Teach English in Banqiaokou Zhen - Bazhong Shi

Nickasius Sindhunata, M.Ed. Teaching is an activity that requires skills, knowledge, practices, and experiences. A deep learning must be done by a teacher in college first before the teacher does a real teaching at school. Doing teaching is not that simple. There are so many prerequisites that must be mastered by a teacher. A teacher must have learned certain disciplines and be able to transfer that knowledge to the students. Even though the teacher is ready with their skills and their knowledge, but sometimes their skills and knowledge are also not enough to make students motivated in learning English. What’s happened? Do we need to try other strategies? Yes, teachers must find strategies to motivate students to study. There are 5 strategies offered in this essay to motivate students to learn English as a second language. First, we must think about fun teaching methods. Choosing a teaching method needs a skill and wisdom. Before we decide what kind of the teaching methods that we are going to use, we must consider about our situation, our student’s age, and our student’s language background. Those factors will affect our teaching methods, how we do teaching best practice, how we treat the students, and how we assess our students. As the illustration, we have primary school students around 9 – 10 years old, the way we teach them will be different with the secondary school students around 12 – 13 years old. In the primary school we teach using slow techniques, and slow speech to make them learn new vocabularies clearly and easy to be imitated. It might be felt too exaggerated, but for those kids it really helps them to get clarity. In the other hand, when we teach 7 graders at lower secondary school which are around 12 – 13 years old, we can speed up our speech when we teach them. This is aimed to make them learning to speak the language more fluently and more natural. Knowing their age is so important for a teacher since the age indicates the development of their brain. On lower grades we must stimulates their brains by giving fun learning experiences such as games, role play, group discussion, quizzes, and presentations, and CALL (Computer Aided Language Learning). We’re living in the era of technologies. There are so many applications that can be installed on student’s phone or laptop for learning purpose. Fun learning experiences will make kids motivated to learn and dig the knowledge deeper, and it’s determined by our teaching method. The students will start showing their respect and give their attention to the teacher. They will expect more and more fun activities in the classroom and ready to engage in teaching and learning process. After they’re ready to engage in teaching and learning process, it will be easier for students to acquire the values. Those values are endurance, enthusiasm, bravery, and diligence. When they have already had these values while they are learning English, it means they’re ready to learn for life. Those are the reason why our teaching methods will give big impacts to their study motivation. Second, build a good rapport to your students. A good teacher must recognize all the names of his/ her students. It will beneficial for teachers when they remember their students’ name. The students will feel that their teacher give them good attention. Automatically, teacher will get the trust from students. Based on the experiences of the writer, maintaining the tone and the volume level when you’re speaking to students is also important. Our voice must be a sound with full of charisma and sounds calm. Never make exaggerating voice, too soft voice, or to rude tone when you are speaking to the students. You must be firm, wise, but friendly. A nice and friendly teacher will make student motivated to study. Take your time to talk to the students and ask them about their felling during the lesson. Show your big smiles in several times of the learning process. Third, be a well prepared teacher. Everything will be easy, effective, and efficient when a teacher had planned everything carefully. Making lesson plans, designing activities, and designing assignments are really important. A teacher must be consistent and come to the classroom on time. Coming late to the classroom indicates that a teacher isn’t well prepared and not ready to teach.. Prepare organized booklets/ modules, interesting power point presentations, videos, jokes, games to make them interest on your lesson. These fun and prepared activities will motivate students to be active during learning process. When the students are motivated, the learning process will be effective. Fourth, use jokes in your lesson. Yes! You can plan your jokes in your lesson. You can do research on youTube, internet, or books about jokes, but you must be careful to choose jokes to be conveyed to your students. Choose the jokes according to your students’ age. You must plan it and never repeat the same joke in the same class. A kind attitude, cheerful face, and good sense of humor will be plus values of a teacher. Students will be happy to see you as their teacher and they will be motivated to study. Fifth, be a good listener. Some students might have some difficulties in learning. Try to listen to their problems, guide them finding the solutions, and give compliments after they solve their difficulties in learning. Those strategies above are the strategies that have been experienced by writer (me). For 6 years in writer’s teaching career, those strategies are really helpful to motivate students in learning the learning process. Those strategies can be life saver in very hard situations. Bibliography: DeLong et al. (2002). Learning to Teaching and Teaching to Learn Mathematics: Resources for Professional Development [internet]. Mathematical Association of America, USA (Accessed in https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/motivating-students/, on 22 July 2019). TeachThought Staff. 2017. 21 Simple Ideas to Improve Student Motivation [internet]. Teach Thought. (accessed in https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/21-simple-ideas-to-improve-student-motivatio/, on 22 July 2019).