Learning and Teaching

Children and adults who acquire language successfully outside the classroom seem to share certain similarities in their learning experiences. First of all, they are usually exposed to language that they more or less understand even if they can’t produce the same language spontaneously themselves. Secondly, they are motivated to learn the language in order to be able to communicate. And finally, they have opportunities to use the language they are learning, thus giving themselves chances to flex their linguistic muscles – and check their progress and abilities.

All these features of natural language acquisition can be difficult to replicate in the classroom, but there are elements that we should try to imitate. Like language learners outside schools, they will need to be motivated, be exposed to language, and be given chances to use it. We will call these elements ‘ESA’, three elements that will be present in all – or almost all – classes:

Engage: this is the point in a teaching sequence where teachers try to arouse the students’ interest, thus involving their emotions with lessons where they are amused, moved, stimulated, or challenged. It seems quite clear that those lessons involved not only more ‘fun’, but also better learning.

Study: study activities are those where the students are asked to focus on language (or information) and how it is constructed. They range from the study and practice of a single sound to an investigation of how a writer achieves a particular effect in a long text; from an examination and practice of a verb tense to the study of a transcript of informal speech to discuss spoken style.

Activate: this element describes exercises and activities that are designed to get students to use language as freely and ‘communicatively’ as they can. The objective for the students is not to focus on language construction and/or practice specific bits of language (grammar patterns,particular vocabulary items, or functions) but for them to use all and any language that may be appropriate for a given situation or topic. Thus, activate exercises offer students a chance to try out real language use with little or no restriction – a kind of rehearsal for the real world.

These ESA elements need to be present in most lessons or teaching sequences. Whether the main focus of the lesson is a piece of grammar (study and activation), or whether the focus is on reading (activation and study), students always need to be Engaged.

(Adapted from: HARMER, J. How to teach English. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2017)