Experiences of a teacher of English

Near are final exams.  After that we could play with the English language if we have some spare time, though exams tend to be at the end of the academic year.  Some students will attend summer camps of English.  A friend of mine’s school has students of both genders. I have other friends whose schools are single-sex education. We teachers and parents have arranged the solution to camps for kids of both genders and their promiscuity.  A camp for boys will take place near Marbella, and a camp for girls also near Marbella but far from the boys. We have been working this way for many years, and the result is positive.  Boys tell me they enjoy the camps of English.  Beside English they have other leisure activities, mainly sports: soccer, volleyball, mini-basketball. On top of that they also visit and assist a special hospital with disabled people; we think this is educative for boys and really they do it well. / Photo from: forest...

Babies acquire the language by hearing their own families around.  Moms may be not aware, but they repeat the same things quite often, so their babies are acquiring the language, English in our case.  It’s enchanting to see moms taking their infants in the baby buggies along the streets, speaking to their babies for long.  These latter ones cannot be conscious about this stuff, but their brains are incoming all those messages. They live inside an immersion of the mother language.  If you’re Spanish think of the way you can address your children in English. They way nonetheless is the same as in the mother language: repetition, repetition… and love. You’re good teachers. / Photo from: bebe-hablando-por-telefono amordebatmami com

Communication is just essential within marriage. Even more if he’s Spanish for example and she’s Japanese, which is a real case I know.  Pragmatics studies are important in such marriages or during engagement. The way of saying messages has to be taken into account.  In this latter case, engagement, communication is pretty important, in order to get to know the other person, who maybe will be my wife, or my husband, and so my mom’s or my dad’s children.  She or he will be the person who I’ll share my life with. My projects, professional ones for example, will be OUR projects.  In the case of marriage she and he have to win and captivate the other person. The passing of years has to be appreciated: she (and he) has to look attractive in everyday conducting, also at home, where a negative relaxation could come to appear and look tedious. I know an old marriage which goes along the street by holding hands. / Photo from: a large family. simplyaddcoffee com ...

It is customary to send our students and our children to an English-speaking country for a period of time, say a term or a whole academic year, usually to the United Kingdom, and especially to England. Also to Ireland.  Nevertheless often Spanish students get together – the same happens with other nationalities – after classes and go out together to such or such place.  It is necessary for a team of teachers to make mixed groups, in order our students should speak in the target language.  But it’s difficult: so far Spanish students go out with other students of the same nationality.  Any opinion about that, how to avoid that fact will be welcome and taken into account if any useful. A solution could be to make the students aware that they have to make native friends. / Photo from: girl talking on phone. welive2care com 

Currently, these days, our students are going to do their final exam perhaps. How to prepare it and study it!?  The student can program the days making them coincide with such or such unit, or units.  He should also make himself strong in the parts of the exam that go well with him, and as well revise the parts where he feels weaker.  He could also think about what the teacher likes more in an exam and think too on previous tests.  The exam might have Listening, Reading and Writing, and Use of English alike. Speaking is a very necessary language skill but you may lean on the course tracking each student.  The final grade for a student can be according to the work carried out each day – we keep some remembrance and grades.  On top of that the exam ought to be practical for the teacher to grade it and for students as well: for instance practical because it will not take you too much time to read it. Ten activities can be enough....

I saw you carrying out that work: you were doing your best.  Did you know that if you offer that work to our father God, for him, for love to him, for his glory, we are making something holy? – counting on God’s help.  Thus you make your ordinary labor and at the same time you’re making yourself a saint – not less than that!  It’s like our kiddies: they make their homework to please their dad.  And when they do something wrong, like fooling with and breaking a valuable vase at home, they either hide or turn to their dad or mom while crying, “I won’t do it anymore...” / Photo from: mom and daughter www cenlimi 5 region cl

