Experiences of a teacher of English

  You know what? A couple of days ago I came across a new class of students I have to teach English to. They are adults, with a big wish to learn that language.  I had planned to convey the same messages both in English and in Spanish, their – our – mother tongue. I came to the classroom with enthusiasm, prone to serve those great people.  And you know what I encountered? They are beginners and false beginners! Great students though.  My assistant teacher was with me – he is learning how to teach English and is a native speaker himself, from San Diego, California. Ok, they knew nothing or close to.  I had brought photocopies for them, taken from a textbook of A2/B1 level, this is, low beginner to lower intermediate – more A2 than B1, because that copy was from the very first unit.  But my dear students needed I had to explain and present absolutely every detail from basic questions, you know, present simple with Do and Does, and similar basic stuff. Oh, man...

  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...

We teachers seem to work for those low-achiever students who deserve our attention, both at face-to-face teaching as well as at remote teaching. Well, we also take care of high-achievers, right?  At present I’m reading a book about history geniuses – awesome. Michelangelo, Diego Velázquez, Isaac Newton, Thomas Alva Edison, Albert Einstein, Antoni Gaudí, Steve Jobs, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Gerardo Diego…  Well, you know, quite many of them and others… were rather bad students at school! Are we not having geniuses in our classrooms? We may have some…  What I mean is that our schools should also foster our dear students’ creativity. Do our schools kill creativity? What are our schools like? What do they resemble?  Because of that we have to assist and attend high-achievers.  Quite many years ago – and I teach English – my school assistant principal told me to hand out extra worksheets to the students that finished before their classmates and eventually got wit...

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, ...

Some time I somehow enjoy in the classroom is when my adult students are reading and working on the worksheets I hand them out. The new school year is coming on and now it is a nice time to think of the good things teaching has.  Sometimes, as I said, my students dedicate some time to revising those worksheets I make myself.  While they’re reading I can contemplate them working and that’s nice too.  They need that amount of time to focus and concentrate on those texts in English. It’s then when also they’re learning and acquiring that language. They often use their smartphones to look up words they don’t understand, on an online dictionary.  They learn a lot mainly because they’re good learners. It’s also then when they’re a bit more of autonomous learners.  As well that’s when I have some recess at my teaching them. And that’s important. Furthermore because I need some break within classes.  Of course I keep at their disposal in ca...

Remember that I teach English as a foreign language.  In our classrooms we may find some few high-achiever students, some low-achievers and the rest could be medium-achievers or average students. On this post I’m writing about high-achievers.  These students have some common characteristics, by means of which we may know that they are that kind of learners. They’re marvelous people but also medium- and low-achievers deserve all our attention and respect.  High-achievers are in some way conscious they’re good students and they see themselves as such. They’re creative learners and can reflect about their learning ways.  They usually are positive, optimistic and joyful students, this latter case being: the older the more they can be joyful I’d say, from my experience.  These students, if treated in a correct way, can help his classmates. As well we must be careful with them: they might get bored in the classroom, so we could think of delive...

  We teachers have to teach our students how to think. How to learn to think on their own. We will provide them with texts that will make them think, and we’ll do so in the school subject of English as a foreign language too. Texts that matter are convenient. I mean we’ll use those texts from which we can draw a nice discussion as a follow-up activity to simple reading. We teachers will help them join what read with their own lives. My experience at teaching English is that we can provide our students with texts that have an interdisciplinary nature: English plus history, English plus short biographies, English plus human-interest texts, etc. In some way yesterday I wrote about a transcendent view of human beings, something like: If you love you’ll be loved. I don’t mean we should love to seek being loved in a selfish way: love is generosity, love is giving yourself to the loved person, love is benevolence love – wishing what’s good, and is there anything better than ...

