Immigration to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and the United States has increased over the past decade, and English is now the language of international business and finance. English as a second language (ESL), or English as a foreign language (EFL), has become an educational specialty. ESL teachers are constantly refining the practice and have developed an array of beginner lesson plans.

Basic Structure
Typical course work for beginning ESL/EFL students will emphasize listening, speaking and writing. Ideally, the lesson plan will orient and engage the students, give them a variety of learning strategies and provide them with follow-up work to reinforce what was learned in class. Lesson plans will include a warm-up, a presentation, strict practice, free practice and a feedback period at the end. Warm-up is a game or joke to relax the students and bring their focus to the front. Presentation is a didactic portion to pass along the concept of the day’s work. Strict practice is repetitious and closely monitored by the teacher to provide quick, accurate correction. Free practice is a time when students can practice more with one another. Feedback is a period to assess the efficacy of teaching.

Vocabulary
The basic units of learning for any language are the words. While many words have multiple meanings and built-in ambiguities, there are some basic words that are representative of a shared objective world that are essential for beginner lesson plans. Simple salutations are always a good way to start, so students will have a way to interact in English with the teacher and each other on a basic level. Directions — up, down, right, left, front, back — and spatial relations — over, under, around, through, across — are good topics for beginner lesson plans. Colors, animals, external anatomy (eyes, nose, hands, feet) and common structural items — doors, walls, floors, windows, sidewalks — are also good beginner vocabulary lessons.

Verbs and Conjugation
English is one of the most challenging languages with regard to verb use. In the Romance languages, verb conjugation is generally regular, based on the addition of a suffix to the verb stem. In English, this is not so much the case. Very basic verbs, such as “to be,” “to have,” “to want,” “to say” and “to go” are conjugated uniquely, requiring a great deal of drilling for the students to internalize them. The differentiation of verbs with similar meanings and subtle differences — “say” and “tell” — can be its own beginner lesson plan.

Subject-Verb-Object
It is often no easy task to teach students the difference between direct and indirect objects in their native language, and it is no simple task for ESL teachers either. Subject-verb-object constructions are lesson plans unto themselves. Beginner lesson plans can use personal nouns first — I, you, he, she, we, they — to help students learn the most common verbs in English and apply them to themselves and others as subjects and objects: "You hit him," or "He spoke to her." In another lesson plan, the teacher can use impersonal vocabulary nouns as subjects and objects: “The car hit the tree.” Thankfully, English does not assign its nouns genders.

Modifiers
Fortunately, English does have one regularity — the suffix change between adjectives and adverbs. Quick is transformed into quickly the same way that bad is transformed into badly the same way that loud is transformed into loudly. Beginning with the “-ly” rule for adverbs, a beginning lesson plan can build a basis for learning adjectives and adverbs that share the same stem. The exceptions can come later, after students have developed some vocabulary and confidence.