Teaching a child ESL can be a HUGE task, whether teaching ESL one on one or in the classroom setting. Especially when taking the language barrier into consideration. Sometimes it is easy but other times it can become down right impossible. But there is always a way around it. How?

The novice ESL teacher will just have to FIND ways around it or they can ask a more experienced teacher. The latter is preferable. Whereas the experienced teacher has his own bag of tricks up his/her sleeve to get through to the student(s). There are 3 categories of students. They are as follows:

The student that doesn't want to learn.
The student that doesn't want anyone else to learn so they are disruptive.
The student who wants to learn but has a hard time understanding because of the language barrier.

Some methods of getting through to them will work for all three types of students. Others are more specialized and will work for only one or two types of student. Listed below are various tried and true methods that some experienced teachers have used.

In the classroom, making teams helps in the way of peer pressure. If the one team is trying and one student is not because of Student type 1 or 2 above, the rest of the team gets on their back to participate better. Works great in that you don't have to do any disciplinary actions. The students do it for you.
When a student is disruptive in class, make them the captain of their team! That gives them an important role to perform in the team so he/she is more likely to pay attention and keep the team focused.
Assign a disruptive student to be the teachers' helper or score keeper.
When someone is disruptive or doesn't want to co-operate, give points to the other team. Never take points away unless it is part of a game.
For the student who wants to learn but is having difficulty, try spending a few moments with him/her to slowly go over the material until they understand it all.
For a type 3 student, you could assign a student who is quick to learn the lessons as that student's helper. But the helper must agree to try to only speak English. Not just translating.
Try to dummy down your lesson a bit so he/she understands it.

Try to remember one thing from your own education through out the years. Chances are that if YOU don't understand something, that others may not understand as well. So the chances of more than one student not understanding the lesson you are trying to teach are pretty good. The rest of the students are probably just too proud or embarrassed to say anything.

One thing you should NEVER do in an ESL classroom is show anger or openly discipline a student in front of the others. Especially with Asian students. If a teacher embarrasses a student in front of others, they lose face and then that student will be all the harder to get back into the groove of things.

There are other methods available. The only limit is your imagination.

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