The topics you choose to study as you learn English will help you improve your language ability in very specific ways.  It is very helpful to choose topics that are interesting to you and are about subjects that are also helpful to you.  The important thing to remember is that when you choose esl topics is that you are choosing to learn specific vocabulary and language use patterns.

For example if you choose "Cooking" as your ESL language learning topic, you will learn cooking vocabulary of course, but also how people use that vocabulary, when they use it, and different grammar structures that are more commonly used with cooking.  If you chose a different language learning topic - say "Environmental Problems", you would find very quickly that the vocabulary used is not the same at all as with cooking, and in many cases how people use the language is different too.

So, for choosing ESL topics, stick with things are that interesting and important to you for most of your study, but always be sure to include topics that are new to you and perhaps not what you would usually choose to study.  Also, open your mind to new areas in each topic you study or teach in your ESL class.  As the saying goes, "think outside the box" when choosing your topics.  I'll give an example below.

A common topic studied in ESL classes is "Transportation".  Now you could stick with a standard set of lessons on types of transportation and parts of vehicles, or you could add in something like:

• changes in transportation
• new inventions in transportation
• why old-style transportation is better than new  styles
• impact of transportation on daily life
• impact of transportation on global economy
• influence of transportation on nature and the health of the earth
• How modern transportation systems changed our diets

All of these are good topics for an ESL class.  You would simply need to make them fit the level and interests of your classes.

Hopefully this has given you a few new ideas.  Here are some other ideas about ESL Topics

Eric