miércoles, 10 de marzo de 2010

Engilsh Clubs

An interesting strategy to teach English

An English club is a very useful tool used to help teachers catching the attention of their students to improve their skills and make them more interested in learning new word, grammar and a lot of things so necessary to understand and how to use English. In these clubs the young, middle and older learners could take part, in order to raise their interests and cover the needs in learning English.

Starting an English Club is a great way to make new lasting friendships. It is important to have good ESL friends because your confidence will increase if you do. You will feel more comfortable using English around people you trust and have fun with. This strategy is really helpful in any age and what you want to do is use English clubs in class, in the first place, use it with young learners, in fact, it’s absolutely necessary for making a solid base in YL’s English skills.

English is being recognized as a world language, and many people believe that the earlier children start learning English, this means, learners will be more successful if they begin studying English at an early age. The English clubs have been designed to provide primary school age learners with a positive initial exposure to the English language before they begin formal academic study of language in middle school. “One of the real advantages to having children start learning English at an early age is that they are better equipped to develop English language pronunciation.”(Birdsong 1999).

What do you have to do for starting an English Club?


*Setting the ideal place*

The easiest place to hold an English Club is in a spare classroom in the English class. Wherever you hold your club, remember that it is a club, not a class. To change the atmosphere in a classroom you might want to open windows or have background music or candles. A pot of coffee or a bowl of popcorn can also make the meeting feel more like a club than a class. You will also have access to materials and television equipment to make more interesting this place that you have chosen.






*Making a special ritual to start it better*


Try to start each session with a ritual so that they know they have entered into the ‘English Zone’. This is especially important if you are just coming into their normal classroom and teaching where their normal teacher would be. You may choose a welcome song or create a phrase to be prepared to start talking about the topic of the day. However, it is so important to try considering the ages of your students, because the activities or song you want to use to do it, they are not the same to the youngest as the oldest student’s activities. Be careful with this.


*To teach them to work together, in any spare of the ideal place*


If possible gather everyone into a circle on the floor to get them out of their seats. This may not be feasible given the seating arrangements you have but make sure you ask about the possibility of changing the seats or even room. If you can’t change the seats themselves then get the students to sit in different places; it is another strategy used to get a work in group. Getting along with them is necessary as well as possible, so include yourself into the group as ones of them. In this way, they could respect to you better.


*Choosing interesting themes to talk about*

You can organize your club in many ways. Everyone can write down a topic that they want to debate, or you can talk about popular culture and current events. Someone can bring in a newspaper article and everyone can read it together and discuss it. Reading clubs are a type of English Club. Each person reads the same book and the club discusses aspects such as what they liked about it, who their favorite characters were, etc. by ages, you can use plenty of strategies for example , in the case of children you may use toys, pictures of houses or something like this, and say to them ‘describe your bedroom ‘ and that kind of things. Although some clubs will be full of members that only want to practice one skill, such as conversation.


A conversational club meetings are often very casual and require little planning. In regards to this, it is really important recognizing that no everyone has the same English level and it’s really necessary using time to explain to your student that there will be other students with different levels of English in the class and that you will be using partnering and grouping exercises and activities in order to meet the needs of everyone. You may find that some students feel uncomfortable acting as a peer tutor, while others feel that they are focusing too much on a skill that they will never use in the real world.

Start a new club session regularly .This will keep the club alive! Change activities/themes that didn't work the first time. Keep adding new ideas, but try to maintain a club identity.

Finally, remember…

Teaching someone else a grammar point or explaining how to use a new word is one of the best ways to review your skills. The purpose of the club is to use English in a life-like situation. Do what feels natural and comfortable.

Posted by:

Zulving Franco
Yesenia Yovera
Gabriel Indriago