Teach English in HuangzhuAng Jiedao - Tianjin

Improving teaching skills and style with TEFL Developing teaching skills and style mean much more then a word ?teacher?. Teaching is not only about giving it?s also about receiving, rewarding from two-way cooperation. Establishing good rapport with students always needs a balanced command of all possible teaching skills, and an absence of some professional skills could influence on teaching style and result poor education. Professional teachers cannot shift the blame onto students. He/she would try to find out what was wrong and solve problems without blaming. Considering the structure of teaching skills with TEFL. As I see, a good teacher is a person with a balanced command of teaching skills as well as with a good command of psychology. In this case I could split the teaching skills into background skills and foreground skills. Where the background skills could include psychological aspects of teaching behavior (Unit 5.p.14-16) and the foreground skills could include teaching techniques and methods of their implementation (Unit 3. p.2-3, 4-20). All the required teaching skills are lighted in details during International TEFL Teacher Training. There are a number of foreground skills we can distinguish from TEFL course. The most important of them are: creative skill, communicative skill, managing skill, leadership skill, and monitoring skill (Chart ?1). Creative skill includes: ? elaboration and implementation of stages? activities; ? warmers; different games and exercises; ? creating interest during the lesson (Unit 11.p.4); ? encouraging interaction (Unit 12.p4); ? Creating the purpose for communication (Unit 12.p1-6). Managing skill includes: ? organization of sitting arrangement of the class; ? grouping students (Unit 5.p.4-8); ? lesson planning (Unit 9.p2-10); ? selecting teaching ads and materials (Unit 17.p1-10); ? Choice of teaching aims. Communicative skill includes: ? abilities like establishing rapport with the students (Unit 5.p.2); ? holding the attention; ? abilities to encourage and motivate; ? effective presentation; ? Effective use of mime and gesture. Leadership skill includes: ? enhancing performance in the classroom; ? guiding position during the lesson; ? organizing different activities (Unit 1p.3); ? he ability to be a guide and a participant the same time(Unit 1p.4); ? Maintaining discipline and giving instructions (Unit 5 p.13, 15). Monitoring skill includes: ? evaluation and testing (Unit 15.p1-3); ? encouraging self-esteem; giving feedback (Unit 1p.3); ? Controlling activities; correcting mistakes (Unit 3 p.20). Basic foreground skills closely intertwine with background skills. Mutually complementing each other they can also mutually influence on each other. Subsequently it will effect on total picture of teaching. Classifying background skills I could distinguish following groups of skills: 1. Positive (negative) personal qualities from nature: ? Kindness and patience (Unit 1. p1); ? Tenderness; ? Positiveness(Unit 19. p10); ? Fairness (Unit 1. p3); ? Attentiveness; ? Wise and supporting; ? Confidant; ? Smiling; ? Respecting (Unit 19. p10); ? Courteous; ? Responsible; ? Creative (Unit 11,12); ? Cooperative; ? Encouraging (Unit 19. p3). 2. Attitude to work (positive or negative): ? A good teacher should really love teaching (Unit 1. p1); ? A good teacher has a good knowledge of his/her subject (Unit 1. p1); ? A good teacher tries to make his lessons interesting and entertaining(Unit 1. p1); ? Ability to develop course curriculum and individual lessons (Unit 9. p. 104); ? Aspiration for effective teaching (Unit 19. p2); ? Ability to foster an effective learning environment (Unit 17. p1-20). 3. Ability to introspection: ? Ability to self-esteem (Unit 15. p1-2); ? Ability to self-monitoring (Unit 19. p10); ? Ability to self-correction. Background skills play an important role and at least can help to improve a total picture of teaching abilities of foreground skills. As in teaching a backside of subconscious processes have a direct impact on teaching process as a whole. Functioning of all these skills play an important role in teaching effectiveness, developing and influencing on the basic principles of teaching style as well. After examine the list of points ?What makes a good teacher?? (Unit 1. p.1) and other materials, I can observe that all the worded points closely connected to all background skills and foreground skills which was distinguished from TEFL lectures. Considering the structure of teaching style with TEFL. Relying on aforesaid information I can observe that the interaction between all structures of teaching skills can affect teaching style as a component of unified process. Choosing the style among possible directions like ?inspiring?, ?confidential?, ?exciting?, ?boring?, ?encouraging?, and etc., I could probably accept the aforesaid conception. As all these sides of styles can be a part of a tendency which is directed to effective and ineffective influence on process of teaching as a whole. That is why speaking about teaching styles I should distinguish two main tendencies: 1. Teaching style can be unbalanced: ? Could contain lack of introspection; ? lack of desire to be evaluated by students; ? Negative attitude to work; ? lack of self-organization; ? Unfairness; lack of positive personal qualities; ? Lack of balance; ? Unprofessional; ? Etc. 2. It can be well balanced: ? Could contain introspection; ? Self-organization; ? Positive personal qualities; ? Positive attitude to work; ? Desire to be evaluated by students; ? Etc. These two distinguished styles can have a strong influence on teaching effectiveness