Using PowerPoint Presentations in ESL Classrooms

What is PowerPoint?
Powerpoint presentations are excellent for teaching large ESL classes
of students. Powerpoint helps concentration and guarantees effective
learning if everything goes according to plan.PowerPoint is a software
bundled in MS office and used for creating presentations usually in
the form of slideshows. Over the years Microsoft has been updating the
software, each time making it even better. Your computer might already
have PowerPoint installed.

Why use PowerPoint presentations in ESL Classrooms?



My experience

Teaching English or any other language especially to large classes of
kindergarten, primary schools and absolute beginner students can prove
to be a nightmare at times. As a teacher of large classes especially,
I found the use of PowerPoint presentations a great aid in my teaching
(by large classes I mean classes of 40-80 students). In China where I
teach, large classes are not uncommon.)
So how do you teach a class of 50-60 students staring at you, hungry
for knowledge?
Luckily, most classrooms in China are well equipped with overhead
projectors and in some cases they have school computer networks and
classrooms P.A Systems.
Being a novice in using the computer, I always did not know how to get
started. However, when I eventually began using MS PowerPoint to
create classroom presentations, I soon realized the similarities it
shares with MS word, which I was vaguely familiar with at the time. In
a few weeks of using PowerPoint presentations, I was amazed by the
results. All of a sudden my students could concentrate long enough for
me to drive home new language points. With new language points well
into their brains, classroom games followed with ease. This was when I
understood why some of my brilliant games had failed in the past.
At the end of the semester, my class of 50 students all passed their
English exams, with 10 students scoring 100% in the final test and the
least score being a 66% pass. Note that test papers of final exams in
most schools in China are usually corrected by a teacher who does not
know the students. Not surprisingly my class’ English test average
surprised the other Chinese teachers.
It would not be an overstatement to say that if well planned,
PowerPoint presentations can take away 50-70% of the burden of
presenting new vocabulary to large classes.

So what about small classes? Needless to say that most often it is
easier to teach smaller language classes than large ones. I have only
focused on large classes because that is the area where using
PowerPoint has solved a great deal of problems for teachers. Well, let
me sum it up this way. If PowerPoint presentations are great for large
classes, then they make teaching smaller classes seem too easy.