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Teach English in Huili Zhen - Yantai Shi

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Huili Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Yantai 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.

When a teacher first meets a new class, he or she will assess the students’ language level. Most likely, the teacher will find that the language ability of the students is a mixed bag. This has the potential for frustration all around with the weaker students feeling left behind if the lessons are beyond them, while the stronger students are feeling bored and unchallenged and the teacher is feeling pressured to meet every individual need. There are ways to turn this problem into an advantage. The teacher can use the stronger students to help lift the level of the weaker students by using pair activities. This will give the stronger students a mentoring role to model English and act as an assistant teacher. It will also benefit the weaker students who will receive one-on-one peer tutoring. Another way to turn mixed levels to an advantage is for the teacher to implement a long-term project of an interesting nature. This can be an individual project or a project the whole class is working on. When a student completes a worksheet or task quickly, the teacher can then allow the student to resume working upon the special project. For example, the students can create their own webpage, or design a profile page, invent a new business or game, or work on a creative story, poem or song. A third way to cater for different abilities with the same activity is to plan an activity that is open to easy answers as well as more complex answers. The teacher could ask the students to write as much as they can for a set time period on a given topic. For instance, the task could be to write as much as they can about dogs for five minutes. The stronger students can then be challenged to write more, while the weaker ones are not penalized in any way for writing less. A fourth tool to use is group activities. Group mingle activities can be especially useful. In these types of activities, each person in the class is given a questionnaire and must ask others in the class a question. A typical question would be ‘Find someone who has travelled in a plane’. This type of activity encourages all level of students to interact with one another. A group project is another way of accommodating different levels of ability. Each student can contribute to the project according to their own ability. Working in a group will offer support to weaker students while allowing stronger students a chance to extend themselves. Another point to keep in mind when working with mixed abilities is that the teacher should ensure that all the students are called upon to answer questions. Singling out the stronger students because they know the answers would be seen as favouritism. The trick here is to ask the lower level students easier questions to set them up for a win and to build their confidence. The teacher can also build up the speaking confidence of the lower level students by doing plenty of choral repetition and controlled practice as well as scripted role play. When using scripted role play, the teacher should place the lower level students in the position of asking a rehearsed question, while the stronger students can be allowed to answer the question as fluently as they are able. An example of this could be a job interview role play, where the stronger student is trying for the job and the weaker student is asking the questions. The teacher has other options to use in mixed ability classes. If the differences in ability are vast, the teacher might want to split the class into two groups and provide different level materials for each group instead of struggling to teach advanced learners with beginner materials. Or the teacher might want to use the same material for everyone but adapt the material by making it easier for the lower level students. One example of adapting material is by providing several answers to a gap fill so that the student can choose between two answers rather than the student having to come up with an answer from memory. The teacher can also choose to not make any special changes to accommodate different levels. This is probably most appropriate when the differences in ability are not too large. In this case, the teacher will want to keep on hand a range of worksheets of a slightly higher ability to give to the students who finish tasks faster than the others. The other option for students who finish fast is to allow them time to play a phone app game that is fun but also improves their English at the same time. This would be appropriate for students who have their own phones. If there is computer access, then appropriate games could also be incorporated for fast finishers. In conclusion, a teacher must not only expect but be prepared to deal with different language levels in the classroom. If teachers want all their students to feel excited and stimulated by their class, they will need to ensure that they challenge these higher- level, faster learners with a range of activities, while at the same time allowing lower level learners to progress at their own pace without feeling overwhelmed. Pair work, group games, group projects and individual projects can all be used to provide something for everyone in a mixed abilities classroom. The secret is to be prepared with a resource bag full of ideas and worksheets to pull out when a student needs quick time fillers. The greatest sin of teaching is the same as writing: Never be boring!


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