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TEFL Grattan Michigan



Check out Tesolcourse.com about TEFL Grattan Michigan and apply today to be certified to teach English abroad.

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This is how our TEFL graduates feel they have gained from their course, and how they plan to put into action what they learned:

said:
For just about any tesol teacher, creating materials is an absolute must, even if working for a school with a rigid course book only policy. That's because, at an absolute minimum, created materials can be used as a course book supplement. For example, if a course book lesson is focused on the past participle of verbs, you could create a student handout using a 3 column list containing numerous verb examples in base form, past simple and past participle. Such a simple supplement and gesture can become an invaluable resource for many students. And created materials don't just stop at making lists. At a pragmatic level, they can be a useful supplement to help students learn new words or reinforce prior known ones via flashcards. At a thoughtful and cerebral level, they can motivate students to think and react more to english via the use of gap-fill exercises, word search puzzles and, especially, crosswords. And at a creative, even inspiring level, they can be the absolute core material for students' to improve all four essential english skills via picture stories or role-play cards. On a personal level, I find created materials to be especially useful because I am completely non-artistic and even have trouble drawing matchstick men. Even when the teacher is not artistic, there are still numerous websites which can be visited to obtain an extensive library of such materials. And unlike authentic materials, they can be graded to the level of the students. Moreover, created materials are more task-oriented than authentic materials and therefore, have a stronger lesson objective. Creating materials also helps the teacher because they spur teacher creativity and improve lesson plan structure. Likewise, students also benefit as long as the materials are relevant, cleanly produced, easy to understand and are at an appropriate student level. Also keep in mind that created materials can be used at any stage of any lesson plan and a good teacher should try to work out at which part of the lesson will the created materials may have the maximum and minimum impact. For example, for students who are at a beginner's level, I like to show the class large flashcards containing only single words or pictures and a single word. At end of class, I like to give each student a mini copied sheet of these flashcards, which is then glued into students' notebooks. For intermediate students, the flashcards will have complicated sentences, perhaps with pictures (near-perfect examples are shown in the Unit 14 handout from pages 5-8). I also provide intermediate students' simple lists and sentences containing examples of the four tenses for the present and past (simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous) or how a noun can become an adjective and how we can use that adjective in the comparative and superlative. For upper-intermediate students, I don't use flashcards. Instead I may make more complicated lists and sentence combinations. For example, I may give examples of words using synonyms and/or antonyms. For me, created materials' greatest potential come into their own when presented as picture stories or role-playing games. It is during these activities where students' minds have the best capabilities to use their english knowledge at its most creative level. Well thought out picture stories and role-plays encourage students' to ‘think outside the box' and conceptualise grammar from scratch. However, it must be iterated that the teacher and students' should have a well-established rapport and that the individual is taken out of the equation by making it a group or paired activity. Also bear in mind that sometimes there will be disaster. Sometimes it may stem from the teacher trying to push the students too fast or too hard, or making lessons too difficult. It may be the lesson isn't culturally relevant or the students' are not focused because there is other more important work to do. If there is a disaster, work out the cause and compensate.


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