Teach English in Shangshixian Dainongye Yuanqu - Shanghai Shi

Motivating StudentsA teacher's behavior in the classroom, which can be roughly be divided into three components, has the largest influence on students' motivation to learn. First, the teacher's overall demeanor should set a welcoming and professional atmosphere for students. Next, the manner in which the teacher interacts with their students should make students feel empowered, encouraged, and respected. Last but not least, the teacher should approach the material in a way that is appropriately challenging, relevant, and considers the needs, skills, and values of the students. Although learning is an interactive process, students aren't always proactive agents of their own education; the role of the teacher thereby necessitates an additional element of incitement in order to create and maintain a stimulating academic atmosphere. Students can sense whether a teacher's enthusiasm is genuine or contrived and respond accordingly. Artifice cannot create the same inspiring and positive atmosphere as a teacher who is truly passionate about the subject and teaching. Students also react to their teacher's appearance; whether they carry themselves with confidence, dress as if they take their job seriously, and maintain a certain degree of formality means the difference between students taking the lesson as seriously as the teacher or considering the lesson just another time to socialize. All in all, the teacher sets the stage for a successful learning experience. Although the teacher is the leader of the classroom and must establish their authority as such, it is important that they don't act overly domineering with students, as young people do not respond well to authoritative behavior. Based on my own experiences as a student, constant threatening, reminding, punishing, and talking down to students can breed resentment, as they feel as though the teacher is underestimating their intelligence. A teacher who demonstrates that they value their students' ideas, makes extra effort to find out about their students' interests and works them into lessons, asks their students for input and feedback, and encourages their students through praise and positivity makes students feel that they are an asset to the classroom, that they are respected, and most of all that they are capable of learning english. If the teacher wants students to be engaged in their education, they must be able to choose their writing topic, activity partner, to challenge the teacher, and to complete a task in a way that suits their own style. While interacting with young people can be challenging in and of itself, let alone as an authority figure, the teacher will find that students who are given freedom and high expectations in terms of academic performance and behavior tend to live up to them, and even exceed them. An important way to establish this is to give students feedback on their work. If a student has produced exceptional work, the teacher should share it with the rest of the class-- with permission, of course. This boosts the student's self-esteem while also showing the rest of the class what the teacher considers good work, which in turn motivates students to do good work in hopes of being recognized for it. According to my past academic experiences, one of the most important features of an engaging and motivating class is the content and how the teacher approaches it. Learning a language means interacting with current, relevant, and relatable materials in various forms in order to provide students with an accurate cultural context. Books, movies, articles, comics, games-- no matter the medium, the topics should be age-appropriate, teach students about modern anglophone cultures, and appeal to students' interests and values. While the material itself is critical to keeping students' attention, the teacher is responsible for presenting it in a way that generates thought, discussion, collaboration, and creation. If the material assigned were a fictional short story, the teacher should ask questions like, "could you name a theme in the story? Which character did you relate to? Did anyone catch the allegory? Tell me about..." These kinds of open-ended questions require original thought, personal preference, insight, and the like, rather than quiz-like questions that only have one correct answer. Students' focus in class should be less on whether they'll be punished for only having read half the story and more on what they learned from it. Moreover, using grades as a weapon against bad behavior is not only counterproductive in generating motivation, it creates a climate of anxiety and competition among students and de-emphasizes learning. Teachers can avoid this by designing their evaluation system to encourage students to learn instead of memorize. Multiple choice test questions make students focus on details and are graded to show how well they memorized them. On the other hand, essay questions make students produce their own ideas and form compelling arguments, and are graded such that students have a better opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the lesson. Influencing the behavior of a room full of young people to be engaged and motivated to learn sounds implausible, if not impossible. In truth, the majority of the influence is done merely by the teacher creating a motivating atmosphere through their own behavior, which in turn affects the students. Although it takes a certain degree of skill needed, anyone who is genuinely passionate about teaching has the innate capacity to turn their class into articulate, thoughtful, creative, competent students.