What Should You Do to Improve your English?

There might be various ways to improve your English. Let me count the ways...

But the most important thing to improve your English is to improve your English memory. It takes a little time to do that but it really pays you well to improve it.

Well, how would you know if your English memory is poor?

Very easy, if you are thinking in your first language and mentally translating to English or when you dream in your first language all the time and never been in English.

What to do?

Before going to bed, listen to an authentic English material or watch an intensive English dialogue movie.

Another is prepare to speak fast. How? Try to read fast. If you are having hard time reading, you could improve your pronunciation or utterance first. It would also be helpful if you study the rules of reading, the English sound system, and the English sound dictionary. Further, you could improve your diction, intonation, enunciation and twang.

Try it and it would really improve your English substantially.

Discover how to appeal to your ESL Student's Learning Style

Learning English as a second or foreign language can be difficult for some students. There are several different ways to learn, and many people benefit from a wider approach than the traditional methods employed in most classrooms. Adding games and activities that appeal to all the different ESL learning styles along with your standard curriculum can transform your lessons and make the time more productive for all!

Most authorities in the field of learning styles agree there are four basic ways people take in and process information. These are known as the four learning styles and consist of Auditory ESL Learners(students who respond best to lectures, tapes and verbal instructions), Visual ESL Learners (students who benefit from more traditional methods such as written material, pictures and video), and Tactile and Kinesthetic ESL Learners (treated together here as their styles involve either hands- on or whole body learning).

Many of the following games can easily be implemented in your classroom and adapted to best suit the ESL learning styles of any or all of your students.

AUDITORY ESL LEARNING STYLE

These ESL students will enjoy verbal games in a group setting; introducing repetitive chants using previously demonstrated words is a good way to start. EFL learners from Japan particularly appreciate Karaoke Night as a learning tool and this can be a fun idea for marking milestones as your class advances.

After a group activity, students can retire to separate listening stations for a Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt; multiple tapes with different key vocabulary words can be rotated to increase the number of words each student learns. Cloze Passages can be used with tapes as well to enhance the lesson's effect.

Quizzes are a fun way to encourage a mild spirit of competition in your classroom; you can divide the students into teams and allow them to confer with each other to find the answers. Listen to a taped TV or radio broadcast and have them take turns answering questions about the content - you may be surprised at how well they pick up on the meanings!

VISUAL ESL LEARNING STYLE

These students can absorb information from common classroom tools such as books, flash cards, and video footage. Many language games work well with this type of student, and worksheets are a must - they will retain more from reading material than from verbal instruction.

Board games such as 'Parts of Speech Path Finding' (based on the Candy Land Board) are easy to laminate onto a manila folder, and the game accessories can be kept in an attached baggie. You can use color and images to make your board interesting, but remember your adult students may be turned off by a childish motif!

You can adapt Jeopardy and other popular games to use picture prompts. Current entertainment and media events can often be humorously discussed, and provide a real world aspect that will help students take their English skills outside the classroom.

Reading is of course expected from all students, and Ten Important Sentences with Watermelon is an excellent game to promote teambuilding, working under pressure, and summarizing. This is a game that crosses over to appeal to Tactile learners as well, as teams send representatives to put sentences in order.

TACTILE and KINESTHETIC ESL LEARNING STYLE

These students make up the last two types of learning styles. Tactile learner projects focus more on model building and crafts. Games for the Kinesthetic learner include group participation and physical use of the whole body. Activities originally developed for these learning styles have been discovered to assist all types of ESL learners, which is encouraging news for those trying to introduce new elements into their classrooms!

A good vocabulary game with a strong tactile element to appeal to this learning style is the old 'items in a bag' game. Students can describe the items by feel and the class can venture guesses as to their identity. Be prepared, this game can cause a degree of hilarity as students grope for words to clue their classmates in!

Spatial games involve rearranging items (a tactile variation) or people (a kinesthetic approach). Population Punctuation can be played by handing out cards with words and punctuation marks to all but one class member who is designated as 'it' This student then tries to make a proper sentence complete with punctuation by lining up as many people as possible.

Crafts and model building sets are invaluable as they combine auditory or visual elements with the tactile as students read or hear project instructions. Investing in an extensive Legos set will prove well worth it! Brightly colored pencils are another fun way for the students to proclaim their individuality as they follow directions for drawing or labeling maps.

Variety can bring success to your classrooms and help all of your ESL class members to broaden their learning styles. Games that make learning fun are a great way to foster independent thinking patterns, and create a relaxed, creative atmosphere where every student can find the tools they need for success!

(from Vernon Shernon)

Three questions

I was asked by someone 3 questions that I want to ask to you.

