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Teach English in Yinying Zhen - Yangquan Shi

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I chose this topic for my essay because I’ve been teaching online for a year and a half and I actually had started it before my offline experience. So working online is even more natural for me, and I saw some obvious benefits like: an easy access to a wide range of media resources; comfortable atmosphere for students as they study at home; high STT as we don’t spend time on moving around the classroom, all the aids are at hand and typing is much faster than using a whiteboard But when I started to teach offline I could see the other side of it. Limitation of physical activities. It’s not of such a huge importance for adults, rather than for children, but TPR really increases the ability to absorb, acquire information and some students are reluctant to do it in front of the screen as if the screen binds them to some expected behaviour, which is just sitting in their chair and not moving. There’s a risk to be too relaxed, as the classroom creates a special atmosphere students don’t feel at home. Moreover, most of students have classes in the evening after work, in their usual home environment, which can make them think about rest rather than about an English lesson. Moving around the classroom takes time, but it also changes the picture students see, creates a variety of ways to manage students’ attention. So considering these points we need to adjust online teaching so that it wouldn’t lack offline benefits. Activities based on media materials should be supplemented by physical activities where it is possible. Speaking of children, there is a wide range of them including dancing to the videos and playing physical games (which only requires to place your chair further than against the wall). Teenagers don’t normally want to dance but they can still raise their hands or clap when they hear a verb in a row of nouns, point at different parts of their body or mime to explain the word given in the task. As for adults, they need it the least, but as I have noticed, when I start to use more gestures they become more physically active too, probably, it increases their level of involvement. Familiar environment creates a positive background, and a proper warm-up, good choice of activities and teacher’s personal involvement should help students to be focused. Apart from those cases when a student was really tired after a long working day I’ve never seen a student who lost concentration even though the lesson is well-planned, the activities, worksheets and questions relate to subjects which a student is interested in and the lesson is held in a lively manner. If a student in not engaged, something of the listed above must be wrong. Although the picture in front of students’ eyes is the same all the time - it is his room and a laptop, there still are a lot of options to make a lesson dynamic. First option is mentioned in the first paragraph. Secondly, a possibility to draw must be provided. Even if it’s a lesson via Skype, we could ask a student to share his screen and draw in any program of his choice or draw on a piece of paper and then show it to the camera. Thirdly, although teacher’s position in the «classroom» is fixed, we can avoid monotony using gestures and our voice. I think I covered some of the most important adjustment that should be done to make online lessons more effective.


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