Teach English in YuxiZhen - Chongqing

Going through the entire course made me realize that I?ve been doing a number of things contained in this course for quite some time now. The company that I work for has set guidelines that we, the teachers follow. For example, since most of our clients are professionals and businessmen, we ask them about their usage of english at work during their first lesson. Do they make telephone calls in english? Do they negotiate in english? These are some of the questions we ask them. Then we ask them about their interests and objectives for learning english then assess their level afterwards. Then we base our lesson plans on the information that we have gathered from them. We also take their grammatical and vocabulary needs into account when we plan future lessons. For instance, if a learner keeps using the present continuous to talk about his daily routines, then I would know he needs to study the difference between the simple present and the present continuous and I will send him documents to address this. I tailor all my lessons to the needs, objectives and priorities of my learners. This is why lesson planning is important. Teachers are able to set goals when they plan their lessons. At work, we also evaluate our learners based on their strengths and weaknesses. Evaluating learners is important because it helps teachers tailor their approach to their learners' needs. They can create lesson plans that would help target their learners' weaknesses. Evaluations also help teachers and students check the progress of the latter in learning english. The course has also reminded me of how important it is to build rapport with one?s learners. Building a good relationship with students encourages the latter to participate more in class. Since I teach english one-to-one over the telephone and sometimes via Skype and I don?t have any experience teaching groups, this course has taught me much about group lessons. I never really thought that the seating arrangement in a classroom was important until I read the course. Seating arrangements should be planned carefully so that teachers can maintain eye contact with everyone and hold the attention of the students and maintain discipline in the class. I also learned about the ESA or Engage, Study and Activate method which seems very effective in delivering lessons. This method allows the teacher to get the attention of students and engage them in the lesson then move on to the study phase where students learn new concepts and get to apply it in the activate stage. Mark?s second lesson in the video was a very good ESA lesson. It was executed smoothly and effectively. I liked the way he moved from one phase to another. I remember telling myself that I want my lessons to flow as smoothly as his after watching the video. I made a mistake with the activate stage of my lesson plan in unit 12 when I asked students to speak individually in front of the class for a free-speaking activity. But something positive came out of that mistake. I now know that student interaction is crucial in the activate stage of a lesson and this is the reason why I can't ask students to speak individually. I also learned the differences between adult and young learners. A lot of adult learners have personally decided to learn english which is why they are more motivated to learn the language than the young ones. The young ones usually feel obliged to learn a new language because it?s their parents or the educational system which requires them to learn english. Adult learners also have a longer attention span than younger learners and are thus, more teachable. Adult learners sometimes can?t help but follow the pattern of their native language when they try to learn a new language and this can impede the learning process. Young learners are more open to learning the rules of a new language. Adult learners are more self-conscious than the younger ones. They?re afraid of making mistakes. This can make it more challenging to make them speak english. Using various materials and doing different kinds of activities also make lessons more fun and interesting. We can use videos, listening exercises, and pictures to teach students. We can also go on field trips with them. All these things help teachers deliver more effective lessons. Also, when we teach vocabulary, we must first ask ourselves if the word/s we?re about to teach our learners would fit their needs and level. We can?t teach insurance terminology to a hotel manager and we can?t teach ?imbroglio? to a beginner. We should also make sure that the vocabulary we?re teaching is useful to the students. It would be a waste of time teaching students words which they will use only during the lesson. I?ve been making some changes in the way I conduct my lessons and teaching vocabulary is one of the things that I would like to become better at. I would like to concentrate more on words that my learners will find useful. I have also started improving the way I teach verb tenses to my students, thanks to the help of this course! I am able to teach verb tenses more effectively and the functions of challenging tenses like the past perfect and the future perfect actually stick in the mind of my learners. For now, I won?t be able to use the things I?ve learned about young learners and group classes because I only teach adults one-to-one over the telephone. But I might be able to use them someday.