ESL

ESL - Teaching English as a

Second Language

Purpose

The purpose of this web page is to make available to others the ESL lessons that I have have put together. Feel free to download, make copies and modify for your own purposes.

My personal goal is to reach out to new immigrants to help them adapt.

My Experience

I have learned that using well organized materials with pictures where appropriate can speed up the learning process dramatically and make the effort by the teacher much reduced.

These lessons were prepared from experience teaching an Aramaic speaking man age 61 who knew almost no words of English. I did not speak his language. Basically, the steps were these:

Learn the letters of the alphabet.
Learn to print them correctly. By this I mean using the basic strokes in the proper order and distinguishing capitals from small. This is difficult for a person from an Arabic culture.
Learn the numbers.
Learn the sounds by using simple words.
Learn the pronouns and simple sentences.
Introduce verbs slowly.

Principles

Each lesson should use 1 or 2 one page handouts.
The student should learn the material in class and take the handouts home for private study.
In teaching pronounciation, each sound is distinct and learned separately.
Some sounds are more difficult for some students. One on one is ideal for teaching pronounciation for this reason. Repeating 20 to 30 times to get it right is not uncommon. Another sound may take almost no time.
The student needs constant encouragement, especially older adults.
Have fun.
Go at the students ideal learning pace.
Always review. Always something new.
I avoid the exotic. Example: There is no "Gnu" in the animal pictures.
Where possible I try to combine other studies with ESL. For example, I may include the definition of area in math as "Area = Length x Width". This is not because they do not know this simple math but because they need to re-learn it in a new language.
My goal has been to bring the student to the level of say a 10 to 12 year old.

Using the Materials

The dates to the right of the downloads are the dates last modified. If there is no date it represents an unfinished work and is not available yet.

An * (asterix) means it is on the way.

Use the .doc (Word) format if you plan to modify the handouts.

Use the .pdf format to keep it simple and use as is. You need to have "Adobe Reader" installed on your computer to see a .pdf file correctly. It can be downloaded free on the internet.

The pictures are taken from free clip art on the internet. I am very grateful to all those people who developed this stuff. I can tell from the design and quality that many had ESL in mind when they created this clip art.

Word documents with labeled pictures.

Animals-1 (09-02-10)

Animals-2

Body Parts-1

Food-1

Food-2

Food-3

Garden-1

Health-1

Household-1

Household-2

Kitchen-1

Land-1

Sports-1

Things-1

Tools-1

Tools-2

PDFs with labeled pictures.

Animals-1 (10-02-10)

Animals-2 (10-03-02)

Animals-3 (10-03-02)

Bathroom-1 (10-03-02)

Body Parts-1 (10-02-14)

Body Parts-2 (10-02-14)

Children-1 (10-03-02)

City-1 (10-03-02)

Clothes-1 (10-03-02)

Clothes-2 (10-03-02)

Colours (10-02-17)

Food-1 (10-02-14)

Food-2 (10-02-14)

Food-3 (10-02-14)

Garden-1 (10-02-14)

Garden-2 (10-03-02)

Health-1 (10-03-02)

Household-1 (10-02-14)

Household-2 (10-03-02)

Household-3 (10-03-02)

Kitchen-1 (10-03-02)

Kitchen-2 (10-03-02)

Land-1 (10-03-02)

Music (10-02-17)

Prepositions-1 (10-02-14)

Shapes-1 (10-03-02)

Sports-1 (10-03-02)

Things-1 (10-02-17)

Tools-1 (10-02-14)

Tools-2 (10-03-02)

Travel-1 (10-02-14)

Travel-2 (10-03-02)

Verbs-6 (10-03-02)

Verbs-7 (10-03-02)

Pronounciation Lessons

Irregular Verbs - Present, Past, Future

to walk (regular)