Experiences of a teacher of English

  Just to halt at times. And have a quick mental look or perspective to your teaching. That is something I sometimes do.  For example I did something of this at Christmas break. We had stopped our English classes for a while. And at home I had a mental peek at how my students were doing, and how I was doing as a teacher myself. Just to detect failures in me and in them. Also to find out what was turning out fine.  And all that is just something simple, even intuitive. It’s like keeping track of how things are going. And all that does not necessarily mean you as a teacher must do something else, apart all your workload, which may be almost huge.  If you stop to think of it, it may be something we teachers may inadvertently do when lesson-planning – even more, it is something we actually do when lesson-planning!  But I mean here to carry it out in a bit more aware way, and like something special at some breaks – Christmas, the Holy Week at southern Spain, and fina...

  I also know that most of you are or may be busy and committed teachers. I was wondering if write about this topic or not, but in the end I’ve decided to write about it, yes, let’s go with it.  As I said, you may be hectic teachers, yet I presume that you devote some time of your valuable and precious time to just thinking about what you do in class, so you can improve your teaching work, also precious as it is, indeed. Because you wish your dear students learn effectively.  I mean, the happy teacher – busy he or she may be though – knows how to extract some time for thinking about their dear students and how they can learn better and more effectively.  I knew a teacher who used to dedicate some time for example at the end of the school year to think and write down some points about his lessons: how they had proceeded, you know, how they’d improved that past year, how could they improve next year, what points are paramount for bettering those lessons, what points I ...

  It seems that a communicative approach to teaching/learning a second or foreign language may be the best, and actually most teachers apply it in the classroom.  Thus the learners would learn and acquire that language by communicating in the target tongue, and also they would learn that language in order to communicate both in and out of the classroom.  As well their dear teacher would not confine the classes to giving language facts but to communication (plus language facts, if you wish, of course - they are necessary).  Okay.  However, that teacher cannot confine the tests and exams to measure grammar learning and other language facts.  If the classes were communication, the stuff measured at those tests and exams has to be also communicative. A few questions can be devoted to grammar, anyway, but also in accordance to what already done in class.  The students shouldn’t encounter questions in the tests which they haven’t been trained for.  Othe...

  The teacher in a face-to-face or online classroom? He or she must be elegant. I mean they have to be tactful, respectful, loving toward their students. What I mean by loving is one with benevolence love, i.e. they will seek the best for their students.  For example, that teacher has to know how his or her students are at each moment, and whether they feel good with the activity he or she is carrying out before those students.  And this value is obtained through those affection and benevolence love, plus through experience at the classroom.  As well that teacher will try and be discreet, cautious and tactful. And he or she will say things that will not hurt their students.  Furthermore that teacher will seek what builds up their students’ personality, in accordance with what their parents want for them.  I said he or she won’t say anything harming in the classroom. For those people have some or a lot of sensitivity.  Over time that teacher knows how ...

  Planning our lessons is a paramount point about the teaching job, right?  Now I’m telling you about something else I carry out when I sit to plan a lesson, in case it may help you.  On my teaching pad or notebook I write down today’s date plus Stuff to do plus the class of students I’m going to plan for.  Then I think about a few points those students are in need of, like for example They tend to explain points in our discussions but they lack standard grammar to utilize , or something briefer, or for instance I guess we may be following the course-book in too slow a pace , or something else those people may need.  Thus I plan the lesson with my students in mind.  Or another point may be To foster the importance of homework for them .  In a few words, what I mean is that just before planning a lesson we have to think of our students’ needs and wants. And then let’s plan with the students in mind.  This pre-planning task takes few minutes, but it...

  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...

  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....

Now I could tell you some more things - interesting ones - from our great author and scholar H. D. Brown. Remember he's an expert at learning and teaching languages.  First I would like to say that the person who achieves to learn a foreign or second tongue is... the learner who REALLY wants to learn.  I myself know some examples of people who have improved their learned language... because they did really wish to learn. A person like that is a powerful engine that takes initiatives and makes firm resolutions and tries to fulfill them.  That person is not passive at all in the classroom and he or she cooperates with their teacher and with their classmates at the beautiful learning process of a second or foreign language.  That person tries to know himself and gets perfectly conscious of HOW he learns, HOW he studies, HOW he improves, HOW he discards what doesn't work and takes up what works fine.  Each class is a step forward, each hour dedicated to learning the...

Teachers are important. We teachers are important for our students’ learning. We are important, if we help our students learn. Also our students need to hear us if we prepared ourselves great in order to teach well. They need a model.  Anyway, we teachers have to help our students learn. According to Professor Ken Bain our college students should have more opportunities. We teachers may tend to punish or the sort when our students do not know the answer at an exam and they fail. They heretofore fail.  Those students should have more chances to learn and try anew. Come on, you tried but should work and learn more, we could say to our pupils. And then you will try again, after some time of working hard.  Our students should learn by a creative process.  They could try and study humanities if they are studying engineering for example. They can benefit from those humanities. And the other way around: They should study science if they are graduating at hu...

