Teach English in Huntingdon - TESOL Courses

This course has taught me so much about teaching, as well as the english language in general. There are many more aspects of teaching than I had previously thought. In order to become a successful teacher, and more importantly a teacher that students can easily learn from, one has to master a number of aspects. There are different roles required of a teacher and the teacher’s task is to work out which of these roles is best for certain situations and certain classes. Different aged students will require the teacher to focus on different roles, e.g. with younger students the teacher will need to have a more controlling/disciplinary/model role whereas with older students the teacher will have more of a facilitator/organizer/participant role. I will assess the age, experience, level of english knowledge of my class before I decide which roles will be best, also certain situations will require different roles of me and I now know when to use whichever role. There are many areas of the english language which can be confusing to learners. Areas such as grammar and the tenses confused me to some extent, so for second language learners to master these will take time and patience, as well as stimulating lessons. This course has shown me how to plan lessons and how to teach certain areas. With the cases of grammar and the tenses, the trick to help the students understand these areas will be to give them fun activities and exercises to do so that they will pick up grammar/tenses without knowing it. Lesson planning has taught me how to structure lessons in such a way that the students will not become board and will want to participate. Structuring lessons by means of a boomerang or patchwork ESA lesson will help me achieve that. I want to make my lessons as active and as fun as possible, yet teaching the students as much as possible. I want the students to want to learn english and not be there because they have to, and this course has taught me how to do that. It has also given me lots of ideas of what to do for active phases and to lure the students in with engage phase activities. I have also gained insight as to when to correct students, and how to do so without just giving them the answer. This course has taught me how to manage the class in terms of maintaining their attention by maintaining eye contact, using gestures, projecting my voice clearly, using students’ names, grouping students correctly, making use of the board, student/teacher talk time and maintaining discipline. One of the most important factors with regards to classroom discipline that has been reinforced by this course is that it is better to be strict at the beginning so that student know where the boundaries are, than to be very lenient at the start. The video lesson (Unit 10) was extremely helpful, it has taught me how ‘not to teach.’ I now know how to make the lesson fun yet very informative, and what to do to prevent myself from becoming boring or un-stimulating for the students. At the end of the day the teacher is there to serve the students, not the other way around. This course has also taught me how to go about teaching certain areas such as reading/ listening/speaking/writing and phonics, all of which are directly related to one another. There are certain means of getting students to participate in class with these areas, such as choosing interesting topics to speak on or read about. The more interest o can generate in the topic, the greater participation I will receive from the class and in turn a greater level of learning. I now understand phonics more than ever after this course and because I feel more confident with this topic I won’t be nervous/ unmotivated to teach it, as is the case with some teachers. I want to be as useful as I can to the students. Therefore it is my duty to understand each topic as much as possible. I have also learnt how and when to make use of course books and lesson materials. From my own experiences, working directly from a course book at the time is very de-motivating. As much as course books are very useful, I feel they should not be heavily relied upon. I will make use of course books but I will not rely on them, students will learn more if they enjoy the lessons, so I will try and make my lessons as enjoyable as I can. I will make use of available class room equipment where possible. The board will get the most use on the classroom, but other equipment such as projectors or laptops may get used if available. If I mix up the equipment I use, it will also keep the students interested, adding a different dimension to the lesson. Overall I have learnt that there are many different aspects to teaching, and different types of classes require different treatment. I will use this information I have learnt to make myself as useful as possible to the specific class I teach, whether it is young learners/ adults/ beginners or advanced learners. I know that more experience I get, the more confident I will become with my teaching; and the confident I will be to try something new. As I have already mentioned I feel that the teacher is there to serve the students, and that lessons should be very engaging and fun to interest the students, the more interest they have the ore they will learn and want to learn.