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About 2 years ago, I have been working as an English tutor and teaching adults online courses in China. I graduated as a science major, so I had little teaching experience before and the only reason I got that job is that my English pronunciation acted pretty good during the job interview. Before my first class, I was sent to a training programme which includes how to analyze a class structure and how to deal with adult students. But even after I completed the internal training programme I still felt not confident to be a tutor and at that time I considered teaching English would only be a temporary job. And in my first class, my students and I had this class by using an online meeting application so I can share my teaching material, which is the power point, to them. In the very beginning of the class, I introduced myself and got students introduced themselves so we can get to know each other better. The class was not as terrified as I thought, the students were very polite and active. I used to think that adults may reluctant to participate in the class activities and practices, but I was wrong. Although some of them might be a little tired after a long day work, they still tried very hard to cooperate with teachers and get along with classmates. Compared with younger people who spend their parents’ money to learn knowledge, working adults spend their own money to join a class to upgrade or improve themselves for a promotion opportunity or to meet requirements of a better occupation. They were well motivated and eager to learn English without wasting any time. The entire teaching process was interesting but exhausting. The duration was supposed to be 1 hour but I finished the class with more than 2 hours. The interesting part was that I can share my opinion and have some fascinating discussion with students, while the exhausting part was I couldn’t finish the class on time because I incorrectly estimated the time consumption by giving too much information during one class. I realized there still a long way to go to become a real tutor and I also realized I kind of like this job by helping people achieve their goals. Therefore, I decided to further my study not only in my English proficiency but also in teaching, which means if I want to do this as a lifelong occupation just being good in English pronunciation is not enough. I also need to polish my English grammar, my reading skills and of course my teaching skills. Only comforting your students and make them feel better doesn’t equate to being a good teaching in teaching adults, and I need to learn more about it. And I felt this every time when I was teaching and this feeling was getting stronger with time. About three months ago, I enrolled in the TEFOL courses not only for the certification but also for learning some real techniques in teaching English. From this course, I learned how to design a class plan which is very important for someone like me to stick with the time conditions; I learned the structure of a class process in different stages such as engage, study and active to get a clear idea what should I when teaching a new grammar point. And I learned a systematic structure of different tense, such as present continuous and past tense with different formats and usages. And this is the first time I realize that teaching is not about how a teacher giving information to students, but how teachers stand in students’ shoes to help them acquire knowledge. In a word, I will keep learning until I can be a real qualified teacher.
