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When someone is speaking with you or to you what manner of speech should they use? What kind of tone? Well of course, everyone wants to be spoken to with dignity and respect. What if someone raised their voice with you, pointed out your flaws in front of others, or poked fun at your mistakes? No doubt these actions would leave you feeling embarrassed, but that’s not all. Happened repeatedly the aforementioned actions would begin to adversely affect an individual’s confidence and self-esteem. The answers to these questions illustrate a very important point. As teachers the manner in which we speak to our students can have a tremendous impact on whether or not we are building or breaking the confidence of the students we educate. As educators it is important to recognize the affect that our actions can have on the student’s within our care. Never would we want to speak to our students in a way that leaves them feeling ashamed or discouraged. To do so would hinder their potential for learning. Furthermore, it would impede any progress they have made or are capable of making. Thus, we learn that it is important to speak with individuals, particularly our students, in a way that will build them up, and keep them excited about learning. Learning anything new, especially a new language is challenging enough, so rather than add to the stress of our students we as teachers can help alleviate some of their worries by speaking in a way that motivates and encourages rather than devastates. So how is this done? For starters, patience is key. Never would we want to speak in a way that comes off as irritated or exasperated. Doing so could potentially leave the student feeling unintelligent or hopeless. Therefore, it’s important that we keep our speech mild and tactful while at the same time recognizing that the student is not the problem, but rather that the challenge to learning is the problem and that’s what needs to be tackled. This brings to light the second point to keep in mind. It’ll be important to keep a proper perspective of the challenge. Never would we want to view our students as the problem. Should a student sense this negative perception of them this would no doubt be detrimental to their sense of self, and this of course would negatively impact their potential for learning. In summary, we learn that there are some key things to keep in mind when it comes to building confidence in the students that we are instructing. For one, we want to speak in a way that builds confidence rather than in a way that tears it down. Lastly, how we perceive our students will manifest itself through our actions, therefore, if we don’t want to discourage our students it’ll be important to see them as intelligent learners. This positive attitude will be evident by our actions and can serve as a tool for building confidence as well as a source of motivation for our students to continue to try their best. So what kind of teacher will you be? Will you be known for building up confidence or tearing it down? The choice is yours.
