Teach English in Yangtun Zhen - Liaocheng Shi

One of the hell most ESL teacher face or scared of facing in their teaching career is beginner students, but why are beginner students difficult to teach? who are they? How many types of beginner students do we have? What is the best approach to apply in teaching them? These and some other questions will be addressed in this summative task. First who is a beginner? A beginner student is someone who has just started learning something and cannot do it very well yet. This is the simplest that can give us the foundation of what I am about to discuss. Now, we can deduce who a beginner student is from the above definition, a beginner student clearly does not know much yet about what is learner, he may have not grasped the basics yet, he may have not practiced enough yet, so many factors can be responsible to labelling someone a beginner student. How many categories of beginner students do we have? There are mainly two types of beginner students namely true or absolute beginner and false beginner. A true beginner is a student who has never studied English before, they have zero knowledge of English, they do not understand common English words or phrases even as simple as “hello” or “hi” because they had no exposure to English before joining the ESL class; they are often from the rural areas and perhaps uneducated which makes it a big challenge for the teacher, whereas a false beginner is a student who has studied English in the past and, for whatsoever reasons postponed or abandoned learning it. Their skills and vocabularies are very limited because they did not progress very much, they are however accustomed to some English phrases to some reasonable extent. Most beginners are actually false beginners and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages classifies beginners as A1 and A2. Let me move to the next question which is why are they difficult to teach? Whether they are true or false beginners; both has the challenges that comes with it but a true beginner is much more challenging to teach. Firstly, true beginners have no idea what English is, if the teacher starts rambling in a language they do not understand in front of them, many reactions will follow depending on the students’ personal disposition, psychological traits, culture or reaction to change. Some will get nervous, get out-rightly uninterested in the lesson, possibly laugh at the teacher or just stare open-mouthed not because they are rude but because it seems the teacher is just speaking random gibberish or just acting as a clown. Let us not forget that true or absolute beginners understand nothing yet so it will really take time coupled with hard work and consistency from the teacher for any word or phrase to stick to their memory. For false beginners on the other hand, they think they know English because of past exposure. For instance, they have spent countless hours studying the language but cannot hold an English conversation with a native speaker. It is up to us to diagnose our students’ language proficiency levels and prepare teaching English to beginners’ material that works on the basics before we get into anything more advanced. After discussing who beginners are, why they are difficult to teach and their categories, I can go ahead to the last part which is how can we teach them effectively in the classroom. As ESL teachers, we should expect great challenges in the course of teaching them because they are the lowest level and can be extremely frustrating at some point. The feeling that we are sweating for nothing or trying hard in vain especially when there is no noticeable progress in what we teach them or what they have assimilated. How do we start with tem, just like building a house, we first need to dig deep for a strong foundation, then followed by embedding reinforcement upon which our beautiful house will finally be built on. A good foundation cannot be done in a day, it requires time, a good plan in place as well manpower is also needed to implement the plan steadily. How can we teach absolute beginners? Absolute beginners need to start slowly. Even the simplest English phrases can incorporate numerous vocabulary items and grammatical concepts so it is best to start with simple sentences, such as Hello, I am Marta. Repetition is key at this level in order to consolidate the language and encourage memorisation. We may feel this is too much rote learning but at this stage we want our learners to feel comfortable with the language and often phrases at this level lend themselves to repetition. Use visuals and gestures. We should include actions and images in our lessons as much as possible to teach the language as this will provide a bridge between the learner’s language and English. How can we teach false beginners? Build on what they know before tackling a topic or a linguistic concept, find out what the students know so we do not waste time teaching them what they do know and can use their knowledge to expand their English skills. Don’t assume anything. False beginners may come across as quite knowledgeable about English but there are probably holes in their knowledge which will cause problems later on if they are not dealt with. Use introductory activities to assess their knowledge and abilities before jumping in to our lessons. Also use familiar topics by focusing on topics we know the students are familiar with. Topics like greetings, going to a restaurant and talking about family are probably familiar to the students, which means they will feel comfortable trying to talk about them. Finally, these useful tips below can help our students get out of the beginner stages; 1. Prepare well, prepare a lot, keep them talking. 2. Pre-teach or establish classroom language. 3. Let them listen first. 4. Keep instructions clear and simple. 5. Repetition (Drill, repeat, drill, repeat, drill). 6. Show, do not tell. 7. Give them lots of time to practice. 8. Always check for understanding. 9. Celebrate Small Achievements. 10. Do not be boring. Although teaching English to complete beginners challenging to new and old ESL teachers alike, it is also super rewarding when your learners get it. It is amazing to see them move from having absolutely no knowledge to being able to speak basic English. References: www.google.com.us , https://www.goabroad.com/articles/teach-abroad/teaching-english-to-complete-beginners, https://www.english.com/blog/teaching-english-to-beginners/, https://www.theteflacademy.com/blog/2018/03/what-are-absolute-beginner-and-false-beginner-efl-students/