This document discusses common problems that English as a second language (ESL) teachers may encounter and provides suggestions for addressing them. Some issues covered include lack of preparation time, keeping lessons engaging, finishing early or being unprepared for substitutions, activities that don't work well, mixed student ability levels, boring or unsuitable textbooks, late or unmotivated students, large class sizes, and trauma among students. The document emphasizes the importance of understanding students, choosing interesting materials, and being flexible in one's teaching approach to solve problems and meet students' needs. It also provides several online resources for finding additional teaching materials and ideas.

1. ESL Teaching Tips to Solve Common Classroom Problems

2. Will you imagine if this happens in your class while teaching?

3. Outline ESL Lesson Planning Problems - Prep Time -Finding Fresh Ideas -Finishing a Lesson Early -Unexpected Substitutions - ESL Activities that are Falling Flat - Mixed Levels In Class Problems with Materials -The ESL Textbook is Boring -ESL Textbooks That Aren't a Good Fit -Finding Materials

4. ESL Students -Students Look Bored Or Don't Seem Motivated -Students can arrive late -Students Don't Listen, or Keep Speaking Among Themselves in Their Native Language -Lecture Hall Setting And Large ESL Classes -A student refuses to join in with games because they seem silly -Students who only want to study one aspect of English -Traumatized Students

5. ESL Lesson Planning Problems

6. Prep Time There are schools in Japan where English teachers get all of ten minutes to find out who their students are going to be in the lesson, and then prepare their activities. This is an extreme example, but there are few ESL English teachers who would not like to have a bit more planning time. While you can't add time to the day, you can make efficient use of the time you have.

7. Finding Fresh Ideas Keeping a file of language games for re-use is great, but it's just as important to find fresh ideas and ESL activities to keep classes fun. But where can we find ideas?

8. Finishing a Lesson Early Every now and then a lesson will go faster than you thought it would, leaving you with ten or fifteen minutes to fill. This can be a panicky moment if you don't have a backup plan.

9. Unexpected Substitutions Occasionally a colleague will become ill or have an emergency and you will have to cover an ESL class that would otherwise be left without a teacher. Sometimes you'll have a lesson plan to work form, sometimes you won't.

10. ESL Activities that are Falling Flat Probably the worst feeling in the world is watching an activity you've selected fall flat with your students. It happens to the best English teachers, and how you handle it is what makes the difference between success and failure for the overall lesson. How you handle it will depend on exactly what is going wrong.

11. Mixed Levels In Class You will probably never have a class where all the students are on the same language level in all skills.

12. Problems with Materials

13. The ESL Textbook is Boring This is a fairly common problem, since no textbook is perfect and every textbook will probably bore at least some of your students some of the time. This is when you start digging out alternative ESL materials and activities.

17. ESL Textbooks That Aren't a Good Fit Sometimes you will have an ESL textbook that is just too hard or too easy, or simply so out of date that it isn't appealing to students.

18. Finding Materials Money and location can both limit your access to materials. There are ways around both these problems, however. Talk to other ESL teachers and find out what they are doing. This is probably the single most helpful thing you can do. Don't limit yourself to other English teachers. Content classes often have materials and realia that are wonderful for ESL and EFL lessons. Internet – Join a blog on ESL teaching tips and share with teachers there. Here is a teaching tips blog: http://teachingenglishgames.blogspot.com/

