Gustavo Fróes ELT

If you know me, you know me. Friends and peers, please TEACH APPROPRIACY.

No, our average student will not need to use inversions. If they go to Disney, they will not need to say 'henceforth'. Do not make learners follow strict rules of Standard English or Received Pronunciation; not even natives follow these.

You may disagree with me, and that's ok. My point is still the same. Never before have I felt the need to use inversion in a shopping centre. I honestly cannot remember a point in time when I had a chance to say "henceforth" naturally. If you speak Brazilian Portuguese as L1, think to yourself: when did you really - but really - need to use "contar-te-ia a verdade" or "mal lhes veria correria para outro lado"?

Should our learners feel the need to learn these advanced and uncommon things, they will come to you, or they go after it by themselves.

More often than not we are the only source of face-to-face English our students come in contact with. Don't make it boring and confusing with the sole purpose of saying "I taught it".

Some of you already know. Others might have noticed my account is a bit on the auto-mode side. Others might be asking "what page is this?". But today marks two weeks that I'm out, on "vacation", the first time with all my classes on pause since 2020.

This is why. My son was born on the 3rd, Benjamim. He's out and about and ready to see it all (after a shot or ten, but you know what I mean). Benji came to us exactly two weeks ago, before the time - but on his time. My house is pure love, diapers and filled with a (sometimes funky) smell that warms the heart.

I couldn't do it without my peers, friends, and students - the time off, I mean. Thank you all for the understanding, I needed this time to be with my family. My family; all mine and my wife's. We made it, and we keep building the family at every passing hour.

One more Fróes is here. If he is to be the third Fróes in ELT is still to be seen, but he's definitely the best of me.

I am mostly good fun - in and out of the classroom. Mostly.

I am a very shy person, more quiet than talkative. This makes me focus on results rather than the process. I overwork and don't mind being a bit bored if that's necessary for me to get to where I want. But my students are not me, nor should they.

I watch golf and curling, love baseball and snooker, and my favourite game is 'Scrabble' (the board game, of course). I am far from boring (but that depends on who you ask). I know fun if it looks me in the eye, but unfortunately - and it kills me - I cannot play hours and hours of Scrabble with my students.

Why all that, one may ask. It shows that we are who we are, but whoever that is, it is not your teacher 'persona'. Go the extra mile, and make that class your hole-in-one. Sweep that shyness so the puck of knowledge can hit the centre of their hearts. Have fun games that are easy to teach and play: simplicity is the way to a home run. Ask the magic 8-ball: what do my students want? Use that final I and Q and hit all the extra points ; )





Based on Penny Ur's '100 Teaching Tips'

"Let's play a game!" can precede something incredible or indescribable.

I have designed games that worked wonderfully well (I made a 'Jeopardy' from scratch glued to the board) and others that were just plain awful (be aware of the selection for the columns if you ever play 'Stop' in class).

But no matter what we do, we are the ones to blame. Did it work? It's all you. Was it like hitting your face on a brick wall? It's all you.

Instructions must be simple. The objective must be simple. The game should be fast-moving and challenging to a point. It should be clear to the whole group, not just a few. If you feel it's too difficult for a student or two, play something they can be paired up with.

'Playing' dictation is not fun. 'Hangman' is outdated and mainly useless. 'Stop' is a source of frustration. 'Kahoot' is... well... 'Kahoot' is 'Kahoot', enjoy it with moderation because it is as addictive as it is fun and useful: but you will never get the same rush as the first time you did it.

There is not much I have to say about this one but the obvious: knowing their names shows you care.

I am not talking about confusing names during the first week of class. We have dozens of students and probably four Enzos, three Valentinas and a handful of Thiagos. But after the first week, you have to know who is who.

Hearing our names being called catches our attention and makes us feel important and heard. Not hearing cause the direct opposite feeling: forgotten and unimportant.

If they know your name, you MUST know theirs.