  I can tell you all of you that for setting a communicative approach to my English-language lessons I foster communication between my students and me, and among themselves. Also I foster discussions. Discussions are great for improving my students’ communicative competence. We exploit texts I hand them out. Even from a small point inside one of the texts we can start a nice discussion about a topic, or after having worked on a text we can talk about the topic of its. With some imagination you can get a lot from a text, both talking about the general topic or from smaller points inside it. Usually I hand out my students worksheets with two texts: one is B1 level and the second is C1 level of English. B1 is intermediate and C1 advanced. I include these two levels because my students have varied levels of English, but they’re able to get a lot from both texts, admirably. As well discussions make people think and learn how to think. Moreover it opens up chances of talk...

  The students I have in my classes have to be the protagonists of their own learning, crystal clear. I will – after Easter short vacations – talk with them in the classroom. They’re grown-ups. With one group I’ll speak in English with them, while with the other group (lower English level) I’ll do it in Spanish, our common mother language. Currently they’re all the students I have. I’m a part-time teacher. And I’ll ask them why we carry out such and such activities in the classroom. The point is for them to become kind of more active students – they already are but they can be more active or more protagonists, or maybe more aware, and that’s it. As well I’ll draw some conclusions about the activities they prefer, and maybe the ones they do not like that much. I will do it. Let’s see what they want to tell me. I want for them to be more aware about why we carry out those activities they seem to like quite much. For learning English – learning and acquiring too – I ...

  My class-groups are mixed-ability ones. Like any one of yours, I guess, right? Anyway, what to do? For example I catch myself translating something I just said or explained, into Spanish, our mother language, for some of my students, while I try to create and make up immersion into English, and so in that way I could facilitate acquiring the language. But the quick solution for some of my rather low-achievers is to turn into Spanish. I said low-achievers, but it’s not so: just there’re so many different levels of English amongst my dear adult students. All of them are nice and so willing to learn and eager to participate! Any suggestions are tentatively welcome. I’m thinking of, on the other hand, making up worksheets of a higher level for those who can go faster and can reach a more thorough communicative competence. Something also I can do is making the high-achievers monitor my lower-level students, whatever they may do, even translating into Spanish, while I w...

  With my adult students we work out worksheets I hand out to them. And we take good advantage of them indeed! I read them out, then they do so, I present the words they don’t understand, and which ones are new to them. Other exercises and activities we carry out are saying the meaning of words in English, or the other way round: I say the meanings and they give me the words, after we’ve read the worksheet several times and they have a clear scheme of that worksheet. Also they summarize the worksheet and now yes, they translate Spanish expressions into English ones from the worksheet, so I ask them “How would you say… in English?” The point is for my students to get a nice communicative competence. And this school year as well I’m presenting grammar points, also for a communicative purpose: they learn and/or revise ways of saying everyday things in English. The classes, as you know are in English, tending to 99% in that marvelous language. The class-group should be ...

  With my adult senior students I usually implement the same routine, and it’s okay with them. Basically I hand them out a worksheet from time to time. We work on it from different attack points, also here basically the same as always. When we’ve worked on the same worksheet for a rather long time, and they master the vocabulary and the phrases of its, we change into the next worksheet I’ve composed for the time. My students like this way of conducting, and are pretty motivated and even enthused with the worksheets, and also with talking with American volunteer girls, at conversation sessions along the week. As different from other ordinary people, my students have lost any fear to speak in English, and they do so even before the class and even after the class. It’s so wonderful to teach them! The worksheets are about given topics: At a travel agency, At the airport, Common and useful phrases, Stories I compose myself, etc. / Photo from: vincent van gogh www taringa...