Teaching is… great, once again. And watching and observing how our students are progressing or not very much… - so far - is also great.  We have to plan our lessons with our students in mind. But I can also see and perceive that I have to keep on improving my teaching. Once and over again and again. No problem. If you've been teaching for some quite many years, you can discover and find out what your students are in need of.   Well, my students try to do their best. I teach English as a second language. This morning my students were saying what some words meant, from a worksheet with sentences and one longer text. That was one of the activities we were carrying out.  That was good practice and I intended for them to notice and reckon that: that was good practice.  For next class I will also say what those words mean, and thus I can mold the exercise for my students to have some more examples to imitate or to build up their definitions upon, ...

The main resource for classes is the teacher himself. And this teacher needs to have a growing capability for planning the lessons and for creating a nice atmosphere in the classroom for his students to learn better and better.  This teacher needs to have a growing agile mind to face the problems he will likely encounter and even to boost his students’ eagerness to learn.  Something I advise is for the teacher to make up the situation in which his students are. I mean, the teacher has to be able – through practice – to visualize each class of students and what they need most.  For this class of students they need this, for that other class of students they need that, and so on.  It’s a kind of clarity of mind to visualize what his students need most necessarily.  Also I advise to carry out this task by strolling. Yes I sometimes carry out this kind of visualization by strolling along a park or the countryside, or other times by relaxing in an ar...

The good teacher tries to plan his or her lessons. Also he or she might as well dedicate some brief daily time to think of just something brief that each class-group of theirs may be in need of. Because each class-group is in need of something to improve, and their teacher tries to find out what that is.  All that has to do with intuition. The teacher has some intuition about what each class-group really needs. And that teacher is capable of quickly finding about that necessity.  As well when the school year is over, that professional will write down some brief experiences of how the school year went.  He or she does so in order to next year build upon what worked the past year.  They will write about positive as well as negative points. All that also has to do with intuition.  For example he or she will write about how some new activities or some more general approach succeeded or perhaps did not do. All this can be written on a simple Word...

Although our students may be using their iPads, we teachers should also teach them to write manually.  If their notebooks are neat, that will for sure help them greatly to study, work, and learn. When a kid or an adult writes nice, clear and neat, they have clear ideas in their minds. Or likely so. They, in a word, have mental hygiene. Or likely so.  Thus we could, with their permission or their parents’, or with both, have a look at their notebooks. Firstly we'll have told them we're going to pick their notebooks. We’ll learn a lot from that written work about our dear students.  If they utilize books also, we could teach them how to underline important terms or ideas – not too much underlining, because at first they hardly recognize what is important or they think all is important: their minds are maturing. But with some practice with the whole class we can efficiently teach them what the main points are.  And that in the classroom with the who...

Second or foreign language teaching is one of the school subjects where we teachers can find most varied levels within a classroom.  Coming to the root of the point every student has his or her own different level of English or the taught language.  Although we may try to place each student at his or her specific and precise level and class, in any class we teach we will likely find varied and various levels.  And the high-performing students ought not to get bored. And the low-performing students ought not to be left behind. And every student has his or her own experience at learning and acquiring the language. What to do?  The answer is not simple. Something I do is trying to combine different leveled activities in the classroom but the solution is not accurate and definitive sometimes. Well, we can try that, trying also to get feedback from the students: Are they understanding me their teacher?  As well something else we can do is get...

I’ve been thinking. If I make somebody talk, which is the case with the one-to-one classes I’m teaching lately, and that person, or that class of students, actually speak, all the thing is gotten!  I mean, I implement a communicative approach to teaching English. If the students actually speak, all the work has been achieved, or nearly all.  Also I could teach and make them practice functions too: apologizing, asking for, promising, offering help, etc. Yet that teaching functions will be for another day of classes.  If I implement warmers at the beginning of my lessons and those warmers serve the purpose of talking in English… okay then, objective accomplished! And if the warmer takes one fourth of the lesson, I’d say the purpose of my classes has been gotten, right?  When I plan my lessons I write “discussion” attached to other activities, for example describing photos in English. And then at those activities of describing pictures I try and mak...

We second or foreign language teachers are prone to teach that nice language, and that’s ok. Now, something so important is to meet our students’ needs and expectations.  Otherwise we would be like plowing in the sea.  We need to know what our students need the language for.  So we could draw and make up like a questionnaire to find out about those needs and expectations. Is it academics, general English, business English, computing English, for tourism, for commerce…?  Also we should take into account that anyway those our students may have to learn general English as a matter of fact. And then, with that load of English they will be able to understand for example computing English.  General English will be okay to deal with that specific English.  If you’re teaching young students and they don’t know what they’ll need English for, you can anyway pass a questionnaire to those people in order to find out: previous experience, any ta...

Our students make errors and mistakes. Every learner makes them. Also we teachers do.  We have to be positive toward those errors and mistakes. They may be some evidence that they are learning. And they may take advantage of them… to keep on learning.  When returning tests to our students after correction we may correct them in the classroom, among all students and us teachers. On the board or chalkboard while they are checking on their test papers.  And remember that we teachers might fall in being too perfectionist, and that’s not good. Because we might be educating too perfectionist learners. And that’s not good, as you may guess.  Once a subdirector of the school I taught even told me that I might try to attract my students’ attention and try for them to focus on their work, of course, but those kids ultimately were free to do it.  We of course have to make our students focus on the work but trying they might focus because they will ...