Have ESL Students Speak Up

Too often ESL instructors rely too heavily on materials they have chosen from publishing companies and find it difficult to maintain student interest in some topics.

Although many publishing companies spend a lot of time trying to find and present the kinds of topics that will sincerely engage ESL students in writing and conversation, the topics they choose tend to be very general. ESL teachers must be willing to keep and open mind about the kinds of topics that their students are interested in and be prepared to redesign lesson plans accordingly.

So what's a teacher to do? If the textbook and supplementary materials are not a perfect fit, then the teacher needs to spend additional time preparing new lessons, right? Not necessarily. Some ESL instructors (myself included) find it useful to let the students determine particular aims of the course by having them suggest topics that will prove interesting to the whole group.

A good exercise that I have used is to let the class know that they will have to figure out which topics might be good for writing or conversation for everyone (or at least the majority) in the class. Set the students on the task of learning as much as possible about their classmates interests, field of study, favorite books, TV shows, movies, etc. Have them take notes like reporters. When they are finished, have them come to the next class prepared to propose some topics that might be interesting to their peers.