6 Teaching Skills to Support Your Students Learning Process
It’s my dream to be a teacher since I was a little girl. It’s so lucky, I became an English teacher after I graduated from school. I like my job, I always prepared a lot before my class, such as materials, flashcards, teaching plan and so on. Because I hope my students will enjoy my class and gain knowledge through my class.
I heard that a good teacher must be a good actor. I really impressed by this sentence, it always reminds me, no matter how tired you are and how sad you are, once you enter in the classroom, you must be full of energetic and keep a smile.
Through my teaching experience, if you want to be a good teacher, I think not only just read books and ask students to do drilling work, but also teaching skills are very important, no matter who is your students, adults or kids.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jing Z.
1. Attitude
First, I think is the attitude. If you are negative and very serious, nobody will like you, students will feel boring and upset during the class, in that way, they won’t absorb the knowledge from your class. On the contrary, if you are positive and full of energetic, everybody will like you, and they will eager to have your class. In a word, a positive attitude will help you succeed during the class.
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2. Sense of Humor
Besides, a sense of humor is also very important. Just like I said above, a good teacher just like a good actor. Sometimes, I like pretending I am an idiot, I don’t know the answer, or even make a mistake on purpose. Then students will be laughing and tell me the correct answer. Through this kind of teaching skill, will enhance the confidence of students and make the environment of the class more cheer up!
3. Lesson Structure
Third, just like we learned in the training, the order of the learning process is one of the most important teaching skills. We always separate the process into engage phase, study phase and activate phase. But please bear in mind, we must have a correct order during class, we should start with an engage phase, finish with an activate phase. Of course, we have different patterns, such as 'Straight Arrow', 'Patchwork and 'Boomerang'.
4. Teaching Approach
What's more, no matter what, we should remember the class must be “student-centered”. To be an English teacher, we must reduce our teacher talk, leaving enough time for students. So, they will have enough exposure to the language, and make a lot of drilling work and practice.
Also Read: Top Online Lesson Plan Resources for New and Advanced Teachers
5. Games and Activities
In order to make our class more interesting and attractive, I always design some games, such as ‘I spy’ and ‘Memory games’ for engaging phase, ‘hangman’ and ‘word search’ for the study phase, ’role-play’ and ’story building’ for activate phase.
6. Encouragement
The last one, most important, I think is an encouragement. Some students, when they learn a new language, always too shy to speak. Especially for the beginner, they always lack confidence. They worry if I am wrong, others will laugh at me. In that case, the teacher must use the secret teaching skill, that is an encouragement.
During my teaching experience, this is really a functional method. If my students finish work during class, such as ‘role-play’ or some other easy exercise, I will give them a big hug and great praise, such as "Super nice", "Excellent", "OH, my god, you are so wonderful". At the same time, I like to make some exaggerate action, maybe I will make a surprise face and show my thumb, it means you are really very smart, you finished a great job! Through that way, my students are encouraged, they dare to speak English, and they believe that they are the best in the world.
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Are you ready to teach ESL students abroad?
There are so many different teaching skills, I can't decide which is the best for students, but all of them are good for learning. When you have class, maybe you will use the comprehensive of the teaching skills.
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