Videos for student teachers of ESL
Introduction
Each year, ESL students at Frankfurt International School travel to the Kalahari in South Africa to assist their own teachers in a project, the Kalahari Education Experience Project (KEEP), to support the education of students in various schools in the Moshaweng Valley.
In preparation for their role as teachers of the Kalahari students, I held workshops for the students in various aspects of teaching in general and the teaching of ESL students in particular.
Shortly before retirement I made video versions of the workshop sessions so that future participants in the KEEP could also benefit from the information and advice of an experienced teacher of ESL.
Some of these videos are linked to below. Although they are targetted at students with no teaching experience, they may also be useful for mainstream teachers with ESL students in their classes, particularly those new to teaching in such contexts.
Video list
- Course Introduction: The Kalahari Situation (2.49)
- Characteristics of good ESL teachers (2.33)
- Pedagogic questions in theory (3.10)
- Pedagogic questions in practice (2.52)
- Difficulties of the English Language - Introduction (3.48)
- Difficulties of the English Language: Vocabulary - Part 1 (2.06)
- Difficulties of the English Language: Vocabulary - Part 2 (4.22)
- What makes language incomprehensible (4.51)
- Making spoken language comprehensible (2.14)
- How to explain unknown words (1.58) [ Note
Note: The Word explanation demo mentioned in video 10 is available to FIS students only.
] - Explaining written texts (4.08)
- Course Summary (1.35)
Further information
This article by a student participant in the has more details about the KEEP: Sowing The Seeds of Education in the Desert (.pdf).
Here is a compilation of useful information and advice (.pdf) from former students in the KEEP for those about to embark on the project for the first time. The comments were discussed in the pre-trip workshops.
And here is a compilation of the questions that students in preparation for the workshops, together with my answers: Q&A.
Image sources
Some of the photos in the videos were taken in the Kalahari schools. Others were purchased from Bigstock or come from the following sources: