Teach English in Chengbeiyuanqu - Taizhou Shi

Engage, Study, and Activate such a simple mix of ideas can come in so many different sequences, shapes, and forms by Jeremy Harmer. I believe ESA to be the base that provides structure for every teachers ideologies, methods, and techniques. Without this basic principle of ESA we wouldn't be able to make our skeleton plan in the classroom allowing for teachers to create muscles to make a moving body. ESA is the route, it is interesting, thought provoking, useful, and the base to any good teachers attack on how to teach and plan a lesson in there own way. ESA is composed of three approaches Engage, Study and Activate. In the engage stage of the ESA model the teacher aims to warm the class up for the lesson. The teacher does by stimulating the class in some way. the target is ESA is to reduce inhibitions, make it fun, and guide the student into a more conducive language learning environment. In the study phase the teachers focus and aim is information. this includes everything from practice of a sound to examination and verb tense. Study stages start with elicitation where we form the basis of board work. This is followed by presentation of language point, drilling exercises, worksheets, and pronunciation. The study phase can be done individually or in groups. It focuses on vocabulary and transcripts often. Whatever method applied in the study phase the students will be focused on the construction of the language. Finally in the activate stage students use language freely exercising fluency over accuracy. In this stage students practice using the actual language and are encouraged to think on there own will using creativity. This is the meaning and ideas behind each stage of ESA. There are many different examples of each phase of the ESA model and they all can be used in relation to each other and to achieve different goals in different styles. The Engage phase is usually based around discussion, prompting, and pictures ect. Some examples of this would be if your objective is to learn greet would would be for students to all ask how they like to be introduced and greeted by others maybe by using pictures, drawings, maybe a short video on it. The Study phase is more based around elicitation, pronunciation, spelling, meaning, word order,and analysis. for example if your objective is learning to greet you may have students practice spelling how to say hello how are you and then practice pronunciation of the words. Finally in the Activate stage the idea is to promote fluency and practice the language usage. Some examples of this would be role play, surveys, drills producing materials, communication games, debate, and story building. For example if your objective is again to teach the students how to greet, the students could all stand in front of the class and role play a greeting scenario. You should try to make each phase flow fluently into the other and keep all activities relevant as I have will all my examples for the learning objective. These are a few different examples of each phase ESA. There are three different sequences that ESA can be arranged in, each sequence can be applied for particular lessons. those sequences are Straight arrow, boomerang, patchwork. Straight arrow is just the simple sequence of Engage, Study, and then Activate. this sequence can be used all across the board but is more common in more simple lesson plans. Problems with this sequence can be students get bored or lack of variation in the lesson plan. Second is the "Boomerang" sequence. This sequence is Engage, Activate, Study, Activate. In this sequence the student activate then study what they need to study depending on how the first activate goes then finally the teacher comes up with a second activate phase revolved around the language they have already demonstrated they need to know. Problems with this phase can be the teachers preparation for the second activate phase. The third sequence is the "Patchwork" sequence. This sequence has only got one rule its got to start with Engage and End with Activate and there is no limit to what you can sandwich in between those two. An example of this might be Engage, Activate, Activate, Study, Activate, Engage, Study, Activate. This format and sequence is more tailored towards higher level language students. Intermediate and above to be specific and take minimally about an hour for a patchwork lesson. These are the different sequences and formats of ESA and what they are used for. ESA the basis of any teachers lesson is not only essential to structuring a lesson format but it is a tool allowing all teacher to become creative in a efficient manner. It allows for all teachers to be productive and use this tool while letting there own style of teaching shine through. All in all ESA is a form of structure and a tool for creativity that each teacher should value in every lesson and that I look forward to using in all my lessons to come.