Foreign Language Teaching Techniques

Jigsaw Reading: A Powerful Collaborative Strategy for ESL Classrooms Looking for a student-centered strategy that boosts communication and comprehension in your ESL lessons? Try Jigsaw Reading—a cooperative learning technique where every student becomes both a learner and a teacher. What is Jigsaw Reading? Students are divided into groups and assigned different parts of a text. They first become "experts" in their assigned section, then return to their groups to teach what they've learned. This approach promotes active reading, listening, and speaking skills—all essential in language acquisition. How to Implement It: 1. Divide students into home groups (4–6 students). 2. Assign each member a unique section of the text. 3. Students join expert groups to study and discuss their section. 4. Return to home groups—each student teaches their part. 5. Wrap up with a class discussion, quiz, or reflection activity. -Why It Works for ESL Learners: Builds communication and collaboration Encourages peer teaching and accountability Supports reading fluency and comprehension Boosts learner confidence with manageable text chunks -Pro Tips for ESL Teachers: Scaffold with vocabulary lists and sentence starters Use visuals to aid understanding Monitor and guide group discussions Choose level-appropriate, culturally inclusive texts Integrate speaking or writing tasks as follow-up -Bonus Tip: You can extend this strategy into a project-based task—students create a summary poster, infographic, or even a mini-podcast to present their topic! Let your students lead the learning—because when learners teach, they remember more. #ESLTeaching #CollaborativeLearning #JigsawReading #ActiveLearning #ELT #ESLStrategies #TeacherTips #TESOL #TEFL #LanguageLearning #StudentCenteredLearning #EnglishTeaching #ReadingSkills

"When children talk, they learn. When they listen, they grow. When they express, they shine!" Teaching English in primary grades goes far beyond grammar and spelling — it's about nurturing voices, thoughts, and confidence. One of the most impactful strategies in primary classrooms is the TALKIE framework — a student-centered approach that beautifully blends speaking, listening, writing, and creativity in one engaging cycle! The gateway to the unfolding of the TALKIE strategy in a primary English class: T – Think: Students observe a picture prompt (like a rainy day or a jungle scene) and silently reflect on what they see or imagine. A – Ask: Each learner formulates one question based on their observation: 💬 “Why are the animals hiding?” 💬 “Where did the rain come from?” L – Listen: In pairs, they take turns asking and responding to each other’s questions, promoting thoughtful listening and meaningful dialogue. K – Keyword: From their discussion, each pair identifies a strong or new word and adds it to a growing Class Word Wall: splash, stormy, wild, silent... I – Illustrate: Students create a drawing that reflects their keyword in context, then write a sentence using it: “The tiger hides behind the bush.” E – Express: Learners present their illustration and sentence to the class — a moment of confidence, pride, and joyful communication. Commendable Power of TALKIE: This strategy ensures that every child participates actively, using all four language domains in a meaningful and age-appropriate manner. It supports self-expression, builds vocabulary, and encourages peer learning. TALKIE can be beautifully integrated with topics like: ⛈️Seasons and Weather 📚Story Retelling 🖼Picture Description 🎑Festivals Around the World ✨ Language comes alive when learners talk their learning! "TALKIE doesn't just teach English-it gives every child a voice." #PrimaryEducation #EnglishTeaching #TALKIE #StudentVoices #CreativeClassroom

