I often see on websites, in company induction materials, and have even created myself, lists of ‘The Top 10/20/50 Tips for Teachers’.

Tips for Teachers are a great idea and can be quite useful to the new teacher.  However, with more experience, I’ve come to see that many of these ‘tips’ are actually quite useless, for a variety of reasons.

Some common problems:

A) New teachers use them inappropriately.

The tips are fine in themselves but the type teacher who they are designed for doesn’t understand how to use them (usually either treating them as isolated events instead of incorporating them into an appropriate lesson or just generally overusing them).  Example: ‘have Ss experiment with different voices and intonation.’  This can be great if utilised properly and in the right context, but as a ‘Tip for Teachers’ it often results in teachers over-exaggerating tones,  over-using the tip, and using it in inappropriate situations.  The teacher seems silly and unnatural as a result.

B) ‘Fun’ takes the place of learning.

The tips come from the desire to include ‘fun’ and ‘games’, which can be a valuable tool to build motivation and reduce apprehension when using or analysing language.  Many tips, though, seem to have dropped the language bit (almost) completely and have become games for the sake of it.  New teachers use these as time-wasters more than anything else, and they often result in reduced learning for the Ss.

C) They help people break out of their comfort zone by breaking them into their distress zone.

Ice-breakers, ‘getting to know you activities’, activities that involve some degree of being silly or embarrassing yourself, and activities involving doing something in front of the whole class, can be real confidence builders if used carefully.  But, it can be difficult for confident, outgoing types of people to realise just how uncomfortable these kinds of activities are for many Ss, and when Tips for Teachers encourage this kind of activity, teachers overuse them and force Ss to do them, resulting in extremely awkward and uncomfortable situations for many of the Ss.

Here are some common 'tips for new teachers' that I think should be tossed in the garbage can or put in a new list ‘things for experienced teachers to experiment with and new teachers to avoid’:

1. Buy some snack food. The students try a little piece of each and give their comments.
   If you’re going to build an entire lesson around this (talking about and describing food), great.  As a ‘Tip for Teachers’ it’s often going to end up as a random, isolated event, resulting in the students thinking the teacher is either too lazy to develop a proper lesson, or is trying to bribe them - and the students will feel really embarrassed for the teacher. 
2. Invite a student to dance in front of the class. The teacher helps the student describe the moves in English.
   If you're teaching ESP with a focus on DANCE.  This would be deadly embarrassing for 99% of students asked to do it, and equally embarrassing for at least 50% of observers.  The last thing an inexperienced teacher wants to do is destroy the comfort zones of people who are supposed to trust and respect you.  And you need to make sure the language focus is relevant, anyway. 
3. Teach from the back of the classroom.
   I just don’t get this, especially for new teachers. It basically means, deprive yourself of one of your best resources - the board.
4. Brainstorm a list of food and drink with the class. Then the students create the strangest combinations that they can from those items (eg. chocolate beef)
   Is there actually any communicative value to this?  Might work with young learners, but anyone else is just going to think you’re silly.
5. Give each pair of students a strip of paper with couple of new phrases/expressions with definitions and examples of each. Ss prepare how to teach their classmates these phrases/expressions, then mingle and teach each other.
   Meaning just isn’t that simple.  Teachers with years of experience still need contexts and situations in which to present and clarify new language clearly and accurately.  Again, if a whole lesson is built around this and you have follow up tasks to check understanding, great… but for a new teacher, it’s probably going to end up as an isolated activity resulting in little learning and a frustrating experience for most students.   
6. Students stand in a large circle.  Student A holds a roll of toilet paper and throws it to another student, while saying something positive about that student and holding onto the first sheet of paper so the roll unravels. Repeat until there is a web of toilet paper between the Ss.
   No comment on the dunny paper, here, but a comment on the ‘say something positive’ bit: not everyone is comfortable being ‘happy happy positive’ (in fact, if you can hear the sarcasm in my tone here, you will know that some people actually spite that kind of stuff)… more importantly, it’s extremely difficult in another language.  All you’ll get from this is “You’re clever” or “You’re beautiful” repeated 15 times.
7. Hire a musician to play for a few minutes of your class period.
   Why?!?  
8. Chinese whispers with a twist.  Ss stand in a circle.  The T whispers a sentence to the first student who whispers it to the second student. But the second student draws a picture of what they heard and shows it to the third student. The third student writes a sentence the picture and shows it to the fourth student. The fourth student whispers, etc… the last student says the sentence to the class before the teacher reveals the original sentence.
   I’ve heard this one from several different sources.  I even tried it a couple of times, before I realised just what happens… nothing.  Chinese whispers is barely useful enough, but at least it works on some sub-skills of listening (eg. making an educated guess when you partially but not fully hear something), but throwing in the ‘draw a picture’ bit means that all skills practice is immediately lost and the message can never get through accurately.  Stick to whispering.
9. Call out a colour and have Ss write down the first word/emotion/person it makes them think of.
   This just has no communicative value at all.  Ss will sit there thinking, “What’s the point of this?”
10. Have students practice reading the dialogue in pairs several times, then get each pair to take in turns acting it out in front of the class.
    Multiple repetitions of the same dialogue (boring); memorisation where understanding isn’t required, rather than meaningful interaction (almost no communicative value); 50% of the students extremely uncomfortable being in front of the class (alienating Ss and increasing apprehension.  Great way for the teacher to waste time when he/she hasn’t prepared properly though!

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