3583. The Beauty of Teaching Our Students: Awesome!

 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 readers and books amongst my dear students, in accordance to their specific levels. 

All the bookies were appropriate for young learners. 

They loved stories. And I loved to see my students engaged and busy with reading. Marvelous. 

It meant kind of a break at the regular, more formal teaching. 

Reading? Marvelous. 

Now, what about the other skills: listening, speaking and writing? 

Every single week I receive a newsletter from British Council-BBC about teaching English, via email. Those guys do know a stack about teaching English. Often the activities they propose and offer mean a mixture – a balanced one – of the four language skills. 

One example to you? Yep, an activity about certain topic may start by a speaking activity, like predicting what a text is about. Then, the teacher may read out a text (listening), and next all those people in the classroom may discuss about the previously read-out text. Finally the students may write the conclusions of the previous discussion. 

Did I forget any skill? Oh yes, reading. Well, the students might read through a worksheet those guys offer on the British-Council website. Well, I invite you to search on your own: those guys will tell you about activities better than I did. 

But basically it’s like that: on a lesson – both remote and face-to-face teaching – the teacher could combine the four aforementioned language skills. On one single lesson! Of course some lead-in and a follow-up activities could accompany the concrete text that is to be worked on on the class. 

Teaching, when you involve into it fully is something you’ll love, tiresome though. Have a nice day.

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