05/18/2021
hello everybody it's liza here and i'm super happy to welcome you to today's itttt live
session um so i hope that you um have some spare time uh to tune in
and uh let's talk about um another exciting uh teaching topic
today uh so if you see and hear me clearly please let me know that you are here
actually via the chat box and um by the way um
i'm super excited uh not only because of this live session but also because of the weather it is
super warm in my place today um my hometown is blooming and um it it feels so nice
actually um also let me know where are you guys tuning in from
uh so i am actually located um in the middle of russia um
the city of yekaterinburg um so uh usually it's pretty cold here but
may is just the best uh month of the year so if you um think of coming
here one day um it's better to choose may and you'll definitely love it um all
right so i can see that there are some people um already so
please let me know that you hear and see me clearly also share your locations and
i'll share them with the audience because i want to um show that we are actually truly
global here okay and just in a moment we are going to um move on to the point
of today's discussion uh which is actually pretty interesting
um to me uh and hopefully to you as well um i um i really want you to benefit
from today's session and i'm not bragging but i really like today's presentation
because it contains so um so much exciting content
um related to teaching and um also some of the ideas are
uh really unique because i haven't seen them anywhere um on the net
yet so i hope you love them okay all right
um here is marvin from vietnam nice to see you marvin thanks for tuning
in all right guys so um if you want to share your locations please go ahead
um i'm here to communicate with you not only uh presenting uh to you so i hope to
hear from you as well and by the way uh i'm still a little bit uh
shaky and nervous uh because of my uh presentation skills so i hope
um you'll support me somehow right and now let me just change
myself change the presentation a little bit so that you could see it and let's move
on so um basically today's uh presentation will take approximately
30 minutes or so uh and then we will have um a usual q a session so if you have
any questions feel free to ask them via the chat box um and
at the end of the main topic i'll go back to the questions and try to
respond to you okay all right hello from iran uh nice to see you guys
thanks for joining thanks for tuning in and let's move on to the main point
of today's discussion so we're going to talk about ways to keep esl students engaged
after the lesson so um today's tips are going to be focused around
online teaching however um i believe that all of the tips might be
applicable to in-class teaching as well so if you work in a real classroom
just feel free to adjust and there is no problem in using
different techniques and stuff like that so just try to be flexible and
also if you see um this description in the bottom um we are actually going
to discuss um a more specific point which is customer
retention or student retention in the esl teaching um
i feel like this point um isn't covered anywhere and it's more
um well let's say it's more common to marketing versus uh esl teaching
however um this thing is really um important here in the esl teaching
as well uh because um when it comes to selling your services uh it's also
about business and marketing all right so um
which is why i decided to share this definition with you so um customer retention
is when um you do some activities in order to increase the number of
repeat customers and to increase the profitability of each existing customer
so as an example if you want your students to stay with you you have to uh be
creative you have to give them interesting and engaging activities uh
you have to be helpful and sensitive probably so um
you will you will basically combine your personal um your personal approach like your
personal skills uh and qualities uh with your professional skills
uh which are teaching techniques right uh and basically this
um notion this expression customer relation uh
customer retention is usually uh used in marketing however we can also implement it in
in the esl teaching if we uh sell our services online
or uh maybe um we find custom we find students online
and then work them with them in a real classroom okay and
um the next point would be how to make students come back actually and um the problem
um is the problem stems from motivation in general and uh
this notion is really um common to the esl teaching we we all know
like um all teachers books all uh teaching courses uh
suggest us to focus on motivation and try to
organize our lessons in order to motivate students
however there is a little bit um much of a problem um
because motivation might be different and i'll tell you about it just now
so um basically when we talk about different types of motivation different
uh teaching courses we would focus probably on um internal versus external motivation
but when it comes to um real teaching we would probably also need to look at
genuine motivation and fake motivation and to understand what's the difference uh
we need to look at these examples so uh let's look at the expressions
let let's look at this example sentences uh these are some types of sentences
i usually hear from my students or from my perspective students
um and um right after i hear such words i i like understand
if i'm going to to teach that person or not so um sometimes
i hear some something like i learn english to pass an exam and get a university scholarship
when i hear words like this i understand that the person is pretty motivated
because they need to achieve a specific goal and on the other hand when we talk about
individuals uh who say some something like um i learn english because it's
important um so it's clear to us that they don't actually
have a specific goal they are not trying to achieve anything
or maybe they want to achieve some something but they just don't know how
