Hi,

i wish someone had filled me in on the effective methodology of grammar pedagogy as students were ineffectively learning without being able to apply. 

Hi Michael,

I wish someone had suggested that the homework I assigned be more focused on reading English fiction stories than grammar exercises.  The students hated the assignments and even if they completed the exercises there was a disconnect between how they applied the grammar in the assignments and how they used it....by reading, they got more vocabulary and more grammar in a more meaningful context....I eventually went to reading but it took some time. 

I don't teach ESL, but from my research I realized that relating the reading materials to students prior experience, readings, and societal or global issue help to make the ESL content more relevant and engaging for the students. The attached help to also show how you can use Social Media to help students learn English as a second language.

Many thanks,

Debra

Conference Paper Social Media in Education: Bringing Your Classroom to Life -...

fortunately we were taught English by very qualified teachers , the secret Key is to make students love  the language. technically concentrate on phonetics of every single letter and vocabulary and speaking skill practice . encourage free reading    

When I taught master coursework in language teaching incl TESOL, the first thing we did was to forbid students to read TESOL literature. The result? Geniuses able to think, not limited to some chat in TESOL textbooks going for decades about the same issues: e.g.  "what does it take to learn vocabulary". Truly, TESOL people should do some basic education that gives fundamentals for thinking. regards  

 I wish someone had told me to watch the students more and follow the textbook/lesson plan less.

I wish somebody told me to read the classics more meaningfully.

One has to read the classics extensively----good novels, essays, philosophy, history etc By that you gain confidence. That is your foundation. and on that you add grammar, pedagogy subsequently, Over here your linguistic experts can directly assist you.Thanks.

I wish someone had emphasised to me that one of the strongest motivators in language learning is reading, listening, speaking and writing in an area that students like most. With no motivation, there's no perseverance, which is a must in language learning. 

I wish someone had told me about the importance of using a wide variety of language learning strategies through approaches conducive to the development of the students´self-confidence  as a basis  for them to become autonomous in their own learning process.

 Hi Michael,

I believe that instruction based on an individual’s learning characteristics provides them with opportunities to reflect on their own learning process by  thinking about how well they perform learning tasks. This  process may enable them become more aware of how they can use  strategies to manipulate knowledge, and, consequently, become motivated to  build up autonomy 

I wish I had been more aware that teaching methodology developed in English speaking countries is frequently not suitable to other teaching contexts such as Poland.

Great answers but I'm most impressed with the framing of the question. Thanks you have drawn out answers that have gotten very quickly to the core of teaching TESOL or otherwise. A 2 hour lecture could not have done so good.

I wish someone had given me some cartoons/movies to watch and some simple stories to read. I wasted a lot of my precious time (many years) studying grammar and memorizing vocabulary. 

I can see a variety of very interesting wishes. Straight to the point, I wish I had known out so many, some of these self-talk, real-life tasks and activities, real resources, reason for learning English, level of proficiency (baseline assessment), thinking power, interest and hobbies (Munby's assessment criteria and human support available at home. The extent could be unending but I finish here.  

I would have definitely liked someone to teach me how to use available resources to learn English. I particularly regret that I was taught with the audio-lingual method, which, in my opinion, put too much stress on correction. As a result, I didn´t have any fluency in English even when I had received six hours a day during my whole first-year as a student.