The Engage-Study-Activate (ESA) Method of Teaching

When teaching English, you must prepare and plan to create a beneficial and constructive learning experience for your students.

Engage-Study-Activate (ESA) is the most effective teaching methodology. Teachers who use ESA can productively organize their lessons. Through ESA, students are focused and highly motivated to learn. 

First coined by Jeremy Harmer in his book “How to teach English”, ESA is a method of structuring your lessons in three elements. The different stages of ESA can be flexible and used to keep students engaged at all times.

The Engage Phase – Warming Up

It is essential to always start a lesson with the engage phase. It is here where students start starting and thinking in English. Before learning new content, students need to prepare for learning English. Games, showing pictures, discussions, listening to music, brainstorming vocabulary and storytelling are some excellent activities to engage and immerse students in the class.

It is paramount that all students participate and interact with the class during the engage phase. Teachers should focus on facilitating engagement and making sure that every student has at least spoken once before moving on. 

Once the engage phase has finished, students should be thoroughly warmed up and eager to begin the next part of the lesson.

The Study Phase – Learning New Things

This phase is mainly the board work of the lesson. It is here where students will learn or review English language topics. Teachers can use textbooks, study materials, videos and drilling exercises to help students learn and use the English language accurately. Other activities include gap fill quizzes, matching exercises and word order arrangement.

After students learn the topic of the lesson, the teacher then checks their understanding. As a teacher, you must never ask the question “do you understand?” as students are naturally inclined to answer yes despite not fully understanding.

Instead, ask a question about what’s been taught and see how they respond. If the student answers the question about the topic correctly, then they will have understood. In cases where students don’t understand, the teacher will go over the text again and ask more questions.

The Activate Phase – Using English Practically

The final aspect of an ESL lesson is the activate phase, where students use what they have learned in activities such as role-plays, dialogues, debates and surveys.

The purpose of the activate phase is to apply the topics learned in the study phase in a realistic situation. By doing this, students will begin to use the English language. As with the engage phase, it is vital that every student participates and speaks during the activities.

During this stage, teachers help students with their pronunciation, rhythm and fluency. Teachers can do this through elicitation and demonstration.
Teachers must conduct the activate phase at the end of the lesson as the way students perform will be an indicator of how much they understood during the study phase. If there are gaps in the students’ learning at this stage, then teachers will need to focus more on improving the study phase.

Different Types of ESA Lessons

Straight-Arrow ESA Lesson

The most common application of the ESA method, teachers simply start with the engage phase and end with the activate phase.

An example lesson plan of a Straight-Arrow ESA lesson

Level	Elementary
Teaching Aids	Worksheets Name cards
Learner Objectives	Students should be able to identify and use comparative adjectives in sentences by the end of the lesson.
Teacher Objectives	Improve my boardwork, elicitation and refine my teaching style.
Anticipated Problems for Students	Pronunciation Confusion between “-er” and “more” comparative adjectives.
Solution	Drilling and thorough explanation of the grammar.
Anticipated Problems for Teachers	Losing track of the sequence of the lesson plan and time.
Solution	Have the lesson plan next to me at all times. Always check the time.

Phase	Procedure	Timing	Interaction
Engage	Use pictures to elicit adjectives based on appearance. As students say adjectives, write the opposites. E.g. tall-short, fat-thin, young-old, etc. List around 10-12 words on the board. Explain that adjectives can be used to describe appearances and then give an example of a comparative adjective. Select two students with one being taller than the other and write a gapfill sentence on the whiteboard. E.g. Tom is taller than Emily. Elicit the opposite: Emily is shorter than Tom.	10 minutes	S -> T
Study	Activity #1 Create three columns and write the list of adjectives in the first column. Ask students for the comparative forms of the adjectives and write them down in the second column. In the third column, explain how to create the comparative form by writing (adjective + er) or (more + adjective) Activity #2 Hand out the first worksheet that has a chart of adjectives and comparative adjectives and ask students to fill in the missing words. Activity #3 Hand out the second worksheet that has gap fill exercises. E.g. This brown cat is ________ than the white cat.	20 minutes	S -> T
Activate	Activity #1 Each student gets a card with a random name and fact. Each student gets a fact sheet headed with “name” and “fact”. Teach students how to ask these questions. 1. What is your name? 2. What is your fact? Students go around the class and ask their classmates these questions, filling in the sheet as they go. Activity #2 Once they have asked everyone and filled in the information on their fact sheet, students will create sentences about their classmates using comparative adjectives. Students will then stand up and say some of their sentences to the class.	10-15 minutes	S – > T S – > S

Boomerang ESA Lesson

The structure of a Boomerang lesson is Engage-Activate-Study-Activate (EASA).

Unlike a Straight-Arrow lesson, a Boomerang lesson dives straight into the activate phase of the lesson before the study phase, then finishing by reactivating the students.

During the initial activate phase, students will most likely be unable to use the language correctly. They will make mistakes with grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, which will reveal gaps in the students’ knowledge.
Once the students have learned the new topic, they will then do the activity again, filling in any gaps they may have had at the beginning of the lesson.

An example boomerang lesson

Engage: Discussion of different jobs and occupations.

Activate: Role-play as different types of people e.g lawyer, police officer, firefighter, etc.

Study: Use boardwork and worksheets to enhance students’ vocabulary and understanding of different jobs.

Activate: Repeat the role-play. This time, students will have more vocabulary to use and thus make the activity more fun and exciting.

The objective of a Boomerang lesson is accuracy of the English language and consistently improving through good practice.

Patchwork ESA Lesson

A patchwork ESA lesson always begins with the engage phase and finishes with the activate phase. However, what happens between these phases can be arranged by the teacher as they see fit.

An example structure of a patchwork lesson can be E-A-S-A-E-S-A.

The patchwork lesson is flexible and can be used to target specific areas of student learning. If students need to increase their understanding of a topic, then a study phase will be conducted. To make a lesson more interesting, a teacher can initiate the activate stage or use the engage stage to introduce new topics. Anything is possible.

Why ESA?

The ESA methodology is the most organized and time-efficient way of conducting a lesson. It will allow students to learn in an engaging, exciting, productive and fun way.

The engage phase sparks the initial interest in the topic, the study phase is the absorption of new knowledge, and the activate phase puts everything into practice.

This methodology can help you as an ESL teacher to structure your lessons to fit your style of teaching and educational needs of your students. It is by far the best method of teaching English.