Fifty Ways to Teach Teenagers: Tips for ESL/EFL Teachers

By Jo Cummins

Teaching English as a second or foreign language is full of challenges: How do you hold students’ attention? How do you ensure that they get enough practice to really learn? Teaching teenagers presents unique challenges. Teachers are often looking for age- and level-appropriate activities to engage teens’ interest while providing meaningful practice.

This book presents ideas and techniques appropriate for teenagers, divided into sections for Icebreakers / Warm-ups, Vocabulary Revision, Grammar, Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening. Several of the activities are illustrated with photographs from the instructor’s own classroom.

The Fifty Ways to Teach Them series gives you a variety of drills, games, techniques, methods, and ideas to help your students learn English. Many require little to no preparation or special materials. The ideas can be used with any textbook, or without a textbook at all. These short, practical guides aim to make your teaching life easier, and your students’ lives more rewarding and successful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayzgoose Press
• Release date: May 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311994707

Jo Cummins

Jo Cummins has been an ELT teacher since 2004. She has taught teenagers and adults from all over the world while working in Ecuador, the UK, and Australia. She is also an author of ELT materials, focusing on teenagers. She has a BA in English Literature and an MA in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing from the University of Wales, Cardiff. She is particularly interested in using creative writing in class, and writes a blog on this topic at http://creativitiesefl.wordpress.com/.

Book preview

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Icebreakers and Warm-ups

Group of four teens chatting comfortably

Starting a class, particularly with a new group, can set the tone for not only how the rest of the lesson goes, but the entire course. So it’s very important to start off right!

Sometimes you might have a new class where the students all know each other; sometimes it may be an entirely new group who don’t know each other at all. It may even be one or two new students joining an existing class. Whatever the situation, you need to get the class to be cohesive. A class that functions well as a unit is easier for you as a teacher, and also more comfortable for each student.

The teenage years can be difficult ones in terms of being awkward, shy, or wanting to make a good impression, so it is particularly important that the language classroom is a safe place where it is ok to make mistakes without fear of being laughed at or mocked. The activities in this section are designed to get your students talking, moving around, and interacting with different people. Some of them are designed for a ‘first class’ situation, whereas others would be just as suited to waking everyone up and getting a new week started on a Monday