In today’s episode, I am chatting with my friend Carissa Ford about teaching speaking to our English learners. Speaking is such a personal aspect of language learning, and that is just one of the challenges our multilingual students face. Carissa and I dive into the best practices in teaching speaking from tasks to activities and lessons to projects. You’ll hear about the differences of teaching speaking to newcomer English learners and to long term English learners as well as tips for mainstream classroom teachers. Carissa Ford is a former high school ESL teacher where she taught newcomers and long term English learners. She also spent four years in Mongolia training preservice teachers, hosting professional development workshops, and leading a language program. Carissa currently works as a curriculum writer creating digital content for multilingual learner programs.

This was such a fun interview, and I hope you can feel that as well while listening. 

Here is what you will hear in this episode:

• Carissa's story - how she decided to become an ELL teacher and what keeps her going
• reasons why speaking is such a challenging aspect of language learning for most students
• creative and easy-to-implement speaking activities 
• ideas on how mainstream teachers can seamlessly implement speaking into their daily lessons

Below you will find useful resources.

• Charities you can donate to help Ukrainian people:
  • Blue-Yellow
  • Unicef 
  • St.Javelin clothing, stickers, etc. - all proceeds from purchases go to support vulnerable people in Ukraine.
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• Blog post - 3 Fantastic Speaking Activities That Will Make Your ESL Class More Exciting
• Teaching Absolute Beginners: An ESL Teacher's Handbook
• 25 Authentic Speaking Activities for Your ESL Classroom 
• Simply Ieva Teachers Pay Teachers store
• The ESL Teaching Roadmap - membership community for middle and high school ESL/ELL teachers. As a thank you for listening, use code ESLPODCAST for 10% off when you join. 

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