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Pedagogical Practice in English as a Second Language

Teaching English as a second language involves creating meaningful opportunities for learners to use the language in real and purposeful contexts. Effective pedagogical practice includes the integration of speaking, listening, reading, and writing activities that reflect authentic communication. Teachers often adopt communicative approaches, encouraging students to interact, express opinions, and solve problems using English.

Another key aspect of ESL teaching is the use of diverse resources, such as videos, songs, digital tools, and real-life materials. These elements help students connect classroom learning with everyday language use. Additionally, good practice involves formative assessment, in which the teacher constantly observes learners’ progress, provides feedback, and adjusts activities according to their needs. In this way, ESL teachers promote not only language development but also learners’ confidence and autonomy.

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Building Rapport

Establishing strong foundations for teaching and learning

By Stephanie Hirchman

September 2, 2025

How do teachers build rapport with students? I can’t think of a more important question; after all, learning is all about relationships. In fact, I hope the word “rapport” runs through all the blogs I’ve written, like the letters in a stick of rock. However, as the summer holidays draw to a close and with new beginnings in sight, I’m going to focus exclusively on building rapport.

Fostering rapport

Let’s get out the metaphors! If learning is a house, then rapport is the foundation, but because it needs constant maintenance, rapport is also a garden, tended with care on a daily basis. When there is a good rapport, students feel:

• seen – each student is greeted individually, and the teacher makes an eff ort to interact with each one during the lesson.

• confident in the teacher, the course, and themselves - the teacher knows what each student needs and how to deliver it so students make progress. Classroom routines are predictable, fair, and make sense.

• safe – they know the teacher will not embarrass them or expose their sensitivities or weaknesses. Mistakes are dealt with sensitively and treated as learning opportunities.

• accepted – the teacher meets each individual student exactly where they are, without judgment, academically and personally. If someone is called out on their behaviour, this is done in private, and an explanation is given about why this behaviour is unproductive or unacceptable.

Student profiles – the basis for rapport

Whatever your teaching context, you’ve got to get to know each student as an individual. This can be considered as an initial information gathering phase, with several possible pathways.

A good starting point is to test students either before they start the course or in the first few days, making it clear that this is a process that produces information that will help you to plan and them to learn. Try to generate as full a picture as possible, so you have an idea about their abilities in all four skills.

Secondly, you need to conduct a needs analysis, either privately or publicly. You can read more about this process, but bear in mind that a public needs analysis can also serve to make everyone in the class aware of each other’s interests and thus of the rationale for including certain topics, language points, or skills work in the course syllabus.

Finally, use whatever resources you have to identify students with specific learning differences or traumas/triggers. This information may be disclosed at registration, self-disclosed (perhaps at interview) or in a private needs analysis, or tentatively identified through your own observations. Obviously, this information is private, between you and the student (and their parents, if they are under 18).

Classroom activities to build rapport at the start of a course

These rapport-building activities aim to generate information in such a way that students feel well-supported.

In a first lesson, the top priority is to make sure you know everybody’s preferred names and how to pronounce them. I’ve always found it helpful to have small desktop cards with this information on display – at least for a couple of sessions. Why not ask the students to make these themselves, or at least to personalize them? The back of the card could have some classroom language phrases to help prompt students, and there’s also the option of including this useful functional language as an introductory lesson – note that this generates a lot of information about student performance in areas like listening (including following instructions), speaking (including pronunciation) and studentship (including note-taking), facility with vocabulary, grammar and functional language. It can also serve as an introduction to pair and group work and to questioning and correction techniques, and, of course, builds confidence for students to take an active part in lessons.

Rapport thrives on praise

Teachers must remember that students are putting themselves on the line every time they come to class. Every effort carries a risk of failure, and not everyone is robust enough to bounce back easily when this occurs. Praise is the magic ingredient here – individualized, sincere and specific. Even when things have gone a bit wrong, find something that went well. It may be that you’re praising eff ort (“Good try, Haruka, I like that idea, but it isn’t what I’m looking for right now.”) or scaffolding achievement (“That’s a pretty good sentence, Juan, the verb tense is correct. But think again about the subject – should it be singular or plural?”). It may be delivered in written form (“This essay makes some relevant points. You used a lot of new vocabulary and improved your accuracy with punctuation. Next time, put the information into paragraphs.”). And when you make a mistake, as you inevitably will, model a positive reaction – check the information, put it right and thank the person who pointed it out.

Finally, make plenty of space for laughter and smiles, as they not only reduce stress, but have a positive effect on engagement, learning and recall. Rapport really does serve learning.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/blog/post/building-rapport Acesso em 18/10/2025

Biden administration, in its last days, proposes new protections for Arctic Alaska land

Lakes and connecting streams in the northeastern part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, June 2014.

Four days before President Joe Biden is set to leave office, his administration recommended that about 3 million more acres in Alaska's western Arctic be protected from development and issued a guideline, effective immediately, requiring additional protections for traditional Native subsistence harvests of fish, caribou and other resources.

The new recommendations and guidance, which apply to the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, run counter to President-elect Donald Trump's expressed plans to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and elsewhere and to overturn Biden administration environmental policies more broadly.

The recommendations for additional land to be protected as part of what are termed "special areas" and the guidance for elevating the importance of subsistence and tribal consultation could be ignored or scrapped by the incoming Trump administration.

The northeastern part of the reserve is the area considered most likely to hold oil and where development has spread in recent years. There is already production in that area, and the most notable production expected in the future is from ConocoPhillips' Willow project. Willow won Biden administration approval in 2023. Production is expected to start by the end of the decade and peak at 180,000 barrels per day; current production from all North Slope fields amounts to less than 470,000 barrels per day.

Like the existing Teshekpuk special area, which holds important habitat for caribou, fish and migratory birds, the village of Nuiqsut is in the general area of the reserve's northeastern corner, where new oil development has occurred. Nuiqsut is so close that oilfield infrastructure can be seen from the village. 

Pipelines extend across the landscape outside Nuiqsut, Alaska, May 2019.

"But at the same time, I think we and our partners have also made it abundantly clear that we're going to keep fighting, and keep fighting for protections in the Western Arctic," she said.

(From ROSEN, Yereth. Biden administration, in its last days, proposes new protections for Arctic Alaska land, Alaska Beacon, January 17, 2025. In alaskabeacon.com/2025/01/17/biden-administration-in-its-last-days-proposes-new-protections-for-arctic-alaska-land/, accessed on February 19th, 202