Experiences of a teacher of English

We teachers should educate our dear students in working well. Both if they have to write essays or to research about some issue or topic. Those are examples of chances when our students have to learn and acquire how to work well.  We have to teach them how to write neatly, and also by reading the exercise instructions well, if the case. So, first they have to read the instructions carefully, and then respond to the requirement of the instructions.  Reading and understanding those instructions are half of the work carried out! As well those young people will be instructed at writing neatly since when they are young children.  Regarding researching about a topic when they’re older, they will be taught to research on the Internet, for instance.  They will learn how to select the appropriate information and discard unimportant stuff. For that they’ll be trained at viewing websites. And better if they carry out that research inside the classroom, ...

We teachers have to take care of the school learning community. For that reason we will treat our students tactfully and with consideration.  They may be young people that are learning, and that learning should be in a rather relaxed way. That is not against discipline. I mean, we can treat our students as intelligent persons and at the same time we are not naïve concerning discipline.  Furthermore, if we have gotten a discipline atmosphere, we can treat our students as those intelligent persons.  As well we teachers should avoid a rather harsh atmosphere: discipline is absolutely compatible with treating those people as civilized ones. Even we’ll try to treat our students as somehow friends: all of us are learning and constitute a learning community.  Even we should treat our students with exquisiteness and politeness. We’ll greet them good morning and so on.  And when reprimanding someone aside we’ll appeal to his responsibility, and w...

I have gotten a costume and habit: I usually thank my adult students at the end of each lesson. I do. I appreciate their contributions, their attention and their effort. They’re great, demanding though.  I owe them classes turn out fine.  As well positive motivation makes them even better learners. I try and reckon what they do well, which is a lot. Since our teaching method is communicative – teaching English as a second language – I usually focus on class communication, rather than grammar accuracy. Sometimes, even often, grammar is also important, anyways.  I insist on purpose: communication, communication, communication is the big thing in our lessons, and they – my students – are so communicative often. Good night, fellow readers.  We can praise our students, but not too much either. / Photo from: Colorín Colorado.

Teaching a second language is something great, tiring though. And demanding! Well any school subject is so.  Teaching a language is not merely giving language facts but helping the students get a nice communicative skill in English or the tongue that is being taught. Communication is the first goal, though the amelioration of the people involved is more important.  Communication among human persons. So in the classroom communication should be fostered. And so also the teacher and the students have to speak quite a lot.  And the teacher should talk in a bit higher level than the ones his or her students have, okay?  Communication and also language functions: apologizing, offering something, stating some asseveration, suggesting, booking a reservation and a long, a rather long series of them.  And the students will be exposed to English for also quite much. The classroom will be kind of a piece of a country where English is spoken. The mor...

The teacher should teach and work with his students, okay. I like for him to educate free students.  He will teach with their freedom. Because his students are human persons, and subsequently free persons. And persons with responsibility, with some subsequent responsibility.  Freedom and liberty will take the students to become able to choose what is good for them.  I am free and very free when I can choose what is good for me, and also good for my classmates, and the whole community, and even the whole world. I mean, when I do something which is good I can be helping and assisting all the world.  If I, as a student, for example work hard, that work influences on my peers and ultimately and in some way on all the world. I make humankind better.  Something practical? I will teach taking into account they are intelligent beings. I will treat them in an elegant way, respecting them. I will smile when I set some task to them, my students. I ...

The teacher has to be attentive to his students. And also attentive if his students feel like working.  He should take these students toward working nice. And that is dependent on the teacher’s attitude.  If he’s eager to work and teach well, more likely his students will work and learn better.  The first thing a teacher must do is trying to engage his students into working and learning. Thus he should implement activities that engage his students and ones that are meaningful to them.  For example when the teacher gives examples of sentences with a language pattern the students are learning he should say or write sentences that have to do with students. And that in a tactful way: never humiliating his students.  As well he should give clean sentences and not ones that by far could be obscene at all. Beauty is educative. I’m going back to what I said at the beginning of this post: the teacher should be attentive to his students’ mood....