An assessment of a student’s work during the whole academic year could be 60% for exam grades and 40% for daily tracking.  His grade I think should not be the grade he got in the last global exam, but an ample vision of the whole year. As well we can think of him: the remembrances of his often help a lot to allot him his final grade.  Summer homework can be a first grade for next academic year.  In Spain, if the kid failed the course in June, he has to pass another exam in September.  A whole and intuitive view of the student ought to help to assign him a final grade, as I said. / Photo from: students doing exam www telegraph co uk

Content Based Instruction (CBI) is pretty interesting.  English or any other language is the vehicle to read and listen to contents explained by us teachers: history, science, biology, minerals, literature and its expressions, interesting and appropriate movies, architecture...  Besides beauty and sensitivity should be fostered because contents and beauty may be educative, if chosen right.  Now it’s too warm here but taking the students out for an excursion may be educative too.  We can tell our students to look at the scenery and landscape. We can explain and present a topic about that scenery, so as the students should pay attention to details of the countryside.  / Photo from: girl studying ma. montessoritraining blogspot com

Your department director may ask you to do it; anyway it’s pretty good for you to make it up: a memoir of the course.  This comprises the most relevant points, first for your own teaching labor.  For example you can make up a brief memoir including the goals your students have achieved;  kids with whatsoever problems;  things that have turned out well;  experiences;  something about the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing;  discipline and class management experiences;  something short about your treating families... / Photo from: Teacher at Computer sm(2)   www nikkoladanielassociates co uk

I have extensively written about love of benevolence to the students.  Doctor Takashi Nagai, a Christian from Japan, and a scholar himself, wrote that it’s supernatural love the one that cannot get corrupted, because its spring comes from our father God.  Because of that, when he saw her wife’s burned rests and remainders after the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, he didn’t get desperate. She was with the rosary in one of her hands, and Nagai could see it.  Supernatural love and hope let him think he would recover her in Heaven. That supernatural love, and faith and hope are gifts from our father God. If someone wants them, let him ask God for them.  Nevertheless you ought not to think that supernatural love is ethereal or something abstract only: we have a single heart to love our families, girlfriend, friends, neighbors, people on the street… / Photo from: plus google com

In my opinion girls in school should dress attractively but with modesty and decency.  They may not realize of it too much, but they influence on boys.  Love between a girl and a boy or a young man may be viewed by her more romantically and with sentiments than boys. These latter ones view the relationships with more stress on sex, often.  Moreover girls can enrich their interior beauty, and this shows up externally. It is a matter of values and virtues. I have seen this in some girls, and I can assure you that it is something great. / Photo from: students on computers

Japanese Takashi Nagai, a survivor of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and a radiologist doctor, with leukemia because of the use of X-rays, said that the doctor has to see a son in a boy in hospital, a father in an old man, a sister in a sick woman.  Perhaps we teachers could try to see our children in our students. We would treat them in a different way, wouldn't we? / Photo from: Boy Studying. migrelief com

In Spain, now and more and more English is being learned and acquired by people, by young people above all.  Some other people are scared of using English or people of the same school department of languages don’t communicate among them in English.  Nevertheless the situation is changing and for example a friend of mine talks in English with another Spanish teacher of English; the thing is to practice and also it is the vehicle language for communicating. Alike it’s good the students see us speaking in English: we can set an example. / Photo from: map navigation girl. collegecandy com

Remember that it’s better when a male teacher has male students for tutoring sessions, and the same regards girls.  It’s so because you can soon reach and build confidence.  Usually families too prefer so, with their kids at school. Let’s cleanse our schools of problems that kind. / Photo from: German or Hungarian Private Classes Upper West Side. newyork olx com

It may help you to write down some notes while you’re talking with a student at tutoring sessions.  These ones shouldn’t be too long, because you have other students to talk with. Perhaps 20 minutes could be the limit of a session.  Nevertheless if some student needs more time because he might be suffering dire straits you can let him give vents to what he wants to tell you. Be delicate, for he can tell you things of his family. Listen, listen, listen.  You can tell him you’re going to think about that problem.  When you come across him at the school halls and corridors, you can tactfully ask him about his family, if the case. He should feel understood and comprehended. / Photo from: Nigerian student. factmonster com

