HOW TO TEACH ENGLISH FOR BEGINNERS

1. 1.Teach relevant and practical content.

2. 2.Use visual aids and gestures.
3. 3.Ensure you use repetition.
4. 4.Choose which mistakes to correct.
5. 5.Simplify language and give demonstrations.
6. 6.Beginner lesson ideas and activities. Activity one: Simple listening. Activity two:
Vanishing whiteboard.

Every English teacher knows that teaching beginners can be a real

challenge. This can be made even more difficult if you don’t
understand your students’ native language! Do you remember
attending your first foreign language class in school and not
understanding a word the teacher was saying? This is exactly how new
English students feel when they first enter your classroom.

If you’ve ever done any form of TEFL training, you’ll know that not
only is it possible to teach English to beginners purely using English, it
is also arguably the best way for students to learn. Plus, seeing your
students’ English levels improve in front of your eyes as a result of
your teaching always gives a great sense of satisfaction.

So, even if your students don’t even know their ABCs yet, take heart
that you CAN teach them and they WILL learn English. To help
you along the way, here are our top eleven tips for teaching English to
beginners. These will work for both EFL and ESL students.
1. Keep instructions simple
Don’t use too much English! When teaching absolute beginners you
should avoid lengthy explanations. Instead, you should use as few
words as possible allied with helpful gestures. What do you think is
clearer to a newbie? “Hi everyone, thank you for coming in. Now if you
don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you can turn to page one in your
textbook.” Or “Hi everyone, please open your textbook” with a hand
gesture or demonstration of opening the textbook.

In other words, don’t over complicate it. You can save your complex
language, phrases and idioms for your more advanced students.

For beginner students, gestures and visual cues are super important
and help them understand even if they don’t know the meaning of the
words yet. This one tip alone could be a life saver for you when you
teach English to complete beginners for the first time.

2. Let your students listen

The first thing most students want to do when learning a new language
is to start speaking it. However, before doing this they need to be able
to listen and understand you and the language. This means don’t try
and teach them the longest words in English right away!
Give students time to acclimatize to your English and don’t pressure
them in to speaking right away if they don’t want to. Grade your
English accordingly and speak slowly and clearly so that everything
you say can be understood.

3. Check their understanding

You should never assume that students have understood the lesson
content or classroom instructions. To assume is a rookie mistake. For
example, in your first lesson with beginners of any age they may feel
too embarrassed to admit that they don’t understand something,
especially in a group setting. You therefore constantly need to check
that they have understood.

Three of the simplest strategies to check for understanding are

to see what your students are doing, be aware of their body language
and ask if they are okay. The word “Okay?” with an accompanying
hand gesture is universally understood and your student’s response
will let you know if they need further help.

Remember, your students can come from different cultures and not all
of them will necessarily be familiar with raising their hand to get your
attention.

4. Practice, practice, practice

In EFL and ESL beginner lessons your students won’t pick everything
up right away. English beginners require a lot of repetition and drilling
in order to learn and this means practicing and repeating the same
words and sentences multiple times.

You need to provide students with lots of examples, check their

understanding and then have them practice what they have learned.
You can then have them do the same with their class mates and
practice it all over again in the next lesson. By doing this consistently
you will steadily build up your students’ language and before you know
it, they will be asking “how are you?” and “how was your weekend?”
having sailed past their ABCs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHaQQ0dWLLI

5. Establish classroom language

We’ve already talked about the importance of speaking slowly and
clearly for beginner students. However, this won’t be effective if your
language is overly complex. It’s therefore also important to establish
consistent, recognizable language in the classroom. This also helps
when it comes to managing the classroom.

For example, once you have taught your students to ask and respond
to “how are you?” and “how was your weekend?”, you can incorporate
this into the start of each lesson. This way you help them regularly
practice what they have learned.

You can also teach students to use key phrases such as “I don’t
understand”, “what does that mean?” or “can you speak more slowly?”.
This will greatly aid your communication with them and help the
lesson go more smoothly for everyone.

Learning a new language can be daunting for students of any age, so

anything that you can do to get students more comfortable is a
massive plus.

6. Show and tell

Using visual cues are a vital part of the learning process in any
language, let alone in teaching English to beginners. As babies we
learn by seeing and hearing and it is just the same when learning
a new language. What does this mean? It means that when you’re
teaching, rather than just stating an instruction or target language,
you need to illustrate it. This can be done in the form of gestures,
drawings, illustrations, videos and role-play.

7. Make it interesting
English teaching for beginners doesn’t have to be boring. Nothing is
duller for you and your students than just making them read from a
text book and fill out worksheets.

By injecting some variation into your lessons by using role-play, games

and watching video clips your students will be a lot more engaged.
This is particularly important when teaching children, many of whom
will be English beginners. Preparation is therefore key here. If their
level has improved enough you could even get them to write some
short stories. Narrative writing prompts can be particularly useful
to encourage this.

8. Prepare well
The old phrase ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’ certainly holds true
in English teaching. If you want to deliver a good lesson to your
students you need to prepare it well and plan for any eventualities.

Even though teaching English to beginners means repeating the same

language, it doesn’t necessarily mean repeating the same activities.
Different types of students will respond better to different resources.
You need to be ready to adapt and teach according to the needs of your
students. Don’t forget, you can’t rely upon having in-depth
conversations to keep things going at this level like you can when
teaching English to advance level students, so the onus is on you to
keep the lesson flowing.

