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There are many important aspects of teaching the English language in a classroom such as receptive and productive skills. However, establishing a good rapport is the most important thing to do when starting a semester or a new class. Making sure you have a good relationship with your students right away is crucial for their learning in the future and will make the class fun for not only the students but the teachers as well. This is why on the first day of class it is so important to not open the course book and begin drills or gap fill exercises right away, but instead, to make sure the teacher and students build a good relationship and for the students to build a good rapport with each other too. One of the biggest benefits to establishing good rapport is the students will have a more comfortable and safe learning environment. If the students feel comfortable then it is much more likely for them to want to participate and not fear being wrong. Giving students a safe space to try and learn from their mistakes is a crucial part of learning English. Constantly encouraging them to try and ask questions will only further help them to improve their language abilities along with creating a good student-student and student-teacher bond. Having a good relationship with the students will also increase the likelihood they will look forward to class. I have taken three different language classes in the past and the ones where I had the best relationship with the teacher were always the ones I was looking forward to. The students will become more interested in what you have to say and will be much more likely to want to listen and talk to you. Increasing the enjoyment of your students will also help increase the enjoyment of the teacher as well. When both students and the teacher look forward to the lesson it becomes a much more enjoyable experience. The teacher will likely take more care into lesson planning and will want to create more fun activities that might get the students talking and practicing English more. Additionally, the students are much more likely to want to participate actively in these activities and will get more out of them because they will talk more even if they may make mistakes here and there. Personally, I have taught English one on one to Chinese students for almost 2 years now through an online program. It has been such a wonderful and rewarding experience to be able to teach children aged 3 to 16. I have seen how important rapport building can be first-hand and now when I have a new student I make sure to get them talking and building the foundations of a good relationship first. When I am able to establish rapport then it is much easier to keep the students engaged and also to correct them as well. There are students I have that are more than willing to talk about what they do during the day or over the weekend and ones that are a bit more shy and will only talk if I ask specific questions. It can be difficult to set up a good rapport for each student but it is very important you make it clear that you are there to assist the students in learning English. The main goal of the classroom is to create a space that can help students learn, this simply cannot happen effectively without establishing good rapport.