I’ve just arrived from going swimming, at an indoor pool.  And I was thinking that the teacher also needs resting and relaxing, obviously.  I’ve recently told you that all we do influences on our dear students. However, we teachers must have our private life. Well, also that private life influences on our students. In some way or other.  I mean, we can give other people what we have, not what we don’t. If we in our private life try to be nice with our family, that will influence on the students.  Even more and moreover, if we try to actually help and build our family and not merely being nice, all that’ll influence on those students of ours. We give what we have, let’s remember. Have a nice week, readers. / Photo from: rain-golf SOCIAL Golfer

At early afternoon I corrected and revised some questionnaires my students filled out this morning: They’re so great too.  For example they said the activities they liked most and the ones they might dislike. By doing that I try to get some straight feedback from them. They’re thoughtful people.  I remind you that my students now are adults. I can assure you that most often I enjoy to teach them. As well they’re so cooperative. They try hard to learn English.  Moreover they attend some conversation sessions with young American volunteers so as to practice speaking in that language: from Iowa, Virginia and somewhere else... The volunteers are Sarah, Jacob and Destiny: they give them conversation for free.  We have native teachers because it’s easier for my students to understand me than those American people: we always understand a countryman better than a person whose language is the target one. Again, have a nice weekend. I can assure you also t...

Pheeew! I’ve written so much so far.  I like teaching. It’s a bit tough though, sometimes. I like to treat my students. I like to teach, as I said. Teaching lessons is a very human and humane job.  Also because it doesn’t have a limited schedule: you can be treating your students also out of the classroom.  And we teachers have so big some responsibility: we’re forming and educating our students! Whatever we do or whatever we don’t influences on our dear students.  Even what we do out of the school also influences on them, our dear students.  As well teaching is very vocational. It’s like a military job: you need to have a big professional vocation or trend, right?  We influence on our students also because we are like on the top of a plinth: we all the time are watched by them… Today I overheard a student of mine saying under her breadth to another student that I was rather serious… It’s better so: otherwise my lessons could be...

I’ve recently told you about learning strategies. Okay then, at individual tutoring sessions with each student he or she can also be helped and so in a sound way.  It is so because in that way he or she can be asked about how they study and learn. The tutor should be nice at treating each kid: the tutor will treat each student tactfully and not in kind of an arrogant way and as if invading his or her interior person.  I’ve seen nice tutoring sessions at the schools where I taught both at the beginning of my career as a teacher and at a second stage of that career too: each boy had a tutor who also became kind of a friend or nearly.  Some of the tutors were ones who knew how to become friendly and close to those kids. Even some of the boys used to talk with their tutors more than with their parents. And those tutors tried to help those parents become closer to their children. The same happened at the girls' twin school. Nice experiences they were indee...

I’ve already told you that we can consciously learn a language or even we can acquire it subconsciously too.  When producing language – when communicating in that language – we are using both learned and acquired language, tentatively.  For acquiring the language the student has to be exposed to massive language. So they have to massively listen to that tongue. And also they can be exposed to massive written language.  From my own experience I can affirm that from read language, from books, from massive reading, I get language that I use when speaking in English to my students for example.  I use idioms, expressions and phrases I’ve read. English is our common target language. Both they and I are learning and acquiring English.  I try to read novels and nonfiction often: it would be nice I could read that language every single day.  When reading we’re sowing the seed, and when producing that tongue we are harvesting and collecti...

Teaching obviously is pretty important for the class of students. And the teacher has to take care of his teaching. The more, the better.  Yet he should also take care of his students’ learning, which is the main goal of his lessons.  So he should foster all that helps his students learn in the classroom. He as well should care he’s promoting autonomous learners: learners that wish to learn and set to the task of learning themselves. The more his students wish to learn, the better.  At the same time he will always respect his students’ freedom to learn: if they wish to learn, they’ll actually learn. Because of all that the teacher should devote some classes to learning strategies: self-assessment, reading for the gist, memorizing, critic learning, making summaries, relating new knowledge with something previously learned, how to revise, self-testing of the personal attitude to learning, etcetera.  I’ve already written quite much about learning st...