Resources

In many schools, private, public or otherwise, books are often used and the teacher simply has to flip from page to page without much worry as to what the next day will bring. Books, however, should be seen more as glorified outlines than a strict play by play manual to be followed to the letter. Publishers make books to make money. The writers have no idea as to your particular learning environment. Some schools may be strict in the sense that all the material be covered but will rarely ever complain if you supplement exercises with activities that engage the students. This is where your personal style will show.

In larger groups, the class can be personalized only so far, but often times, as freelance ESL teachers, we will have many private or individual student classes that we can, and we should, fashion according to the student's personal interests and needs as a learner. There are a multitude of sites online where one can find mountains of resources. You can find complete lesson plans, handouts, boardgames, articles of interest, activity ideas, etc. With so many teachers in cyberspace sharing their hard work, it would be foolish not to accept these gifts. Many sites today are asking for registration fees and offer pay-per-print resources, but there are a good many still which ask for nothing in return and allow you to print and use what you like without restriction or condition. Once you begin using these free resources and familiarize yourself and become comfortable with them, you might just start making your own and share them with other new teachers out there in the world.

The ESL teacher often makes the mistake of assuming that resources all share the same form: Paper. However, many good resources come in different forms. Some experienced and dynamic teachers might have boxes of material resources. Take a look and you might find dice, playing cards, coins, macaroni, string, tape, markers, glue, toys and whatever you can imagine that could play a role in the second language classroom; a teacher's bag of tricks. Resources abound. We need only to stretch our imaginations. Instead of only looking for resources to fit our plan, try and look at our surroundings and see how my plan can fit these things. This practiced, you will have a large collection of material resources in no time. This is not to say that we should neglect all those printables we love to use but we should be wary of over-use. Before printing off another worksheet and simply handing it to a student to silently complete, ask yourself what you could do with it. Ask yourself if there is not another way to deliver this, another way for students to do the work without boring them and yourself, and at the same time, reach your objectives.

Many ESL teachers travel from place to place to give language instruction in-home or in-company and plan and prepare their classes on buses, in cafes or in their heads while walking from one class to another. In this situation, it wouldn't be practical to hike your 'bag of tricks' with you all over town. Resources can always change shape, size and weight. You need to adapt your resources to your environment and personal situation. The teacher can deliver just as effective a class with little paper cut-ups with words scribbled on them and a pair of dice as the the one with chicken wire, bubble wrap and a hard boiled egg.