Ice-breaking session, classroom activities, common errors | Teaching English | British Council

I would like to share some of my random experiences. When I first started teaching, I did an informal ice-breaking session with my students for each class. They were asked to write about their hopes and expectations in our lessons. In my views, I has helped me understand my students better because I eventually try to come up with better classroom activities towards achieving successful English lessons. So do tell me all your hopes and fears! *winks* So far, I think that the best tool to evaluate students' level of proficiency is through essay writing because it is easier to identify their strengths and weaknesses in using the role-plays, informal conversation such as giving opinions, asking questions, chit-chatting away. Moreover, we should never underestimate the power of classroom activities that include the active participation of the students such as role-plays which consist of dialogues, acts and authentic use of the language. Besides that, vocabulary is also an important point that educators and learners need to consider in a language class. One of the common errors that students keep on doing is the habit of using the same words or phrases all the time due to lack of ideas. For instance, the word "thing" is being overly used. The other interesting matter is the usage of direct translation from their L1. As all of us know, L1 is also known as the first language or mother tongue while L2 is the second language. For instance, English does not have similar sentence structure as Bahasa Melayu so students need to be corrected because some of them could not identify their mistake if no one is taking the chance to assist them. Hence, it is important for all of us to identify the root or cause of such errors and correct them before they become apart of us. Now, that's going to be a nightmare. Until we meet again. Take care.