Hi,
At the moment I am studying to be a teacher of English in Holland. I spent my first 16 years in the USA so I am kind of fluent when it comes to speaking but the worst thing for me is grammar. As a native speaker I really never bothered too much with grammar. Now, my counselor has asked me to prepare a lesson for the (mostly guys 16-20yrs old) students at a vocational school. These students are learning to be supervisors at building sites or something in the world of building. I feel that they would benefit most from a TBL lesson or a practical lesson. Does anyone have some tips for me? This will be my first 'independent' teaching experience so I have to make it a good one.
thanks for looking,
Pat
This question was submitted by Patricia
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Amir A. Ravayee
The first thing you should do is to find answers to these questions?
1- Who exactly are the students?
2- Are they all at the same level or not?
3- What do they want to do and why?
4- How long the course will take?
5- How large is the class?
It’s very important to know who your students are. I mean what they are interested in. Do they have a lot of time to study and do homework? Are they auditory learners or visual ones?
A placement test helps you a lot to find out whether all the students are at the same level or you will have a mixed-ability class. You can use a diagnostic test or entry test to identify problems that students have with language. It helps the teacher to plan what to teach in future.
You won’t be successful unless you know why they are learning English and how they are going to use it. Do they want to listen and speak or they just want to write reports or
E-mails. They might need to read a lot. All these will influence the procedure or approach you choose to use.
A teacher must be aware of the course duration. This is very essential for timing in his lesson plans.
Teaching techniques can be different in small classes or in the large ones with a lot of students.
Now you are able to decide what to teach and how to teach. I prefer not to use a course book as far as some parts of a course book might not be useful. If you skip these parts, the students will complain and may think you do not have the ability to teach the omitted parts. So you’d better choose the needed language and the activities related to that by yourself. You can download worksheets from the internet or make copies of photocopiable worksheets in course books.
Task-based Learning (TBL) sounds logical for your purpose. You can give students meaningful tasks to do and may ask them to think about the language they have used to do the tasks, but the main focus for students is on the task itself.
Another teaching method which you can benefit most from is Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP) method. Here the teacher presents the language and gets students to practice it in exercises or other controlled practice activities and then asks students to use the same language in a communicative way in their practice.
Amir Abbass Ravayee
martina kliem
1. Teaching beginners requires special skills and psychology
They're very satisfying to teach because enthusiasm and motivation is usually high (especially with real beginners), and progress rapid and measurable. But some beginners may lack confidence after several failed attempts to learn (false beginners) and may be easily discouraged. Others may have dogmatic ideas about how they want to learn. Older learners often think they can't learn as well as younger ones, which isn't true.
METHODOLOGY and TECHNIQUES
2. Be aware of your students' needs
Adapt your teaching and materials accordingly. Do they have particular concerns, e.g. Do they need functional language quickly? Is speaking more important for them than writing?
3. Have clear realistic aims
Always know what you want students to learn in each lesson and tell them. Beginners need a clear, step-by-step approach. Don't aim too high or go too quickly, or all but the strongest will lose motivation. Keep reminding students what they know, what they're going to learn, and how well they're doing. Students need to feel they are moving forward. Use a Progress chart to help students monitor their progress.
4. Adapt to suit your situation
No two teaching situations are the same. Adapt, personalize, and localize the course to suit your students. Spend more time on structures and sounds which students have problems with because of L1 interference. Use the names of locally-famous people and places as examples in exercises to generate interest and humour.
5. Arrange the classroom
Ensure that everyone can see the board and move to pair and group work easily. Experiment - a semi-circle works well. Although some students feel more secure sitting in the same place, encourage them to change partners sometimes. 6. Be as visual as possible.
Use flashcards, blackboard drawings, and mime to put across meaning. Build up your own library of magazine pictures (e.g. of famous people, activities, etc.). Cover them with plastic for long life.
7. Take care with your board work
The board's your main teaching aid. Think how best to use it. Beginners want to copy everything so write clearly and make sure students copy correctly. Tell them when and when not to write things down. Plan grammar explanations beforehand and decide what you want to highlight. Elicit and mark the stress on new words for students to copy. Use blu-tack to stick pictures on the board. Colour-coding with pens or chalk helps.
8. Control your language
You are your students' main source of listening comprehension. Simplify your English and try to use language they can understand. However, don't speak unnaturally slowly. Always use contracted forms, and insist students do the same. Don't talk too much! A good teacher gets students to do most of the talking.
9. Give clear, simple instructions
Make sure students know exactly what they have to do. Demonstrate activities with a good student first. Explain an activity clearly in English then, if necessary, ask a student to tell the class in L1 to check everyone understands. Teach students the instructions you use most often in class, e.g. Ready? Stop. etc.
10. Pace your classes
Concentration is very tiring for a beginner. Variety of activity, pace, and focus can really help, so try to balance intensive and less demanding activities. Give students a time limit for each activity. Stop an activity at its height - don't wait for it to grind to a halt!
blazini
I have trouble getting the attention from sts, in a high school, it´s hard to get sts to learn, and make them love it
I need some other activities that appear to be more exciting than the traditional ones