Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Ligezhuang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Qingdao 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.
Teachers use many different techniques to teach English language. It is ideal for the teachers have their own style that helps students to be eager to learn and, in this case, students have a good learning experience. Learning is a natural instinct of any human being. The main goal for the teacher is to find appropriate methods and techniques for the specific age group and for the certain level. It is easier when learners are surrounded by the language environment and have an opportunity to imply their knowledge in a real life. For those learners, who are not so lucky, it is the teacher`s job to provide as many effective techniques for learning language as it possible. All methods have their own strong and week sides and some techniques work better than others. The professional teacher should use methods that engage students for learning and keep their motivation constantly. The good teacher takes into account age, prior domain knowledge, memory capacity, motivation, interests, personality, a cultural background and needs of the learners. Nowadays, teachers have a wide range of learning techniques, from the oldest, like grammar-translation, to the newest, that include modern devices for effective learning. Having so many approaches, it is can be difficult to decide which is the best to use. Experienced teacher always use different techniques to produce the best results. In the TEFL course I learned the most effective method that was put forward by Jeremy Harmer. It is the Engage, Study and Activate method. For each stage we use different learning techniques. But even the best learning techniques must be based on the certain conclusions. And one of the most important is exposure to language as much as possible. But to make language learning effective for the students, stress and anxiety have to be low. The best way to make the learning process less stressful is the way that is being used in elementary and preschool education; learning through games. Using games, students learn even without realizing. Here we just use learners` curiosity as the main driver of learning. The goal is to let students focus on an area that interests them and learn about it for themselves. And it is also a good way to keep students motivated. Using games is one of the best way to engage students, to rise their interests and get them involved in the lesson. That is why this technique can be very effective and at any age. Engage stage is very important, because this stage sets the tone tor the whole lesson. During the Study stage the teacher has to provide students with a variety of activities where students will be focused on the construction of language. It could be hangman, fill in the blank, worksheets, word search activities, etc. At this stage, activities could be balanced where the teacher will explain the structure of the language and the students will want to discover it for themselves. And the final one, is the Activate stage. It is a very important stage that shows if the lesson was productive or not. Doing different activities, students should be using the language as effectively as possible. This would be a time for real-world simulation activities such as communication games, role-plays, story writing, etc. In summary, to make the learning process interesting and effective for the students, my lessons have to be balanced with a range of activities and include all stages wherever possible.