to uh express it uh which is like which is why i believe um this type of
attitude this type of approach is is not this real motivation which drives
you in language uh in the language learning
right so um it is really important uh to um make sure
that your perspectives prospective students um are genuinely motivated
versus like fake motivated um and then when we go
back to some teaching activities um we would ask like how how we
as teachers uh can influence some students retention how can we make them come back like for
example um right now we have this uh trial lesson
and we are not sure that students are actually going to come back and uh
here is what we have to count on first of all we need to um summarize
like some of our personal qualities and um try to um get prepared uh
to the first class we need to be sure we want to be
as helpful and motivating as it is possible it is also important to be sensitive and
accept any peculiarities any um
features of our students um it is also important to treat them
equally and as any uh as individuals um the atmosphere
of the lesson is also pretty important and as an example here um i'd like to share
my personal story with you so when i was much younger like
um probably eight years ago or some something when i just started uh
tutoring students uh one by one one-on-one uh i was really
um i wasn't prepared uh for being a teacher i i didn't know how to
communicate with um different people especially with children um
i i could easily um get annoyed and irritated
uh with some of the answers or some something you know
so my reactions weren't um normal i would say they were um too extreme
uh and that approach was it it made me look like a bad teacher i believe
also when we talk about the lesson itself we need to make sure
that the lesson dynamics uh is interesting and engaging
and to do to do so we need to give clear instructions positive feedback and
praise um and select materials which are going to be
appropriate for specific students um of course it is always better to
focus on students interests versus some specific tests and uh
scores and stuff like that and another example here would be that um
as a learner myself i um i didn't like to learn english at school
because it was always focused on getting correct answers it was
circled around some grammatical points and it was all about being clear and
um precise in different um aspects of of the language learning
uh teachers never praised me and never said anything encouraging and usually
especially when i um wrote some essays and uh received them back checked
i saw like papers um with red marks with
red uh corrections and stuff like that and i felt so miserable um moreover
um there were questions questions or uh remarks like it's not wrong it's not right it is all
wrong um change it uh paraphrase paraphrase it uh but i couldn't
understand how to do that because the type of the feedback wasn't clear at all
so it was just uh not motivated and motivating it was not um clear and
it was just useless to me as a learner and nowadays when i work with my
students i usually try to look at the most positive aspects of their uh work
when we have speaking activities i try to show them that they do
great even if they make mistakes so mistakes are not actually important
when it comes to communication well regardless of the fact that they um
um change understanding that they uh prevent um
other people from understanding clearly so that's the point and
now um i'd like to ask you guys um there is another question which is
also important but i'm not sure that everyone is on the same page with me so
um do you think it's important to assign homework to your students let me know
via the chat box like yes or no do you think it's important or not
in terms of student retention and let me quickly while you're thinking
let me quickly look at the chat box if there are any questions all right
uh hello alexey um you you haven't missed anything uh we are
just in the very beginning i suppose and today's live session is devoted to
student retention which is like we want to make sure that students are
going back are coming back to us after the trial lesson after the first
like course for example so things like that okay
so there are people from egypt i can see nice thanks guys thanks guys for tuning
in and yeah just feel free and go ahead
please vote like do you think it's important to assign students um
assign homework to students what do you think and as for me
it is pretty important but there is a problem
sometimes teachers give too much homework and this is the way to um
to reduce students motivation actually especially when they are committed to
working like two times a week for example and then you give them um
so much home task as for example they are going to spend i don't know approximately
three or four hours more uh of their spare time i mean so um
this way it's going to be not motivating however
giving um home tasks is still important and i learned this trick
when i worked for a teaching platform for an online teaching school
they assign students with home tasks right after the first trial lesson and
they motivated it they explained it uh that
it is important to give this first homework to make students come back again um
so it's some some something like um you give this trial lesson but you treat
it as a real class and you want to make sure that students uh understand it the same
way as you so for example if you teach um on a
teaching platform like kaitoki or some something then you are probably giving
this trial classes for free or maybe for some
um discount and um you want to make sure this way
that uh your prospective students your prospective clients are going to
come back next time and pay you um that amount of money you really want and
you really deserve so it's a great idea actually to give
some home tasks which would be relevant uh to the content of your
teaching okay so the answer would be yes it is important to assign
students uh homework but make sure
that you don't um burden them with it
