Hi! We are Astrid and Erik from The Netherlands and we are excited about teaching teenagers English as a Second Language (ESL) and having fun while doing it. Because life is too short to have a boring day in the classroom.
Learning and teaching any second language is easiest when lessons are enjoyable and students want to come to your classroom and actively participate. However, we often find ourselves working with what we have, rather than what we would like to be doing.
Why?
There are many good reasons to trudge through your teaching days uninspired. We as teachers are overwhelmed as it is. We are scared to let go of our feeling of control in the classroom (there is probably a curtain climber or two in every class, even if you have no curtains to climb within a two-mile radius). You might have no idea how to make this bog standard grammar activity fun. And besides, we have to follow a fixed plan and do what our colleagues are doing because there is a standardised test at the end of this unit of study and we really must all do the same thing. Right?!
Whatever your reasons might be for feeling stuck in a rut and not having fun with your students, spending your days doing something you do not love is exhausting for anyone.
Let’s have some fun!
We believe that teaching can be fun and students can have a blast while also learning a thing or two about English, or French, or German, or Spanish or any other second language they are learning. With this blog we would like to inspire you and invite you to go off the beaten track and introduce a little playfulness into your classroom. Get students working on creative assignments which gets them excited while also learning a new language.
We would like to show you how you can make minor changes to your lesson plans to get students excited about reading, writing, listening, speaking and revising grammar and vocabulary. We would also like to show you how you can incorporate these skills into a larger piece of study which involves a task based approach. Some activities will be very easy to incorporate into your everyday lessons while others take a little more work to organize. It’s up to you to decide what you are comfortable with.
Start small
Whether you are new to teaching a language or you are the been-there-done-that type, we hope to give you some teaching inspiration and invite you to try out some of our ideas. Start small. Try it with your nicest kids first. Get their feedback and reflect on what went well and what needs work. Try another activity and see how that works out. Slowly, you will see your confidence growing and your students will walk into your classroom excited to find out what is next.
Have fun teaching! ^_^
Love,
Astrid and Erik
Astrid has an MA in teaching English and Bilingual and International education from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. Her passion for English was sparked when she became a bilingal student at a Dutch secondary school, attending most of her classes in English. As a student, she thoroughly enjoyed the IB English A: Language and Literature programme and set out to become a teacher in that same programme. She has been teaching the IB programme and the non-bilingual programme since 2012. Currently, she teaches ESL to Dutch students between the ages of 15 and 18 years old at a secondary school in Gorinchem, The Netherlands.
Erik has a BA in English Language & Culture from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. His passion for English and eventually getting a knack for the language came from video games and comics. The idea for teaching the language he loves came later, at university. He has been teaching ESL to Dutch students between the ages of 11 and 16 years old at a secondary school in Spijkenisse, the Netherlands.
Exciting English 