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Let's get started. So, as you know, today we're talking about uh 15 absolutely game-changing tricks for even more engaging, successful, and fun lessons. I like to say that these tricks are kind of universal because you can use them for teaching any language. You can use them for your trial or regular classes, online or face-to-face ones. And if you follow and of course please adapt those tricks according to your individual classes. I think that you can definitely retain your regular students

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for a lot longer. And before we start uh here is a question for you my lovely audience. Please type in the chat box why do you think that engagement is so important in ELT? Let's see for the motivation. Wonderful Elena. Very good. Motivation, enhancing. Wow, that's really quick. Okay. Fun learning. Motivation again. Memorizing. Longer attention span. Effective learning. Interaction. Brilliant. Good emotions. Peer learning. Interactive engagement. Yes. Retention. Fantastic. Wonderful. Amazing. Yes, exactly. Of

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course, you're right. And that brings me to my first trick, which is all about building a very friendly rapport with your students. It's an absolute must to have fun during your classes to make some silly faces, intentional mistakes for uh learning and teaching purposes, but at the same time, you have to find the golden mean between being your students new favorite best friend and guide and discipline them. At the same time, you can remember some tiny details about them. for example, uh

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when is their birthday, the names of their siblings, their favorite pets, favorite uh activities, football players, whatever. But uh building friendly rapport is so crucial. And how to do so? Of course, you have to wear your best makeup. And this is genuine smile. Just always try to be genuine and authentic because students and especially very young learners can easily identify in authenticity and might lose their trust in your lessons. And building the friendly rapport is also important for the parents of your

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students especially again young learners because at the end of the day they are the ones who pay for the subscription or for your classes. And um to do so the best way is through timely and honest feedback which is highly appreciated. So first of all of course mention the strong points of the students but at the same time always say uh and leave the room for the areas of improvement because it's also must and try to keep the parents of your students updated regarding their children's progress.

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Well, as an ESL teacher, I always say that my superpower is asking questions. So, feel free to ask more wh questions such as who, what, where, why, and so on and concept checking questions because these kind of questions will not only pull long answers from your students, but will also trigger them to open up, express themselves, and they might even show you their talent. and we'll thank you later for that. And at the end of the classes, um especially after a challenging one, try to save some time

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for curiosity. Ask your students, do you have any questions at the end? I understand that we're always time limited and we don't have that luxury. But still try to do your best to save some time for the questions. Well, initially they might be very hesitant to ask, but gradually they will start asking questions. And I always say that students learn only when they start asking some questions. And this trick is super important if we really strive uh to teach them something and to retain this learning and knowledge in them. And

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again, I say that my students always learn when they correct their mistakes on their own. So you have to normalize the selfcorrection throughout all your classes and um you have to normalize what I mean is that you have to do it during every single lesson. I've got some kind of tips here and methods how uh I'm doing that and feel free to copy that. Uh let's go through the details just briefly. The first one here is repetition. So what we what I do here is just I simply repeat my students mistake with a

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slightly rising intonation of the uh mistake and they know what to do after that. As for prompting this is more like clarifying question. So for example they forget article and I ask well you made something in general or in particular and again they know that they forgot something. As for follow-up questions, you simply ask a question with a correct grammatical structure. And body language is universal. You can use that for any student. So, for example, your student forgets he walks ass at the end and you

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simply you're gesturing that and they know what to do. But my all-time favorite is a dramatic pause because it's like it's like acting. So what you do here is you're simply repeating uh the sentence up to the mistake and then you make boom boom da like this kind of dramatic pause and that really works. Our next trick is really fun because I find that all my students at some point they want to be teachers. So why don't we give them this opportunity? Uh I usually swap the roles with my

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students and what I do here when for example we are uh learning do and does. So, I'm going to ask a question like this. Do your brother likes football? And well, initially they're a little bit, let's say, intimidated to correct the teacher. But if you normalize that throughout your classes, trust me, at the end they will be so happy to correct you and they will even mock and laugh at you. But it's totally normal because they know that you are the teacher and you already have your reputation and you

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already earned their respect. So, it's fun and it's really really engaging. Feel free to do that as well. And never underestimate the uh power of rephrasing. Anytime when you're explaining something new, material, vocabulary, whatever it is, uh first of all, listen to your students. How do they comprehend that? How do they understand that? And um well I understand that some students might require more time uh to comprehend the task but uh still try to do your best uh you can put them on the right track.

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Make sure that you are on the same page. Don't give away the right answers. It all it should always be your last resort. Give them several options. Give them hints, clues, whatever. But don't give away the right answers. And that brings me to my next trick which is really so powerful. Let your students speak up. Always listen to them. Especially if you want to be their best friend. Everybody wants to be heard. Everybody wants to be listened. So listen to your students. Let them speak up. Let them uh show their emotions. And

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that also builds up their confidence. Uh so this trick is pretty much related to my previous trick because especially when we're doing the speaking activity, you have to listen to them. Uh let them finish and try to never finish their answers. This is this is the key here. Try to always listen to them and if you've got any concept checking questions to ask or maybe you want to share some extra information, do it at the end of their speech because the flow of the speech should really run and it

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also builds our confidence again and we're all about we're all about our students. Uh well, in a contemporary world where the only permanent thing is a change, I think that we should make most of all the AI tools here without being scared of losing our jobs to them because AI think it's my personal opinion can never replace two most important things of life educators. This is life compassion and emotional intelligence. and the world itself tells you it's artificial intelligence. I

