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Teach English in Tingshui Zhen - Linyi Shi

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Tingshui Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Linyi Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.

To begin with, I would like to state why I have chosen to write exactly about the English learning difficulties. As for a non-native speaker, English is a foreign language to me, or, in other words, L2. I have learnt it since I was a pre-school boy. After achieving the upper-intermediate level of proficiency in English, I started to give classes to my fellow citizens and after achieving the advanced level, I moved on with teaching to China. I have experienced difficulties of learning English in terms of pronunciation, grammar, listening, vocabulary and way of thinking and the same problems have often been faced by my students both from my country and China especially. The other problems I noticed are not only in having or absence of talents to languages, but also in motivation and language differences. Such aspects often challenge teachers, when teaching English and students, when learning it. That is why I would like to share with my experience in this sphere. Even if you are a person having talents to languages and you easily memorize new vocabulary or grammar, you still certainly need to do regular practice of L2, because even with a brilliant memory you can forget things that were learnt long time ago. The less talent to languages you have, the more you have to practice regularly to keep yourself fit. I do not believe people, who refuse learning a new language stating, “I have no talents to languages at all”. Somehow, you acquired your L1, didn’t you? Talking about motivation, especially young learners have little motivation to study English. It is difficult to talk to a four-year-old child about future career prospects. You often have to find another way to motivate people, who do not really get the idea of importance of studying a foreign language. For children it can be a shiny sticker, for a teen it can be a small pile of candies. Regarding an adult person it is not your job to motivate them, but whoever you teach, a small child or an adult, ESL lessons have to have some useful games related to the topic of the lesson (especially for the young learners, whose attention span is short) and the teacher should always praise the students’ efforts put into learning. As a young learner I was quite responsible and just a verbal praise would be enough for me, but is everyone the same in terms of motivation? No, that is why, your teacher has to be experienced and flexible enough to find the way to motivate you, for example, nowadays the abovementioned ways are typical among the ESL teachers. Regarding language difference, in my case learning English as a foreign language was comparatively not a big problem, since the vocabularies of my mother tongue and English are 20% similar to each other. However, this is my case, which is a lucky break that you can not really refer to, let’s say, Chinese learners, whose vocabulary has no similarities to English one. English language often seems to be a difficult language to learn for many nations in terms of tenses and some other grammar issues like articles, reading (since English is not a phonetic language), accent differences between native English speakers and pronunciation (“th” sounds seem to be a problem for many learners for whom English is L2). What is the solution of such problems for me as for an English learner? Except for the clear explanation of abovementioned issues, observation of literate native English speakers using English in speaking and writing and practicing it would be the most effective solution. To sum up, I would like to state that whatever difficulties you face when learning a foreign language, you have always to be motivated by different means, normally different at different age. Before setting into motion a good saying “Practice makes perfect” in real situations, you shall be guided by a professional teacher or/and a good teaching material to acquire new knowledge and to make it clear about how to use the language correctly.


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