Seeing first hand the impact that a good quality ESL teacher can have on a second language learners life over the course of a few years can be quite inspiring, such is their impact.
ESL teachers are important because they can help ESL students to integrate into school life much more quickly and easily, make friends, and do better academically. Without their input an ESL students’ confidence and self-esteem may be restricted and it may take them longer to achieve their potential in every area of their life.
Withdrawal lessons on ‘ESL support programmes’, in-class support, co-teaching models, providing support and advice for subject teachers not used to teaching ESL students, and cross-curriculum intervention are all part of the ESL teachers weaponry. In the following paragraphs I shall outline why each of these areas is important.
Withdrawal Programmes
Typically these are conducted when a student joins a new school and their entrance test results suggest that their level of English is significantly behind the average for the Year group.
The ESL department would then arrange a certain number of lessons per week where that student would be withdrawn from the mainstream classes i.e. Math, Geography, Biology and so on, and work one to one, or in very small groups on that students English.
These small group environments are the ideal place for an ESL student to build confidence in speaking in English. Activities can be pitched at the exact level of the students and in such a way that they get to really practise the language that they will need to succeed in their mainstream lessons.
Sometimes an ESL student may arrive at a school with no English and these lessons become crucial in terms of starting the language learning, getting the basics right and enabling a student to learn the real ‘survival’ language needed to function properly in an English speaking society.
Learning how to ask where the toilets are, say that you are feeling unwell, and learning basic introductory exchanges are immensely important for beginner ESL students. It is extremely important for a student’s well being that these basic aspects of the language are covered as soon as possible.
As a side note here, you might also be interested in my insiders guide to TEFL certificates and how to choose the right one for you, here.
Provision of In-class Support
To prevent an ESL student becoming completely overwhelmed and unable to access a curriculum, in-class support can be provided that ensures that they can participate at their level.
The ESL teacher will know their exact level of English and will have a good working relationship with the ESL student already, perhaps from withdrawal lessons so they can differentiate activities either on the spot or from advanced planning for the ESL students.
A further advantage of this approach is that the ESL teacher can then follow up on the new vocabulary and concepts being taught in mainstream classes in the withdrawal lessons. They can even preview future lesson content so that ESL students can go into the next class feeling confident and much more able to follow the lesson.
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Co-teaching of ESL Students
It may well be the case that the mainstream are not used to teaching ESL students in which case their are two methods that an ESL teacher can us in terms of co-teaching.
Firstly, they can be active and stand at the front with the subject teacher. After the subject teacher says whatever it is they are explaining the ESL teacher can then ‘jump-in’ and give a modified ‘ESL friendly’ version of the explanation.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of this approach as it can seem as though you are undermining the main class teacher as it may feel as though you are always trying to give them a better explanation that they weren’t able to come up with.
Secondly, it is not always easy to come up with modified versions of what the teachers are explaining, especially in the more technical subject areas, such as Physics as I have found out to my cost/embarrassment at times in the past.
The other method of co-teaching is to be sat next to, or, in a group with the ESL students in the class and to modify the teacher’s message just for that table. This is a much more suitable strategy in my opinion and allows the targeted students to get the information they need but still feel like part of the main lesson.
The obvious downside being that some students will not like the feeling of being singled out to sit on the ‘ESL’ table. However, some students would be relieved that they knew they were going to get the help that they needed rather than them just sitting in silence at the back of the room feeling lost.
You might also be interested in reading about whether ESL teaching is a difficult career choice or not, here.
Provide Support, Ideas and Advice for Subject Teachers
I have personally worked with teachers both in the UK and in international schools abroad where the teachers were absolute experts at teaching their subject to native English speakers but were dreadful at differentiating their lessons for ESL students.
In fact, when a large percentage of the class were ESL students some of them found it terrifying as they simply did not know how to deal with them.
Of course, it was my role to work with the teacher to take a look at their planning and make suggestions to schemes of work and lesson plans as to what would work and what wouldn’t work and how best to deliver the content in a way that would ensure the students had an opportunity to use the language as much as possible and to understand the content.
Some teachers would be unresponsive to the new approaches initially but when they realise their traditional teaching methods were not having the impact they desired they usually got onboard with the ESL approaches I would recommend.
In fact, they would often be so overjoyed a lesson had gone well with the ESL students that they would seek me out to tell me all about it and the relief you could see in their eyes and having found a successful method to run those lessons would be written large all over their faces.
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Cross-curricular Intervention
In a proactive school environment where the needs of ESL students are imperative then language learning points can be embedded across subject areas. For example, science teachers could focus on the grammatically correct use of ‘If’ clauses when teaching Year 7 Chemistry, and Art teachers could be focused on teaching adverbs during their classes and so on.
These points can be systematically embedded across a school curriculum and taught alongside the standard lesson content. There is often resistance to this from subject teachers who may claim that they do not have time for this type of approach, but my personal experience is that it can be an effective way of improving the accuracy of language usage across a school.
The Importance of ESL Teachers, Final Words…
I hope you can see from the variety of approaches how impactful and important a good ESL department can be to its ESL students. Ultimately, if ESL students feel as though they are making progress then their motivation will continue to be strong and they may well flourish.
This is great news for fee charging schools who will inevitably lose money should the student complain to their parents that they are not progressing or do not feel supported enough. Positive feedback, however, can result in parents recommending your school to other parents of ESL students and this can be very lucrative in the private school/international school circuit.
ESL teachers are important for the well-being of ESL students initially but also for the fact that by increasing the ability levels of ESL students they then have far more opportunities open to them in terms of choice of university, employer and beyond.
It is truly rewarding to watch an ESL students journey unfold over a number of years from learning the alphabet through to scoring highly on an IELTS test and get an offer to study at the university of their choice. Are ESL teachers important in that journey? You bet they are! You might also want to read the pros and cons of being an ESL/TEFL teacher here.