Can you guess this important ESL skill...?

 

From everything I have heard and seen so far, I have come to the conclusion that there is one very important skill that will help anyone in life: problem solving. I consider problem solving probably the most useful skill, because if you can solve problems that appear in everything you do and if you can manage situations well, you can achieve all you are working for. Problem solving is extremely useful throughout life, whether it be school, work, or even relationships and pretty much anything else.

I want to focus now on the problem solving as an ESL skill. Imagine, you’ve planned a class, you know the students and everything is going to be great. During the class, no one’s getting it. The enthusiastic students are tired and everyone’s getting restless. As the teacher, everyone looks to you and you need to rescue the class. You develop an instinct in the class- you think fast and try new things. If that doesn’t work, you keep your cool and find something that works. This is a skill seen time and time again in the classroom, and the ability to stay cool under pressure and think quickly remain invaluable.

1- Anything Google related

Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Classroom, Google Forms, Gmail, Google search… Google offers a huge, extremely helpful variety that will always come in handy, depending on the tasks you are aiming for. It is all-knowing and all-functioning and you can never go wrong with it. How does that help with problem solving? Well, first of all, when not instructed by the teacher, students can figure what will help them with an assignment, they won half of the battle. Second, whenever a problem appears in front of them, if they can come up with the solution by searching answers, this will develop their skill of managing problems. Thanks to the different specific apps Google provides, it makes it even easier for them to identify where they should head to when facing a certain objective.

2- Note-taking apps, text as a multimedia element

Note-taking is something that will accompany us our entire lives. Since elementary school we are taught to keep notes and to organize them. Growing up, we are taught that when you write or organize something beforehand, it will be much easier to later learn it or work on it. Note-taking is important, because it also helps organising thoughts and seeing things written helps the brain process the information better. How would a note-taking app help in problem solving? Easy, when a problem appears, you write down notes and thoughts of possible conclusions and solutions. Writing what comes to mind helps you being quick and calculating. Google Keep, OneNote, Evernote, these are only some of the many, many note-taking apps.

3- Visual elements, pictures

Of course, everyone prefers learning with pictures and videos due to the fact that it is more interesting and attention grabbing. Also, visual representation of ideas helps expressing ideas that maybe verbally wouldn’t be as complete and spot on. While it’s important to make it visually interesting, it is also important to keep it simple so that it does not get too confusing. Simple things such as charts, trees, diagrams and tables are extremely useful in problem solving due to the fact of being able to organise thoughts and ideas better. It all resembles to the brain organisation as well. Even pictures or sketches help in brain order and problem solving. A good idea is also for ESL students when they struggle to find the right word in the SL, they can draw that idea out! A really useful app for this is Visme, and every other drawing or chart organising app.

We can mention other elements and other skills that can be extremely useful for ESL that I would definitely want to teach my future students, but I am 100% into encouraging problem solving skills using such simple and ubiquitous elements.

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