Teach English in Daguan Zhen - Chengdu Shi

Teaching English as a second language is a rewarding yet challenging journey. English is one of the primary languages in the world. For foreigners, learning English can open many opportunities in their life. If they are lucky they will be exposed to English at a young age, but many foreigners start learning English when they are adults. As a teacher, you must analyze each student and class level and adapt the lessons to what fits best. Every student, class, and culture is different. Using teaching skills that fit their needs will ultimately set both you and the students up for success. Teachers must be familiar with different teaching skills if they want to be a great English teacher. There are different methodologies teachers can implement in a lesson. Grammar-translation is great for learning the basic principle of the system. However, the downside with grammar lessons is that it prevents the students from learning the natural flow of the language. It also requires teachers to know somewhat of the student’s native language to help them understand English grammar easier. Audio-lingualism is a habitual and conditioning learning method where it is focused on long repetition and drills. Drills are still popular, but over the years linguists discovered that learning language is more than just forming habits. However, it is still a good learning method when it is incorporated with other ways of learning. Presentation, practice, and production is a method where teachers present the context and situation for the language, explaining the meaning and form, then students practice making sentences with them. Task-based learning is where teachers give students a task and they complete it using English. Teachers can provide feedback and clarity once students finish the task. Communitive language teaching approach focuses on the importance of language functions. Community language learning is a student-centered lesson where teachers let students engage in what they want to talk about. Teachers will help when students are stuck during a conversation. The silent way method is where teachers say as little as possible to encourage students to discover the language themselves. The suggestopaedia method is focused on the students feeling comfortable, confident and relaxed so they have an easier time learning. The students and teacher often have a parent-children relationship. The lexical approach is focused on words and phrases rather than grammatical structure. All of these teaching methods have their pros and cons and there are no better or worse methods to use when teaching. The teacher must learn what works best for his or her students and use them accordingly. The most effective teaching skill a teacher should learn is implementing the engage, study, and activate method into every lesson. The ESA approach allows for flexibility and structure into a lesson. The engage phase is typically at the beginning of the lesson where teachers spark interest in their students by giving them materials that are fun, stimulating, and interesting. An example of an engage phase would be showing students a picture of various animals and starting a conversation about them. The study phase is where students are given more structured activities and it usually starts with elicitation. After you elicit as much information as possible you can give exercise materials for them to complete. The activate phase is where students are encouraged to do role-plays, communication games, and debates so they can practice the language. This phase is focused more on fluency rather than accuracy. ESA consists of a few different lessons. The straight arrow ESA lesson is where the teacher takes the ESA in order. The boomerang ESA lesson consists of engage, activate one, study, and activate two. The patchwork ESA lesson consists of engage, activate, activate, study, activate, engage, study, activate. This lesson is great when the material is not as straightforward and it requires more learning. These methods and teaching skills are proven to work for both new and established English teachers. As a new teacher myself, learning these skills has given me the confidence to tackle lessons in a structured and effective way. Knowing these teaching skills are great, but no matter how great the lessons are, a good teacher should always be kind, patient, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and love teaching. Teaching is not only about giving lessons but building relationships with your students and creating a loving atmosphere for learning.