Top 5 Tips for Teaching Conversational English | How to Teach ESL Conversation and Speaking Classes

Many foreign ESL teachers abroad, especially in places like South Korea, teach predominantly English conversation classes. Some teachers (and students too!) have the perception that teaching English conversation involves just “talking” to the students. However, there's a lot more to teaching conversational English than just free-talking. Check out some of the best tips for teaching TEFL conversation and speaking. In my years of teaching, back-and-forth conversation has been a great way to teach and learn. Watch this video to find out how to teach conversational English and have an awesome English conversation class! Want to find out more? Check out: https://eslspeaking.org/english-conversation-class/ 101 ESL Activities for Adults: https://amzn.to/2QEqH1B Even more Ideas for the TEFL Classroom: https://eslspeaking.org/ https://www.facebook.com/eslspeaking https://www.pinterest.ca/eslspeaking/ https://www.instagram.com/jackie.bolen/ https://www.tiktok.com/@englishwithjackie #teachingenglishwithjackie #englishconversation #teachingenglish #esl • Join Jackie's email list: https://eslspeaking.org/subscribe/ • Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAb9LpA9eTtwdSlo91c03Mg/join • Find me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jackiebolen/membership Tags: teaching conversational english, teaching english conversation, teaching conversation english, teaching esl conversation, esl conversation, english conversation, conversational english class, conversation english classes, how to teach english conversation Transcript for how to teach conversational English: Hi everybody, this is Jackie from eslspeaking.org. So today I have my top five tips for teaching conversational English classes or ESL/EFL/TEFL classes, etc. My first tip is to make it as student-centred as possible. This is something that I always thought, that my classes were student-centred but I took the CELTA course and my tutor actually challenged me. He just said you know what, it is student-centred but you could make it a lot more of that. The way I think about it is that I try to get my students talking and participating, writing, reading, listening, and doing things as much as possible. They need more practice with English, not me. So any time I'm at the front of the class talking, I think, can I minimize this? Can I get my students doing the hard work and not me? Just keep that in the back of your mind. The next one for conversational English is to teach students to ask follow-up questions. It's kind of a weakness of many students. It's easy to get in the habit of the teacher asking a question, how are you? I'm good. How's the weather? It's sunny. What are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm playing soccer. And students never really ask questions back and they also aren't great at asking follow-up questions. Who do you play soccer with? Or, if the answer is, I'm gonna catch a movie, then, what movie are you watching? Just simple things like that. The next idea for a conversation class is error correction. So error correction is a little bit tricky in a conversational English class. It's a bit demoralizing, especially for beginners if you correct every single error that students make. And I mean, I get it. I've been there in my language studies. Just a general kind of rule that I have. I actually have two general rules. The first one is that I correct all errors related to the target language. Wo if we're studying or I'm teaching about the simple past, I'll correct all errors related to the simple past. Another rule that I have is that I'll correct errors related to something we've already just covered in that class, say in the past week or two. So the next tip for teaching conversational English is to set the context. By setting the context I mean you can teach the simple past, the present continuous, whatever you're teaching but students need a reason to use that language or a situation in which they can use the language by setting the context. There are various ways to do it. You can tell a story, get students to talk about a little topic related to what you're teaching, do a little warm-up game or activity, make a prediction about maybe like a headline they see in the text. The final tip that I have is to review. Repetition is key. I'm not sure of the exact number, but studies have shown that when you learn a language, things don't really stick until you see them a certain number of times. This is true for vocabulary, grammar, whatever it is. I always do my best to help students with this process. Want more tips for teaching English, including more ideas for how to teach speaking? Be sure to check out my book. ESL/EFL Teaching Practice and Methodology: https://amzn.to/3ELb91y Timestamp for how to teach speaking and conversation 0:00 Intro 0:12 Make it student-centred 1:03 Follow-up questions 2:06 Error correction 3:27 Set the context 4:27 Review lots 5:35 Conclusion