20. More materials log on… Magazine by young writers and artists (8-13):reading and listening to young writers and artists’ essays http://stonesoup.com/ Online English lessons (videos) for learners and teachers of English by an experienced ESL teacher http://www.youtube.com/user/Jennifer ESL?gl=ES&hl=en-GB Listen to real people talking real English from easy listening to advanced listening passages http://www.englishlistening.com Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab. Listen to everyday conversations with adults and Children’s voice http://www.esl-lab.com/ An online new teacher support site with information on lesson plans, learning styles and many issues faced by new ESL teachers http://newteacherresourcecenter.com/ A blog of an ESL teacher with a lot of lesson plans, teaching tips, professional development ideas, reading materials... http://dreamingenglish.blogspot.com/ Language arts lesson plans by Columbia Education Center http://www.col-ed.org/cur/lang.html#lang2 ESL Lesson plans and Ideas for teachers http://www.eslflow.com/ A site for developing language teachers with teaching tips, lesson plans and articles http:// www.developingteachers.com/ A blog for teacher, focusing on methodology, strategies, and classroom activities http://englishwithjennifer.wordpress.com/ Various interesting things for everyone – more than you expect! www.chantyta.blogspot.com Description Sites to Link

21. A magic site where you sent your today’s mail and you’ll get it back after around 3 months www.futureme.org The New York Times Students Connections http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/ CNN Students News http://edition.cnn.com/studentnews BBC learning English http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish English Grammar exercises, Video lessons, Quizzes, Vocabularies Exercises http://www.englishmedialab.com/ A website focuses on developing ESL/EFL learners’ conversational English skills http://focusenglish.com/ Various activities to use music in English lessons http://www.musicalenglishlessons.com/ Interesting speeches made by famous people http://www.americanrhetoric.com This virtual library brings English textbooks including teacher books, student books, audio material and other learning materials to your fingertips. Subscribe to this website to receive weekly newsletters and download books, audio CDs, DVDs all for free http://www.englishtips.org/ Test Magic Forum: students discussing about English tests http://www.urch.com/forums/ A site for English learners, various materials http://www.betteratenglish.com A public dialogue about belief: reading and listening to inspiring essays discussing about life http://www.thisibelieve.org/ The American Academy of Achievement online resource: written interviews, inspiring life stories of eminent achievers of our time, transcripts, audio of insightful discussions with Academy members http://www.achievement.org/ A place for stories, materials, lesson plans to enhance extensive reading http://www.awesomestories.com

22. Problems with ESL Students

23. Students Look Bored Or Don't Seem Motivated Activities that fall flat were discussed above, but sometimes it isn't the ESL activity that is the problem. Sometimes it's the students' attitude . It's important to find out why the students are in class.

24. Students can arrive late This can be really disruptive if you aren't prepared

25. Students Don't Listen, Speaking Among Themselves in Their Native Language This always happens to an extent, but you can't let it take over the class. yI GavÉgBitCasðatEmn! ÉgTijvaenAÉNa? ehIyéføbunµan? ¹TijvaenA Sorya . bu¨EnþvadUcCa cegðótbu¨niþc. ……

26. Lecture Hall Setting And Large ESL Classes Sometimes your classroom isn't a good setting for practising conversation or games, or the class just seems too big.

27. A student refuses to join in with games because they seem silly There will always be students who think games are beneath them. Clearly demonstrate the purpose of the game and show through the demonstration that it is a more effective way of learning.

28. Students who only want to study one aspect of English conversation or reading or writing If the class is meant to be a well rounded class, rather than specifically a class focused on a single skill, then try using games and activities that integrate more than one skill at a time, like shopping games , sentence relays , and role-plays . Demonstrate to the student that most uses of English integrate all the skills you are studying in class. Role-plays and videos can provide evidence of this.

29. Traumatized Students If you have students who have been recently traumatized due to war or political upheavals in their home countries, it is best to steer clear of any games that rely on personal information.

30. Conclusion Lesson planning – helps teacher know where to start and where to finish the lesson. A good teacher must have an explicit lesson . Teaching materials – Not all books are suitable for students. Hence, a teacher needs to choose interesting topics or materials for the students. ESL students – read the students like a book trying to understand what their needs are and what their expectation is. REMEMBER you teach the students NOT the textbook.

31. Make yourself like water ‘ Be flexible’

32. WE ARE PROUD TO BE A TEACHER

33. ? Thanks for your attention