Teach English in Huji Zhen - Jining Shi

This essay will deal particularly of teaching beginner students, students who have only started learning English, which whatever their reason may be for learning English. Beginner students can be scared, nervous, or even ready for whatever is thrown at them. That’s why we have to cater to them and make sure they know what is expected and that we’re here to help and meet their goals. They have to know that learning doesn’t have to be boring, and it’s not just memorizing vocabulary, but also immersing yourself a whole new culture, a whole new world that welcomes you to new ideas and motivating to fill your goals, that in the end is it worth it no matter how you look at it. We start with our first question. Why English, and what motivates that? Getting to know your students is the most important analyses you could conduct when teaching with a new class with some to zero experience in English. It’s important as a teacher to show the students what they would be expecting from the class and also, as a teacher, to get to know their students. Why are they learning English? Is it for work? Does it have to do with their dream? Is it because they’re being forced? No matter the reason there has to be a bridge that the teacher and students can build so they may cross and meet in the middle. From there we continue on not just beginning a lesson, not in the first day, but by starting off with the goals in the class and how, as a teacher, you’ll be able to help them reach those goals, showing them a syllabus or goal tracker for them to see their road to their achievement, and also to show what is expected of them and a schedule so they may see what future lessons come their way. As the syllabus ends we then continue off with some games for the students to talk to each other and yourself to get to know them more personally of what their hobbies and what interests them. The syllabus doesn’t have to be something that can’t be changed, maybe a few students are interested in soccer, maybe a little time is made for them to learn a few vocabulary words that deals with sports. As the lessons continue on, we start off with the basics. How the grammar is structured, if teaching Japanese then their sentence structure is (S)OV(subject, object, verb), but as English speakers we go by SOV. So we can start from teaching those types of basics for them to understand how the English structure works. We can then show some examples of short simple sentences for them to pronounce. Now, it’s not expected for them to get it right away, it’s just example for them to check. We could take “I go to school”, as a simple example. We break it down, showing them that “I” is the subject, “go” is a verb, “to” is a preposition, but they won’t have to know all the complexity about that just yet, and “school” is the object. From there it opens them to knowing English just a little bit more, and we continue on to vocabulary. When I first learned Japanese it was the most difficult part of going to school. Learning vocabulary was difficult and at first hard. So I believe that using activities to is the perfect way to keep the lessons memorized for them. We’re starting with the ESA method, the straight arrow. We introduce the vocabulary and I speak them using the vocabulary. From there we go to the study section and I introduce multiple verbs and objects, while I give them a worksheet for them to check out with the words. Then, finally we do the activity that deals with having the students move on about and using the sentence “I go to school”, only changing the object, for starters. That way the students are able to interact and they are able to obtain new vocabulary to add to their minds. With this they slowly learn something so simple in a matter of a few days and repeat the process for the more simpler beginnings of English for them, to show that they aren’t just there to sit around and listen and not practice English. For beginners it’s very important for the teachers to encourage their students to speak English, no matter how little they think they know. There has to be a line of communication, to slow down during the lessons, to make sure the students are asking questions or going over the same lesson as much as it’s needed for them to understand, speaking with a loud and clear tone. Showing visuals and working with the boards for students to either see or copy for notes will help them throughout the course. Adaption is very important, because everyone is different and you have to make sure that everyone is learning and no one is being left behind even if it means going back to lessons or answering the same questions. As teachers, we can cater to them and help them in ways that other classes might not be able to, it’s knowing that we can make a real difference that can drive us. It’s showing that learning a language doesn’t mean you’re doing it by yourself, as teacher we’re there to help from beginning to end.