Experiences of a teacher of English

  We as teachers wish our students would learn a lot, who doesn’t wish so?  It seems sound and sensible they would gain reading comprehension. At least here in Spain quite some or many students have rather poor reading understanding at school and when they leave school.  And experts now state that some drawback for them is they may be so accustomed to screens. Even they may show some addiction to them. Well, it’s ok they use computers and tablets at school, yet it seems more important they’d use paper books and practice handwriting: sometimes you can encounter kids or teens or college students that have no dexterity at composing an essay, or understanding an article properly.  And that’s a big problem.  It is so necessary our students would dedicate a lot of their daily time to study their paper books and write essays. What can you do with a student who reaches college and cannot answer an exam with some appropriate response?  It is paramount our students s...

  Quite many students learn and acquire a second or foreign language by reading books. Me myself.  Well, as you know you need to practice all four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Ok. I always have a book in English which I’m reading. Now, two: a graded reader plus Jeremy Harmer’s The Practice of English Language Teaching .  I’m learning and re-learning quite a lot from this latter one. Well, also from the graded reader. From Jeremy Harmer I’m learning a lot of insightful points for teaching my English lessons.  Now we have summer vacations, but I’m taking lots of mental notes for those classes I’ll teach in fall. And the graded reader, well, basically it’s B2 level, yet it serves the purpose for me for reviewing lots of expressions and ways to say such and such things in English. Remember that level is upper intermediate.  When I come across a new phrase or word, I stop reading, study and take like a mental photo of it. In that...

  Today I wanted to share with you several points which can help both teach and learn a second or foreign language.  For example I’m still learning English and I know that I will finish my days on earth by still learning: When can you say, well, ok, I’ve already finished to learn Croatian or Polish or Spanish?  Something I’m doing lately is reading an interesting book. I confess I’ve been reading it – with some stops anyway – for almost a year. The book, about the Apollo missions to put the first man on the moon and written by a space historian, is a volume of more than six hundred pages and I’ve been reading it since last December.  You know, it was a present from the Wise Men or Kings on 2018 or so Christmas when we were going to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely.  Then, in 2019, when the 50 th anniversary, I read it more quickly – namely several months – and now I’m studying it, let’s say, because I try an...

  The good teacher must know how to plan his or her lessons. They have learned over the years. Now I’m referring to second or foreign language teachers. They learn how to plan efficient lessons for their dear students to learn effectively.  And there’s a plus. They achieve to plan in rather short time.  That kind of teacher plans his classes with their actual students in mind. He wants for them to really learn and acquire that target language.  He knows how to get the most from a class text or a photocopy he has gotten from his resources – they may be modest, though.  He learns how to be imaginative and he’ll accomplish – as I said – to get the most from a photocopy.  And he plans several activities from that sheet of paper. For example, as follows.  First he plans a listening comprehension activity while his students do not have the copy yet. And he has planned a lead-in activity for that listening, for example, a first exercise of predicting what the...

  So we have – continuing what said on the previous post – that we can learn a foreign or second language, but also we can acquire it. Subconsciously. Similar to what little children do.  And we language learners have to receive a comprehensible input, to acquire the language. Thus we will be exposed to that input, which should be a bit above my actual level, thus we can proceed and advance in that language learning.  All this entails practical points for the classroom.  Remember all that was already said by Stephen Krashen from the seventies and eighties of last century. A great fellow this expert I guess.  He also said that you can learn & acquire the target tongue by reading books, and this is good news – I do like reading books and articles.  He puts that fiction books, like novels, help you a great deal in those learning & acquiring: those books bring everyday lexis and sayings and kinds of expressions. And even it seems better if you select th...

  So we have already finished another school year or are about to do it.  Do we teachers have into account that we have to also educate our students, and so in accordance with their parents’ views?  We also have to educate them in freedom. If we educate our students like they were robots… we are doing wrong with them.  I teach adults. Yet something similar in some way may be applied to teens. I believe that a lot of English may be learned by reading books – like Krashen himself puts it himself. And, you know?, I say to those learners of mine they have to purchase graded readers or unabridged books. On their own.  As well they have to massively and intensively read, on their own. Beside what we actually do in the classroom to learn English. On their own, I said, by themselves. I leave them on their own.  Something I do is I encourage them to read, and when they’ve finished that graded reader, then, come on, get a new one. Or an unabridged book, which for the...