as well as improving. While the first is a kind of destructive, well balanced style can help to improve teaching effectiveness and as a result both sides will benefit from positive communication. Teaching style has a deep connection with presentation skill. If the aim is to improve your style, one of the main points is improvement of the way how you can present information during the lesson (Unit 17, 14, 7, 5 p. 10). If you have lack of introspection, you are not able to see your poor presentation. And as a result it can bring ineffective influence on the process of teaching as a whole. As well as if the teaching process isn?t positive, it cannot bring positive results. As long as the process of teaching is truly two-way cooperative it will return what the teacher gives. Eventually I can conclude that teaching style has a strong influence on teaching effectiveness. Improving teaching skills and style with TEFL. Reading through all materials of TEFL course I can observe a lot of really useful information for teaching improvement. For example, starting with the first unite where the information about the role of the teacher is introduced. Teaching big classes can affect lack of awareness that the teacher should have different approaches to learners (Unit 1. p.1-8). Some of students can be nervous about performing in front of the class and the teacher should pay respect to this fact, because of the deep impact of background psychological founts. Teachers should ?know students? weaknesses and try to give individual attention where necessary? (Unit 1. p.1). The most difficult areas for teachers like planning, teaching methods and techniques, class managing, classroom materials, evaluation and testing, teaching pronunciation and the most important areas of grammar are presented in course?s modules. These all areas form a basic knowledge of a teaching process as a whole and give a wide introduction to the most exciting area of pedagogy ? education. Balanced and appropriate use of presented information helps to orient directions of educators and identify their teaching quality. The material is also helpful for those who don?t rely on personal opinion about their teaching and have courage to look in the eye of truth (Unit 15.p1). Evaluation by students is as needful as self-correction and flexibility doesn?t play the last role in developing or improving teaching skills and style. Another important area that is presented in this course - how to teach the most significant parts of students? skills and what stages lesson should contain. For young or inexperienced teachers these areas are the most complex. Sometimes they don?t know how to start a lesson and warm the atmosphere among students, attract their attention and keep it as long as some activity needs. Teachers should aware the sequence in the lesson and use appropriate activity for each stage of it making a well balanced lesson. Every lesson needs a presents of three main stages as engage stage, study stage and activate stage. These stages not only help to plan appropriate activities to each stage of the lesson but also keep a pace during teaching. Lessons become more interesting and more exciting. There is no boredom any more and students take no notice of time. If to speak about well balanced lesson then it?s a presence of two main founts first of all: the sequence in the lesson and students? skills. Courses modules give teachers complete information about these fields. Structurally each lesson should contain minimum three stages and a work at productive and receptive skills. Inexperienced teachers always have difficulties at these areas and sometimes nearly forget about needful presence of some productive or receptive skills filling the lesson time over concentration upon some particular area. This usually leads to the types of lesson where too much reading or speaking for instance. At least I should say that it doesn?t matter how long somebody is in teaching and what methods he/she usually uses. Submitted information is helpful for both inexperienced and experienced teachers and helps to improve teaching skills and style. My own experience. I would like to say a few words about my own experience. Being an experienced teacher I was surprised how many useful and new information I found during this course. Having a new view on my lessons I reconstructed them trying to use the most important components of the lessons as presence of the sequence of stages and productive, receptive skills. As a result, my lessons became more interesting and balanced. I should notice that both sides benefit from balanced teaching. I work with adults as a tutor one-to-one and the sharpest problem was an absence of time for writing skill. Being working people students do not have an actual time to make home assignments, especially written ones. Rewriting of the structure of the lesson gave me a free space for writing skill. This course also helped me to become more creative and flexible teacher. As a result I increased presence of exciting speaking practice for my students and reduced my talking time to minimum. This course also helped me to look at myself and analyze my work. I brought evaluation by students in my classes and questionnaires for business english students. Generally speaking I think I benefit from each particular module. As each one is a container of really useful and significant information. Literature: 1. Jef Menguin ?Improve your teaching style?. 2. TEFL modules information. 3. Jeremy Harmer ?How to teach english?. 4. Jerry G. Gebhard (1996) ?Teaching english as a Foreign or Second Language: A Teacher Self-Development and Methodology Guide?.