I am sharing this to raise the visibility of a superb plenary on AI. Although centered on AI in foreign-language teaching, many of the takeaways generalize—also to fields like economics where methodology and ethics around AI are evolving quickly. ---------------------------------- Allies or Enemies? AI in Foreign Language Teaching Plenary by Dr. Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia (at Universidad de Guanajuato • Oct 11, 2025) Bottom line: AI won’t replace teachers—but teachers who know how to use AI will replace those who don’t. Key insights from the talk: 1. Shift in focus (2014 → 2024): from training in skill-specific abilities—speaking, writing, reading—to pedagogical approaches that foster active learning, personalization, and learning how to learn (learning autonomy), helping students become more proficient beyond the classroom. 2. Real classroom uses that work: - Faster lesson design: using AI to generate activities and learning supports aligned with instructional goals. - Adaptive content: adjusting materials to different proficiency levels while keeping pedagogical focus. - Broader language exposure: incorporating diverse voices, accents, and contexts to enrich comprehension. - Reflective feedback: using AI to prompt revision and deeper learning rather than provide ready answers. 3. Limits are real: LLMs can be confidently wrong (e.g., verb tense feedback). Teacher verification is non-negotiable. 4. Risks: technology failures, bias toward prestige varieties, privacy concerns, academic misconduct, and deepfake realism—ethics and classroom policies on AI must be part of the syllabus. Research agenda ideas: - Building a multimodal corpus of Spanish-speaking learners’ output: compare human-only vs AI-mediated writing/speaking to map what students actually improve and how teachers can detect/guide it. - Designing classroom-ready pedagogies for “AI used right”: when it is valid, how to cite it, how to double-check it, and how to keep the learning process central. Takeaways for educators: - Guide • Create • Verify, don’t just Generate. Treat AI as an assistant; your expertise closes the gap between “good” and “good enough.” - Teach the process, not just prompts. Make expectations explicit: be an AI-ded learner, not an AI finisher. - Build AI literacy & safeguards. Include review & checks, source verification, and disclosure norms. - Prioritize interaction & exposure. Use AI to diversify accents and contexts—areas underexplored yet high-impact. - Assess what matters. Emphasize drafts, oral defenses, and in-class performance to reward learning over AI outsourcing. Verdict: AI is an ally when paired with strong pedagogy and ethical guardrails. The teacher remains the conductor, but AI is a powerful new instrument. #AIinEducation #EdTech #LanguageTeaching #Assessment #AcademicIntegrity #HigherEd #LLMs #Pedagogy

Improving students' syntax requires explicit instruction, modeling, and practice. Here are some strategies I have used that align with evidence-based practices:  𝟭. 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 🧩  • Scrambled Sentences: Teach parts of speech through directly working with sentences!  • Sentence Types: Guide students through simple, compound, and complex sentences.   • Syntax Manipulation: Show how changing word order affects meaning.  𝟮. 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴  ➕ • Sentence Expansion: Start with a simple sentence and have students add details. (e.g., “The dog ran.” → “The big brown dog ran quickly down the street.”)   • Sentence Combining: Provide two short sentences and guide students in combining them using conjunctions or relative clauses.  𝟯. 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗿-𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 🌈 • Use color-coded parts of speech to help students visually organize sentence elements.   • Provide sentence frames and stems to support structured writing.  𝟰. 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘅 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 📋  • Use cloze exercises where students fill in missing words.   • Have students correct sentence errors in a controlled setting before applying the skill in writing.  𝟱. 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘅 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 🏃♀️  • Teach how prefixes, suffixes, and word roots affect syntax. (e.g., “She runs” vs. “She is running.”)   • Work on subject-verb agreement and tense consistency systematically.  𝟲. 𝗢𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘅 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 🗣️  • Use dictation exercises where students listen and write grammatically correct sentences.   • Encourage recasting, where you model grammatically correct versions of students’ oral responses.  𝟳. 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 👷♂️  • Have students imitate well-structured sentences from mentor texts.   • Teach sentence deconstruction, where they break down complex sentences to understand structure.  𝟴. 𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘅 𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱 🧠 • Guide students through sentence-level revision activities.   • Provide sentence variety checklists to encourage diverse structures in writing.  🤔❓What are some of your favorite strategies or activities for teaching syntax?

