Using Topic-based Teaching to Ace Your EFL Lessons
With the festive season round the corner, you might want to consider introducing some topic based teaching into your lessons. Topic-based lessons can be a great way to increase engagement in the classroom, as well as bring in some fun activities. Halloween, Bonfire Night, and Christmas will be here before we know it, so it’s the perfect time to get to grips with the concept and prepare some engaging lesson content!
What is Topic-based Teaching?
Topic-based teaching places the emphasis of the lesson on a particular theme, topic, or subject. All the contents and activities in the lesson are centred around one thing. Common EFL topics include holidays, food and drink, sports, colours, and hobbies. There are many benefits to including topic-based teaching in your lessons. It helps your students to relate to your teaching content, as it’s often about something they have experience in or are familiar with. It’s great for encouraging association of vocabulary, structures, and functions, which can help with comprehension and memory.
Structuring your lesson
Introduce the topic. In the first part of your lesson, you should introduce the topic to your students. There are many ways you can do this and it will depend on the age and level of your students. Picture boards work well - place several topic related pictures on the board and have students discuss what they think the topic might be. You can ask them how they think each picture relates to the topic, how they relate to each other, and what they can recognise from their pictures.
Class activities. The amount of activities you do in your lesson, and how long each of them are will depend on how much time you have to teach. A typical lesson is around 60-90 minutes. With this timeframe, you might want to spend 10 minutes on an introduction, and reserve 5-10 minutes for a consolidation activity at the end. With the remaining time, we’d recommend between 2-4 activities. That way, you have enough variety within the lesson to keep your students engaged whilst ensuring the pace isn’t too fast or too slow. With topic-based teaching, you want to make sure each of your activities has a direct link to the chosen subject. Some of our favourite activities include ‘words in a word’, topic related quizzes, making magazine articles, and debates and discussions.
Consolidate the topic. At the end of the lesson, you’ll want to consolidate the learning with students. This is where new material is reviewed, and learning is reinforced. As well as helping learners retain material and reinforcing it, consolidation is an opportunity to clarify and address any doubts in learning. It can offer a different angle on new vocabulary, which is productive for learners with different styles. You can consolidate learning in many ways - use the 3-2-1 method (students pick 3 things they learnt, 2 things they found interesting, and one thing they’re still struggling with), do a short true or false quiz, or write a related question on the board and have students write answers on a sticky note and put them on the board.
Ultimate Halloween Teaching Pack
The festive season brings several topics that can create really interesting EFL lessons - Halloween, Bonfire Night, and Christmas. To help you create the best topic-based lesson, we’re creating a series of Ultimate Teaching Packs with lots of useful information, teaching tools, and lesson plans so you can create engaging, fun lessons. The first in our series is our Ultimate Halloween Teaching Pack featuring lots of information about the origin of Halloween, examples of realia you can use in the classroom, some activity ideas, and two ready-to-use lesson plans.
