Experiences of a teacher of English

  We can count on the transcendent One, who is God our father. He has a limitless love of all dads and moms, even more than that. The clever thing is trusting and counting on him. That makes life much easier and we are not inclined to a fate. We are taken care of with limitless love and tenderness. We have empirical knowledge but also we have philosophical and metaphysic knowledge. And that knowledge tells us we can count on God. He is our father God. And this makes us be more tranquil and easier: we are not advocated to a blind and sightless fate. We Christians have the knowledge of God’s providence upon us. And thus and therefore we can live more tranquil and peaceful. And that on the street, at our job, at home, always, always. / Photo from: face2faceafricacom. The illustration is just so, a nice illustration. We can have a hint from God in creation. And we men and women collaborate with God at his creation: we somehow complete creation, we cooperate with hi...

  The foreign or second language teacher must train his students to acquire some communicative competence. A lot of communicative competence, I’d say. He will not give just language facts, like words, but he will train his students to get that competence. The communicative approach is okay. But consider also that it implies some notional and functional approaches. The student will learn about different topics and as well he will train himself at saying things that are performative: how to book a reservation, how to claim for something, how to apologize, how to ask about something, and zillion of more nice things. All that with serenity. Classes will be practical, although the teacher, or the students, can also give the needed vocabulary and grammar. Students will be exposed to massive English – if the case – and in that way they’ll also acquire the language, and not only learn it. Acquisition has something of unaware learning. And adults can also acquire, and not on...

  Homework? It’s essential. If I had kids as students I would assign and set some homework. It is useful. I teach English, as you may know. At home the students could write compositions or focus on already corrected-by-me compositions or essays. Or also they can read and re-read some text we’ve worked on at the classroom. Etcetera. Only we teachers should realize that they have other school subjects and must also do homework for those subjects… At home they can sediment what learned at school. However, if we follow the flipped-classroom model the homework would be so different: The kids search, read and visualize material at home and they bring that material to the classroom to discuss about it, said in a rather simplistic way – that’s the core thing I think; well also I’d add that the teacher help the students get and obtain something more specific, more defined, at the classroom. At home also they can visualize tutorials and can work online. In that latter case ...

  Lately I’m having more lessons with adults. They’re great and very grateful and kind. Also they’re more demanding than most of kids. Now, these days I’m trying to make out their levels. There are two levels, two groups, but each student has his or her own level anyway! There should be more groups, but this far it’s only two groups. I have to combine multiple leveled-activities. And also I only have one lesson per group in the week at one of my schools! / Photo from: Heathrow Airport. They’re learning English also for traveling abroad.

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  I have recently started English classes with more adults. They’re great. And very motivated. I enjoy to teach them, they’re demanding though. They need English for traveling and because some of them have sons or daughters in some English-speaking country, mainly in the UK, Ireland or the States. They’re great, and very demanding, as I said. Now they’re making out what exactly their level and communicative competence in that language is, to attend the corresponding lessons and levels. I can also learn from them: they tend to work nice and take learning and acquiring English pretty seriously, and most of them don’t want to miss any lesson. And quite perseverant. Even sometimes I learn vocabulary from them... They use nice learning strategies. When teaching the lowest level class I have to adapt my teaching at that level – some of them know little. At the same time I also have to raise the level when teaching high-achievers: by no means can I have them get bored, b...

  We have already progressed along the school year for a while, okay. And if we’re foreign or second language teachers we may have to also learn that target language. And we also need vocabulary, to help our students. One way for learning vocabulary is massive reading, for example a novel or an essay book. If we read massively we’ll learn words inadvertently. But remember, we need to read a lot. In that way we’ll be not only learning the language but acquiring it, in an unaware way. And since we’re learners we will be able to advise our students in a nice way. We can consult the dictionary for some words but others will get stuck in mind inadvertently, as I said. And all that’s very nice, and useful. In that way as well we’ll be acquiring what we could call the language sense: you can state learning strategies from your own learning experience. You’re a learner, you’re like a teacher, you can advise other learners. You read a lot, you get some words, quite many ones...