Listen to the show.

Mark has added some phonics games for students at Fun Fonix.com.

This show discusses MES-English.com's curriculum for young learners. This is the second part of teaching without a textbook or teaching oral English only. For the first episode of this check here.

The curriculum covers the same core sections:

* content - vocabulary
* target language - phrases, questions, speech acts ...
* running content - more lengthy topics
* TPR - vocabulary introduction
* Phonics - phonics, reading, spelling ...

Mark covers Units 4-6, explaining what vocabulary he uses for the content section, why he chooses those and how they work to achieve the target language goals for each unit, and how those vocabulary units tie into the target language. There are also a few ideas for practicing the different parts.

The materials for this curriculum are all available for free from MES-English.com.

* flashcards
* worksheets
* phonics resources
* games
* more ...

We'd love to hear how you use you MES-English resources or your own curriculum ideas. Post them here or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums. Ask questions or leave comments about the show. You can also just pop-in and introduce yourself. We'd love to know who's listening.



Game of the Week: Flashcards and Board Games

This is an activity for making a board game more of a conversational activity. Using a board game for practicing simple vocabulary or one taget language and combining that with another target language to form mini-speech acts. This is a great activity for changing a board game into a communicative activity and is useful for adults down to elementary school students. You can make boardgames here and get free printable flashcards here.

We hope it helps. Happy teaching!

Hi there,

Thanks for the new episode on your curriculum. It was really interesting. As a new ESL teacher to Primary aged ESL children and one without a course book for my lessons i've found your two episodes so far really helpful, in thinking not only about the vocabulary I want to teach the children. Ones that they would be interested in but now the structures that come with those vocabulary families.

I feeel its given me a much better structure and clearer goals to where we're heading to the end of the year and hopefully in the coming years.

The advise as always is great on the website which accompanies the sets of flashcards - thanks again for all your FREE advice and support!

Looking forward to the next instalments.

Bye

SandyP - That's great to hear that the curriculum episodes have been helpful. I've also started to write this up - www.mes-english.com/curriculum/

If you have any questions about the curriculum or suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know.

Part 3 should be coming out soon. We're just trying to space out the MES curriculum shows, as they might not be that useful to a lot of people.

Hi there! I have already ordered Fun Fonix Intro and Fun Fonix Book 1. Gonna have a pretty close look and order other books. It's pretty challenging to forest City HS Class of 1975 be an ESL teacher, though a bit stressful, at the beginning.

I think you may have ordered some other book. Fun Fonix is only available for printing yourself from the website: www.funfonix.com You can print out the books or view the entire book online.

Teaching English can be very ominous. It is a huge task to try to teach someone a language. Also, from the studies I've read, it's a near impossible feat for a non-native speaker to reach native speaker levels. So, if it feels hard it's, because... it is.

A lot of positions just throw teachers into a teaching situation with very little guidance. That causes problems and sometimes the old system in place isn't good for the students there either. Textbooks and set courses are good as a foundation, but language teaching needs to meet the needs of your group. So, look to supplement what you have and make the materials more applicable or tangible to your group. Luckily, there is a ton of stuff on the internet. In the last 10 years it has really blossomed into an incredible resource for English teachers.

Just like any large task, it's important to break it down into smaller goals and then smaller goals. It's much easier to find your way.

Anyway, please feel free to post any questions you might have. We'll try to help if we can.

Happy teaching!

Thanks again for sharing the new episode! Rather interesting!That gives me more confidence to achive my goal!

I am lookig forward to new arrivings!