Teach English in Yushan Zhen - Linyi Shi

Teachers influence the lives of students much more significantly than we imagine. A teacher with the right skills inspires and influences entire student lives. They are instruments who can ignite powerful thoughts in students and unleash their true potential. To bring about such long-standing impacts, it is important for teachers to have certain skills. In addition to being knowledgeable in our area of expertise and having the ability to plan and execute lesson plans, successful teachers also need to possess a few “Extra” personal skills. These specialized teaching skills will not only help us be an effective teacher, but a successful one as well. Following are some of the important teaching skills a teacher should foster: 1.Patience: One of the most important qualities a teacher can have is patience. Patience is a very helpful quality to be successful in the classroom. 2.Creativity: Successful teachers are creative in many ways. They have the ability to think outside of the box, use the resources that they have to create amazing lessons and activities, and come up with creative ways to handle discipline in the classroom. 3.Communication and Collaboration: To be able to communicate and collaborate with others is an extremely important personal skill to have as an educator. A successful teacher needs this skill whether communicating with students, parents or colleagues. 4.Discipline Skills: Discipline is not about punishing students; rather it is a way to manage and guide students. The most important discipline skill includes being respectful, responding to students, and reciprocating their interests. In order to discipline students, a teacher should have Self-Discipline which means to have the willpower and control and to not be affected when students are misbehaving. 5.Student Engagement Skills: To be an effective teacher, we should develop student engagement skills so that we can motivate our students. Developing a strong rapport with students is one of the best ways to ensure that the students are engaged in the class. Apart from the above interpersonal skills, other teaching skills are also important. To teach a particular language, teaching skills plays an important role and have been divided into two major categories such as: Receptive Skills: Reading and Listening; and Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing. All skills are equally important and a teacher should be able to incorporate all of them into their lessons to have a balanced approach (wherever possible). Receptive Skills: (Reading and Listening) Any person read or listen either for a purpose or for entertainment. Reading or listening for a purpose helps us to achieve a particular goal and for entertainment it proves to be enjoyable or pleasurable in some way. But there are times when reading or listening are mix of both the motives (for a specific purpose and for entertainment). Reading is the most favored and practiced skill in English classes. Reading should be followed by checking the learners understanding of comprehension. In addition, teacher can use specific activities for developing reading, using materials that are authentic (such as journals, magazines, dictionary etc.). Listening is different from hearing as it involves understanding. A teacher should be able to generate interests of the students by exposing them to a good lesson plan (appropriate to all students). Readers and listeners implement many specialist techniques/skills according to their needs of expertise, for example: Predictive Skills: Prediction of content from a headline or introduction. Specific Information/ Scanning: To listen or read for a particular information. General idea/ Skimming: To get a general understanding of the content. Detailed Information: To understand everything in detail in a concentrated manner to gain full benefit. Deduction from context: To deduce the meaning of the words/phrase from the context. But problems arise while teaching and learning of receptive skills which are mainly in connection with the language contained in the text, the topic and the tasks of the students. Language There are many ways to overcome language difficulty such as: Pre-teaching vocabulary: To teach the students difficult language and structure prior to the commencement of a reading or listening activity. Careful selection of texts: To present the students with the materials which are suitable according to their knowledge. Topics Teachers should be able to choose those topics that create interest of the students. Knowing their interest assists the teacher greatly in selecting suitable materials and this helps to develop enthusiasm in students. Tasks Teachers should provide comprehension tasks that promote understanding which is realistically achievable e.g. jigsaw puzzle. In short, basic keys to successful receptive skills are; - Interesting/ motivating materials. - Create interest before reading/ listening. - Pre-teaching Vocabulary. - Varieties in materials. - Usage of materials to practice different skills. - Comprehension tasks that promote understanding. - Incorporation of activate phases. Productive Skills (Speaking and Writing): These skills are quite different in many ways but both are used for the purpose of communication. Speaking requires a greater degree of fluency while writing requires a greater degree of accuracy. Both accuracy and fluency carry equal importance; accuracy ensures the understanding and use of the language while fluency ensures the creative usage. To develop the speaking skill; some of the activities are listed below: Controlled Activities: Accuracy based activity where the language is controlled by the teacher e.g. Drilling, and Prompting. Guided Activities: Accuracy based activity but little more creative and productive e.g. Model dialogues, Guided role play. Creative Communication: Fluency based activity e.g. Free role play; Discussions; Debates; Simulations; Communication games etc. Teacher should always encourage students to speak; who have lack of confidence; fear to speak; peer intimidation; lack of interest in. topic or who don’t want to speak because of cultural reasons. These hurdles can be overcome by creating a comfortable atmosphere for the students through pair-work, group activities and by changing dynamics of the class, teacher can encourage interaction. A proper planning of the lesson is required for any skilled activity, which includes guidelines before the lesson; during the activity and after the activity(feedback). Writing skills are different from speaking skills because of grammar, vocabulary, spelling, layout and punctuation of a written text. Helping students in these areas improves writing skills. Therefore, to be an effective teacher, we should be able to motivate and support students so that they are well-equipped to deal with any challenge life throws at them both academically and otherwise. With all the above skills in place, we will invariably take on the title of an effective teacher who inspires students in more ways than one. .