9. Encourage them to read

Even complete beginners can learn English from reading and it is
one of the core skills of language learning. You should try to find
suitable material for your students’ age and comprehension level and
encourage them to read as much as you can. This may be as simple as
getting them to use a dictionary to look up the translations for words,
or trying to follow the English subtitles on their favorite TV show.

Just make sure that you have a good understanding of their English
level to begin with, as you don’t want to assign something too difficult.
This will lead to frustration with the student when ideally you want it
to be something that they enjoy.

10. Give praise

Providing positive reinforcement is one of the key elements required
to successfully teach English to beginners. By giving praise when a
student gets something right you give them confidence to speak again
or attempt another sentence. This helps them learn and is much better
than saying “that’s wrong” if a student makes a mistake.
If a student does give an incorrect answer, it is better to make a note of
it and then have the class practice again together. By doing this you
won’t embarrass the student in front of their class mates and everyone
will get the opportunity for more practice. A positive classroom is a
happy classroom, if you can foster this it will help both you and your
students

11. Remember your students are fluent in their

own language
After all is said and done, you should always remember that your
students have their own language. This means that they might have
different ways of communicating their ideas or use specific patterns of
speech that make them more prone to making mistakes in English. As
teachers, we need to be aware of this and listen carefully and patiently
as they go through the learning process.

The objective is to help them to learn and use the English language
correctly. We should therefore encourage them to speak it all times
whilst in class, and try to avoid them using their own language as
much as possible.

Teaching English to beginners: Some

final thoughts
Teaching English to beginners may seem difficult at first, and there is
no doubt that it can be one of the hardest levels to teach, but if you
persevere it can be incredibly satisfying.

When you teach your students to speak English, you are also helping
to set them up for success in other areas of their life. Seeing your
students start from nothing to going on to hold full conversations is
very rewarding and a great reason to get into teaching

50+ CONVERSATIONAL PHRASES English (Practice writing the words on the lines )

1 Hello -------------------------------------------

2 How are you? ------------------------------------------

3 Hi ------------------------------------------

4 I'm good ------------------------------------------- etc

5 I'm okay

6 I feel good

7 I feel bad

8 What about you?

9 And you?

10 What's your name?

11 My name is...

12 Nice to meet you

13 What's up?
14 What's new?

15 Where is the bathroom?

16 Can you say that again?

17 Where do you work?

18 Do you speak English?

19 Excuse me PDF by pdf-language-lessons.com 2

20 I'm sorry 21 Thank you

22 You're welcome

23 Yes

24 No

25 I don't understand

26 Really?

27 Please

28 I like it

29 I don't like it

30 What's your job?

31 I am...

32 Bye

33 See you later

34 Let's meet again

35 Cool 36 Great

37 Good

38 Bad

39 The weather is nice today PDF by pdf-language-lessons.com 3

40 The weather is bad today

41 What's your favorite food?

42 Let's go eat

43 Do you want to go eat?

44 What's your favorite music?

45 I like...

46 Delicious

47 It is delicious

48 It tastes good

49 It does not taste good

50 How old are you?

51 Where do you live

30 Greetings English
(Practice writing the words on the lines below)

1. hello _____________________

2. hi _____________________

3. good morning _____________________ etc

4 .good afternoon

5. good evening

6. good day

7. hey

8. how are you?

9. how is everything?

10. what's up?

11.long time no see

12. excuse me

13. hello, my name is...

14. bye

15.good bye

16.see you later

17.see you tomorrow

18.let's meet again

19.have a good d

20.have a good night

21.good night

22.How is your day?

23.What's new?

24.How's life?

25.Nice to see you

26.Nice to meet you

27.How have you been?

28.Hello everyone

29.How are you feeling?

30.I have to go

100 TOP WORDS BEGINNERS MUST KNOW

1 April

2 arm

3 August
4 back

5 bad

6 beautiful

7 beef

8 beer

9 body

10 calendar

11 can

12 chest

13 chicken

14 clock

15 coffee

16 come

17 cook

18 december

19 Delicious!

20 difficult

21 do

22 doctor

23 easy

24 eight

25 employee

26 engineer

27 far
28 February

29 finger

30 fish

31 five

32 foot

33 four

34 Friday

35 go

36 good

37 Good afternoon.

38 Good evening.

39 Good morning.

40 Good night.

41 Goodbye.

42 hand

43 head

44 Hello.

45 hour

46 How are you?

47 I'm...(name).

48 January

49 July

50 June

51 lamb
52 laugh

53 leg

54 make

55 manager

56 March

57 May

58 minute

59 Monday

60 near

61 Nice to meet you.

62 nine

63 No.

64 November

65 nurse

66 o'clock

67 October

68 one

69 police officer

70 pork

71 programmer

72 salesman

73 Saturday

74 second

75 see
76 September

77 seven

78 six

79 small

PDF by pdf-language-lessons.com

80 stomach

81 Sunday

82 tea

83 teacher

84 ten

85 Thank you!

86 three

87 Thursday

88 today

89 tomorrow

90 Tuesday

91 two

92 ugly

93 use

94 water

95 Wednesday

96 week

97 wine
98 year

99 Yes.

PDF by pdf-language-lessons.com

100 yesterday

101 zero