ESL Conversations about Americans

During my conversation lessons with ESL students who have been in the U.S. for a short while, I often ask them about their impressions about the U.S. What were they expecting before coming here? What did they expect to find? What ideas did they have about Americans? (Of course, I usually wait to ask such questions after we've established some rapport. I want them to speak freely and not worry about offending me.) I then ask about their current experiences and observations. What turned out to be true? What's false?

One of the general themes in the answers of all my ESL students is how diverse the U.S. is. They tell me that they thought that Americans were primarily white. When they come here, they see and experience our abundance of hyphenated Americans (Mexican-American, African-American, Italian-American, Japanese-American, etc.)

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The Best ESL Conversation Topics

For the ESL or EFL teacher, one of the challenging parts of a conversation lesson is getting some students to talk! The ESL teacher has to choose a topic that appeals to the majority of students. I'm fortunate because I teach English language learners one-on-one. Sometimes it's easier to get one person to speak than it is to get a whole class of ESL students. Getting an EFL classroom to speak may be easier. The challenge there is to get the students to speak in English!

As I said, the best conversation topics are those of interest to the English language learner. The topics could be of interest because the student needs the skills for his or her job, or in order to more easily live in an English speaking culture. The best ESL topics will be those that are relevant to the student's life.

When an ESL student knows that he or she can take what is learned in the tutoring session or in the classroom and apply it in real life, then the student will be more likely to want to participate in the discussion.

Other ESL topics that could get students talking include things that students know about (e.g., their family, their home culture, their jobs, etc.) and things that are controversial (e.g., abortion, the death penalty, and other standard debate topics). I also use Compelling Conversations when I need a very thorough list of ESL conversation topics and questions.

One of the important things for ESL tutors and ESL teachers to remember is that the student(s), not the tutor/teacher should do most of the talking in a conversation lesson.

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Learning Vocabulary from Television

I often encourage my ESL students to watch television. Although watching TV is usually a mind-numbing process, for English language learners, it's another way to practice English listening skills. It also (for better or worse) teaches about American culture. Sitcoms are particularly useful for learning new vocabulary and idioms. TV news can also be useful, although most of my ESL students tell me that they have trouble understanding TV news. The stories are often out of context so the English learner cannot use the context to understand what's going on.

I was just watching a Sunday national news program. One of the stories was about adults who take care of their aging parents. One of the lines in the story was, "She took care of her aging parents until they both passed." Although an English language learner could probably figure out what this sentence means, it was interesting to me that the reporter said "passed" instead of "passed away." "To pass away" is the more common euphemism to talk about death; yet, any native English speaker would have no trouble understanding this sentence. I wondered if a non-native speaker would completely understand.

Incidentally, I looked up "pass" on dictionary.com. Without using "pass" as part of a phrasal verb, there were 75 definitions! Seventy-five definitions for the word "pass!" How's a person supposed to learn English?!

ESL Students and Self-Confidence

As a private tutor of adult ESL students, I think the most important thing that English language learners get from our sessions is increased self-confidence. Most of my advanced students have excellent grammar skills, a pretty good vocabulary and fairly decent pronunciation.

The thing that ESL students are lacking is self-confidence. They're afraid of making mistakes out in the world. Just by providing a safe place for them to have conversations and practice their English speaking skills, their self-confidence improves immensely. I've noticed that it only takes three to four months of regular practice with me for their self-confidence and speaking skills to significantly improve.

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Transition as a Verb

One of the things that is so fascinating to me as an ESL teacher is that the English language is continually evolving (or at least changing). As most of us were taught as children, "'ain't' is not a word." (And yet, it's now in the dictionary. Although most educated people don't use it, or if they do, they use it selectively.) The word "google" used to only be the name of a search engine. Now it's a verb. "I googled you last night."

In the past, we also only used the “generic” “he,” “his,” and “him.” That changed to "he or she" and sometimes "s/he." Now, using “they,” “their,” and “them” as singular pronouns is common and used in informal conversation and writing. It is perfectly acceptable to most people and “Usage Notes” are discussing this point in dictionaries (see Longman Advanced American Dictionary).

This word came up in one of my ESL lessons with an advanced ESL student. I was pretty sure that "transition" could be used as a verb. She had never heard it used as a verb. We looked in my dictionary and it was not there. Yet, I felt fairly certain that I'd heard this word as a verb before.

When I got home, I searched the internet for other dictionaries and other sites about this topic. Some people are absolutely adamant and even offended by the idea of "transition" as a verb. Most of the sites I saw "transition" used as a verb were discussing the issue of transgendered people. Some medical sites use "transition" as the verb to talk about the process of a person "transitioning" from one gender to another.

Transgender issues and sexual reassignment are a fairly recent phenomenon in our history. I tend to think that as society changes and deals with more issues, our language will change to enable us to talk about these topics.

Whenever I teach ESL students about non-standard English (even if it's only using reductions), I always explain how the language is changing and caution students about using new terms.

ESL Blog and Blogger's Navbar

As most of you may know, the ESL blog you are reading here is hosted on "Blogger." Blogger is a free service that belongs to Google. It's a really great way for anyone to have their own blog, whether it's about teaching English as a Second Language or anything else in the world.

The one very unfortunate thing for many people, especially teachers or others who work with children, any many others of us, is that the Navbar (the line across the top of the page that says "Search blog," "Flag blog," and "Next blog") is required by Blogger. It used to be optional when I started this ESL blog.

It used to be a great little resource or interesting for internet surfers because it would randomly pull up another Blogger blog that had been recently updated. You might find someone's blog in another language, certainly about other topics besides ESL of EFL. It was like a little mini-travel portal (a wormhole?) that would take you to another part of the world.

Unfortunately, now the "adult content" people have discovered Blogger and are essentially "spamming" the rest of us. They are creating tons of blogs with adult content, from which they can make money. And they are adding and updating them regularly.

So now I have noticed that if I hit the "Next blog" button, more than half the time I'm taken to an offensive "adult content" blog. Google and Blogger don't seem to care about this. They don't give us regular bloggers a way to block this offensive content.

I have considered using only my regular website (Teaching ESL to Adults), over which I control of the content, and abandoning this blog. However, I have put a lot of effort into this blog and I am hoping that Google and Blogger will eventually reconsider their policy of not allowing certain types of blogs to be blocked.

In the meantime, please be careful of using the "Next blog" button and I apologize if you come upon offensive content. Blogger does not make it very easy to complain to them.

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Using "A" or "An" for Acronyms and Abbreviations

Articles are very difficult for ESL and EFL speakers to master. There are only three: a, an, the. However, there are way too many exceptions.

Aside from the exceptions, one of the extra challenging areas is determining whether to use "a" or "an" when using acronyms or abbreviations. ESL students are taught to use "a" before a word (noun) that begins with a consonant and "an" before a word that begins with a vowel. But what do you do with something like "RFP" or "MA"? Both of these begin with a consonant, so it seems that an "a" should be used. However, when looking at acronyms or abbreviations, we don't look at the first letter, we "hear" the first letter, or we look at te first sound.

The first letter in "RFP" is an "R." When I say this letter, it sounds like "arr". The first sound is a vowel. The same applies for "MA." The sound is "emm." Another vowel beginning sound. So for both of these abbreviations, I would use "an."

For example:

She has an MA in English.

I need to complete an RFP before I can submit my application.

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