1. Why should I teach in a high-need school?
2. The most important responsibility of a teacher is to ensure high academic achievement for all students. Describe a skill or ability that will help you fulfill this responsibility and provide an example of how you have effectively demonstrated this skill or ability in the past.
3. Describe a professional, personal or academic challenge you have overcome, and how that experience will contribute to your success as a teacher

But first, here is my answers to the three questions.

1. Why should I teach in a high-need school?

Education is a treasure. It empowers people. It is the best catalyst for change.
High-need students of high-need schools would benefit more in education. These students need the guidance of teachers notwithstanding the inspiration students could derive from the teachers. These students need education to transform their lives.
High-need students of high-need schools would require teachers with great conviction, high motivation and remarkable skill to educate and guide them for a better life, better future, better self.
Teachers like me have the tenacity to mold students of high-end schools.
Besides, teachers like me require more than inspiration to get satisfaction from our teaching. We need challenge to bring about our aspiration of using education to bring change and positive transformation to our students. We need a fertile ground to lay our eggs and nurture it to be a great eagle soaring high in the end. With all the volume of knowledge, insight and wisdom, we want to give or pass on those to the next generation.
High-end school is a fertile ground to execute the best teaching possible.
It would be an achievement of a life time.

2. The most important responsibility of a teacher is to ensure high academic achievement for all students. Describe a skill or ability that will help you fulfill this responsibility and provide an example of how you have effectively demonstrated this skill or ability in the past.

As an ESL teacher in particular, I have been very effective in analyzing the needs of my students and matching the needs with a require teaching acts. Which include among others:

- Assessing the student’s performance and development
- Amending the student’s negative references and problems
- Advising the student of his strength and weaknesses
- Analyzing the root of the problem of the student

Excellent teachers create excellent students. I am a product of those teachers who imparted their skills and knowledge effectively. And through the years I have learned that I cannot teach beyond what I know. The impartation of knowledge requires more than knowledge itself. It would be more effective if the teacher had an experience to impart.

Being an excellent student, I know what it takes to be one. And the way it was imparted to me, subtle and swift, I am imparting it to my students with the vision of making a better world through education.

Adherence to some principle governing one’s profession is another thing. If you are good because no one is means you are not good at all. Knowing this makes me try to improve myself more and always believe that there is another room for improvement each day. Humility in teaching gives me patience to teach.

3. Describe a professional, personal or academic challenge you have overcome, and how that experience will contribute to your success as a teacher.

When I was a Presidential Staff to the President of the Republic of the Philippines, I was surrounded by the most intelligent graduates of the most reputable universities in the Philippines and else where. I was thinking that I was the worst staff ever. And if I cannot equal them with intelligence, I will double my diligence. I believe that success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. I worked hard to deliver every assignment. I took it like a runner took every turns and hurtles. I was praised by superiors for every work well done but when I was told by my colleagues later on that they were inspired to work because of me, I was awed. My colleagues in the Office of the President told everyone how I worked hard so they should equal the effort. I succeeded and from then on, I was never afraid to take any challenge.
In fact, I took the challenge of ESL in the Philippines when I got into ESL teaching during its infancy. While teaching my students, I invested half of my pay to the research on how to teach ESL students better. I did not stand to the challenge of the limited resources we have in terms of teaching English. It might at times too costly for me but I tighten my belt to afford any facility that might help me teach better.

After that, I shared all my knowledge for free to the other Filipino teachers.
This road I took was not easy, as a matter of fact, I believe there is no easy way to success but I am willing to run the race that was set before me.

No mountain high enough, no river deep to anyone who is willing to help.

Power of speech in ESL

Of all the four skills, speaking seems intuitively the most important: people who know a language are referred to as ‘speakers’ of that language, as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing and many if not most foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak.

Classroom activities that develop learners’ ability to express themselves through speech would therefore seem an important component of a language course. Yet it is difficult to teach speaking according to some Filipino teachers. I have one famous teacher who told me that his dilemma is how to make his students speak but other skills he could teach well.

Speaking actually is very easy to teach if the teacher has a gift of gab. The basic premise here is a pattern. It is through role modeling. I always believe that people learn how to talk that way. When we were children, we acquire speaking through the examples of people around us. When I was young, I always listen to people and mimic them afterwards. My grade five teacher was my real model and I like my name to be “Grace” because I want to be graceful when I talk. Then I got into people who lectured a lot and I want to do that, speak like they do. Though many people believe I can speak well, I never was satisfied of myself. I have always wanted to improve my speaking skills that my model changes from one person to another. After high school graduation, I had a different thought. I thought my enunciation was good, speaking grammar was well but content-wise was not well. So, I tried hard to improve my content. I read voraciously on variety of topics. I got interested on any material particularly those I have never read before. I read, read and read that reading became my hobby. I read everywhere. Then it became my pleasure, a form of relaxation. There were times that I would lie down on bed, raise my feet and read a loud then comment on what I had read. I had never let a night without reading. Sometimes I memorize some lines. I copy some and I made it part of me. Little have I known that it would really pay well and would improve my power of speech? Now, I am speaking well enough. I can say practically things I would like to say without faltering and stammering.
This pathway is what I am trying to develop with my students since my long research on speaking made me to see not enough materials to help people develop.Teaching speaking is establishing or building up confidence. That explains the tips, tricks and activities. I tried hard to come up then with a fertile ground for students to speak or true acculturation. I give them example, avenue, leeway and momentum and it was not that easy though. The level goes with vocabulary, span of time, topic and structure. Lower level uses simple vocabulary and expressions, shorter time, easy topics and less complicated structure than that of the higher once. The Korean dictionary was chronicled and categorized words according to level and I agree to that. So, I never expected beginners to talk better but the advanced to talk like advanced.

