Teach English in Shizifeng Linchang - Huanggang Shi

The internet is one of the best and most popular sources of teaching materials needed by the teachers in order to make their lessons interesting, entertaining and fun. According to study.com, an online resource is material you find online. It can be an online newspaper, magazine or television website, such as NBC or CNN. However, it is important to remember those resources are not limited only to those few previously mentioned. Finding them is extremely easy. Simple Google search can provide us with multiple websites providing teaching materials. For example, many teachers in China are using resources provided by Super Simple Songs or Fun English Games. Websites like this are particularly important while working with children. This kind of work requires teachers to be creative with their teaching in order to make sure that their student will pay attention, focus and enjoy their classes. One of the reasons for that is a very short attention span of young learners which sometimes can be very challenging. It is urgent to understand why online resources play such an important role in education. I will focus on three reasons that in my opinion are crucial when working with children. Firstly, they can make classes more active which leads to big amount of benefits. Working with children requires providing them with fun activities like dancing, which can be used as a warm up or to review already learned new words. While planning our lessons we should always think about activities like this because children get bored very easily. One of the examples used in this case can be videos showing animated characters dancing to the song Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. Following those characters’ movement can help to remember names of different body parts. There are many sources of videos like this but the most popular is probably YouTube which provides a wide variety of materials helping to teach children. While choosing them, it is very important to remember students’ age and English language level to avoid future problems and confusion. Using online resources to make classes active may be challenging for some teachers but sometimes it is the only way to encourage young learners to study English. Secondly, they make lessons more interesting. Working with exercise books only doesn’t work very well every time. Fortunately, it can be supplemented by online resources like games. Even though some classrooms may still not be equipped with computers, most of them should have at least one able to help the teachers include online games in our teaching process. Websites like Fun English Games or Games to learn English offer interactive ESL games using fun and unusual way to introduce new words, numbers or grammar to the students. In this case, online resources can help the students not only to review but also test their knowledge by finishing simple puzzles or completing small challenges. Again, it is very important to keep in mind English level of our students. Lastly, they make lessons more enjoyable. Working with children requires special attitude. The most important thing during first stage of our lesson is to engage our students and make sure that we can do it in a fun way. Good example in this case may be songs. They can be used as a warm up before the lesson to engage students to speak English and prepare them for the study phase. One of the best examples is previously mentioned website called Super Simple Songs providing songs for children at any age. Potential problems of using this particular resource may be new words related but it may be solved with simple pronunciation exercises before the start of this singing activity. In the rapidly-evolving world the importance of developing our skills and adapting to employers’ expectations is something that teachers must do. Many of them expect their workers to be able to use more and more resources in order to make lessons interesting, helping attract new students. Using online resources is a perfect solution to this problem because they are easily accessible, in most cases free and simple. Sometimes using them may be a little bit problematic but in my opinion, eventually they can be very beneficial for both the students and the teachers. Online teaching aids will keep growing in number because of the ease that anyone can access the internet and share their teaching ideas, plans and resources. They are especially important to children who once discouraged, can give up on English forever.