Jan 23 2009
ESL Activities for Outside of the Classroom Part 1
ESL students living in the US are lucky in the fact that they are surrounded by English all day. They can’t walk anywhere without seeing or hearing English. This provides some good language learning activities for outside of the classroom. In this particular blog I am going to talk about activities geared towards the more advanced ESL students.
I always tell my ESL students to watch at least an hour a day of TV in English. Students will hear different accents and get exposed to English in all sorts of subjects. Depending on the level of the student, I recommend that they have a notebook handy to jot down any unfamiliar words. At a latter time they can look these up. For a beginning student I wouldn’t suggest trying to write down the unfamiliar words. This would be all of the words!
It is important that the student watch a variety of channels and doesn’t just watch the same show every day. If there is a particular subject that a student faces everyday in their life he can find a channel that deals with this. For example, if a student works with computers, he could watch the science and technology type channels. He will hear words spoken in real time that have to do with his field. Another ESL student may just use English to chat with co workers. This student would benefit from watching sitcoms or other daily life type shows.
We are constantly told that TV is not good for us. In the case of a language learner this couldn’t be farther from the truth. So watch away!
