I recently found this picture and I thought it may be interesting not only for TEFL students, but also for teachers in general. There are two ways that we can be inspired by this picture.
Firstly, the quote. Benjamin Franklin may have not been a teacher, but from his quote we can suggest that he was thinking ahead of his time. Nowadays, active involvement of the students to the learning experience is crucial. For instance, a good idea is to use personalized tasks for it has many benefits: the students always have enough things to talk about as they dive deep to their experiences and memories or their beliefs and thought. Other examples of actively involving a student to the learning process actively is using role play, games etc. So, according to Benjamin Franklin’s quote, teaching is inadequate when there is not active involvement from the learners’ side.
Another way to see the picture is technically. We have a picture which visualizes the words of Benjamin Franklin. If we look on the internet we can find thousands, maybe millions of pictures with quotes which are food for thought. As teachers, we can select a few of them and use them as teaching material for speaking or writing tasks. Also, we can allow the students to go on a short Web quest and look for a quote themselves and then either write what they think about it, or bring it to class with their comments in order to discuss it. The possibilities are endless and we all benefit from it.
Technology in TEFL 