If you are the director of the school department of languages or you have teachers below you, remember that those colleagues should be at ease with working in your school.  You could have meetings with them or with individual teachers to let you know how they’re conducting in classes, the problems they encounter, their inexperience perhaps, what is turning out well, their worries, their findings, things concerning the salary...  The main point is that they should be at ease with their labor, and with the people they teach, and also they must feel understood. You have to become a patient listener to them. / Photo from: www telesup edu pe

Takashi Nagai, a convert to Christianity and a survivor of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki once said something like, “If you have not suffered and cried, you cannot comfort any person with a deep pain, for you do not know what compassion is. If you have not cried, you cannot wipe out someone else’s drops.”  He had a leukemia because he was a doctor and had utilized X-rays for long in the first periods of that invention.  He respected other religions in Japan. / Photo from: road-trip-old-car. blog krrb com

How to start a conversation? It depends on you teacher.  Some teachers smile and ask about the student, how he feels, how he is.  Also we can ask for help to the guardian angels of both, student and teacher.  Usually students will start by saying little, except in the case the initiative of the individual session of tutoring has been requested by the student himself, so as to tell you something that has happened to him.  All they say is important for him, though you may think it is something childish. If it’s important for him, it’s important for you, since you are his tutor.  A prompt of a few questions can foster communication between you two.  I remember a summer and torrid course for remedial study before September remedial exams, in 1993. The students and most teachers lived in the school. The students were boys from 13 to 18 years. The course was somewhat tough.  They could go out with their parents in the weeke...

Often we claim that teens are disruptive – some of them – in classes.  Okay, but also it’s true that most of them are people who you can have a sensible conversation with.  I’m referring to individual tutoring sessions: with those students most of the times you can hold an interesting and educative dialog. They feel they aren’t children any longer and they conduct as though they were young adults. Their views are worth to listen to.  Besides if you have talked with an adolescent in a serious and calm way, likely he will not disturb too much in the classes.  Better male students with male teachers and the same for girls: we can reach confidence. / Photo from: aviva-mile-challenge-girls-pic. athleticsireland ie

Spirit of overcoming.  That can be helpful for class-management stuff.  We can try to treat the kids tactfully and respectfully. That is a point in favor of discipline: we respect them as persons and we have them think they have to do the same.  In the classroom one comes in to work and learn, and some basic politeness rules should be kept, in order to learn and teach.  We’re helping them work and learn, so they should come to terms with that goal; they must keep the basic rule of being polite, in this way, in that way…  Well, just try and see how it works. If someone is arrogant, we can say something in the class tactfully and skip over that problem, finish the class and talk with him on next day or so. And pray: you aren't alone. / Photo from: Ejecutivos hablando móvil.    cincodias com 

If you’re a member teacher of the department of languages in your school, I’d tell you to follow your director’s requirements.  If you do not agree with one requirement, let him tactfully know, and give your counterpart.  And always try to implement initiatives: if you're ateacher you have a mind that can boost your students in their learning English or any other modern language. Consult ideas, tips and material from TeacherLingo and from The British Council – BBC’s site; you have the links in my blog: it is sound to learn from others and expose your problems to other teachers, both if you’re a novice teacher or a veteran one. / Photo from: EjecutivosTablet www pymeempresario com

A trick to make our students be quiet and focused, at the beginning of a class, is to address some of them individually, one by one plus speaking in a low and slow voice: tentatively often they will keep silent.  And with warmers or short revisions of past classes we might achieve they get silent and attentive.  An important point is for you to get calm albeit they may be chattering a lot at the beginning of a class.  Then it’s the time for relaxing and starting the class in English – the target language. / Photo from: tadpoles log. edtosavetheworld com