Teacher-centred lessons are loooooong gone - thank God. Teachers MUST act as facilitators and guides. We do not own the knowledge, and we are not walking thesauri.

Take the moments learners are working by themselves and do not interrupt. Monitor. If our instructions are good, learners will not need to interrupt their work to ask us anything.

Don't know a word? They can check a dictionary.
Don't know what to say? Ask a classmate.

My wife is a school teacher, and she taught me something incredible she uses with her 6-year-olds: 'Ask three before me'. It means her students will ask three classmates what to do before going to her.

What does it do to students? Does it mean we will not help them? Of course not.
Going to their classmates and not to us teaches learners how to:

- be independent
- look for answers by themselves
- talk to other people in English
- decentralize the source of knowledge.

We limit our students' creativity if we focus on close-ended activities (meaning there is only one correct answer for the question).

Take these two sentences as an example:

Complete with Simple Past.

1) I (a)___ late yesterday and I (b)___ to work. (wake up/ go).
2) I (a)___ late yesterday and I (b)___ to work.

Answers:
1) (a)woke up; (b) went.
2) (a) slept, went to bed, woke up... ; (b) went, was late, didn't go

_________________________________________________________

Which is a more interesting activity for learners? Which will give them a sense of "job well done"? Which will limit their thoughts and which will let them think about it?

Give this some thought. It is ____ to let our students be right even if their classmate has a different answer ; )

If you have never overexplained something, you are not a teacher.
We thrive on explanations and good results. But good results are directly linked to our instructions.

If you need to spend more than 5 minutes explaining a game, it's not a game you should use. Many stages, nuances, hidden rules, distributing material and elaborate pieces are all enemies of a good classroom game. They hinder comprehension and kill the little time we have.

What to do? I suggest 'Bingo' (change numbers for a word class, for example), 'Tic-tac-toe' (each space has a question), a simple throw-the-dice-and-move board game with the target language in the squares (lots of these are free to download online).

Any other suggestions?

A problem in class undoubtedly starts small. No matter the aspect or type of problem. Be it discipline, language, or attention. If you see it, address it.

Minor problems grow as fast as bamboo. They may enter sleep mode but rarely do they go away - especially when left unattended.

Discipline problem? React quickly and firmly.
Vocabulary problem? Consider differentiation.
Attention problem? It might be you or them. Address it through experimentation.

P.s.: Did you know bamboo is the fastest-growing plant in the world? They can grow up to a metre a day.

Did a task work? Are you proud of the results of a specific part of your lesson? Did your students finally learn 'that thing'? Use it again!

Any reference in-class material for teachers recycle tasks - or even whole lessons - from time to time. Have you ever noticed "the same" lesson in a book, but in a different unit and with different topics? That's recycling.

Don't waste a good lesson, activity or task. Change it for content, difficulty, and structure, to have more or fewer repetitions, to boost confidence and interest. If you decided to use it once, there's definitely something good to it ; )

Allowing yourself access to a good coursebook is essential, but don't use all of it.

Choose the one you feel more comfortable with that matches your style and expectations. I use Nat Geo's 'Life' series, but there are so many out there.

Dip in and out of the coursebook, and design tasks based on the ones in the book. Use the book's tasks but change the target language. Would you rather use it more often than not? Make sure to include some out-of-the-book moments for your learners to know you are actually doing something with it. Remember that advanced learners are more independent, so if you have a book with answers and just go over page after page and do not change anything, why do they need to go to class?

There are many ways to prepare a lesson. However, I believe that at the heart of all communicative lessons, they are pretty much the same - what really changes is the delivery.
When we think about the structure of the steps in a lesson (not the Lesson Plan) we tend to fall into a Framework. Sometimes we do it by accident, sometimes we do it because we know about them. Lesson Frameworks help us guide our steps throughout the planning of a lesson. They tell us what works.

We are ALWAYS free to try new things, and those might work even better. However, let's analyse our most recent lessons: do they follow some structure? Are they planned in a specific order of events or everything is just thrown together for the purpose of practice?