Experiences of a teacher of English

  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. ...