Originally Posted by Goughy
Guys I'm training to teach english as a foreign language, thoughts? Advice? Let's discuss.
Every great teacher knows the importance of excellent lesson planning; as your students are unpredictable, there’s no way you can step foot into a classroom and wing it. Instead, you need to print enough worksheets for the entire class and ensure that you’ve prepared enough for your allocated lesson time, while also having backup solutions in the event an activity isn’t working very well. You must think about how you will introduce a new language into a classroom, and whether your students are ready to move on with the syllabus or if anything needs revisiting. Don’t move onto new topics without making sure all your students are comfortable; you can check this by doing a small pop quiz at the beginning of your lesson.
No matter the average age of the classroom, it’s essential to teach through visuals in your class. These visuals can be in a physical form – ie: labelling desks, chairs, computer screens and doors. They can also be in picture form on handouts and drawings. By using visuals, your students will be able to relate to physical objects and pictures and will begin to pick up on certain words. You can also build a pictorial wall to help your students grow their vocabulary and match a meaning with a word. In an ESL classroom, a picture really does speak a thousand words. And by using timelines effectively to explain grammatical tenses, your students will be able to absorb information faster.
Over time, you’ll naturally establish your own teaching techniques. However, if you’re just starting out, you should practise different ways of teaching. This can include games, quizzes, show-and-tells, silent reading and act-it-out challenges. Whatever method you choose to adopt, it’s essential to break your lessons up into smaller sections. For example, if you’re teaching young children, their attention span is going to be short, so you might want to consider splitting each activity up into 10-minute sessions, giving your students time to recap and have a break in between tasks.
Students need to feel safe and supported in order to express themselves fully; they don’t want to be scared of making a mistake, and they should be dealt with the utmost compassion. Encourage them to speak up and correct errors carefully (sometimes it’s best to let things slide if the overall sentence is correct). Give them time to form their answers, and patiently wait for a response – don’t move on to another student when you can see that they’re thinking about the best way to answer your question. On the same note, you should reward good work and effort to encourage students to keep learning. This will differ between age groups, but for a young class, you could set up a point system that will lead to a physical reward at the end of term.
While fred makes a valid point with encouraging success through incentives and rewards, it purpose of teaching is to wholly get the information across so that it sticks. While this approach may be systematic in a graded environment, it is not fundamentally sound for the purpose of education. Having a class structure lenient on reward and punishment teaches students to study what is apt for examination - and as a consequence, memorization of some of the most trivial information is a result. This is particularly common in foreign language instruction, as introductory courses often set the premise of 'you need to write X in Y way such that Z can be communicated effectively'; which is not at all how comprehension of secondary of tertiary languages is achieved. You should gauge such a system if you choose to employ it. I'm not a fan of teaching language in a class setting as it were. You miss out on immersion and true conversation - which lies outside the realm of formalities and discussing activities you did over the weekend.
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