Speech is contagious. Speech is innate. As they say, “Nature has given speech to man not that he should speak to himself, which is no purpose, but to the end that it helps others and you see that the tongue serves us to teach, to command, to discuss, to sell, to counsel, to correct, to dispute, to judge, to express the affection of the heart: as a means whereby people come to love one another and to link themselves together….”

Will that not be enough guideline for us to develop our students' power of speech.

Does pronunciation matters?

Most Korean learners prefer modeling than teaching in learning English. The Korean preference of the North American Accent (NAE) is there. Not that they would really want to study with American teachers, otherwise they will not come to the Philippines to learn English, but their preference to NAE caused perhaps by their instrumental learning type. For example, Korean university graduates must have a favorable Test of English as International Communication (TOEIC) result which listening part is taped in NAE. Notwithstanding the competitiveness in job placement that has become more in more incline with international job placement for higher salaries.

As teachers to these kinds of learners then, it is imperative that we have to use the North American accentuation. This is not only for the students’ appreciation of the teaching process but to meet the needs of the learners as well.

However, we must recognize the evolution of the international auxiliary language and Philippine English being one of them. Philippine English has the accentuation of the British English and the structure of the American English. This salient feature of English in the Philippines is brought about by the effect of the local dialects or languages in the islands versus the English language. Also, the enunciation and aspiration of the Philippine national language, Filipino, affects the sound of English in the Philippines. So that even if Filipinos use similar phonetics of the NAE, production of sound is different since the aspiration of the word as well as the placement of sound are snappy if not stern.

Filipinos has different set of critical sounds than the Koreans. At times, even the Filipino has been exposed to the English language for a long time, he shows strong regional accent. The problem for most Filipinos is the production of “a” sound. English has a lot of various way to sound “a”. There is no glottal projection in the Filipino sound system. That’s why glottal sound is some kind of hard to aspire. Another is the difference of the sound production of “sheep” and “ship”. In most cases, the Filipinos produce clipped sound of the vowels. In the consonant sound system, ‘f’, ‘p’, ‘b’ and ‘v’ are the victims of sound production assassination. Most of the time, Filipinos interchange sound of these consonants which at times are really confusing. Vibration sound of ‘th’ is removed. For those who try to sound well, they sounded a lot fake if not exaggerated. This is though acceptable being international auxiliary language.

Filipinos tend to have strong intonation, but it’s usually toward the end of the phrase or sentence. It is very clear sometimes that a person taking an entire pattern and imposing it on the English words. The language has five vowels that make words being pronounced clearly. The lack of concept of schwa or other reduced vowels may make over-pronunciation. The absence of long and short vowel sound might be very confusing to hear for the native speakers.

These deviations on sound production and accentuation have been the subject of mirth among Filipinos themselves. However, the concept that the native speakers of English never care about how English is being pronounced somewhere or, making another pidgin English is less to their concern is not true to our learners. It might be very praiseworthy to spread out a pidgin English from the Philippines but the Filipinos have the reputation to learn any language easily. Good enough! To add the phrase ‘ in their own style’ might not be acceptable.


Since pronunciation is very contagious, it is very important that the teacher must have exact way to say things. This level of exactness does not follow accentuation. The segmental production has uniformity in all kinds of accentuation. However, to meet the needs of the learner, Filipino-English teachers for Koreans must have the accent of the international prestige dialect of the North American English or what we call the American Standard English.

There is another thing. The objective of communication is to deliver the message to the receiver to the best the sender could do. What happens when a sender would try to flaunt his language or over articulate his sound production? Well, what if the receiver is an ESL student like Korean - English learners? Will that not be a waste of energy to talk to the moon?

We need to choose our words carefully when we talk to our learners. Aside from effective word choice, we also need to use purposeful talk and accurate sound production. We have to avoid artificial and stilted language that more often obscure the meaning than communicates it clearly.

