3437. Getting Our Students Motivated


We teachers have to work fine and to teach our students to work fine too. 

For example their notebooks, books and iPads have to be clean and neat. Discipline at working neatly is very educative, indeed. 

As well we will teach them to think, to ponder, to meditate, to reason. And most of the topics and issues we teach are suitable for making our students think about them. 

Even when talking to them we can leave blanks in our speech in order to make them think: silence can help think a lot – it pushes you to think and reason. 

Most of our students are used to playing videogames too much maybe: let's also help them think about abstract topics, even more when they already are 10 years. When they’re 10 years, for instance they can understand syntactic and grammar concepts, when teaching a second or foreign language. 

Before that age approximately we have to use visual aids for teaching a language: flashcards, posters, realia or real objects, cards with words, drawing on the smartboard or chalkboard, TPR, etc. TPR stands for Total Physical Response – responding with actions and roleplaying when we ask them. Young kids need to move physically in the classroom sometimes. / Photo from: ACTIVEkids

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3658. Language Facts or Communication in Class?

  I teach English to adults. It’s so great … and demanding.  Adults have some characteristic way of learning the language. For example they tend to focus on specific grammar patterns and ways of saying things in the target language. Well, it’s something I also do when learning that language myself. And it is something I cannot change. It is something we can take advantage from, anyway.  Even in that way they can learn quite a lot. You know, it doesn’t matter they would ask me questions in class that show they are focusing on grammar. It’s ok. It’s ok ever if also we as teachers facilitate there is plenty of communication in English in class.  I mean, do not confine as a teacher to teach grammar and language facts, but provide a lot of communication in class.  When some newcomer arrives at one of those groups of mine – and I’m thinking of one specific group – that new student says kind of, Oh I can see my classmates have a lot of fluency while in my case … Why do the other students have
Read more

2064. Connecting people from different countries

Image
Something we teachers of English or other languages have to bear in mind when teaching adults is that the students should learn and practice communication, and we shouldn’t confine our classes to give them facts of the languages.  Also in kids’ case.  The point isn’t for them to know information about the language, yet to learn how to communicate in that language.  Thus we could plan our classes with that aim.  I state all this because we could dedicate a long time to teach facts, information, something nearly dead, say.  In this way, besides we contribute to connect people from so varied countries. It’s something brilliant, isn’t it? / Photo from: people-happy-cheering bachflowerssingapore wordpress com
Read more

758. Irregular verbs now and then

Image
One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “English irregular verbs are an interesting grammar point Spanish students have to study year after year, increasing the list of them each academic year. Quite many more verbs of this type existed in Old English, before the 11th century, perhaps most of the English verbs then. In other words, the way each verb took the form of past simple and past participle was more complicate than the simple – ed ending. With centuries passing, fewer and fewer verbs remained as such ‘irregular’ verbs, in fact those verbs native speakers used very often. Because of that those verbs remained being ‘irregular’, while most of the English verbs, roughly speaking, were taking on the regular form of – ed for past simple and past participle. This can be due just to linguistic evolutions that actually occur in every language, with the language common people speak, year after year. Beside the fact that many words, so verbs too, were entering in the E
Read more

2551. Agradecimiento a TeacherLingo

Image
Desde la bonita Granada, España, agradezco mucho al equipo de TeacherLingo por la publicación de las entradas nuevas en mi blog.  ¡Muchas gracias! Ojalá sirva a profesores noveles y a todo el que lo lea. / Photo from: nature-landscape-beautiful-photos-best-desktop-landscape-hd-wallpapers-widescreen www hdwallpaperscool com. the picture is not Granada necessarily
Read more