all right and right now we're moving on to the most exciting part
of today's uh presentation i'm going to share some um engaging ideas
but before i do that uh i'd like to uh move back to the chat box and see
um at your responses all right
yeah so um this is the answer i was actually thinking about so when you work
with some specific groups of students for example with um adults it is extremely important to
give them enough home tasks
but not too much and later on i'm going to share several
ideas on how to give um exciting home tasks
which won't uh take more than like one hour or some something during the week um
all right yeah um i partially agree with it
uh sometimes it's important to ask for students opinion like do you want to to
get home tasks do you want to do home tasks however it is still important to assign
students with home tasks in order to
make sure that they request something and then they come back to your classes
and they are prepared somehow okay all right so let's see
um at some of the ideas which can actually solve this problem like how
not to give too much homework uh and at the same time help students
to retain um your lessons contents and um as i have already mentioned
these ideas are actually for online teaching however it is really
flex they are really flexible it is possible to adjust all of the ideas to your uh real
classrooms okay so um in the next on the next slides i'm going to show you
uh like some of the greatest ad tech um ideas
and i hope you will benefit from it and i hope you'll try to use them with
your students and the first one um is actually really
famous it is quizlet um let me know if you've heard about it
or not so i actually started using quizlet not that long ago
but i see that this application this service is really helpful so
um like last year i actually created uh real cards
to learn words by heart and it was so useless it was so inconvenient because i lost
all of the papers like i i did um i created papers like
this i wrote one word here and a definition or a
translation on the other side uh this is the way i used to do um when i studied at
university and nowadays i feel like it's a little bit old-fashioned
and quizlet actually solve solves this problem like how not to create uh
too many paper to too many pieces of paper and how not to um lose them
basically you can have all of the cards uh in your um cell phone and uh you are able to
learn the vocabulary some patterns and even have team activities uh
on your on your way i don't know home or on your way to school and stuff like
that so quizlet is just really amazing and i want to show you how to use it as
a teacher so this is the way um it looks this is the way it looks from
my teacher's dashboard so i paid for the teacher's
account um it's not that pricey especially if you
um get the discount from time to time they um share discount links
and um special offers so it's it's not that pricey
but i i can't say how much was it when i when i paid for it but um
it is worth it actually so uh this is one of my classrooms um
with my adult students i created several sets of cards and um
well made a special classroom for this particular group and now i can
track their activity i can track their progress and i actually see that some people are
really consistent and some people are really engaged into this learning
uh versus some other people who um log in and don't do anything
well i believe that it is especially um exciting for uh younger students
but adults enjoy this application a lot as well uh especially because uh there is this
um well this part of competition um
this sense of competition and my adult students um mentioned that they really enjoy
competing with each other and seeing uh this course like doing
this game for example which is gravity uh and then seeing that uh their score
was beaten by some other people so they really want to compete again
and they want to get more scores to be on the first place so um
this application is super helpful uh in terms of teaching vocabulary um
some patterns um so it's it's actually up to you uh how to
organize your content but as for me um i create sets
uh for um like more advanced students
focused around collocations and structures
so it's really easy to teach grammar through this lexical approach if i know
what i mean so yeah just use quizlet it's super helpful and it is really
awesome um all right and let's see
the next idea so i haven't seen this idea anywhere yet but
i believe it's super helpful to those teachers who are struggling uh to
explain speaking activities and who are struggling uh to assign students uh speaking
activities uh to do at home so uh the application is called elsa um i believe i have
already mentioned it uh in my previous um streams however here i'm going to show
you how to use it as a teacher again so basically elsa is for drilling your pronunciation
um it it contains different conversations scenarios um it can help you to prepare for
different exams like ielts because it also contains activities related to the speaking
section on ielts uh what else and the last point which is the most
beneficial for teachers is community study sets so
i'm going to show you uh how to use them and how to implement these ideas
in your esl teaching but first this is um the way it looks when you
just start using this application so this first
screenshot was my assessment test when i began using it um in
2020 um however i actually started using this
application uh even before that so i i feel like i retook
that test because i've been using elsa since 2017 or some something
um at that time elsa wasn't this advanced and today
its voice recognition is just amazing so it is really like um a speaking body
so if you want to practice your personal speaking skills elsa is really helpful
to you as english learners as teachers as well and yeah this is my score
right now like it's changing and uh although it is not that obvious like
i can't say that i sound better or some something like that but um little by
