Training ESL teachers has been a long-term aspiration of mine. From the beginning of my 30-year ESL teaching career, I have enjoyed making conference presentations, and in the early 1980s, I worked for 3 years as an inservice supervisor and trainer of Filipino teachers of English to Indochinese refugees bound for the United States following the Vietnam War. In 2010, nearly 25 years later, I retired from full-time ESL teaching in California community colleges, and in the fall of 2013, my wife and I moved to our present location in the Philippines. English is widely spoken here; in fact, along with Filipino (Tagalog), it is considered an “official” language, is dominant in business and government, and is used as the medium of instruction in schools. I contacted one of the local universities about teaching possibilities, figuring I could teach a course in grammar, writing, or my recent specialty of listening/pronunciation. I was surprised and intrigued when the vice president of academics said she would like me to teach a course in TESL in their graduate education program: a dormant dream come true!

A drawback, however, was that this course is offered only when there is sufficient demand, perhaps once every 2 years. The academic calendar in the Philippines runs June–October (first semester) and November–March (second semester). We had arrived in early October 2013, and I was hoping to find a class to teach in the second semester. Then in June of 2014, I finally received an offer. The dean of the graduate school summoned me to his office and asked me to teach the TESL course. With almost no time to prepare, I was hesitant. However, I really wanted the opportunity, so I accepted and prepared to meet this first challenge.

Immediately after accepting, I learned of two additional challenges: the class would meet once a week only on Saturdays (as all their master’s classes do) and textbooks would not be available for students except for a few outdated ones in the college library. Teaching only once a week had a plus and minus. On the plus side, I only had to prepare one time a week. The minus, however, far outweighed the plus. Early in my career, I had learned that distributed study was better than concentrated study for long-term retention. Studying for several hours once a week is much less effective than studying an hour a day 3 days a week. While I could do nothing to change the schedule, I hoped to engage students in online activities and communication between classes. Unfortunately, this never materialized. I developed a website with some activities but was unsuccessful in getting students to use it.

Regarding textbooks, I was hoping to use a particular text, a copy of which I had brought with me. However, I quickly learned that getting textbooks to the Philippines would take months, and the cost would be prohibitively high. I would need to use whatever resources were in the college library plus whatever I could find online. I was pleased to find several copies of the third edition of the Celce-Murcia text, Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (2006), and in the first weeks of class, I assigned readings from it, assuming that students could take turns checking it out. However, I learned from the students that their standard practice was to photocopy assigned readings. I was concerned about making extensive copies of pages or chapters and violating copyright, and I was determined to do so as little as possible. Thus began my quest for free online sources.

Being new to the field of ESL/EFL teacher education, I was familiar with only two academically acceptable online sources for TESL material, TESOL Quarterly and TESL-EJ, but I did not know how to search them directly for the material I wanted. Despite concerns regarding reliability and academic acceptability, I used information resources familiar to most users of the Web: Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube. I was pleased with my findings: information about Krashen’s input hypothesis and Long’s interaction hypothesis can be looked up on Wikipedia, and the Internet provided an online publication of Rod Ellis’ “Principles of Instructed Second Language Acquisition” (Ellis, 2008). I also found YouTube videos of these three linguists: an entertaining 15-minute talk by Krashen on language acquisition extoling the importance of comprehensible input (Krashen, 2010), a 4-minute discussion with Michael Long about the interaction hypothesis (Long, 2014), and an 8-minute introduction to task-based language learning by Rod Ellis (Barahona, 2014). For a historical overview of language teaching approaches, I used the first chapter of the Celce-Murcia text (Celce-Murcia, 2006).

The largest portion of my TESL course was a study of seven language teaching methods or approaches: the audio-lingual method, community language learning, total physical response, silent way, the communicative approach, task-based language teaching, and probably the least widely known, teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling (TPRS). For the first five, I used the excellent demonstration videos and accompanying handouts provided free of charge at the United States Department of State’s American English website. The series was authored and organized by Diane Larsen-Freeman, a professor and friend since our MAT days at the School for International Training (SIT) in Vermont. The demonstration videos (1990) feature SIT faculty teaching an international group of intermediate English learners. I was especially pleased to use materials created by teachers I knew and respected. For task-based language learning, I used British Council and Wikipedia articles plus YouTube videos. For TPRS, my friend Contee Seely donated a chapter of Fluency Through TPR Storytelling, a book he coauthored (Ray & Seely, 2012). Contee also conducted a demonstration teaching my students via a Google Hangout. This hour-long first lesson in understanding and speaking German was, for many of my students, the most enjoyable portion of the course.

In early December 2014, as I revised the university’s Instructional Guide for the course and thought about teaching it again, I began thinking that there are probably more up-to-date and academically acceptable resources than the ones I used. I posted a message on the TEIS listserv asking for recommendations and within days received some great links from TEIS members. Thanks again to the members who sent these. I have posted these along with the resources mentioned throughout this article on my Wikispace, ESL/EFL Teacher Education Resources. I welcome comments and additional suggestions.

REFERENCES

Barahona, M. (2014, March 19). Prof Rod Ellis on task based language learning [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OLySXzZY-4

Celce-Murcia, M. (2006). Language teaching approaches: An overview. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed., pp. 3–10). Singapore: Heinle & Heinle.

Ellis, R. (2008). Principles of instructed second language acquisition. CAL Digest. Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/content/download/1553/16478/file/PrinciplesofInstructedSecondLanguageAcquisition.pdf

Krashen, S. (2010, October 15). Stephen Krashen on language acquisition [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug

Larsen-Freeman, D. (1990). Language teaching methods. United States Department of State American English. Retrieved from http://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/language-teaching-methods

Long, M. (2014, January 17). Interaction hypothesis and corrective recasts [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HekZlFJ-9Uc

Ray, B. & Seely, C. (2012). Fluency through TPR storytelling (6th ed.). Berkeley, CA: Command Performance Language Institute.

Robert Wachman received his MAT in ESOL from the School for International Training in Vermont. He has taught ESL for 30 years in community colleges and adult schools in California and worked for 3 years as a supervisor and trainer of ESL teachers in the Philippines. Most recently, he taught an ESL teacher training course for Notre Dame of Dadiangas University.