How to get EFL ESL language learners emotionally engaged.

1. Webinar Reflection
Using Imagination in the
Class

2. The Presenter
Helping teenagers to overcome some of the difficulties that
can affect their creative ability is one of the key challenges
teachers face.
Recorded on 11 July 2014, Fiona Mauchline shared her ideas
for encourage students become more creative and develop
critical thinking skills.
There were 33 participants of mainly from European countries.
Of the participants, I noticed only 5 were activelly participating
by answering questions and posting comments.

3.  In this webinar, Fiona Mauchline shares some interesting ideas and
techniques that may help student to tune in to their creative sides. I
wanted to share with you some screen shots taken from the webinar,
and there are some links to useful websites at the end.
 I chose this webinar as I often try to stimulate my language learners
to be more creative in their production and often encounter a brick
wall of indifference and lack of enthusiasm.
 Firstly, theoretical issues are mentioned breifly, that gives some
grounding to the following techniques.
 Secondly, some practical ideas based on how words, music, and
imagary can be integrated into classroom practice to make learning
more engaging.
Introduction

4. Theory
 Twilight zone: personal taboos, topics such as diet, house, family may be
seen as invasive
 Learner autonomy: letting students decide what they want to talk about.
 Scaffolding: When asked ‘’What did you do at the weekend?’’ typical
answers are nothing or sleeping. We must give support for students to
access imagination
 Self perception: We all have creativity but self esteem is an issue with
teenagers.
 Personalisation: Activities are great for displaying learning but these tasks
often lack personal expression of the self.
 Retention: How can we integrate songs with language learning
 Integrating skills / Recycling: Reading, speaking, writing and listening with
target structure or target vocabulary. Using the same language but in
different ways.
 Whole learning: Using all the five senses plus cognitive use.
 Emotional response: Students don’t remember stuff they aren’t engaged.
 Summary: Encouraging creativity by stimulating the imagination
 emotional investment
 engaging senses whole body
 playing with language repetition recycling
 personalisation

5. Words

6.  Asking students to write down words that describe not
only how a person or thing looks, but also some more
interesting traits that require some thought before
answering thus making it more meaningful and
engaging. It also develops critical thinking skills.
 Visualisation techniques - intrapersonal intelligence
 Students reflect on their feelings whilst answering
probing questions and listening to music, then write
down the vocabulary and make a story either
individually or collaboratively.
Words

8. Music

9.  Music can be used to stimulate thought and feelings during brainstorming
activities.
 Can be used to relax students in between activitie as a time out function.
 Can be used to reinforce target vocabulary or grammatical patterns.
 Give students a context and ask them what are the first things they see, hear,
smell and do. Reflect on their feelings and assumptions.
 The teacher can board vocabulary then play two different types of music and
see how it affects vocabulary ellicited from the students.
 Musical stories, where student create stories according to different tyoes of
music, using the vocabulary ellicited earlier.
 Stop music ask questions elicit responses when needed.
Music

10. Images

11. Images
 Allow students to choose a pıcture of a dream house for them
to describe. (avoiding twilight issue)
 Students make a collage of images with sentences using
grammar structure or vocabulary (previous slide)
 Ask Students to take photos and share them with classmates
talk about them. I think Facebook is a good way to do this. My
students have shown great intrest doing this.
 Students can tell stories using photos they have taken and may
combine pictures for group work.
 Wordle cloud is a visual image that includes content related to
the text or vocabulary being used in class. I think students would
also benefit from contextual imagery to support a top down
learning approach.

12. Conclusion
 Although I had previously tried many of the activities mentioned in this
webinar I still found it a useful refresher for some interesting an
innovative ways to engage my unmotivated learners.
 My favourite part was the collage with sentences activity that I look
forward to using in my class.
 I think webinars are a vital tool for the professional development of
teachers. But there are of course time and technological constraints.
Being able to watch a recoded webinar via ACMC allows teacher to
access them in their free time. I have tried several time to access live
webinars but due to limits on numbers, I wasn’t able to participate. There
are also issues with regards to connection speed and computer
processing power. In this case it took me 2 hours to watch a 1 hour
presentation which was a really frustrating.

13. Links
 https://britishcouncil.adobeconnect.com/_a917587435/p4gm
qg981c1/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal