Experiences of a teacher of English

  The pandemic has brought us something good, well, more than one good thing. It is that since I had to teach online last school year, I also started to send emails to my students. This current school year we have returned to face-to-face lessons… and I keep sending emails to my grownup students, and it works!  For they feel their lessons and all the English course more of their own, and I can tell you that my students work and learn better. Well their lessons are just that, THEIR lessons. And they participate a great deal on those classes.  On those frequent emails I also push them upward at their feelings that they are actually learning English. I’ve written things like, You are being great at the lessons . You know, this is positive motivation. As well I let them know that I like to work with them.  Alike I attain to reinforce things I tell them on the classes themselves, by sending them those emails.  Something else for today. I think that we language teache...

  On my last post I said that in a foreign or second language classroom our dear students should participate by speaking for quite long periods. It’s not the same to say one sentence than speaking for 5 or 10 minutes. And if we want for them to learn and acquire that language, well then they should give long oral presentations. And lose their natural fear to speak for those allotted minutes.  Expert teacher trainer Mary Jane Amaya taught me how our students can prepare that very oral presentation.  Basically and trying to remember I can describe the preparation process as follows.  First the student has got to choose his or her topic. They can do it by brainstorming possible topics and then choose their favorite one. Of course you can teach all that nice process by carrying it out in the classroom with the class of students as a whole.  So after that brainstorm they can vote or anyway select one topic.  Then they can again brainstorm possible points about t...

  Lesson planning takes quite a lot of a teacher’s time. If you teach a language, you may have had the following experience.  A foreign or second language teacher, I think, should foster speaking in the class. A lot of speaking. In that language.  Thus that teacher should plan activities which will make his or her students speak. And not only will that teacher make his or her students participate by uttering and conveying sentences, yet he or she ought to take their students give longer messages, for it is not the same to say a sentence than talking for five or ten minutes. There is a big difference indeed, and our dear students should speak for pretty long periods.  With creativity, imagination, practice and even a bit of fantasy the language teacher should plan his or her classes, so as to give their learners chances to speak.  Well also the other three skills: listening, reading and writing.  Yesterday during the lesson I was teaching I came to think tha...

  Sorry for my silence these last days. Today I wanted to write about two points: classroom behavior management and lesson planning for English or any other language lessons.  I have already told you that I’m reading Jeremy Harmer’s The Practice of English Language Teaching , which is a major work and a must read if you teach English or other languages.  Recently I have read about problem behavior in the classroom. And the main point is that if you want to teach successfully, peacefully and serving your students, you have to engage them. If these ones are immersed in the class, you for sure will have fewer problems.  We teachers have to manage the classroom, but always having in mind that we have to respect our students: the problem is their behavior and attitude, not the person. We don’t go against the person.  And it’s practice and experience what will lead you to manage classes better and better.  When some problem arises in the classroom, well we could ...

  And now I’m trying to say something which could hopefully help you out on your lessons, above all if you are a teacher. I’m telling you something from my classes to adults, yet same things could be said for teaching kids.  Ten points, ten.  I would say that for teaching English or any other language and, if possible, you the teacher ought to say all in that target language, or more than 90%. Well if everything is said in L2, much better. Even your announcements to your students, about logistics. The communication problem may be convenient for them to learn and acquire the foreign or second language.  Second, while talking to your students, look in their faces also for them to have eye-contact. That will help you reach them more fully with your messages and also that will help you keep the class tight – for classroom management and sere discipline.  Third, your messages to them have to be clear: speak in a finely or roughly tuned level, so that they can follow ...

  I can see you are so concerned about being a good teacher. Let’s see if I can help you out.  And you wish to really assist your students.  What about trying to improve your correcting your students?  Now I’m reading about correction and giving feedback to our dear students from great British expert Jeremy Harmer – he’s an expert on teaching languages.  The first premise is that our dear students do need feedback about how they have performed in the class, okay? And we want those people would learn and improve their work, okay?  The second premise is that positive motivation is a tremendous learning booster.  Yet also we have to correct what they did wrongly. Well I particularly give both positive points and negative ones when correcting their written essays, and also sometimes when the students have given an oral presentation about some topic. And they appreciate both positive and negative feedback.  As well there is a big difference when correc...

  You are the teacher? And want to teach a language effectively? I’m working on it myself.  These days I’m reading from great British expert Jeremy Harmer, and you know what? I’m finding out a couple of principles that may serve to teach in that effective way.  Namely I’m reading about language teaching methods. And I would highlight, as I said, two principles that I think they are at the basis of any success. They are: it’s the learner who has to really wish to learn a language, plus the teacher ought to foster in the classroom to lower the affective filter.  Among the methods I’m reading and studying about, those two principles come up as common in most of the methods.  You are the teacher, okay, well you should bear in mind that it is the student the one who should WISH to learn. If we achieve this learner would WISH to really learn a language, well we will accomplish success, believe me!  In those methods I’m reading about the student is so active at le...

  Learning a language is beautiful. Learning English is so too.  For learning English, which is my case and my dear students’ as well, tentatively you ought to be relaxed.  Well, some sane tension may be okay, for you struggle gently to learn that tongue and put all your strength into action to learn it.  There should be nice rapport between the teacher and his or her students, and in that way these latter ones will learn with some satisfaction.  Alike the students, the learners ought to be aware of the ways they learn, English for example. They are not just exposed to teaching, but they are eager to learn English. They do not attend lessons in a passive way, yet they are so active to learn English. In that way they do achieve to learn it.  They reflect on what they are doing both in the classroom and out of there on their own. They reflect, think of, ponder, meditate about the ways they learn, and tend to better what is susceptible to better and improve....

  Many, many of us want and need to learn English or any other language. This blog is on teaching English.  Now I can tell you how I do to learn that adorable language. I do some activities like listening to a radio station – one from Dublin – plus carry out activities from an English C1 coursebook – for example I carry on speaking exercises as if I were speaking to some other students, by developing some internal discourse – plus other activities plus… reading!  I try to read two books in English, and the thing works. I assume that most of what I have learned has been by reading.  Reading is not the only activity you need to do to learn a tongue, but you have to practice the four language skills. Anyway, reading may be the one that may give you the language for speaking and writing.  Reading gives you grammar, lexis and ways of saying things in the target language.  As I told you, I’m reading two books, one about teaching English, by Jeremy Harmer, plus a ...

  In this new school year we teachers would like our students would work well, would learn a lot, and would study fine too.  And since they are younger than us and we are in charge of teaching them, we have to teach them how to work that fine.  And they thus will learn how to have neat and useful class notes, and they will acquire and develop some like for the work carried out well and outfitted well.  For that goal tutoring sessions are crucial. At those times and in the classroom we may monitor their work: how to write down neat and useful notes, how to keep them in an orderly manner, how to record each day’s date at the beginning of each day’s notes, how to follow and study those notes, how to enhance those notes by consulting other books and websites.  If they utilize laptops or iPads for taking notes, same way we will teach them how to type those class notes.  For work well done is so educative.  And when they sit for studying those notes plus tha...

  A new school year is beginning, and we teachers wish our dear students would learn a lot, don’t we? As you know I teach English to adults. And I want for my students to learn how to taste reading books. For reading is a language-learning booster indeed.  They will have to get graded readers, or full version books in some of the students’ cases. I can affirm for sure that by reading you learn English. Not only reading, of course. Yet reading gives you vocab and grammar and ways of saying things in English, and at the same time you enjoy even can relish learning that language.  You have to read many readers or full versions to grasp the language, yet each page read is a firm step forward.  As well my students will also have to read from websites whose link I will provide to them. Formerly I handed them out worksheets, but last school year with the online lessons I had them work on pages from websites, for example from the British Council – those guys are aces at teac...

  We are starting a new school year and we teachers want everything goes okay. And also want our dear students learn a lot and the families as well be happy.  I teach English. To adults. And last night I heard a friend of mine tell about another common friend, who has achieved to learn English marvelously. He has learned English – well he IS learning that language – and he has done so as a hobby or the like: he worked as a businessman of another issue different from English, and lately he has set up an English academy where he lives, namely in Málaga, in Costa del Sol in southern Spain.  What I want to emphasize is that he has achieved the goal many learners wish: to learn English.  Now he states that with his method you can learn English in a reasonably rather short period of time.  I think one of the ingredients for achieving that goal, according to what I know from him, is that le takes up that learning with a big enthusiasm and as well he creates an environm...

  At least in the north hemisphere of our wonderful blue planet we are before a new school year. What will it be like? Face to face classes or remote teaching or both?  All in all the first lesson is paramount. Anyway, be relaxed on that first lesson, if you are the teacher. Well, with a bit of benign tension, otherwise that first lesson will be colorless.  At K-12 schools our dear students may have new textbooks or new iPad programs that replace old textbooks. I personally prefer printed textbooks.  Some days ago I worked on a video about single-sex or single-gender classrooms. It was so interesting.  You know, at 4 th grade in a school in North Branch, Minnesota, parents have something optional, which works. They can choose single-gender classrooms for those kids at 4 th grade within elementary school.  They have a young male teacher for the boys and a female teacher for the girls. And it works, as I said. You know, the girls’ class teaching is more emo...

  I like to be a teacher. I do. I’ve been one for a number of years. And I guess a teacher should train himself or herself for ever. You never get a perfect teacher. The teacher’s training and learning and education never ends. And we have a new school year ahead of us.  I would tell you that a teacher should always have a book to read. A book on teaching, education, the character’s forge, or the like. Always in accordance to human dignity. For the teacher has to educate his or her students, and if these ones are kids, well, the teacher has to educate in accordance to their parents. Also that teacher could prefer to learn from the Web, from other teachers who post on the Internet: there are so many websites that have a treasure about teaching!  At present I’m reading Jeremy Harmer’s The Practice of English Language Teaching . The third edition, namely.  Well, you know, I’m re-reading it, because I consider I can still learn tons from him.  If the teacher keeps s...

  The teacher. The teacher has to wish to make up a classroom atmosphere where the students – most of them may wish to learn and work – can find and encounter the ambience where they can actually learn and work.  That atmosphere is one where delicacy, culture, respect, civilization, working minds, can be encountered. The students thus are serene and peaceful to learn and work. They are thus treated with those delicacy and respect.  The teacher in the meanwhile manages to motivate his or her students. And these ones also want to get plunged into the topic they are dealing with in the classroom.  But if the teacher is harsh and covetous and he just tries to get a jail-like behavior-management, and he just shouts at his students… well, he will not make up that culture atmosphere where his students can learn and work peacefully .  These students are assisted to make up and take up virtues. That word comes from a Latin word,  vir, which means strength and fo...

  For teachers it is important to assess and evaluate their students’ learning, right? Also his or her own teaching, right?  In the first case, how can we assist students who have to retake an exam and catch up on the materials they missed?  Well, let me see. They are students in need of extra work, extra learning, extra studying. We could split the class up into two groups: special objectives – during the regular classes – for those who passed the exam but still can learn new things or deepen into what learned. And also objectives for those students who failed.  Even the students who passed could help out their classmates by monitoring them.  This is it: they could sit with their peers and teach them.  And thus we have that some students are assisting their peers, and that counts as something very educative and formative: helping others.  As well in that case we teachers might assign some extra grading to those students who have been helping their cla...

  The teacher, if he or she wants to be a competent and committed one, has to assess and evaluate their students’ work, learning, knowledge, attitudes, skills.  He or she will utilize different assessing ways and not only tests or exams.  He or she will be willing to educate those kids or those adults. In accordance to their parents in the first case.  He or she will watch out for those dear people. That teacher will achieve to combine seriousness and affability. That teacher is able to manage classroom behavior. At the same time that teacher treats those people tactfully and with energy at the same time.  It is so because that professional treats those people with affection, benevolence love, and energy, oh, and with respect too.  That teacher gives himself up to those people. He forgets about being tired and pulls up to keep assisting those learners. Although he may be tired, as I said.  He treats those people with delicacy, and can deal with treatin...

  Let us see something else about assessing and evaluating our students’ progress, work and learning.  When I taught kids in another city, the school deputy principal or assistant headmaster at least once told me in a nice and collaborative way that I ought to deliver some extra work for those students who were capable of further aims and objectives.  I taught and still teach English. And the classes I taught were multi-levels: English may be the school subject where you can face more diverse levels: some students may have some upper-intermediate level or close to B2, while others may have some basic levels, namely A1 or A2.  And unless I did something else with those more advanced students, they might feel bored and disappointed. So I had to have extra material – exercises, texts, challenging resources – for those who could do more.  So I would recommend you to think of the following possibility, in case it may help you as a teacher.  You could have aims a...

  Assessing and evaluating our students is something of a paramount importance. Is it not?  When I began my career as a teacher I one day set my first exam to my kids. It was a class of some 25 students. You know what? I can recall it as if it was today. Some 60% of them failed! And it was a regular class, not bad, not that bad.  One colleague of ours told me something like, “Even NN failed that exam!? It’s so weird, he’s a clever student! You may expect what his parents will say about that…!”  NN actually was a smart and clever student, and he could hardly fail an exam… I had set a test which could be paralleled to the ones someone could expect at college, but not at early high school! It was me who had “failed”.  Generally if at high school many, many students fail… from a regular class of kids… something about the teacher may be failing.  When a teacher sets a test, an exam, the first point he or she is going to test and examine is himself, herself....

  We may be on vacations now… or not. Anyway, we teachers may be preparing ourselves for the new school year next fall.  Classes, classes, classes, we also may miss our students, although we appreciate this summer break, in the north hemisphere.  And we have to learn how to motivate our students.  Well, better said, mostly they get motivated in the lesson if we know how to plunge them into the pool, if we know how to get them fully involved in the lesson.  On the one hand we have to show the relationship between what we teach and real life. But as well we teachers have to arouse the interest for new material and new stuff if we achieve to get them immersed into the lesson.  I mean, we have to teach new things to our dear students, and consequently and eventually they will get motivated about that new stuff. Also if they work hard. Some people say we have to meet our students’ interests, but also they will get interested in new things when we teach them thus...

  I love other teachers or other people in general would visit my blog. I have taken a three-week recess, after the school year has finished. It’s been a lovely year. Next year I expect we will be able to have face-to-face classes, always if the pandemic allows us to.  On that recess or break I have read and studied a lot. Also English. Purely – concerning English – I have taken a dictionary and learned some words each day or nearly. It was a bilingual dictionary. As well I could grab a big one, also bilingual, but I wanted to study the smaller one, yet it offered thousands of words.  I have not read any other book in English.  However, I can tell you I have learned quite many daily words, words we use on a regular day of ours, everyday words.  At home I have heard family stories about people who used to learn words of a different foreign language by using just a dictionary, for example of Japanese (!).  And can anyone learn a language by studying from a di...

 It's so nice to get comments from colleagues all around the world. I hope I will keep posting after the recess, a three-week one! Thanks, hema and Surbhi Singh!

  Many people want to learn a language. They need it. We need it. My students and I want to learn English.  A school year is over or nearly. One more year. It’s beautiful. And my students are great. They have struggled also this year. They have attended the online lessons. They have participated a lot on the lessons.  They for example wanted to explain things at the lessons. And they used the language they had, the language they mastered. I have noticed that the students who had strived more, they had more language to participate. They are the ones who for example have read more.  For reading is a language-learning booster. Reading provides you with the language you need when you want to explain something. Reading provides you with the grammar, lexis and ways of saying things. I have noted it this school year which is already over.  Also the learners that succeed at learning English are the ones who really and actually wish to learn, for they use the means to le...

  I am finishing the current school year. Or I should say, WE are finishing our school year, my dear students plus me. They’ve been great also this school year, and I’ve noticed their progress in the target language. They’ve paid off. Yes, they have.  They are adults.  Recently I have again understood that successful learners are the ones who really wish to learn and those really in need of learning that target language, like migrants that have to earn their lives in a foreign country.  In an English classroom there must be a real immersion in that tongue: communication is sustained and held in English, like the classroom were a piece of a foreign country.  I teach English as a foreign language, or perhaps I should say as a second language, for English is permeating people’s learning and studies, above all amongst young people. Indeed.  This finishing school year I have offered my dear students unabridged articles from the Web plus emails in English to info...

  I am a teacher. You already know it. I teach English to grownups. And I actually wish they would learn the language. And acquire it. I do.  Yet all my effort would be fruitless unless they my students also wish to learn and acquire it.  For that reason I give them articles from the Web, two of them about learning English. Next lesson I will insist on the following premises.  Who is the student, the learner who REALLY learns the tongue? The one who REALLY wishes to learn. Crystal clear, you know? I’ve seen it this school year. In my students, in some more than in some others. Anyway all of them have improved.  The learner that really learns is the autonomous one. That person pays off. That person will for sure apply all his strength to learning.  If I dedicate my best forces to teaching but somebody would not really wish to learn, my job would be useless or close to that. Well, you know, they my students want to learn. And they attend the lessons. And when...

  Today I would tell you more about reading for learning English or any other language, and also about communication in the (remote) classroom.  Reading books and readers is a language-learning booster. Yes, sir, it is. I do it myself, and I’ve done so for many years. It gives you language: grammar, ways of saying things in the target language, lexis.  While I’m reading a science-fiction novel,  I read, yes, but also I study the language. I kind of devour the words, the phrases, the sentences, and much is retained in my memory.  And while speaking at the English lesson with my students, or while writing a new post for this blog, some expressions come up to that moment and I utilize them.  I study the language, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading, I do, yep.  Plus sometimes after reading a couple pages I go back and randomly revise some sentences or phrases or words, which thus get stuck in mind too. And afterward I can retrieve them when neces...

  I have been teaching English since 1993 regularly. I like it, it’s a bit hard though. Well, what job is not a bit or very hard?  I like it.  And I can assure you that reading books is a booster of learning and acquiring a language. Not only reading is necessary though. Today I’ll say something about the four language skills.  As I just said, reading helps learning a lot. It’s my experience. And I guess I’ll be all the rest of my life learning and acquiring English. Sometimes I propose myself keeping learning German or French, but… I assume that rather I better keep learning English, together with my dear students. I might dedicate that precious time to English...  Reading is stupendous. Both fiction and non-fiction.  And for our learners reading is some aid to learn English.  I can recall that when teaching kids I sometimes used to bring a bundle of readers and books to the classroom. The students loved that. I used to deliver and distribute those re...

  Does the teacher have to give contents and knowledge to his or her students? Or otherwise he or she has to foster their students look for those contents and knowledge? Both.  However, that teacher has to give that information, those ideas, concepts, data, notions. They have to give contents and knowledge.  But their students will not be passive. It’s not like a half-robot which gives a lecture to an audience and that’s it. No. In the classroom, both face-to-face and remote, there will be a nice conversation, where the students may ask and comment on some points, with order and agreement.  The students are active in that classroom.  I teach English, as you must know. English as a foreign language, or English as a second language, and this latter case more and more in Spain, for more and more people speak English.  Now I teach online.  And I try to get a lot of conversation arise. I ask my dear students. Sometimes namely or nominatim , and many times I...

  Some of my students have lately improved a lot, and I notice it on our dear online lessons. I teach English as a foreign language. I teach grownups. And they are autonomous learners, so also when we finish the school year at the end of May I guess they will continue learning that marvelous language on their own.  An autonomous learner is the one who really and truly wishes to learn. If he or she is learning English, they will carry out a series of activities. Namely they practice the four language skills: listening, reading and writing.  Did I say four? I did. Well, one of them also practices speaking by replying to himself when doing exercises as if he was answering on the class to several people. Even I sometimes do it myself, when learning that language! It is not some crazy speaking alone, to myself!  For example some months ago I used to dedicate some daily minutes to a C1 English book. C1 is advanced but not the top, which is C2. And when the speaking activit...

  Today I copy and paste a program I have designed for a friend of mine. He wants to learn English, so I propose him the following plan. Basically he wants to read English more fluently. I hope it may be of any interest for you my readers. There you can see what is my regular teaching like. Also he says English is an issue he has always wished to master and he has tried more often than not. He is retired, yet he often is very busy. Posible plan de inglés para NN 5 de abril de 2021 1.      Si lo que quiere es leer y entender más, y leer con más soltura, le puede servir utilizar un buen diccionario online, como wordreference.com. Es muy completo y útil. 2.      Si lo que quiere es mejorar en inglés globalmente, debe practicar las cuatro destrezas de la lengua: listening, speaking, reading, writing . 3.      Más gramática y vocabulario, si bien estos se pueden aprender al practicar esas cuatro habilidades o destrezas. 4. ...

As I’ve already told you, both teachers and parents wish our students would learn. Well, and most of students as well.  And these students need abundant time for studying. Just them. They should have some place and abundant time for studying, researching and writing their activities. Just themselves, as I just said.  I can recall with joy and gratitude when I was a student at high school and we the students did have a study hall or a library to study on our own. And we carried out and accomplished high school and after that, college.  Perhaps sometimes there might be a teacher or a monitor in charge of taking care of that study hall and he used to work on his own stuff, but also as I said, it is convenient students on their own would learn how to work, study and write their activities.  It is so because it’s them who have to realize they have to study on their own, just because they wish so, it’s them who have to learn how to work on their own.  When there were ...