little step by step my personal skills change and i i am super excited about it
so just imagine what can your students feel about this application
and now about this communi uh community um stats uh community study sets
uh so this is it looks like um
well community study sets are not that advanced like it's a new feature on uh elsa yet
however you um you can have already start using it so you can
create some activities you can add some study sets in your personal group
and share this group with your students so you can use an invite link and share uh
it with your esl students and they will see this leaderboard
they will have access to the leaderboard and all of the materials stored here
and again the best idea of this of using this application
is that it is possible to compete and i think that competition this sense
of competition is the best driver for the esl students even for the um older ones
uh because my english students my older students really enjoy competing with each other
uh so basically um the best way would be to um
make like a classroom or some something it is especially helpful if you teach uh
groups of students um not just one-on-one lessons but even if you work with your
one-on-one students uh it is possible to uh invite them in
your personal classroom uh even if there are some other people
so they will probably enjoy working on their pronunciation uh competing with others and yeah
just uh master their pronunciation skills and speaking
abilities and the next idea is focused
on listening comprehension it is actually not a single
application for teaching this skill it is important to
use various um resources so uh but generally speaking your
you you will probably need some audios and this application this
website which is called storyboard storyboard that um what what is about this website
it helps you to create uh this comics uh and um i decided to use it
um in a slightly different manner like i i didn't want to create comics
myself i wanted my students to create comics to retell me the contents
of the videos or podcasts they they have just seen so for example
i i ask my students to listen to a podcast or to watch a
video and then i ask them to um
make some conspects using this storyboard that application
and for example this um this comics uh was created by my
um 12 year old student we talked about mindfulness and
meditation uh she watched a video uh from netflix about meditation
like some something like a guide to meditation uh serious and uh she made this
short story um to retell the content of the video
and that activity was really engaging because uh it not only um
was focused um on listening but on retelling as well
so first she listened and then she um told me the story as she understood
it so from listening we moved to speaking so that's the idea of this
activity and this is how it looks like again so uh the application the resource
is really simple so you log in with your google account or something
um oh by the way it's not for free so you have to pay some money
to use it but it has um i think two weeks trial
so it's possible to use um and try it to play to play around with this um
storyboard that application and see uh what it actually offers so there
there are different um close-ups um characters scenes so you can change
pictures um add your characters uh write like speech bulbs and stuff
like that uh and um if you want to use it yourself you can prepare um
this comics related to your teaching points for example um in this uh storytelling way
or otherwise you can assign it as a home task and students can get
creative and create their own comics okay so this is another idea
how to practice at home okay and the last um
thing i'd like to recommend is this practice uh writing practice
activity you will also need this um
special resource which is called write and improve it is from cambridge
it is pretty famous nowadays i used to practice my
writing when i prepared for ielts a couple of years ago it was pretty
helpful because uh it it has this automatic checking
feature so um as a learner you don't need to ask anyone for
feedback like how to check mistakes how to check for errors and stuff like that
but as a teacher you can use it in order to assign home tasks as well and you won't
need um to check for grammatical errors or i don't know punctuation spelling and
stuff like that um all you need um is to provide your students with a positive
feedback on like how they did with their writing and maybe explain them
how to structure how to organize it and and stuff like that so it is
also awesome if you want to engage your students in a different way
and if you want them uh to spend not that much time
on doing something because um this application is also about
progress and competition as well um you can add your students into a
workbook and like this for example i prepared um i just actually copied this activity
from the textbook and shared and assigned to my student
and yeah there are actually some prepared materials so you don't necessarily need to
create something on your own you can just pick pick uh from um
you can pick from the bank ideas on them
yeah idea bank and that's all uh so actually that's it
but um the last point the last but last but not least
i'd like to say that um it is really important apart from your home tasks and apart
from your actual teaching it is important to learn how to provide feedback
and when we when we go to this feedback idea it is really
important to um be sensitive and to to stay positive somehow
so the best choice here would be not to over correct your
students they don't like to receive works which are marked with red with red pen
or something with all mistakes corrected because this is the way they actually start feeling miserable
and you don't want this happening okay
the next point is that it is always better to implement different
correction techniques and if you want to learn more about various correction techniques
um i'd recommend you to think about uh our tefl course or
uh it's another idea is uh to search for correction
