Experiences of a teacher of English

  Many of us English language teachers are non-native speakers… and we have to provide with a lot of that language to our students. And we perhaps are life-long learners of English. It is my case.  To learn a foreign or second language you have to practice the four language skills plus learn grammar plus vocabulary.   One way of approaching one of those language skills – reading – is by reading graded readers and full-version books.  Now I’m telling you how I proceed lately with reading, in case it may help you.  At present I’m reading a novel, which brings language you can hear on the street. I enjoy reading it. And that’s quite important.  As well and on top of that I would say that I study the pages I read: I have gotten accustomed to focus and pay close attention to the few pages I read each time.  I attentively read the lines and kind of mentally collect a lot of interesting expressions and ways to say things in English. I like it.  Then, aft...

  Here I am again with you.  Man is a person who naturally tends to work. We have been created to work. And also naturally we tend to work better and better, with perfection. Not with some insane perfectionism. But with perfection.  So we teachers naturally would wish our students would learn. Right?  And now in the northern earth hemisphere we are close to finish another school year. And we may be tired. Our students may be tired. So we foreign or second language teachers have to pull our students upward, until the school year is over. Even we could think of the work our students might carry out through the summer.  I was thinking that one way to help our students to reach the end of this sort of race is assigning to work on texts of their interest. It’s something I do myself. And those texts can serve the purpose of prompting a lot of spoken language in the classroom.  We for example English language teachers might be expert at arousing to provoke convers...