How to plan when there’s already a plan

In the last 10 years, the ESL industry has exploded online and has become a huge money-making business for many entrepreneurs.  Most online ESL platforms promote “no lesson planning” or “no preparation needed” slogans when they hire teachers.  And indeed, there is very little or no lesson planning expected from the online teacher today.

The slides are ready.  There is even a script for the teacher to use, prompting the teacher what to say or not say, what to do, what to circle, etc.  In some platforms, a teacher is bombarded with moving reminders like “smile!”, “do TPR!”, “ask the student to repeat” across the screen.  Everything is literally set up for the teacher that sometimes it feels robotic. It’s like you have ceased to be a teacher and instead, morphed into an actor, or worse, a clown.

So, if that’s the case, What else is there to plan? you might ask.  Here are my suggestions:

1. Plan for contingencies.  From my experience, especially if the student’s level is higher than what the material is presenting, you need to have additional activities to pull up on the screen just in case you finish the whole supposedly 45-minute lesson in five minutes.  I usually prepare pictures, games, conversation questions, etc ideally related to the official material.  I am currently creating “back-up stuff” for situations like that, so stay tuned!

2. Use what you have. As you teach, mentally take note of the portions your student had a struggle with.  Plan to go back to those slides and have a quick review, or open a whiteboard screen to teach more about it.

3. Have Plan B generic lesson plans and slides.  Not all official lesson materials work.  Your student might just stare at you blankly or throw a tantrum or simple tell you “I don’t understand”.  Smile and retrieve a generic teaching material which you have created (or taken from the Internet), and go from there.

Hope this helps!

Question: Any additional thoughts? Which company are you teaching for right now? How much planning do you actually do?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Is grammar really important?

I used to treat grammar like math.  Avoiding it like a plague.  🙂

But through the years of teaching ESL in different countries and in multilevel settings, I realized how truly important grammar is.  This is especially true when it comes to teaching adults.  Most of my adult students would ask me “why” and “how” questions when we learn about sentence construction.  This is even more challenging with students whose first language does not have the same tense structures as English.  Based on my experience, the most difficult to explain are reported speech and the conditionals.  

In addition, I also had to polish my grammar knowledge when I signed up to teach test review classes like TOEFL, IELTS, etc.  The old TOEFL test was brutal.  Thank God it has switched to more speaking test questions in the recent years.  

Finally, we teachers need to have a good grasp of grammar if we wish to teach writing.  Paragraph writing, expository writing, essays,. short stories, etc — we need to be able to explain why this word is not appropriate or why this phrase needs to be there.  

As I continue to build this website, I will share lesson plans, worksheets, videos and more tools to help students, parents and teachers learn/teach grammar.

OK, if you find a grammatical error here, let  me know.  LOL

Question: Which grammar topic is the most difficult for you to teach? Why?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com