Hi there,
I am a young teacher with some experience. However, I always have problems with planning lessons, it always took me a lot of time planning lessons so sometimes I really got impatient. Plus I do not feel that my plan is working because i seems not to have effective lesson plans. I have difficulties about what to teach students. So generally in my lesson, I do not feel that the presentation step is really helpful. At my old college, mostly when studying methodology, I focus more on the stages/ steps/ activities of the lesson, not the content. I really am surprised that one colleague of mine teaching pronunciation can find so much to talk about during her lesson. The same lesson I will simply explain how to pronounce the sounds then let the students practice.
Do you have any suggestions for me from your insight? And what kind of input should I provide for low-level students if I want to teach them TOEFL? Thank you very much and sorry for such a long post.
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Hi,
I work with teachers and students at a teacher college in Mongolia and it always surprises me that what takes me 3 lessons to cover with students, it takes them 1 lesson or sometimes even less. The problem is that they just go over exercises without giving the students time to practice and revise. So when you plan your lesson think of activities which will let your students practise whatever they have just learned. I believe that each student should speak at least for 10-15 min during a 90 minute lesson.
Let me give you an example. Today I taught my students some vocabulary connected with a holiday. After some games helping them to memorize the new vocab (usually done in pairs where a student A has his/her book open and the student B prompted by the student A with the beginning of a phrase for example has to finish the phrase). Then we have some other games like miming for example. After memorizing they are ready for communicative activities, which usually take them quite a while, again in pairs or small groups.
Also, you said that you have a colleague that takes his/her time when going over topics with her/his students, so why not to ask her or him if you could observe some of her/his lessons? You have already asked yourself the question: what is she/he doing that I am not doing?, so observing his or her lesson could give you an answer to that. On the other hand, you could ask him or her to observe your lesson and advice you on what you could improve/change.
Hi,
I agree with the questions you have raised in your initial coment, I am sure with due course of time you would also feeling integrating various aspect into your teaching, to me teaching requires reflective practices, reflecting before action i.e. planning, during action i.e. implementing and after action i.e. conclusion and later evalution.
At present in my English language classes, I am focusing overall fluency and presentation skills because students are coming from diverse background, their needs are varied and their motivation also vary as sometimes they attend the classes other times they skip, thus I have adopted a method which i called overall fluency program where I integrate most of the skills. In our discussion based class with their limited vocabulary they prepare few minutes presentation and share it with all, through this integrated approach, they are learning grammar structure, vocabulary and application of those structures as how to use it in real situation etc.
I plan my session using integrated approach of language teaching, which resulted in maximum participation of students with less or no absence. I had shared this with my colleagues and now sharing this with you.
best of luck
regards
Rozina Jumani
I always believe that we mature and grow as effective trainers only by having the courage to implement whatever we believe in and then learning from it. Innovation is all about taking a new route which has never been tried or explored before. Do not look at your success or failure. Since you have just started your career, give yourself some time to get settled.
You just need to understand that each session needs to be interactive, interesting and challenging to the students. You just need to achieve this objective. All trainers have their own style. You could probably identify an experienced ELT trainer who can mentor you till you get comfortable.