Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Shipaotai Jiedao? Are you interested in teaching English in Shantou 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.
Unit 19 covers teaching special groups such as children, individuals, and business students. This unit gives a nice overview of the unique challenges a teacher may face when teaching young children, tutoring individual adult students, or teaching small classes of working professionals. For example, with adult classrooms, not only may students within a class have variation in their skill level in English, but they may also speak different native languages. In this instance, the only language students will have in common is English, which can be a benefit. However, when students do share a common language, they are able to go over directions with one another in their native tongue, which may enable them to do better on the activity portion of a lesson. Much of this unit covers behaving professionally as a teacher, which I found helpful. Suggestions include printing everything and hole-punching in advance, avoiding saying anything about students to staff as it can lead to miscommunication, and reporting frequently to your boss to ensure there is clear communication about student needs and areas of improvement. As I will be teaching children, I found the section on children to be most relevant. While I agree that threatening or shouting at students is not a good idea, I have found that speaking loudly is often essential in a large classroom, where it is difficult for children to hear since they are typically distracted and speaking amongst one another. I really appreciated the advice about having an attention-seeking child help you out with tasks such as handing out papers, or having students get excited about helping you erase the whiteboard.
