Ideas and Techniques for Teaching English Language Learners

Teaching English language learners can be challenging, problems seem to arise from all directions. However, this challenge doesn’t have to rub off on onto your students. The following are ideas and techniques to spice up your ESL classroom and make lessons more interesting and effective.

1. Repeat and Re-phrase:
- The repeat and re-phrase technique is effective in classrooms because a student may know various vocabulary words and now know the ones that the teacher is using. By using this technique the teacher exposes the student to new vocabulary that can be associated with the old to acquire a meaning. The student benefit by both the repetition, as the source of learning new vocabulary, and the use of old vocabulary to form a re-phrased question in order to acquire a new and better understanding of the English language. 

- This techniques can be used during oral instruction given to the class or an individual student. It can also be applied during question and answer time in class, and is optimal for such a use as it provides students with an opportunity to better understand the question and answer it without help. This promotes a higher level learning, understanding, and self-confidence in students.

- The repeat and re-phrase strategy is used in the classroom to promote, achieve, or ensure, understanding of a given topic, standard, or question. For example: if a student doesn’t understand the question “what is the meaning of an adjective?” Then the teacher can respond by either repeating, and/or if understanding is still not reached, re-phrasing the question to promote the student’s application of knowledge. The question could be re-phrased as: “What does an adjective do?” This also helps with future questions as the student will better understand the meaning of the posed question.