  I wrote a few days ago the following.  One more year has begun. And today I’m going to let you know about something I lately do when lesson planning, in case it may help you out.  I teach English to adults. And when I start to plan a new lesson, I wonder, Okay, what should I do to really help my students learn that language? Because each and every class should be one step forward in their learning and acquiring English.  Secondly I also could wonder, Okay, what can I do next class to make my students become autonomous learners? For those autonomous learners are the ones that actually accomplish to learn English.  Thus we have two points for when we have to plan a lesson.  Now I’m trying to give you some examples of those two points, which we can bear in mind to improve our lesson planning. Well, they have to be brief, each one could take few minutes to think about.  Some examples, I was saying. Let me think. Even I’m trying to give an example that co...

  One example of a lesson plan for the second or foreign language classroom? Ok, let’s go with it, for a lesson plan or part of it, by combining the four language skills, which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.  Let me see. Ok, we have a text, one for our dear students, adequate to their English level – that language is the target one.  First I provoke my students’ attention by asking them, kind of, Now, do you know how we say such and such things in English? And I give them, one by one, sentences in Spanish for them to try hard to translate into L2 – English.  Then, I hand out some photocopies of the text or I send it via the Internet, to their laptops or iPads.  Then, they have some minutes, say, ten or fifteen, to read the text silently. While they’re doing so I can contemplate how they work – often it’s awesome, and I can circulate to solve doubts.  Then I read the text out for them to grasp word and sentence pronunciation.  Then, the...

  On my previous post I told you that we teachers have to also educate our students for their future… and for the present alike. And we have to have them contemplate beauty. For example through texts.  And always in accordance with their parents and with human dignity.  Well, you know, if possible, we can have them read the classics, where we can find and encounter beauty. Plus other human values such as good, evil, love, virtues, generosity, sincerity and honesty, doing good to others, friendship, honorability, etcetera.  You know what? In principle I was going to have all my students read graded readers and other full version books, for instance classics, but for two of my groups I’m going to introduce an English coursebook, so what can I do to offer good reads?  Well, I have to check whether the coursebook contents are okay and in accordance to human dignity – otherwise I would have to offer other texts and not that coursebook. Anyway, I foresee that the text...

  We teachers may be spending some nice vacation, or otherwise we may be still working, or even we may be dreaming nice about next school year.  It may be a good moment anyway to put our profession in front of our eyes and try to improve our teaching job.  For example we may think that we don’t just teach but also educate those people for a happy future and a happy present now.  As well we have to educate people who will try hard to make happy to those other people our students will treat.  We definitely have to educate those people, but in accordance with their parents and in much way in accordance with human dignity.  For example we have to teach those students how to contemplate beauty.  Not only will we try to form people for the so demanding job market today, but we teachers are right there in the classroom to carry out something else, and that something else definitely is educating them.  I teach English to adults. And we deal with texts in ...

  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...

  In this new school year we teachers would like our students would work well, would learn a lot, and would study fine too.  And since they are younger than us and we are in charge of teaching them, we have to teach them how to work that fine.  And they thus will learn how to have neat and useful class notes, and they will acquire and develop some like for the work carried out well and outfitted well.  For that goal tutoring sessions are crucial. At those times and in the classroom we may monitor their work: how to write down neat and useful notes, how to keep them in an orderly manner, how to record each day’s date at the beginning of each day’s notes, how to follow and study those notes, how to enhance those notes by consulting other books and websites.  If they utilize laptops or iPads for taking notes, same way we will teach them how to type those class notes.  For work well done is so educative.  And when they sit for studying those notes plus tha...

  A new school year is beginning, and we teachers wish our dear students would learn a lot, don’t we? As you know I teach English to adults. And I want for my students to learn how to taste reading books. For reading is a language-learning booster indeed.  They will have to get graded readers, or full version books in some of the students’ cases. I can affirm for sure that by reading you learn English. Not only reading, of course. Yet reading gives you vocab and grammar and ways of saying things in English, and at the same time you enjoy even can relish learning that language.  You have to read many readers or full versions to grasp the language, yet each page read is a firm step forward.  As well my students will also have to read from websites whose link I will provide to them. Formerly I handed them out worksheets, but last school year with the online lessons I had them work on pages from websites, for example from the British Council – those guys are aces at teac...

