Bolton, Mississippi TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

UNIT 1: TEACHERS AND LEARNERS GOOD TEACHER The Top Five qualities of a “good” teacher for me is that he should: 1. Be Knowledgeable of the subject matter, 2. Be Kind and patient to the students, 3. Have a good rapport and interaction with the class, 4. Be able to correct students without offending them or affecting their motivation, 5. know the students’ weaknesses and try to give help and individual attention when necessary. I couldn’t say one is more important than the other because each of these characteristics complements each other. They strengthens the area where they are focused on. For example, a knowledgeable teacher could be inefficient of he is not kind and patient to the students, or if he couldn’t correct them with offending them. On the other hand, a teacher wouldn’t be able to give a helpful feedback if he isn’t experienced of the subject matter. ROLES OF A TEACHER Here are the top five most important roles of a teacher for me: 1. Manager or Controller – this is how a teacher manages his class properly, where discussions of the topic and explanations about the rules and specific lessons are done. It is important that the teacher manages properly because it sets the environment of the learners in a conducive way. An uncontrolled class wouldn’t be helpful in both teaching and learning. 2. Organizer – This role is when the teacher properly arranges the flow of the class on how the lesson should be presented from the introduction to the activity, all throughout the evaluation part. It refines the flow of the learner’s development as they are led smoothly through the lesson. 3. Assessor – This role is important because as individual learners are progressing, each would need to know and pin point on their strengths and weaknesses so that they’ll be able to eventually improve more 4. Model – In a situation where the students only hear or converse in English is during class, being able to hear the teacher with correct pronunciation matters a lot. A good model during a conversation would give the student a good start. 5. Tutor - as a tutor, the teacher supports the need of the students after some weaknesses are discussed. This is important to make the students feel more confident as they try to improve on the lessons. GOOD LEARNERS Teaching and learning is a two-way street where each side would flow properly if both roads will be open for each course. For me, the most important characteristic of a good learner is if the student’s willingness is already on set. They would benefit more because discussions would be natural. The time to participate in the activities would be joyful, and giving evaluations and receiving corrections would be seen as an advantage. ? THE LEARNERS AND THEIR DIFFERENCES The youngest learners are often hard to teach when it comes to their shorter attention span although their being the youngest of the group is an advantage to having a more fun with more varied classroom activities. The students who belong to the pre-puberty stage are more receptive to new sounds, words and grammar. They are easier to talk with when it comes to classroom rules and discipline. The most difficult learners are those that belong in early teenage stage. They are often unmotivated, self-conscious and unwilling to take risks or experiment with language. Sometimes, building a good relationship with them helps in assessing their language needs but it may also be a disadvantage if it was seen as something that could be taken advantage of just to miss language practices or homeworks. Adults are expected to come in the classroom with a set of expectations and sometimes pressured with time and responsibilities which often affect how they either behave as a learner. These set of expectations may or may not hamper the learning environment. On the other hand, young students often appear as a sponge that absorbs the lessons. Most of them have a more open mindset as a learner. Adults are often more motivated as they usually would come wholeheartedly to learn a new language for a specific purpose, unlike the students, who might think of the language lesson as less important and would put it not on their top priority as they don’t see its long term benefits yet. The Adult-learners usually have had their set of experiences in the professional world which could affect positively or negatively as a language student. They are more nervous in learning a new skill and a great number of encouragement will be of help in building their confidence as a language learner. In terms of behavior and discipline, adult-students aren’t expected to be unruly in the classroom unlike the young learners. LEVELS OF LANGUAGE ABILITY 1. BEGINNERS: Form zero knowledge to a very basic knowledge of English which cannot be easily activated; 2. ELEMENTARY: Students are likely to be able to form basic sentence structures and communicate on simple topics. 3. LOW/PRE INTERMEDIATE: Are able to communicate and understand a greater range of topics but lacking fluency and depth of language awareness. 4. INTERMEDIATE: Are able to understand and communicate on a wide variety of issues but with limited vocabulary, lacking accuracy and fluency. 5. UPPER INTERMEDIATE: Are expected to be able to actively communicate on almost all topics using greater range of language but still lacks accuracy. 6. ADVANCED: With very good knowledge of English language LANGUAUGE LEARNING MOTIVATIONS The following are the most obvious reasons why one would be driven to study and attend an English class: ? For future career plans ? For travel purposes ? To improve grades at school ? Achieve success in exams ? To study and live in an English speaking country ? To communicate with colleagues/friends/partners ? Pure interest in learning languages ? To better understand songs, poems, books etc. ? For future business transactions