5 Things ESL Teachers Should STOP Being (And how to escape these common traps) 🚫 1. The Dictionary Teacher A "dictionary teacher" thinks they're the student's only source of English—so they explain every word instead of teaching students how to learn independently. ✅ Fix it: Don’t just present material—create inductive learning opportunities. Train students to guess vocabulary from context before you explain. Prioritize production, facilitation, and feedback over definitions.   🚫 2. The Mom Teacher Remind, remind, remind, remind… 😩 If you’re constantly nagging students to do the work, you’re playing the wrong role. ✅ Fix it: Drop the "mom badge" and set clear expectations. Say it once, then enforce it. Let students experience consequences—responsibility is part of learning.   🚫 3. The Theorist A theorist teacher overcomplicates everything and believes explaining deeply = teaching well. But talking about the language isn’t the same as teaching it. ✅ Fix it: Leave the theory outside the classroom. Focus on hands-on, meaningful exposure and repetition. Show, drill, and practice so much that explanations are rarely needed.   🚫 4. The Conversationalist Some teachers think their job is just to "chat" with students. Unless you’re being paid by rich clients who only want a conversation buddy (and don’t care about progress), this is a trap. ✅ Fix it: Be intentional, clinical, analytical, and practical. Take notes during conversations and build lessons around them. Interrupt the flow to correct, drill, and reinforce patterns. Great teachers don’t just talk—they shape speech.   🚫 5. The Friend A teacher is not a student’s friend. Friends are equals. Teachers are authorities. Sure, be friendly, but reducing yourself to a buddy weakens your impact. It’s like taking the trucks and equipment away from a firefighter and expecting them to put out fires. ✅ Fix it: Assume your authority. Even business professionals need structure. Focus on training your students, not entertaining them. Don’t chase approval—chase results. If students see real progress, they’ll stay.   ========= Your students don’t need a walking dictionary, a nagging mom, a theory lecturer, a casual chat buddy, or a best friend. They need a leader—someone who pushes them, challenges them, and gets them real results. Go be that.

Students who are seen and not heard are students who don’t learn. In the classroom, students should be talking 80% of the time. Here’s why: Students learn when they are speaking. 🗣️ As educators, we need to shift the focus from our voice to their voices. We can guide them, but the real magic happens when they engage in: -conversation -problem-solving -collaborative learning But the above is easier said than done, I know - especially if our current lesson plans and models focus more on our voices. Here are a few evidence-based instructional practices for educators who want to make an intentional shift: 1. Revise your lesson plans. First define whether it’s  a grammar lesson or a comprehension lesson. If it's a comprehension-focused lesson, prioritize communication over perfection. Don’t correct every mistake you hear or observe - that can disrupt the flow and impede learning. But in a grammar lesson, corrections are essential as the focus is on accuracy. Then ask yourself: How can I foster a conversation around this topic? 2. Break students into small groups of 2 or 3 and assign speaking roles. Start with the English speaker with the most experience, allowing other students time to observe. 3. Incorporate tangible items. Give students something to talk about, like a picture or object. Ask them to walk around, discuss, and write down their thoughts. 4. Set time limits. Teachers should speak 20% of the time or less. Time your instructions, repeat key points, model, then let them do the work. Think of yourself as the facilitator, not the lecturer. 5. Observe your students. Walk around, listen, and note where your students struggle and excel. This informs your next steps in supporting their language development. To the other educators out there - any other evidence-based practices you’d offer on this subject? #EducationEquity #LanguageLearning #CulturalHeritage #LanguageLiteracy

Looking to enhance classroom impact for English language learners (ELLs)? This insightful Edutopia article distills six evidence‑based strategies drawn from decades of educator expertise — offering a practical roadmap for inclusive, culturally responsive instruction. As Emily Kaplan explains, these approaches help bridge language and content learning for over 4.8 million ELL students in U.S. schools: • Scaffold instruction using visuals, simplified language, and gestures • Make time for students to use their native languages • Help them build both conversational and academic vocabulary • Provide ample chances for speaking and writing • Foster meaningful cultural connections inside the classroom • Differentiate instruction based on students’ unique proficiency and needs Whether you teach ELLs or support broader educational equity, these strategies are a powerful guide to more inclusive, engaging learning. https://lnkd.in/emS4ZeWr