TEFL Wood Branch Delaware

The course offered lessons on two major aspects of teaching english. On one hand, it was a refresher course on the english language itself, including grammar and pronunciation. More importantly, the course taught me the qualities and characteristics a good teacher should develop. Speaking in terms of practicality, the course offered reviews on parts of speech, tenses, pronunciation and phonetics, and active versus passive voices. This is important because as an english teacher, I must know the language accurately in order to teach my students how to speak properly. I am a fluent english speaker, but it's been due to years of practice. Sometimes when you do something for long periods of time, such as speaking a language, you no longer think about the rules because it comes naturally. However, when teaching students, the teacher must provide some guidelines because it does not yet come naturally to the students. This is why re-learning the basic aspect is good. It is a reminder of what to teach students before getting into advanced topics. These are the fundamentals. The aspect that I found more critical, however, was lessons on how to become a good teacher. There were already basic qualities that I know are important like being patient, fair, and organized. However, there were other aspects that I have not considered before and the class helped me realize some of this. Other than creating a comfortable atmosphere in which students are not afraid to ask questions, the teacher must also be able to take charge of the class. Sometimes the teacher will try to get through to the students by being friends or by being silly, but the teacher must also be careful not to overstep the boundary and seem unprofessional. It is a tedious balance, but the teacher must still command respect. The teacher needs to be keen on the dynamics on the class. The teacher should watch out for interactions among students to see what works and what doesn't. She/he should keep track if certain students are having problems with each other or difficulty with a specific subject. If the students do have problems, the teacher should figure out what to do. Being a teacher is more than just preparing lessons and assigning homework, the teacher has to hold the class' attention by keeping things interesting, understand the students individually and the class interaction as a whole, and be able to adapt when things do not go according to plan. Adaptation is important because as a teacher, one should be prepared and organize, but things may not always go as planned. The teacher should have lesson plans worked out before the class and procure necessary materials. The classroom, arrangement should be planned out and set up. However, the class may not go as planned because students may not understand as fast as the teacher hoped or they may learn faster than expected. In the first case, the teacher may have to spend more of the lesson going over the study phase and alter plans for the other phases (shortening it or changing it completely). It is important, however, for the teacher to not be frustrated and to stay realistic on the goals. The teacher needs to be able to understand and empathize with students if they are having difficulty. In the case of the second scenario, the teacher should have prepared extra material for the class to move on to. Other important aspects of teaching that I hadn't thought about but realized the importance of is the setup of the classrooms, the different role the teacher could play, the different props/equipment/resources the teacher could use, and the different ways to split the class up. There are multiple ways to set up the classrooms both in terms of students (all facing the board, sitting in a circle, sitting in a line, etc…) and equipment (where to place the blackboard, the projector, the visual aids, the books, etc..) and that should vary depending on what the teacher wants to do during class. For example, if the teacher wants to the class to be more teacher-centered, then he/she should choose a setup that would direct attention towards him/her. If the class is to be more student-centered, the arrangement should probably be students sitting in a circle. This also brings up the topic of the many roles the teacher can play. Sometimes the teacher can be very active in the activity (like when he/she is standing up and teaching the topic) or sometimes he/she can just stay back and observe (like during activities). The teacher needs to figure out what role to play depending on the activity and the goal. However, the teacher should always ask for feedback and comments for improvement no matter what role he/she plays. I know that in order to teach students the teacher must keep the class entertaining, but I did not realize the vast amount of resources available. There are adaptations of games into activities, different props (i.e. audio recorders, video records, computers—I know they exist but just didn't quite consider using them in class because I had not used them when I was in school), and the course readers and resource books. I think the course reader would really help for a first time teacher. The plan would not be to go exactly as the course reader has the lesson planned because it would be too generic, but it would be great to have an idea of how a lesson should go since I have never taught a class before. Also, I felt the lessons gave good ideas for creating homework and in class assignments by discussing authentic material. Created material comes from the teacher or the course book, but I think adding the practical element may be important to adult learners. Another aspect I had not really considered prior to the lesson was the different ways to split students up. Growing up, I felt that most of my assignments were individual assignments. Rarely did I do group activity, but I feel that team and group activity may sometimes be a good way to go. Lastly, I feel that the lesson planning was a huge help. It's a very organized way of thinking and knowing the different types ESA, boomerang ESA, and patchwork ESA are a good basis for planning what to do with students. I would use the lessons in grammar by incorporating these topics in the initial lessons for beginners. I do believe these are the fundamental concepts and students won't get very far without knowing them. Even in future lesson where topics become more complicated like, like how to write an essay, it would still come down to having correct tenses and using correct parts of speech to form sentences. As for all the qualities and actions that a teacher should take, I would make a matrix in excel separating out the personalities and what can actually be done. For example, patience or observant are characteristics whereas planning lessons and acquiring aids are physical actions that can be done. Before beginning class, I will go down the list of physical actions that can be done and see if I've already done it. As for the list of characteristics, I'll review it before the lesson and try to remember everything I should do. Then I will review it again after the class and see how many I actually followed. The goal is eventually I would gain enough experience that I won't need the list and it would become second nature to me.