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wrote listed down here some of the IA tools that I use throughout my classes. Uh when we're working on phonics or new sound clusters, I generate some funny chants for them. I also generate images and then they describe uh using different adjectives or adverbs. And I have to admit that all my students regardless their age, they enjoy this kind of activity uh because they find it a really contemporary one. Okay, you can start uh your lesson with a blitz interview. And what I mean is a it's a wonderful warm-up activity. What

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I do here um I check sometimes irregular verbs, sometimes the topic that we went through last time or just we simply feel much more connected, you know. uh we get to know more details about each other we love. And I uh also play some association game here uh like randomly name nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, whatever it is. And my students should uh say the first thing what they think of and sometimes it's so stupid but it's absolutely amazing and you will end up laughing and that's that's also

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wonderful trick. Uh what really works. Okay, I love this pictures because you can literally use roleplay as your lightsaber and it's it really makes magic and it's so powerful. So, what I do here um I find some readym made everyday conversations or make some kind of a life scenarios and then do this role play with my students because I also love role playing. I love acting. I love theater, cinema, movies, everything. and I try to put something of my own into my classes and uh my students usually enjoy doing that. In

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this case, feel free to correct your students their pronunciation, emotions, gestures, body language, give some tips about public speaking if applicable, of course, and they will thank you, of course, because it it it's going to be very useful for them later on in life. Uh, never underestimate the power of timing, even the most hyperactive and um, absent-minded students love this activity because everybody wants to push their boundaries. Um, test their limits. Everybody wants to win as everybody

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wants to correct you. Like when we talked about correction and swapping the roles, everybody wants to be teacher because psychologically it's proven that we like correcting others. And here everybody likes winning. What I do here is maybe uh I give them some chance or tongue twisters and tell them to say it fast. You can act here like a personal sports coach and do something like this. Go quickly. You can do that again. Yes, good job. And it's so it's so empowering for both you and your student. It really

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uh works magic. Uh I also do some timed translations. But what I love most, and this is I I call it my personal trick because I've never seen anywhere. Well, at least um so for example, when I have students from different countries, I usually find some viral videos on Tik Toks, Instagram, reals, doesn't matter. Of course, I know the content beforehand. And I ask them, I put that in the class and I ask them translate it. Do the live interpretation in English like quickly, as soon as possible. First of all, they do word to

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word. Then if we have some time, we go ahead and do some academic translation. But we have to do it really fast and really quick to make it funny, of course. And they are so eager to share with their teacher what is this video about. Of course, I match it with their interests as well. Uh well as I said at the beginning of um our talk I uh it's really personal for me writing and especially I enjoy writing with my students. So we usually do the storytelling. We take turns on a newly learned topic maybe on some kind of new

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vocabulary. We generate a lot of ideas here and try to make it as illogical and as stupid as possible because your student will always try to do very correct grammatically and everything but you try to be a little bit illogical because it will spark wonderful laughter. You will end up laughing and nothing beats a good laugh as the commercial says that like h it's it's a wonderful trick. You can uh say different scenarios here and different incompatible um uh ideas. Okay. So here is a lot of thing as you can see but I'm

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not going into details because it's not my topic today. Uh this generally works for students who have more like let's say extrinsic motivation. Uh because some students will do everything just to make it to the end of the class to play their favorite game. But I personally think that some advanced students should also be rewarded with this little treat. So here are some of the games. You can take a screenshot. You can also find them um on the internet. These are just the ones that I use during the lessons.

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But if you've got any questions like feel free to ask what are they and I'm going to explain them for you. Okay. Here I want to use a chat. Ask a simple favor. Well that sounds a little bit tricky. So I want you to write down in chat what do you what do I mean what kind of help am I asking for my students oh let's see can I see the chat because you know it's psychologically proven that uh everybody we all like people yeah now I can see it's coming homework disguise uh I need your help

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with something can you help me exactly so if you are school teachers you can ask face to place, but I usually do it online. Could you write it? Okay. Clean the board. Amazing. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Help hand out materials. Of course. Brilliant. We've got fantastic audience today. Eliciting ideas. Amazing. Pick up health rubbish of course. And I'll tell you why is it so important here? because when we ask help from others um I mean when they ask help from us we tend to like them more it's really

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strange but still they feel like genuine what I do here I simply ask them like for online classes for example could you please translate me the translate this for me in your own language or could you help me to pronounce your name or your sound like Will did today I helped him pronounce my surname so that's that's kind of the sign that we we were doing. Uh, and I remember asking my Spanish students to explain what was that inverted uh exclamation mark and question mark at the beginning of the sentence. And they

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love to share that information with me. And finally, this is going to be my last trick for today. Uh, it might sound weird, but it's true. Students, regardless their age, but of course, especially young learners, uh, they love and tend to mirror us. They copy everything. Our speech style, our English, uh pronunciation, uh body language, even the sense of fashion. So give them something worth copying and uh try to be on your best behavior. What I mean here everything like mood, your mood, smile uh because

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you can, you know, easily check that. Start your lesson in a gr grumpy mood and you will fail it. But start it on a happy note and you will end it even happier. Uh module the behavior that you expect from your students and they will definitely mirror you. So that will work magic. I'm done with this. These are some of the resources that I use and in case you've got any questions uh further clarification maybe you need or anything just feel free to connect. I'm leaving my LinkedIn profile QR code here and

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feel free to connect. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for listening.