The 9 Best Ways To Finish EFL Lessons

It is as important to end an EFL lesson effectively as you start it. Your main aim is that your students leave the classroom with a good feeling about themselves and their learning. They should end their EFL lessons with a sense of achievement and the knowledge that they have made progress in their English.

The following are nine of the best ways that you can use and adapt to end your EFL classes.

1. Giving feedback.

After presenting the new language, students should have some time to practice the language presented. Students do practice by working on certain tasks. Towards the end of the lesson, students need to be given feedback about their work. For example, if they have been involved in a writing task, you can note the common mistakes they did in their writing, then spend the last ten minutes of the lesson talking about the things you noted. Praise correct and creative ideas, sentences and expressions, and discuss the common mistakes done eliciting from students how to correct them and improve any piece of writing. This approach to ending your EFL lesson offers a nice closure. In addition, it supports students’ recognition of their progress and what they still need to work on.

2. Displaying work.

If your students have spent a lot of time in the lesson working on something creative such as writing a story or designing a poster, make sure you allow time at the end of class for them to display their work. For example, they could pin it up on the walls and then walk around the classroom looking at each other’s work. You can select some students to describe what they have done or given a title to their work. This is a very satisfying way to end a lesson. You might need 15 minutes for it. If you feel you don’t have enough time to dedicate to this type of display, then consider setting up a class blog where students can post their work online.

3. Asking “What have you learned today?”

Set aside five minutes at the end of the lesson for the students to reflect on what they have studied in the lesson. Ask them to write down three new things that they learned in today’s lesson and to compare their list with other students. This is a quick way to establish what everyone is taking away from the lesson.

4. Defining what you can do.

You might have a course syllabus or course materials that include ‘can do’ statements at the end of each page or lesson for students to review their learning. For example, the student can define a language objective with a statement like ‘I can order food in a restaurant. You can write on the board at the end of the lesson “I can ……. “ and encourage students to complete what they can already do in English as a result of the lesson.

5. Revising vocabulary from the lesson.

It’s good to have the last 10 minutes of the lesson to revise some of the vocabulary that has been taught. You could choose 10 new words from the lesson and have a quiz in which students compete in groups. Read out a definition of the word and they have to say what it is.

6. Ending with “Challenge yourself”.

You could spend the final 10 minutes doing a high-level exercise or having a general language knowledge quiz on grammar or vocabulary. This ending can engage brilliant students and challenge them. It will also change the pace and end the lesson on a high note.

7. Asking “Any questions?”

Allow time in the end for students to ask questions. Questions allowed at the end could be questions about the subject matter of the lesson or they might be about the course in general. If one student has a question, it’s good for the whole class to know the answer to it so that benefits will spread.

8. Setting homework

It’s usually best to set homework towards the end of a lesson and to make sure – especially in the case of younger learners and teens – that all students write it down somewhere. Even if you set the homework earlier in the lesson, remind your students about it again at the end.

9. Previewing the next lesson.

It’s preferable, especially for good students to give a short description of the next lesson in advance. Try to be focused and add some kind of excitement to your talk about the next subject. You may ask students to prepare the lesson, telling them what to do exactly to be more knowledgeable about the next class.

Can you add way # 10 to the list? Let us read about it in your comment.

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