I’m achieving, thank God, nearly all my classes with adults be in English.  Yesterday I had them realize of that, plus I told them they’re listening to me speaking in English, so they’re also thinking in English. They got amazed in some way.  As well my class plans are focused on making them speak in that marvelous language, all the time or closely.  I tell them explicitly and clearly about all this marvel mainly attained by them: they're speaking in English.  This has to do with acquisition: alike they’re acquiring English. We’re finishing the academic year, and if I look backward in time I can see their progress. Great. / Photo from: teach english in china adult students.  www goabroad com

Now I’m giving you more learning strategies for learning vocabulary.  First I will say that I’ve learned a lot about learning strategies in Rebecca Oxford’s book about them, published in 1990.  More strategies that I have learned from my students or strategies I’ve utilized myself: make up a group of words of the same semantic field;  focus on the spelling and take a mental “picture” of a difficult word;  think or write sentences by using those words;  focus on those terms that have a Latin origin and so they may be similar to the ones in their mother tongue (our language is Spanish, whose origin is Latin);  write the same difficult word several times;  or repeat mentally;  play with the new words in some way, like scribbling them;  play with the sentences I wrote with that word;  write very original or fantastic sentences with those new words;  every day learn one, or two, or three, which demands se...

Both within family and school – albeit they are so different – kids’ faults need correction: a conversation where the fault is brought up and its correspondent correction as well. That is an educative process.  Better if the kid recognizes and realizes of that fault.  Now within family: both dad and mom should demand the same – for example the correction of certain faults. It’s no good dad says something that is the opposite of what mom says. / Photo from: girl piano. www stagelights us

If parents love their sons and daughters, these latter ones will feel loved.  This is what makes someone happy: to love someone and to feel loved by someone.  If the parents love their kid, and this latter one does not do as what was expected from him or doesn’t obey to them, soon he will feel bad, because also he loves them.  And this is a good basis for freedom and responsibility. This is partially taken from a case put by Spanish scholar Gerardo Castillo in one of his writings. / Photo from: class. www ecpl lib oh us

Why our students obey and follow the instructions we give them? Because of our professional prestige, because we respect them, and we give them instructions in a polite and nice way, taking them seriously. / Photo from: large_writing1gp. blog nj com

Our teen sons and daughters, or our students should feel we trust them by delegating some tasks to them.  In this way they will see and feel we trust them and we love them – love of benevolence in teachers’ case. And so they’ll feel important enough because they receive a small job in the classroom.  This will contribute to make them grow up fine, just because of that: we delegate to them, and they feel loved. Also they’ll be educated as responsible people: I must carry out my job, they could say. / Photo from: Male-student-studies. news rutgers edu

Yes…, no…, maybe… are the answers we parents and teachers often get from our sons and daughters, or students, above all if they’re teens.  Now I’m referring to teachers. In teachers’ case we should not ask them so many questions, but let’s try to turn the tutoring session into a time of communication, where feelings arise.  Tell the student how you feel, how you see things…  It’s sound the tutoring sessions would be with two people of the same gender.  The answers I wrote above by the student would be in Spanish, our mother language. / Photo from: 12-10-WendyPedroso. stateimpact npr org

Students have the capability of laboring and for example they can make up a theme poster, as I wrote in post # 1748.  If their teacher tries to help them so as to improve their ways of working, that teacher is helping those students in a human capability, and so he’s helping them develop and better as persons, according to Spanish scholar José Bernardo Carrasco. / Photo from: Students-Learning. thepearsonthinktank com

In my opinion work-teams should be composed of three students, not more nor fewer.  When working in groups, for example in order to make a project work or a theme poster, tasks are delivered among them, and each worker carries out the tasks he does better.  In every group there arises a leader. The leader can easily boost working and can assure they all will work in something specific. When the group is that small, every element more likely works more than in groups of more than three members. I’m thinking for example in making up a theme poster in English. / Photo from: ejecutivos varios. www paxtravel com pe