TEFL Teaching skills in the classroom.

Teaching skills are a combination of knowledge personality and judgement. A lot of people think that teaching is merely a teacher standing in front of a class telling them about a certain subject but it is definitely much more than that. And it doesn?t bode that just because you know your subject knowledge in depth, you are able to teach it well.

Teaching styles vary from teacher to teacher but the good core skills are a good voice and organisational skills. Having decent facilities to use can greatly aid in your teaching and conveying what you wish for the student to learn such as videos, computers or cassettes but if you are a good teacher these should just be an added bonus rather than an necessity.

Students take a class to learn and develop their skills and a good teacher helps them to learn in a way that suit?s the student style and personality. Gaining knowledge is useless unless it is applied to their thinking and problem solving. The teachers roll is to transform knowledge into suitable tasks.

The teacher needs to be continuously creative with problem solving activities. most of us will remember our best teacher as some one who brought the subject alive. The lesson should be relevant and capture the imagination of the class. Planning is essentials so that you can see the progress of the students. Learning experiences should be structured by teachers and meet the needs of the learner.

Ask questions so the students think about what they are learning and understand what you are ultimately trying to show them. The skill is to improve their weaknesses whilst developing their strength. The main way to improve your skills is to listen to your students. as they learn from you so you need to realise that you learn from students on how to teach better and how to relate to them.

Teachers should evaluate every lesson afterwards so that they can see what worked and how the time differs from what they estimated it to be.

Teaching is to lay the foundation for further learning of the student to continue to want to progress. the teacher has a big responsibility to teach which in turn is a big commitment.

One main problem is how to motivate the students and sustain their interest. The teacher needs to put the student first. Their job is to make themselves redundant that is that the student has learnt so much from the teacher and then are able to get on by themselves.

A good lesson for the teacher is to constantly evaluate your teaching. It is good to have a lesson plan so you know what you are going to do and set the time that the activities should take. Then afterwards one should keep a record of how the lesson went. for example seeing how long something happened as opposed to how long it actually happened. also you can see what worked and what didn?t pan out the way you wanted it.

Unfortunately the teacher may be teaching but the student may not be learning. so always remember the Chinese proverb: I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.

Source: an introduction to literacy teaching - rose Gittins Learning to teach in the secondary school Edited by Susan Capel/ Marilyn Leask/ Tony Turner.

Author: Meredith Keel

Date of post: 2007-04-12