Experiences of a teacher of English

  If you are placed in the northern earth hemisphere, you may be on vacation. Maybe not. Anyway, today I wanted to say that our students must be, at any level we may be teaching, the protagonists of their own learning. No protagonists, no significant learning.  I saw it last school year: I’m thinking of a particular student who has significantly improved his English – I teach English to adults.  Why so? Why has he lifted off a great deal at English language learning? Because he has strived hard to learn it… and he is like a strong and powerful engine that does a lot on his own.  When I say that our students have to be protagonists, in no way do I mean that we teachers have to come down to foolishly create an atmosphere where they do just what they feel like doing by looking down their teacher. No. The teacher is the teacher and his or her students are right there as students and learners.  Perhaps if we teach a modern language we have to read through Rebecca Oxf...

Learning to spell correctly is something that adds a point to classes totally in English or in other modern language. It helps students to immerse in the class and the language.  First you teacher can write the alphabet on the whiteboard (for example) and practice naming each letter, in alphabetical order.  Then, in order to practice furtherly, tap with your marker on the letters in alphabetical order and the students say the sounds as a chorus. Afterward tap randomly.  All this serves the purpose of you teacher writing the words the students say in their contributions to the class. And as well you can teach them a word and they write it down on their notebooks, by spelling the word.  Also to practice spelling in English is pretty good because as you know we write and say the same word in a different way in English, like “Gloucester”, “choir”, “traffic circle”. / Photo from: madre e hija. discreame blogspot com

The next day teacher B went on by telling teacher A what follows and which continues what they were talking about on post # 929. “As I told you, some of the classes are private, individual, and I usually try to help each student with his school subject of English. Obviously it’s another teacher the one who teaches him English. So I’ve got to learn as much as possible concerning the subject of his school, because it’s of a paramount importance to get to know how he’s going in that subject. Also the student is new for me. As the private classes are taking place I try to find out things like: whether he has a test soon, whether he has some homework, how he feels in the classes, I see and observe what his course books are like, his grades so far, whether he should study some point harder, we revise the stuff he’s learning lately, maybe he can do an exercise or drill his teacher has not set yet as something to do either in the class or as homework, what his ha...

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “Crosswords are simple to make on your own, on the board, with little preparation out of the classroom. It’s useful to revise the vocabulary you are learning in the classes and fun too. Very simple, look. You write a rather long word from up to down, vertically. You don’t need to draw the grid. You give a clue about one word of the unit, and you point at the horizontal line where that word has to be written, including the letter of the vertical word. It focuses their attention. If not too complicate, you can give a clue in English for a vertical word containing two letters of two horizontal words. Do this game in just a few minutes, so as to make them wishing to continue... but the game is up! It works.” / Photo from: eviajando com. This is Patio de los Leones , in Alhambra palaces, in Granada, where I live. When are you coming, if possible?

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “Pronunciation in English is essential in teaching/learning this language. The teacher has to pronounce single words clearly, and make the students repeat, as a chorus, and individually. Also the teacher should read sentences in a more naturalistic way, and make the students read aloud too, and so listen to one another. He or she will dedicate enough time to the vowels, for example the pronunciation of ‘i’ in different words, like idea, finish, mine, meantime, bit, bite . Though the students may not understand much, it seems good they listen massively to their teacher, to sense the peculiar texture of English. CDs and DVDs help the learners focus attentively on the spoken language and its pronunciation. With passing time, the teacher can start to teach the international phonetic alphabet (IPA), a great aid, as it appears in dictionaries.” / Photo from: www thecia au. The film is Once , a moving Irish movie, produced with an ama...

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “The irregular verbs? Like you know, they keep being irregular because their use is daily. In early Medieval English most of the verbs were irregular in this sense. A few words about their learning and usage: One teacher I know told me once that the student has to learn them by studying them, for example, in triplets: ‘do-did-done’, ‘bring-brought-brought’, as any of us has learned them. Nonetheless the student must use them in the naturalistic atmosphere of the classroom. No use, not retaining in memory. As well and very helpful at early steps of studying the irregular verbs we can set drills, as for example, leaving blanks to be filled out. Study plus practice.” / Photo from: Asian_Indian_Family pmec org uk

One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “One trick to keep your students calm when the class is making a mess and you can’t control it, although you’ve tried hard? Quite often reading and writing exercises and activities force them to be quiet and focused. Oh think of an example. Make a dictation. I can assure you they’ll get quiet and focused on your phrases. Moreover in this way the students are practicing, say, grammar, listening, vocabulary, spelling, neat writing, engaging their mind...” / Photo from: topic2 choir northchristian org - Thank you, hdmiklos, and welcome to our blog.

