What's a verb? Overcoming socio-economic hurdles in ELT

As globalisation continues to dominate, learning English is becoming a more attractive prospect and worthwhile investment for members of lower socio-economic groups in Brazil. Those who had never previously thought they would need to learn English as finding that it is a pre requisite in their chosen careers. Nonetheless, although learning English is more accessible from a financial perspective, given the increase in lower priced courses, sometimes students from lower socio-economic groups have had little exposure to English or incomplete mainstream education. If the teacher isn’t prepared for this, difficulties can arise and students can be demotivated and frustrated. Combining research and my own experience I have developed some activities that can be used with these groups to encourage production and ease the learning process. 

Here are my top 5 tips: 

• Help learners to see themselves speaking English.

• Help learners identify the extent to which they are already in contact with English on a day to day basis without even realising it.

• Be wary of picture elicitation.

• Personalise personalisation activities.

• Analyse your approach to grammar.

Whilst they may be motivated to learn English to increase their job prospects I have found that students often view this as an abstract concept instead of identifying how and when they will really use English. One way of doing this is showing them pictures of typical industries in which English is necessary (if possible use the most common employers of  your students) and ask them to discuss in pairs (in L1 if necessary) about what type of language or expressions someone working in that area might need to know in English.

My favourite activity for doing this is a jeopardy style game using commonly used "international" words such as mouse, sexy, jeans, etc in which students stand in two lines; one line facing and one line facing away from the board. They then work in pairs, describing the word that appears on the board to their partner who has their back to it and then rotating after their partner has guessed. This can be done in L1 as a way of motivating students. 

Picture elicitation is one of the easiest and  most common ways of getting students talking and introducing a topic, however sometimes something simple like showing a picture of a  famous (to you) city such as New York may not generate any discussion as students may not have the background knowledge to recognise such places (this has happened to me before!). Instead, ask students to describe what they can see in the pictures and to speculate about where it might be or what might be happening. Then ask them what and if they know anything about the place or event. If they do, great. If not, they've already produced so you can move on.  

Typical personalisation activities in course books rely on students experiences however be aware that students may have limited life experiences and therefore cannot talk about time in which they went on a trip, did something exciting, did something dangerous, etc. If your course curriculum calls for them to talk in pairs about their last holiday to practise using the past tense, for example, try giving them a picture of another person and asking them to invent a holiday for that person. This takes the pressure of them and avoids any awkward silences and feeling of inferiority. 

In a communicative methodology teachers generally use a hybrid approach to grammar which involves an implicit contextual presentation and then an explicit presentation of form followed by practice and production. We may often elicit from learners, asking them to identify the adjective or using phrases such as well it’s the third person so we need to add an s to the verb, often forgetting that many learners have an insufficient or inefficient L1 education which prevents them from being able to identifying these grammatical components. Therefore avoid over using grammatical terminology. Try referring to a verb as "an action", a subject pronoun as "who", etc to avoid alienating and demotivating students. I also like to alternate the classic PPP with task based learning when possible. 

Recognising and addressing learners’ needs is the only way to ensure successful learning; neglecting these increases the chances of abandonment by the learner and feelings of frustration in both the learner and the teacher. 

I hope you find these ideas helpful!