Alternatively, task demands can be adjusted according to individual levels
of oral competence.
Promote Positive Attitudes among Students
Students who hold positive attitudes towards language learning are less likely to suffer from
language learning anxiety and more likely to participate actively in learning tasks
(Tsiplakides & Keramida, 2010).
The techniques suggested below can help the teacher build up positive attitudes among
students so that they can feel free to speak in the language class.
Change Students’ Negative Beliefs and Attitudes towards Mistakes
Teachers can discuss with students the value of language use even if it is not fluent and
accurate (Young, 1991; Nation, 1997). Meaning-focused oral activities (Nation, 2007) can
also be used frequently with the goal clearly stated. When students are rewarded for
successfully conveying a message, they will gradually change their perceptions about
mistakes and language use. The teachers' tolerance of mistakes also needs to be made clear
because there is no point in trying to change students’ attitudes when the teacher still keeps
them.
Boost Students’ Self-confidence
This can be done by creating various opportunities for classroom success in using spoken
English (Oxford, 1999). A sense of success and high self-perceived communication
competence can be easily achieved by students if easy tasks with clear and simple goals are
used in the first place. The level of difficulty can be increased over time as students’ ability
develops. General goals should be broken down into smaller, short-term goals so that even
when students do not achieve the final goals they still feel a sense of achievement for
completing some of the sub-goals. Also, students should be rewarded once they achieve one
or more goals.
Lower Students’ Anxiety in the Classroom
According to Young (1991), teachers can start with finding out what students are anxious
about. Then teachers can help them ease some of their irrational fears and teach them
strategies such as self-talks and doing relaxation exercises to deal with fears.
With the principle of encouraging students to solve their own problems, the first two solutions
should be prioritized because they provide assistance for them to change their own attitudes
and affect in an appositive way while the third solution does not require as much effort from
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the students in solving the problem.

Build a Supportive Learning Environment
Once students feel a sense of support from their teacher and peers, it is likely that they will
be more willing to speak in the target language. The following are some techniques that
teachers can use to create a supportive atmosphere for students.
Encourage Peer Support in the Classroom
Tsui (1996:160) suggests that “allowing students to check their answers with their peers
before offering them to the whole class also encourages students to speak up.” Similarly, they
can be allowed to have a discussion with their peers before talking to the whole class so that
they will feel more confident in speaking English.
Be Sensitive When Assigning Students into Groups
Many students tend to talk more with their close friends. Therefore, when organizing group
work, the teachers should take account of and accommodate these personal traits. For
example, students can be allowed to choose who they are going to work with.
Tolerate L1 Use When Appropriate
At a low English communicative level, students are not able to convey their every thought.
Therefore, teachers should be tolerant of some L1 use. According to Nation (1997), using L1
can help learning in many cases. The teachers’ attitude to L1 use should be positive so that
students are not humiliated when they use L1 to assist L2 development. When L1 use is not
necessary, the teachers should tactically lead students back to using English, e.g. by
commenting or asking a question in English instead of showing strong objections.
Make the Classroom Environment a Non-threatening Place (Oxford, 1999)
The classroom should be an environment where students are not scared of making
communicative mistakes and being ambiguous in communicating. Situations that make
students anxious such as correcting mistakes on the spot, calling on students at random
(Young, 1991), calling on students without allowing them to prepare for the answers, and
calling on a student simply because he/she is quiet or not concentrating should be avoided.
Otherwise, what the teacher gets from students is usually not desired language use but
threatened faces and this will have negative effects on the students’ feelings and attitudes
afterwards.
Introduce Opportunities for Students to Speak English Outside the Class
Opportunities such as English clubs inside and outside the school should be introduced to
students. The benefits of and tactics for participation should be clearly explained to them.
Classroom activities can also be linked to these club activities. For example, students can be
asked in the class to report on their participation in the clubs or they can share their experience
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with their classmates. More opportunities for speaking English outside the class can also be
created. For instance, students can be put into groups to do some projects and if possible,
their group work should be recorded. They may also be asked to carry out and record
interviews with foreigners who are visiting or living around.
The solutions in this category are ranked from the most specific, day-to-day basis to the most
long-term one. Although short-term and long-term measures should be taken in parallel, it is
believed that short-term solutions should receive priority to be completed first. This will
create more opportunities for the long-term ones to be successful.
It is thought that once a student has a learning problem, it is best to allow the student to try
to solve the problem on their own in the first place. When the problem is too challenging for
the student to solve, support can be provided. The above list is made with the amount of
support increasing from the first to the last solution.
Simplifying your Classroom Language
1. Write it down
For example, write down an explanation or two for each piece of vocabulary you think they
might ask about and check it for simplicity using criteria like those explained in the points
below. You could ask a manager, more experienced teacher or teacher who has more
experience with that specific level or nationality to check if your explanations are easy
enough, or even ask the same question on a teaching forum. Other things you might want to
write down include instructions for activities, grammar explanations and concept check
questions.
2. Use an Elementary learners’ dictionary
Especially if you are going to write down what explanations you are going to use, an English
dictionary of the right level can be a great tool. To make sure that you don’t rely on it too
much and make its use part of a training regime to simplify your own language, it is generally
best to write your own explanation down first and then check in a dictionary or two if
anything about how they explained it is better than your attempt.
3. Copy a grammar explanation from a low level book
As with using a learners’ dictionary, it is usually best to work on your own explanation first
and then check against book versions. Check that any simpler explanations don’t miss out
the meanings or exceptions that the rest of the lesson includes.
4. Copy the instructions from the book
Some books have instructions for you to tell the students or photocopy and give to them. If
not, you can rewrite the instructions for the teacher to make them comprehensible to the
students, and use that as the basis of what you say in class.
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5. Take the books into the classroom