Agata Zgarda asked for help to teach students of different countries. This post of hers appeared on www.teachingenglish.org.uk , the site of BBC – British Council. Underneath is my response to her post. Photo from Farsi Crop. How diferent is it to teach students from different countries? Submitted by Agata Zgarda on 26 July, 2010 - 23:08 I've been invited to take part in a webinar with a title (that's not the final title yet) "Cross-cultural communication". One of my ideas was to look at the communication from a different point of view: teacher-student communication, provided that a teacher is of a different nationality than a student. I am one of the examples - a Polish person teaching English in Brazil. So for that I need to collect characteristics of English students from different countries. Have you ever had an opportunity to teach people of a diferent nationality? How would you characterize them as learners? What kind of difficulties (that come from cultural ...

Here is a comment about teaching Roman handwriting to Arabic children. Basically (sorry to summarize the problem) Sandy Millin has some Arabic children aged around 9 years, plus other children who use Roman characters. For the former ones is so tough to learn our characters, and may become demotivated. Both posts, Sandy’s and mine, have been published on the web site of British Council – BBC (link at the right column). I have corrected some mistakes. Hello Sandy, I've studied Arabic myself, so I can see the problem... from the other side. Well, I learnt very little, anyway. I'm trying some advice. If any helpful. First, utilise TPR, I'd say. It's so motivating when the kids can see their progress! Make one student stand up; the others just watching. Miming here is crucial, believe me. Give him or her instructions, perhaps by using gestures more than words. Better said, show him/her what you demand from the kid, and say the instruction in simple terms, and with gentle re...

This is a post within a thread I contributed for, some days ago, about dictionary games, on the website of Pearson-Longman. Thanks to the author of the following post. – Picture from lego star wars blogspot com Fernando Diez Gallego, A new message was posted in the thread "Dictionary Games": http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/message/2255#2255 Author : Alistair Melliar Email : alistairm@eircom.net Profile : http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/people/voyager Message: -------------------------------------------------------------- This game is a bit different to any others so far, but I've found it works very well - have used it with upper-intermediate and advanced groups only but could be played by intermediate groups with a change of dictionary type preferably. You have 2 teams, each with a dictionary, the first team starts with letter 'a', opens dictionary with eyes closed in this section, and selects a word from the page opened to ask the other team about. There are 3 p...

Here I offer you a linguistic point. Taken from http://www.putlearningfirst.com Photo from www.ascobi.com NB.: We would need some special characters to show differences in the pronunciation of some letters below, if compared with contemporary English. To say in simple terms, OE is from the stem of Germanic languages. And as you may know, this stem comes from the Indo-European family. Basque, Hungarian, Finish are some of the very few languages that do not come from this big family but anyway spoken in Europe. Finish and Hungarian, and I think one of the languages of Mongolia, have the same origin. (I have read something somewhere about the thing of Mongolia). How English Has Changed Five translations of the Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 8, Verses 1 & 2. Anglo Saxon 995 Sothlice tha seHaelend of tham munte nyther astah, tha fyligdon hym mycle maenio. Tha genealaehte an hreofla to him and hine to him geathmedde, and thus cwaeth, Drihten, gyf thu wylt, thu miht me geclaensi...

This is a post with which I responded to a teacher of English. The posts, both his and mine appear in www.pearsonlongman.com . The thread of posts are about dictionary games. This was my contribution. Picture from www friendlyplanet com Hello Daniel, I can also suggest some games I implement and they work so fine in my classes, and my students love those games! 1. (I hope to be any helpful: I see you implement similar stuff). Dictionary competition. I write a word on the whiteboard, and the students have to find the word as soon as possible in the dictionaries. The winner is the first in finding the word. Currently my students are aged 10 to 14. 2. Sometimes I am one of the players in the latter game. They wish to play vs their teacher. It’s funny. 3. One student counts the seconds one other student takes to find a given word in the dic. Obviously the winner is the fastest. 4. On worksheets or on the WB I write words that appear close to one another in the dictionary. The ss have to pu...

