Teach English in BaoAn Nongchang - Tongliao Shi

There are several methodologies of teaching and learning Language. Practice is one of the best methods known so far. Practice has its own method and procedure, as we all know that force applied in one particular direction bring some effective results. In TEFL also, ESA is one of the best and powerful method of teaching and learning English language. ESA stands for Engage Study and Activate. As the name suggests, ESA methodology has three important phases. First we need to Engage students as much as we can. This can be done in various ways. Teachers arouse students interest and get them involved in the topic. Secondly, we have a Study phase and elicitation technique with which study phase get initialized. It is better known as thought provoking questions. It increases the time when students speak and reduces the time when teachers do. This is essential for learning a language. Last and third phase is Activate phase of an ESA lesson. This is the stage where students are encouraged to speak with no restrictions. In this phase fluency is more emphasized than accuracy while speaking. Role play, communication games are the main activities in Activate phase. Let us discuss all the three stages in detail in the following paragraphs. The first stage of the ESA lesson is an Engage phase. This phase is considered as a warmup exercise for the students as if imagine that a person is doing a warmup before an intense weight lifting in gymnasium. Teachers try to provoke the students interest in a topic or a chapter which students going to cover up. This can be done by activities and materials like their favorite games, music videos they like the most and interesting pictures which lead them to participate in answering questions in full sentences when asked. For example, a computer teacher said students to write about Internet and use of Internet on white board. One of them wrote YouTube, few wrote technical stuffs related to how Internet works and some written that internet can be used through cell phones and tablets we well. Thus, teacher got to know the level of the students, how much they already knew and what were their speaking level before moving to Study phase of ESA lesson. The second stage is Study phase. Here the main concern is the language construction and information about the language. This stage starts with Elicitation and with the help of which a teacher forms a base from where he/she can start the board work followed by the presentation. In few cases, where the regional touch is more influential, teacher can run the drilling exercises as well. After language construction and concepts, students are given the exercises for practice what they have learnt. There can be several exercises including worksheets, group study for vocabulary, discovering the style of speech to check the status of students and reinforce the concepts of language. The exercises are initially easier and getting harder with the time to fully mugged up the matter by students. Lastly in this phase, teacher needs to review the exercises following with the error corrections. The last and final stage of an ESA lesson is Activate phase. In this phase, students apply the knowledge they already knew and what they have learned in study phase. Here the objective is to become confident with the language they speak and presentation skills. Students focus on fluency while speaking rather than emphasizing on accuracy of language. There can be role play activities, communication games and debate competitions especially with higher standards. Teacher should not correct or interrupt while speaking or performing the activity as it breaks the flow and student would feel interrupted. Activity must be observed when it is being performed and feedback should be shared after the completion only using positive strokes by the teacher. Lastly, our main concern should be the students learning. ESA had been discovered for the effective learning of a language. This methodology is flexible and can be modified as per the requirements and by the need of an hour. There is nothing a particular order of an ESA lesson. Hence, on the factors of flexibility and requirements there are few subsets of ESA lesson. “Straight Arrow”, “Boomerang” and “Patchwork” are such few examples of ESA lesson.