Teach English in Qiaochong Zhen - Shanwei Shi

This course is getting more and more interesting. In the third unit, I have learnt mainly about teaching technique in the classroom based on Engage-Study-Activate (ESA) method. Before getting right into the ESA method, the unit explains type of teaching methods that have been used, such as grammar-translation, audio-lingualism, and communicative language teaching. I really often apply the grammar-translation method while teaching Indonesian kids because I feel like that is the easiest way for them to understand tenses. However, after gaining the knowledge from this unit, I understand that there are probably more effective methods in teaching English. The lesson emphasizes the importance of Engage activity; I agree on that. A good teacher should create a way so that student can participate in speaking English before they start learning about a particular topic. This can be achieved by activities like interviewing other students, creating sentences using prompts from teacher, and playing alphabet games. After that, there is a Study step - in which a particular topic should be taught (simple past tense, can/cannot, set of vocabularies) by giving worksheets about gap fill, word searches, matching exercises, and many more. The last step is Activate - telling students to use the language skills that they have just learnt. Examples of this step are encouraging them to create a role-play and to write a story or advertisement. A teacher can use those steps in order (E-S-A) or different orders (boomerang or patchwork methods), to be able to reach the teaching goals effectively according to students' level.