Teach English in Xuangang Zhen - Xinzhou Shi

Rapport between a teacher and students is a contact trust and mutual understanding. Why is a sympathy so important? The answer is easy. When you choose a person to communicate with, you will build relations with somebody interesting pleasant and positive. You will never get on well with a nasty person. The opinion or advice of such a person will not carry any weight for you even in a case they are relevant. What will learning be if a teacher is unpleasant to you? No doubt that the lesson will not be successful until the atmosphere is relaxing and friendly. Professionals have knowledge of many ways to set up rapport and make a conducive atmosphere at the lesson. I will talk about the most common of them. The main rule is to respect the students, regardless of their age, and they will respect the teacher back. A good approach is the first step in making great relationships. The teacher should always be positive. People always appreciate those who give them good mood, so use your humour and share your smile as much as possible. It will make the atmosphere relaxed and friendly. You should start the course with an ice breaking activity. A task will help students to fight inner fear and feel more comfortable. It may also make them more open to further communication in the class. Every teacher should pay more attention to the students’ relationship with each other. You should take into consideration their preferences when making sitting arrangements in the classroom. Let them join the groups with students they get on well together and avoid those they do not. Teachers should learn the names of the students. It makes them realise that you care for them and you are interested. Make sure the students know each other’s name and a little more information about each other. People contact more with those they are familiar with. So arrange more activities that can help the students to learn each other better. Pair-work and group-work activities are extremely useful for this purpose. Don’t forget to change pairs often so that students have an opportunity to work with more people in the group. A wide range of participants will make communication more vivid, stimulating students’ interest in the activity. You should encourage the students to speak more. We notice that many English language learners are too shy to speak sometimes. Accuracy for them is more important than fluency. The teacher should reassure the students that making mistakes is okay. Let the students help each other and correct each other, but don’t let any student dominate the group. The teacher should choose communicative activities to involve students talking to each other. You should encourage them to share their opinions and ideas with the class. The more you involve the students, the more motivated they will. Speech tasks will lead to a positive effect on students’ speaking and fluency. Teachers should try to understand the students better to be aware of their interests and needs and consider them when preparing for the lessons. Teachers should remember that each student has a preference for the way they understand the information. Some students are visual learners; some take in the information while listening; other students understand better if they do something with their hands. You should change activities from a lesson to a lesson to correspond to each learning style. This tactic will involve all the students and make learning more effective. It goes without saying it is impossible to follow all these recommendations if you don’t enjoy your job. So the final rule is that you must love teaching. Summarising everything, I should say that a good rapport is often a matter of personalities. So the teacher will have a better rapport with some groups than with others. But anyway take these tips into consideration because the truth is: no matter how experienced and skilful a teacher is, no matter how well-thought-out a lesson plan is, students will not listen to a teacher until they like, trust and respect him.