Teachers’ Beliefs Inventory

Approaches to ESL Instruction

This is not intended as a tutor activity but has been included for your information. This shows some attitudes towards tutoring ESL learners. If you want to try this exercise, please read all 5 statements. Then select 5 statements that most closely reflect your beliefs about how English as a Second Language is learned and how English as a Second Language should be taught.

  1. Language can be thought of as a set of grammatical structures that are learned consciously and controlled by the language learner.
  2. As long as ESL learners understand what they are saying, they are actually learning the language.
  3. When ESL learners make oral errors, it helps to correct them and later teach a short lesson explaining why they made that mistake.
  4. As long as ESL learners listen to, practise and remember the language that native speakers use, they are actually learning the language.
  5. ESL learners generally need to understand the grammatical rules of English
    in order to become fluent in the language.
  6. When ESL learners make oral errors, it usually helps to provide them with lots of oral practice with the language patterns that seem to cause them difficulty.
  7. Language can be thought of as meaningful communication and is learned subconsciously in non-academic, social situations.
  8. If ESL learners understand some of the basic grammatical rules of the language, they can usually create lots of new sentences on their own.
  9. Usually it is more important for ESL learners to focus on what they are trying to say and not how to say it.
  10. If ESL learners practise the language patterns of native speakers, they can make up new sentences based on those language patterns they have already practised.
  11. It is important to provide clear, frequent, precise presentations of grammatical structures during English language instruction.
  12. Language can be described as a set of behaviours that are mastered through lots of drill and practice with the language patterns of native speakers.
  13. When ESL learners make oral errors, it is best to ignore those errors, as long as you can understand what they are trying to say.
  14. ESL learners usually need to master some of the basic listening and speaking skills before they can begin to read and write.
  15. It’s not necessary to actually teach ESL learners how to speak English; they usually begin speaking English on their own.