The Perfect Skillset of a Great ESL Teacher
First of all, I would like to mention that I am very happy about successfully mastered units. I am sure that the acquired knowledge will help me in further work and upgrade my teaching skills.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Dragan M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
Early Years of My Career
I met the importance of teaching skills and what they mean in general at the beginning of my teaching career, a long time ago. I have to admit that at the beginning of my career, I understood the job of the teacher not quite full and in the right way, that is, what is required of me as a teacher.
Already after my first classes, I realized that I would be required to have special knowledge and skills, and I realized that some of them I needed to improve and some I had yet to develop. However, the teaching of English takes place in special conditions, for example with students of different ages in the same group, and it is necessary to reach each student with different learning techniques and transfer the knowledge of English, which is sometimes very demanding and not so easy. It starts with four basic skills, receptive and productive, but their usefulness depends on how they are used, which is what I realized shortly after the start of my teaching career and what I started to work on.
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Why Do Teachers Need Those Skills?
Skills form the basis of the work, but further upgrading and alignment with all other aspects of teaching work are needed. For example, since my target group is children up to the age of twelve, I quickly realized that it was not enough just to repeat a word or sentence repeatedly, but to put a much more productive word into a humorous context when children would start reproducing it themselves, and so much faster adopt. For slightly older children, whose work focuses not only on speech and listening but also on reading and writing, I soon realized that learning is much better and faster if keywords are put into the context of some logical and fun game, such as crossing words, making rhymes, or drawing words from dice.
Also Read: All You Need to Know About Teaching Beginners
Using The Skills
Each of the four basic skills should not be kept in isolation and strictly adhered to, it is often much more productive to give them creative attributes and make them interactive, which is accepted by children very hard and sometimes with unexpected ease they acquire the knowledge that is transmitted to them.
Over time, having acquired work experience that is crucial in this type of work that I do, I have developed with the ability to recognize how I can use which skill to obtain optimal results, ie to help students master the material in the fastest and best way. Certainly, learning is a continuous process and there is always room for personal improvement and the acquisition of new knowledge and techniques that assist in the work.
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Also, I am always happy if any of my older colleagues relay their experience in a particular field of work and that way helps me to overcome some of the problems or situations that I may face in my future work.
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