Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Tuanjie Nongchang? Are you interested in teaching English in Maoming Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
Great teachers make great students. A teacher takes on many roles during their teaching. A great teacher should be engaging, motivating, organized, kind, and knowledgeable. A great student shows a desire to listen, think, experiment, ask questions, and accept correction. Younger learners differ from adult learners in many ways. Younger learners are generally less nervous, less rigid, less motivated, and have less behavioral control. Adult learners are generally more nervous, more rigid, more motivated, and able to cooperate with class requirements. I reflected on how often a teacher should correct a student's speech. 100%, at every little error or mistake? Certainly not. And 0%? That would not be effective. There must be a medium ground where the teacher is correcting important mistakes while still keeping the students motivated to ask questions and respond. How to tell if a mistake should be corrected? 1. Is it indicative of a pattern? If the student is beginning to form a habit of this mistake, it should be corrected as early as possible. 2. Is it relevant to recent course material? If it's something the student has just recently learned and the activity is focused on usage of this word/phrase/grammar construction, mistakes should be corrected right away. 3. If it's none of the above two, could the teacher still make the correction without reducing student motivation? If so, consider making the correction just as an aside, after the student is done speaking. Interrupting the student as they are speaking does more harm than good in this case. If the student's mistake does not fit into one of these categories, then it's likely best to not overcorrect the student. Mistakes are a natural part of student experimentation with the language, which is an indicator of a healthy learning attitude. Don't mess it up by overcorrecting!
