6 Creative Homework Assignments Ideas That Will Make Your Online ESL/EFL Teaching Session A More Engaging One
Regardless of the age of your ESL/EFL learners, homework is a complicated task for any student. Quite essentially, the duty for doing homework lies with the learners, but at the same time, the responsibility lies on the teacher to make the assignments engaging enough so that students want to do it. The online TESOL certificate course understands the significance of the matter and prepares the potential ESL/EFL teachers in such a way that they can plan engaging homework well.
At the end of the class, you have the option to allocate homework to your students. Homework, Post-lesson activity, Self-study or anything you may call it, these are a crucial part of your teaching practice. It can be a challenge task to assign homework. However, your adult learners may argue about their busy schedules outside the classroom. So, what will you do? The only way to get through this situation is by planning extremely creative and systematically engaging homework assignments for these kinds of learners.
We’ve got some simple yet creative homework ideas to share with you:
What’s on TV?
Well, majority of the students enjoy watching TV. You can use this situation by assigning a video task as homework. It can be a TedEd video, a specific episode of a particular series, or even a movie or anything like that. This is an effective assignment technique as students will be motivated enough to do it as well, and it is a good listening exercise too. Also, if you select the precise video for them, it will expose them to authentic English language as well.
Podcasts
Podcasts are a great way to practice comprehension. Try not to choose a podcast that is too extensive. Usually, 4 to 10 minutes is the ideal length – anything longer will make your learners confused and the task will become a bore. Do not choose a podcast which speaks a childish topic. Also, avoid using a podcast-website that needs flash player to play an MP3. Remember, access to any homework material should be really easy for your students or you’ll see half your students won’t complete the assignment.
In the News
Well, this is an ideal assignment for adult students. Most of your adult learners generally stay updated. So, you may ask them to select a news story that has matched their interest, and have them write a report on the news story or may write a dialogue in which a person interviews someone involved in the story. This is undoubtedly one of the homework assignments that works best with adult learners.
Music
Music can do anything and it is also good for English learners as it stresses numerous aspects of language that can otherwise be hard to segregate. You may ask your learners to practice the lyrics to learn pitch and rhythm, observe the cultural references in the songs, or simply you may ask them to share their favourite lyrics and what a particular song means to them. Who doesn’t love to listen to music?
YouTube Video Stories
Well, there are sufficiently a number of great story videos that your ESL students can watch at home and which are categorized for level. You need to choose a video which is engaging and it is much easier to get students to watch something than writing something. You may ask general comprehension questions on the video, or you may divide the class into groups and assign homework to summarise the stories to each other.
Word Book
If you are teaching young learners then this is a classic example of assigning homework to your learners. You can help them to design their very own Word Book from scratch, out of construction paper, cardboard, or any materials, etc. Their homework assignment will be to enter each of the new words in their Word Book. Your young students may also cut out pictures from magazines or newspapers and get as creative as they like. However, one thing is sure to happen… these will be words they won’t forget easily!
Well, apart from the above-mentioned creative ideas, there are some more which we think may help you immensely:
- Five Minute English
- Grammar and vocabulary quizzes
- Writing
- Do My Research!
- Email Writing
And so on.
Well, if you want you may ask your students as well to come up with some ideas for creative assignments on their own and share them with the class. They may surprise you! The reason teachers give homework is so that learners can learn the language even when they are not in the classroom.
If you focus on certain points like - letting your students know what goals you have for a particular assignment, allowing your students to be creative and making homework fun! The online TESOL certificate course deals with all of these crucial areas and prepares the 21st century ESL/EFL teaching professionals. With these activities, your students will surely like to do homework on time!