Also, we have to avoid going around Robinhood’s barn when we talk to our students. Pompous language has no room in a language learning class. Wordiness is often perceives as laziness or carelessness. If our object is to communicate, as teachers we need to communicate well. Remember that we are models to our students. The kind of talking we give them would be the kind of talking they will carry through. Our learners are not just simply passing through us, they are us. Therefore, we have the responsibility to guide them and lead them to a proper way to communicate to the English-world.

Now, what do you think about how we should sound?

The need to adhere to a certain standard of instruction

In my 15 years of teaching English in the Philippines, I have attempted to send signals and messages to all language centers and teachers that there is a need to adhere to some methodology or approach. I have been consultant and curriculum developer(at times for free) to at least four English language centers in the Philippines. In this four language centers, I have introduced four different kinds of concept. I did that to prove that there is no single way to language acquisition but there is the need to adhere to at least one.

To the BEST Language Center, I introduced functional-notional approach since most of their teachers were using cognitive approach using ALM textbook. In 1995, BEST developed the Conversation Development Program focusing on the need to speak through the enhancement of the macro and micro skills.

The Educational and Culture International, I have introduced the communicative-transformational approach which blends communicative competence with linguistic competence in their man-to-man classes in 1999. ECI came out with the Communicative Language Program, a six-level program designed for each language level. It has also developed a way to separate language learner through a diagnostic test and description of learners for each level.

For Samson Language Institute, I have introduced communicative approach since most of their teachers then possessed a level of English language eloquence.

With the Subic Bay Academy, I have proposed a natural approach since the concept of the center is to blend language learning and sports learning. I developed the English Language Program, a one-year English language curriculum. ELP is an output-oriented curriculum designed to mainstream the learner through a step by step, skill by skill scheme towards fun and spun learning paradigm.

However, misunderstanding was still there since most of the teachers lack the pedagogy of language teaching. As soon as I live, the concept that I have planted would go back to the cognitive which is very comfortable for most Filipino-English teachers since they have learned the language in that manner. A sad reality but has to be accepted and transformed. It is not because the approach or method was not working but the reality of it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks.

Awareness of teaching is empowerment. The more interest teachers have in gaining awareness of their teaching, the more freedom they will have to direct this teaching toward a successful learning.

In most English language learning centers for Korean students in the Philippines, there is a quest to create an action-learning situation that interest and immerse students to a contextual, creative and communicative language-rich environment. Furthermore, there is this exigency for a total English language-rich acquisition objectives ranging from language immersion to communicative proficiency. These scenarios require teachers to have a pedagogical understanding and pragmatic creativeness for exploring language teaching and bring about expected learning output.

Actually, second language teaching is an approach or a point of view. It is not a specific method. It is the awareness on the part of the teacher that when the students learn another language they have already developed a set of habits in their native language. These habits may interfere with learning a second language. The teacher releases the systematic nature of language. She has come to think of language as pattern, not as words. In the classroom, she teaches the language in context. She drills her students in the use of the structure, continuing practice until the patterns have been learned so well that they can be used with unconscious mastery. By using strict controls and putting words and patterns into the student’s mouth, she sees to it that they spend their time learning to use correct form with as few errors as possible. Then, she releases the controls and allows her students more freedom until they learn the language for the purpose for which it is intended – COMMUNICATION.

Communication is an intricate human activity that serves as a vehicle for thoughts and feelings. With this in mind, second language teachers has to be given specific strategies on how to conduct meaningful communicative language encounters that may recreate the reality to prepare the students to a real and more complicated communication requirements.

Enabling the language learners then entails exploring beyond boundaries of theories and techniques of language acquisition. Since the thrust of streamlining the language learners hinges on the real time, real situation and real communication, second language teaching requires much more than simple language acquisition device. In most of the time, it requires much eclecticism on the part of the teacher, hence, the need for the teacher to master various approaches, techniques, methodologies and pedagogy of language teaching.

Do we need to teach reading in ESL?

When reading is being taught in language institutions, the Korean students became a bit skeptical on the benefits of what it could bring them. They would normally say that it would be better for them to learn reading in Korean where teachers would be able to explain the text in L1 which is of course very convenient for them.

However, there is something in language learning that makes reading the most important area to explore – comprehension. It could easily be mediated since there is a common modality between the teacher and the student. I always tell students when they become very negative to reading tasks that it is the only way for me to see their brain (at least the area where English is).

Do we really need to teach reading?

The answer is a big yes. Reading is the gateway to speaking. At times, we only thought that reading is correlated with listening in terms of comprehension. But, reading is the pathway to a good speaking class particularly to beginners that are less communicative if not short to the cultural and knowledge background of the English material. It gives student ideas on what to say and how to say it. It could also improve the pronunciation of the students instead of simple drilling. Or, it could teach them how to articulate or how to discuss.

There are various benefits reading could give our students if we only knew how to do it well.