1. Contextualizing Language

In learning a new language is to fabricate actual real life communicative events to help fully understand and immerse the student into using constructive language skills. This is where you use relevant content or ‘context’ themes appropriate to your age group and/or environment. Whether it be at lower or higher levels of language, each class setting will be different. At lower levels of language topics should include interesting light-hearted themes while at higher levels more serious topics. The type of lesson activities taught should vary to keep students engaged. All of this is necessary to bring English out and alive that incorporates current ‘real world’ tasks or problems that need to be solved using spoken English language as the medium throughout the language acquisition process.

Lesson activities should include highly interesting topics that involve interactive pair and group work. Examples include:

  • Singing/chanting out songs or phrases or make up fictional characters and stories
  • Acting out of typical social setting exchanges or plays/movie scenarios
  • Discussing ethical issues such as science, religion and politics from regional or world news through student/class presentations
  • Review vocabulary, verbs, formal and informal language, and social norms of interaction
  • Pronunciation of words by noting the medium, tone, genre, and register

Into finding interesting motivating topics, teachers should look to satisfy the needs of the students their level of sociability. Each student will have different social needs that needs to be addressed. So finding purposeful and situational topics and themes that can relate to the student will help develop the students social skills and thus help develop deeper level of language use.

Regardless on which level you would like to teach, teachers should be able to understand and differentiate all social language levels from primary, elementary, middle, secondary and post-secondary levels. This way you will be able teach in a broad variety of situations.