Here is a worksheet to implement orally with my students, aged 10 to 13. They like worksheets. You can steal it, copy, paste, print, photocopy, hand out, exploit, send via email to a friend who lives in the jungle, but please quote its source. Sorry for the formatting bugs - I struggled hard to manage the sheet from a Word document. Worksheet 103 Written on 12 May 2010 1. What’s your full name? 2. How do you say in English? bolsillo botas de fútbol librería gorra skater gafas de sol salvapantallas 3. Write one sentence with one Word of question 2: 4. ...................................................................................... 5. Say things about this photo: (from www tayside police uk) [Sorry, the picture is above instead of right here] 6. Say things about you . 7. Unscramble: OF CASTLE OF THE IN FRONT MUSIC IS BAND A 8. Say the order of these words in the dictionary. DISTRESS DISTRACT DISTINGUISHED DISTRACTION DISTINGUISH DISTRIBUTE DISTINCTIVE 9. ...

This is chapter 28 from my book on TEFL, TESL, ELL. Photo from www tribuneindia com 28. Cómo aprender palabras nuevas Leyendo. Entre otras fuentes, que ahora veremos. La lectura es una fuente de modos de decir peculiares del inglés, de palabras, de enriquecimiento. Van creando un depósito, del que el hablante no nativo extrae las palabras adecuadas a tal momento. Sin palabras no hay comunicación. Y se recuerdan las palabras que se practican, que se usan. Si llega un término nuevo al cerebro y se queda solitario, se aburre y se va. La memoria , además, es como un chicle: se dilata. Una amiga que tengo lee un vocablo nuevo, y es capaz de recordarlo, al primer vistazo. Fotografía cada palabra nueva, su spelling , si me permites un término inglés de no fácil traducción: es la cadena de las letras de la palabra, tan diferente de la pronunciación. También corrige y aumenta su depósito de combustible al oír a un angloparlante utilizar tal frase idiomática. Y como da clases de ese idioma, se l...

Below you have some games that have been very helpful and fun in my classes . On the Labels column, on the right hand of my blog, you have one label which if you clic on you'll have a long list of 107 games, all levels of English. Now just some games, especially popular amongst my students. 1. Dictionary. The teacher writes a new word on the blackboard (or digitalboard or...). The first student who finds the meaning, one point. Very helpful to practice looking up words in a dictionary. Every activity can be done individually or in pairs or in groups of three. 2. The teacher writes words beginning with the same letter. The students have to order those words as they appear in the dictionary: belong, believe, beneath, be, beep, bend, bachelor, believer. 3. Hangman. Also to construct sentences. 4. Simon says … They really enjoy this one! If you say "Simon says" plus an instruction the students have to do it; if you don't say "Simon says", they must do nothing; ...

I wanted to say I just reread the story post #291 and I found some errors and mistakes. I have to present this composition to my C-2 English-level teacher. We learn form mistakes. Picture from www bookpalace com. I don't know from what episode this picture is.

This is somehow funny. Oh, do not get me wrong. I just opened up my blog, to post a new entry today, and I found a comment in Chinese. The first premise is I appreciate anyone's comment, but I do not understand Chinese. I love that great country, and have friends working there. So, Please, I appreciate you, the person who sent me that comment, to translate into English (or Spanish or Italian or Latin). Hello, anyways. I'm prone to read and publish your comment, after approval. Today, Ash Wednesday, i wanted to say a few words about errors, and mistakes. If one learner makes a mistake, or one hundred, well, as you know, that means he or she is on the right pathway toward success. All of us commit errors and/or mistakes. I don't say any more about this point. You are a smart teacher, and you'll infer your own conclusions for your struggle, a one of peace and goodtreating your learners. One other thing, you, teacher of English, be considerate with yourself, with regard to ...

One day teacher A said to teacher B, “Words, as you know, are essential for any communication. No words, no communication. One student of mine told me, some days ago, about his tricks to learn new words. He is learning Finnish. Finnish is not an Indo-European language. He does a variety of things. Writes a list of new words. Now he writes longer lists of words he picks here and there. He dares to write longer lists: he thought before he shouldn’t write too long lists. He makes a mental photograph of the word or phrase. Something that helps him is to unconsciously relate the new word with a cognate of his own language. A cognate or one similar word in some way: “pelliohjet”, which is Finnish word, resembles and sounds similar to Spanish “pelo”, and “jet” reminds of English “jet”, “yet”. That Finnish word means “guide of rules” (of a board game). He learned that word weeks ago. He uses Wordreference , a nice dictionary-plus-forum on the Web. He revises the words by making mental training...