  Today I would tell you more about reading for learning English or any other language, and also about communication in the (remote) classroom.  Reading books and readers is a language-learning booster. Yes, sir, it is. I do it myself, and I’ve done so for many years. It gives you language: grammar, ways of saying things in the target language, lexis.  While I’m reading a science-fiction novel,  I read, yes, but also I study the language. I kind of devour the words, the phrases, the sentences, and much is retained in my memory.  And while speaking at the English lesson with my students, or while writing a new post for this blog, some expressions come up to that moment and I utilize them.  I study the language, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading, I do, yep.  Plus sometimes after reading a couple pages I go back and randomly revise some sentences or phrases or words, which thus get stuck in mind too. And afterward I can retrieve them when neces...

  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...

Lately and for my job as a teacher I’m reading a book by Spanish teacher, philosopher and pedagogue Gregorio Luri (born in 1955).  Before I continue writing, I would like also to say that young kids – complementing what I said on my previous post – can have some abstract ideas; for example they can think of love and other values and virtues.  Said that, I keep on writing about this post #3571. I’m learning a lot of things about teaching and learning from that educator.  Thus I’ve learned that we teachers would have to be watchful: we could be insisting too much on our kids should gain skills, yet they have also to learn contents: from their teachers and from their books.  By the way, they may learn from tablets and other technologic devices but paper books may help facilitate focusing on what they’re reading: paper books facilitate attention, above all if they have long texts, more than one page.  So skills are okay but students have to learn contents, both from...

I have some nice remembrances and memories about when I was a kid and carried out my high school period. I can recall the so many hours I used to spend at the study hall of the youth center I attended.  It had a nice library. And that center monitors aroused and waked up my thirst for knowledge. Also its teachers did.  Also I have some nice memories about my school teachers. Most of them, maybe all, were good teachers, both male teachers and female ones. They gave us knowledge and contents, and as well aroused our thirst for learning.  That’s the teachers’ mission: both give contents and wake up the students’ hunger for learning. Thank you my dear teachers. Most of them may be retired or they have departed.  And libraries are in no way obsolete.  Okay, we have Internet browsers, yet libraries are necessary still, and hopefully they will keep being so.  Think of the good that libraries can make to students, more if the books are in accordance to human dignit...

We as teachers wish all our students would learn, right?  Have you noticed what good students or learners are like?  We as teachers want every student would learn. And we want to help and assist and attend all our students. We want all our students would be good ones. It's so because we as teachers should love our students with benevolence love, which means we want to seek what is good for them. However, we are prone to accept the students the way they are.  Good students usually know they are good students.  Any average student can become a good one.  They, good students, are conscious and aware they are good students. They utilize learning strategies and are aware they usually learn.  What are those learning strategies? Well, it is up to what school subject those students are learning: math, linguistics, religion, English as a second language, science, biology, history, literature, fine arts...  Some examples? Reading a text for the gist,  readi...

If you’re learning or teaching a second or foreign language, you should remember that any language has four skills to practice: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, ok?  Today I would like to say something about reading. Reading is so great. The language learner has to read intensely and massively, and that counts toward a lot of learning that tongue, whatever that tongue is.  I personally read a book at least some brief minutes a day. I try and enjoy it. Reading is great, as I said.  When reading you’re thinking in that target language.  I come across some new words and enjoy learning them.  I use the dictionary rather little – I’m learning English, by the way.  I read a couple of pages each time or so, and then I come back to what I’ve read and then randomly I pay attention and focus on some words and idioms and take like a mental picture. Memory is something you can train and it's elastic, like chewing gum... In that way I can tell you that I’ve le...

We teachers want our students should read massively and intensively, right? That is crucial, both if our students are young people and if they are adults.  It is not enough we would say to them whatever their age is that they have to read a lot. We should rather help them and teach them how to read well. Even whatever the subject we teach is.  If our students learn how to read well, we teachers will have reached pretty far concerning teaching them.  For example, when reading, the reader has to grasp the meaning of what he’s reading. And thus he should get the gist as well as the main ideas of the text.  Actually I’m an English language teacher, and I tell my adult learners they have to read simplified readers to learn and acquire English. They’re abridged and simplified books in accordance to different levels of difficulty and mastering of the language.  Also something they do not have to do is to translate the texts into Spanish, no, no way...