If you get stuck in an explanation and can’t move on until they get it, there is no shame in
turning to a book such as a dictionary to find an explanation or translation they can
understand, as the students will usually think it’s their own fault they don’t understand you
rather than a lack of knowledge on your part!
6. Write about it
For example, writing an article about different games for the Present Perfect can be a great
way of making sure your instruction language is perfectly clear and concise. Comparing
grammar or vocabulary explanations from different books could also make a great article or
blog post and be good practice for improving your own explanations, as can critiquing a
single book.
7. Workshops
Leading or taking part in workshops on any of the topics mentioned in Write About It above
is great practice for simplifying your classroom language. More interesting ways of
approaching what can seem a dull topic include teams competing to write the best
explanations, “battle of the dictionaries/ grammar books” to find which one is best for 3
topics you pick, the speaking game Taboo (define a word without saying any of the related
words written on the card), ranking activities (see below) and role-plays where one teacher
pretends to be a student with a particularly limited vocabulary. Another one is taking a simple
sentence, adding complicating language to it and seeing if the other people in the group can
guess the original version- maybe leading on to analyzing what kind of language added
complication.
8. Translate
Write out what you want to say in a language you don’t know very well, then translate it back
into English without making the language more complicated.
9. Learn a language
Even if you don’t use the language directly as suggested in Translate above, learning to
express yourself in a language that you only know a limited vocabulary in is good practice
for doing the same in English in the classroom. Activities you can do in L2 that are
particularly useful to develop the skill of expressing yourself in simple language include
Taboo (see above) and other games where your partner has to guess which word you are
defining.
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10. Use a word list

Various word lists are available from textbooks, exam boards and researchers including
words students should know at each level. When you’ve decided what your explanation will
be, check it against such a list and eliminate or change any words that are not included at that
level. This is also another way of using a dictionary, either by checking if the word is in a
dictionary meant for students of that level at all or by checking it against the symbols many
modern dictionaries use to show the core vocabulary. One thing to check for is that the
meaning of the word on the word list is the same as the meaning you are using, e.g. avoiding
idiomatic uses.
11. Mime
Deciding on how mime could be used to explain vocabulary gives you something you can
use to back up your explanation (you might want to miss out the mime the first time you
explain with occasional classes that get to rely too much on such clues and don’t listen), and
also helps you simplify the language to the level of something that can be mimed.
12. Draw
This is similar to Mime above, in that it makes your explanation clearer by supporting it and
also makes you think more deeply about how the explanation itself can be simplified to fit in
with the drawing.
13. Rank
Write down all the grammar or vocabulary explanations you can come up with or find for the
point you are going to teach and rank them from the simplest to understand to the most
difficult. Eliminate the ones that don’t include the specific meaning(s) you want to introduce,
and then select the one that is the right level for your students. If you are having problems
making yourself understood in that class, maybe choose one that is a level or two lower than
the level of their class. This ranking activity works particularly well if you do it with someone
else, for example as part of a workshop. You can do the same thing for suitable classroom
language for different level classes.
14. Write it up
Writing up a grammar explanation, vocabulary explanation etc. makes it easier for students
who have problems with listening comprehension, and also gives them something they can
easily look up in their dictionaries or grammar reference books (at the time or later at home).
15. Stop writing things up
For some other teachers, the fact that they can always resort to writing difficult words up on
the board so students can use their dictionaries etc is a crutch that needs to be taken away
before they can really train themselves to only say things the students already understand.
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Stopping use of the board might also make the students listen more carefully, and so make
explaining to them easier.

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group classes. Skyteach. https://skyteach.ru/2019/11/11/how-to-minimize-using-l1-
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Case, A. (2008, September). Simplifying your classroom language | TEFL.NET.

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Beck, J. (2021, August 17). Tips for teaching with limited classroom resources. Go Overseas.
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Catherine, & Catherine. (2020, September 20). Teaching English with limited resources?
make your own visual AIDS! tefl ideas. My English Language.
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Darn, S., & White, I. (n.d.). Checking understanding. TeachingEnglish: British Council.
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/checking-understanding

Hue - Encouraging Reluctant ESL/EFL Learners to Speak in the Classroom. (n.d.). Iteslj.org.
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Hue-ReluctantSpeakers.html

Meador, D. (2019, May 4). How investing time in preparation and planning pays off for
teachers. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/power-of-preparation-and-
planning-3194263

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Said, I. (n.d.). Teaching Effectively with Limited Resources . Penpencileraser blog.

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