Teach English in Beisu Zhen - Jining Shi

Four weeks ago, I decided to sign up for the ITTT TEFL course. I wanted to refresh and update my existing knowledge of English grammar and to learn more about what it takes to teach English as a foreign language. Admittedly, I had high expectations of this course. Having now completed the twenty course units, I can say that I’m very satisfied with the content of the course units and the overall approach taken by the ITTT. In this paper, I will answer the question: what is the best thing I’ve learned from my TEFL course?’. While this course provides many teaching tools to aspiring teachers, there is one lesson that I will never forget. In one of the course units we looked at the attitude of the teacher and how this can influence student productivity and thus their learning process. This was demonstrated to us in two videos. In the first video, we saw a teacher that wasn’t very motivated to do a good job. The teacher often ignored students’ questions and was quite bad-mannered to be fair. He basically limited himself to asking questions, which were often not clear and simple. When students struggled with certain pieces of information, he would just continue with the lesson. He simply didn’t care about any difficulties they were experiencing. Furthermore, when he organized a group-activity at the end of the lesson, he forgot about the rules of the activity. This made him look very clumsy. With the activity falling apart, he then decided that it was time to end the lesson. He quickly said goodbye to his students and left the classroom, slamming the door behind him. This was then contrasted with a second video, in which we saw the same teacher now doing everything like it should be done. From the very start of the lesson, he did his best to build report with every single student in the classroom. This started by greeting the students when they entered the classroom. When all students were seated, he told them his name. He then pointed to the students, one by one, to get to know their names. This was then followed by saying ‘nice to meet you’. Not only did he build report this way, he was also teaching the students how to properly greet someone you meet for the first time. During the lesson in the second video, the teacher was also smiling to the students and trying to make them feel comfortable enough to ask questions and to participate as much as possible in English. If the teacher felt that students were struggling with specific materials, he would explain things for a second time or explain it in a different way. This made me realize that it is important to make sure that your students understand what you are teaching them. It is necessary to provide them with clear and simple instructions and to monitor their progress during activities. All this must be done with a good attitude and a desire to help. As a teacher, it is crucial to enter the classroom with a positive mindset. Not every teacher has a charismatic personality. It is however not much to ask to smile from time to time, to genuinely care about the students learning experience, and to focus on giving constructive feedback. It is also not hard to give a compliment every now and then. This will further stimulate student participation. I truly believe that a teacher who is genuinely motivated and interested in improving his students’ abilities, here being English language proficiency, will produce good results. A good teacher will also be motivated to work hard, both in preparing suitable activities for the students, and in guiding students through the different phases of the ESA process in any given lesson. For students, the classroom should feel like a safe-environment. It is a place for them to learn, to make mistakes and to ask questions. There is no need for students to stress during an ESL lesson.