Experiences of a teacher of English

  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...

  Are you a foreign or second language teacher? If affirmative, let’s think of some points that may help you, both if you are a novice teacher or an experienced one. With experts’ help, of course, and what they put into teaching debates.  We language teachers ought to have the main goal for lessons as mastering that language, so we can foster activities which foster communication in that language, yet bearing in mind that those activities should have interesting contents, respectful toward our students’ ways of being and what their parents wish for them.  Now I want to focus on those language activities.  They should promote communication in the target language, thus we create an atmosphere in class where that tongue is the communication vehicle.  That said, like a web is created in class where the normal thing is communicating in, say, English – which is the tongue I teach.  Something essential is planning each and every lesson. And thus when planning a le...

  Both a novice teacher and an experienced one as well must know that it’s the active student the one that really learns, for example a second or a foreign language. I have seen it in our school.  Students should not confine themselves to solely and superficially fulfill what their teacher sets as homework for example.  Successful language learners are the ones who actually wish to learn.  Otherwise they could pass the school subject of for instance English, yet they would not actually learn and acquire that language.  They do not confine to merely attend the language lessons and see what their teacher will say in class: they attend the lessons with the desire and will of getting the most of each lesson. And they will do more than the sole set homework.  They are autonomous learners.  And they work on the course-book on their own and not only on the set activities for homework. Even they access the Internet in search for videos – really useful ones – w...

  Teaching a second or a foreign language may be fantastic. And somehow hard.  That teacher has to be alert: he should teach language facts… but mainly he ought to foster communication in English or whatsoever the target language is.  Thus he may ask his students questions as prompts for further communication in the classroom.  Asking questions also by other students may be great – I have seen it in class this week. A female student asked another female student how this latter one managed at home if she only cooked simple meals. They have an intermediate level and we utilize a coursebook which is A2/B1 level – some lower intermediate grade. The question was absolutely spontaneous.  That questioning each other also can further the communication in the classroom.  Another point, look. It is not the same our students would convey just sentences or otherwise they would convey oral presentations of a few minutes or even longer, of course.  They can choose a...

  We have already started the new school year and some lessons may have been taught.  One of the most important points for a group-class and their teacher is there should be nice rapport amongst them. The teacher seriously has to be an authority reference in the classroom, and at the same time he or she will get their dear students in his or her pocket.  That teacher will seriously try and get them immersed into the lesson.  In order to achieve that, he has to address each student by his or her name, all with affection and interest, real interest in each one of them.  Out of the classroom he will talk with his students yet he will not be their buddy.  You accomplish all that by treating each student with respect, interest, affection, deference, seriousness. Affection with prudence plus without being a simple buddy to them.  And in a foreign language class he will try to get their learners plunged and immersed into English or whatsoever the target langu...

  Today I wished to tell you about several points I consider as paramount.  First, what the teacher does influences upon his or her students. Even I would say that that influences both if he or she does something in the classroom and even in their private life. We teachers transmit and pass on what we are. What we are, I insist on purpose.  So if a teacher is nice, kind, committed in her profession, respectful toward her students, growing as a person and as a professional, and quite some other good things, well, she will do a big good to those students.  Otherwise if that teacher carried out his job in a sloppy way, he would not attain and accomplish to teach well, and likely he would not educate his learners, the persons that have been entrusted to him by their families. That person could do a big bad to those persons. I retain the positive: if a teacher strives to do his job well, he will do a big good to a lot of people.  Another issue, connected with the pre...

  Once upon a time the subdirector or sub-principal of the school where I worked, and this happened more than twenty years ago, told me that of course I had to keep classroom management and discipline, but also I had to bear in mind that ultimately my students were free.  Free to act as they thought better, in that classroom, I add now.  And that made me think, it did. I was a novice teacher. Yes, they are free, as human beings they are.  Jutta Burggraf said that any authority problem starts from a problem of knowing how to order and ask to do, for example at a classroom.  If you want to be listened to and obeyed by your students, well, do not give a lot of orders. We have to insist on the essentials in the classroom, yet we should not give many orders. And leave liberty to act subsequently.  And leave our people to be free. And let them be free.  These ideas are partly by scholar Jutta Burggraf.  We have to leave our students to act as they think...