Teach English in Haifeng Nongchang - Yancheng Shi

While teaching, a well-planned structure course can give both teachers and students a clear direction, it is a record and guide of goals and results for teaching and learning. 1.Benefit of planning Once teacher step in the class, she or he should know how to activate the class. A planned and rehearsed course can get teacher and students into the study mood immediately. No course plan would result in students losing their attention, getting confusing about the class and losing their interests and patience eventually. Course plan can guarantee the objective of English lessons being achieved also it is a good way for improvement. To avoid wandering of both teachers and students in the class, a proper lesson plan can help. Writing down your expectation for the students, what they should have achieved by the end of first semester no matter in grammar, vocabulary or listening skills etc... also your strategy to facilitate those students. Considering your plan as a tracking documentation that would help to keep the initial target. Making the course plan a record of teaching history to remind the teachers what have been done, which materials have been used and substitute teachers could quickly catch up the process of learning and cover your classes. It is vital to keep the plans simple, flexible and adaptable. Neat and reusable structure is recommended, also a balance structure covering receptive skills and productive skills is suggested. 2.Build a consistent, flexible and balanced plan to facilitate the course goal. Normally the goal of English learning is that students can master the language, to communicate. To achieve the goal, teachers need to break it down into a sequence of lessons, consider proper teaching materials, how to convey the lessons, what kind of ESA will be applied in this class, timing and quantity arrangement for class activities and how to enhance and practice students’ both receptive and productive skills. There would always be unexceptional scenarios happening during the classes. For example, you raise the bar for second round engaging activity however your students could not fully understand and start to lose their attention. Then you will need a backup activity that relatively easy to replace the hard one. To be able to use the language, reading, listening, writing and speaking are essential. Teaches should make sure that all courses include every element that students need. Teacher could engage the students with reading or listening certain material that suit their level of English then enhance those receptive skills at study phase by teaching new vocabularies and practice speaking and writing at active phase such as getting students in pairs to do conversations on given topics or asking each of them write a short story and read to the class. Also, it is quite important to incorporate variety of works and activities to enlighten students’ passion and interests to learn a new language. Experienced teacher may just write short and brief notes to remind them the procedures to prompt the learning however a beginner teacher is suggested to be fully prepared and write down a comprehensive plan. 3.What do we put on the plan? Though lesson plan varies when it designs to target different group of students or teach different language point,general information should be included such teacher, date and time, class level, room number, expected number of students, contents, focus, teaching aids, learner objective, teacher aims, anticipated problems for students and for teachers. Those written information remind teachers to create a suitable course for variety of students. Next step is to rehearsal the plan and write down what should happen during the class in that case teachers will not be panic and lost during the class. Talking teaching present continue as example, we list out the objective like by the end of the class, students should be able to use and identify present continue. Teachers aim could be like demonstrate rather than explain, reduce teacher talking time, elicit the right structure of present continue etc... anticipate problems for students may have pronunciation, using the tense in context etc. and be prepared that teacher might get lost during the lesson some time. Finally, write down a class reflection, an effective way to improve teaching and learning process. Teachers can find out the problems and modify the lessons accordingly and check if students retain the knowledge. For example, reviewing that if all students understand how to use past simple. If not, recall students’ performance from each stage, did all students actively evolve in all activities? Did the word game work? Did they capture the essence of usage of past simple during the study phase? Can the students answer questions or discuss past holidays with past simple? In conclusion, prepare a course plan can help not only in improving teaching skills for teachers but also facilitating students to master the language. Reference International TEFL and TESOL Training course book International TEFL and TESOL Training video