techniques uh on the net so there are a lot of them and uh for
example um one of the uh most one of the famous correction
techniques uh is isn't actually done by yourself
uh it is rather done by uh peers so it's it's called peer
correction or even self correction it's when you ask your students
to check for mistakes or for for some slips on their own
and then say like what was bad or what was good and the last point is to check um
to ask concept checking questions to actually understand if students
understand you if students get the content if they um have any
problems maybe so um concept checking questions
are something like um what have we just finished uh what tasks
have we just done or some something like that so um they are asked in order to to understand
if students got it uh if they didn't get it then you have to
repeat uh you have to get back to explanation to get back to theory
and things like that okay so that is actually all
but let's have a short summary of today's live session so basically
we've covered uh three main points which are motivation for uh customer retention
um then personal qualities which are important for student
retention or customer retention and the last thing is to um how to assign students with
um how to science students uh to um engaging homeworks
uh and uh how to give them this appropriate feedback so that's pretty much
um i should say that i'm really proud of today's presentation
i'm not bragging again but i really like this ideas and i think they are helpful
uh i hope they will be helpful to you and you will try to implement them in
your classroom but if you still have any questions it's time to ask them
so let's have this discussion so we are 45 minutes uh
online now and i believe we can have like 15 minutes q a session or so um and yeah
let's let's discuss today's points or if you have any uh questions related to
esl teaching to tefl courses whatever is on your mind please go ahead and
send them to the comments section um i'll try to be even more helpful and yeah
provide this feedback to you and uh just a quick reminder if you scan this
qr code you will be able to get this 30 percent discount of
any idt tefl courses so if you are thinking like um to get
this tefl certificate uh or to learn more about teaching approaches um
and maybe uh ways to give feedback just go ahead scan this qr code or
copy uh this link from the chat box it is also um containing this 10 percent
uh 30 percent discount so you if you follow the link you will get the same
discount as well and now let's see the questions
all right so the first one where to get these apps
yeah this is the best question probably because i'm going to share this presentation uh
with you and this presentation contains all the links so uh just
let me copy it and send to the chat box so if you want to get um
all of those applications all of those services uh just follow the link from the chat
box uh it's the link to today's presentation uh and uh all of the ideas
um all of the slides with the ideas they actually contain um the
links okay so for example here on this slide if you click on this
part yeah if you click click on this uh word you will
you will be directed to the service itself and the same about
the rest of the activities the rest of the applications um as fos elsa
uh it it doesn't have a desktop version so it's for your mobile phone only
but you can access elsa either on apple or android so if you
if you have any of them um just go ahead um download and install
this application it's really useful and as for quizlet there are both
desktop version and the mobile version
all right oh sorry some something is wrong with my voice that's probably because um i i've been
speaking for 48 minutes already that's pretty much
i um just because i work from home sometimes i don't talk to anyone for the
whole day and 40 minutes is something for me
all right yeah so green ink is much better
um yeah red is probably irritating it's some
something related to our psychology probably but the thing is just uh the thing is
not just about the color but rather in the problem is that um
the quality of your feedback um it's it's pleasant to get um praise
and it's pleasant to get like good words and and say uh and see that uh there are not
only mistakes but also some something good in your um
essays for example in your homework and stuff like that so uh it's actually
better to use um just appropriate way to feedback
all right uh so do you guys have any further questions related to today's presentation
or any other questions feel free to ask
yeah and by the way i'd like to invite you to my
facebook group um i'm not that active on the facebook
group group yet however um i am thinking um about the most interesting content
for you and i hope i will be consistent uh in posting so if you want to
communicate with me um at some spare time please go ahead and um yeah add me
as a friend on facebook or uh join my facebook group and we can keep in touch all right so
i see no further questions so probably today's point was pretty clear
to you and uh your masters of tefl nowadays so i believe
this is all for today i am super glad that you you could make it and that you joined me
and um just a quick reminder um itt is presented on various social
networks uh we are actually pretty active on instagram nowadays and we share
useful tips over instagram uh so please follow us and
let's keep in touch as well i hope to see you next week
um i'll try to come up with another exciting topic i hope you enjoyed this one uh i know
that probably my speech wasn't perfect again but i try my best and i actually work on
elsa on my pronunciation and on my speaking abilities like as a presenter
so i hope to improve and uh this is actually thanks to these sessions um i i try to
open up and speak up yeah so this is the best approach how to uh practice and how to become
better i just strongly recommend elsa to you all right
so thanks for joining me today and yeah see see you next week guys
this is all for today and bye bye