  We English language teachers can raise our students’ curiosity about how we say some common Spanish phrases in English. For example “How do we say such and such expression in English?” And you may think of phrases like “¿¡De verdad!? ¿Lo dices en serio? Despedir del trabajo. ¡Me pones de los nervios! No me extraña. ¡Por supuesto! ¡Ánimo! ¡Sírvete tú misma!” I’ve worked out on this issue with my senior students and has turned out nice: they were curious about how we say certain things in English. If any of you are interested in learning some common phrases in English (or in Spanish), let me know, and I will post 2 worksheets! Anyway I can give you the previous idioms as a tip right away: “Really? Are you serious? To get fired. You’re driving me crazy! No wonder! Sure! Cheer up! Help yourself!”/ Photo from: www bikeroar com. the pic is just an illustration

We teachers of English or other languages have the danger and peril of giving facts of the language in classes, while the key point for classes is, in my opinion, communication.  We shouldn’t confine classes to presenting vocabulary and something else maybe.  Currently we are working on texts: stories I invent and make up, and one activity, after reading the text several times, is giving an oral summary. Therefore they practice speaking a lot. / Photo from: Singapore matakdometork com. the photo is just an illustration

Today, amongst other things, I or we have had the first classes. It has been great. Everyone was happy and we wished a happy 2016 to one another.  I remember you that my students currently are adults.  Despite they were the first classes we’ve had immersion: for example I congratulated my students because just the fact that they were speaking in English with me, with all the class – namely we have made up summaries of a story I’ve written in a worksheet.  It has been great, and we were relaxed after the vacations, Christmas vacations. / Photo from: Wolf-Full-Moon-HD-Wallpaper wallpapers ae. the picture is just an illustration

My conducting at classes with adults? My students orally contribute for example with a summary of the story I’ve written.  I say Yes and accept their summarizing the story, so I praise them gently and peacefully, and when they finish I tell them one correction, of an error or mistake; sometimes I correct while they’re just contributing but usually I let them go on.  The atmosphere is one of respect and comradeship, although I’m their teacher and moderator clearly.  Yesterday Monday I gave them my congratulations for their contributions and for improving their communicative skill or competence in this term. / Photo from: venues.meraevents.com_227 notable ca

Written tests should be practical: simple to grade and score, and practical because they concern communication.  We teach a language, or to communicate in that language.  Speaking and listening could be assessed apart and daily, with the aid of a class list, with symbols or small titles, for the grades (or marks). Plus my knowledge of students’ improving and striving.  In my written tests I included: an exercise about vocabulary, to translate from Spanish into English.  Next is an exercise to write a sentence with a word from exercise 1.  Then I include rather practical exercises, like a writing one, to write about a topic or situation, and the students had got to write 100 or 150 words, or the like.  Assessing written communication, as you can see, is included in the test exercises. I tried to assess their communicative competence chiefly.  Now, how we corrected the test in a later class. Students used to say the wor...

At my English language classes I try my students would speak a lot. They’re adults, with some previous knowledge and practice of English.  So as for them to talk in English I hand them out worksheets.  Some oral activities we carry out are making up summaries of the stories I invent and write for them in the worksheets, defining new words and describing pictures from a magazine that includes so many ones.  And they do speak in English; with errors and mistakes, but we can communicate with one another. I correct one or two errors or mistakes. / Photo from: woman-computer-writing f3y com

In my classes with adults we work on worksheets I compose myself, usually with useful idioms and expressions to survive and live in an English-speaking country or through the Internet, plus a story I invent and make up for each worksheet.  We foster communication by speaking, so we hold oral communication.  I have only two classes per group per week, so we focus on speaking.  To foster and boost speaking we carry out different activities, like summarizing the story of each worksheet, defining words from the worksheet, describing pictures from a magazine that has a lot of pictures so varied, asking questions by me or by the students. / Photo from: cam-college-student-studying-shutter www globesicc com

Oh, what do we do with such a worksheet?  You know, we work on it in different ways, following a plan usually.  The students basically learn useful and helpful expressions and phrases.  We read the worksheet in different ways, first I read it out myself. Another thing we do is making up summaries of the story, or change the end of other worksheet stories, guess the end… / Photo from: window-cleaning expressservicegroup com. this picture is just an illustration