Walking along a teaching path….

OMG! After had finished my TKT course I decided to sign up in a new school which is going to help to become a better teacher or at least to learn something else to improve my teaching career…something like that!

Along these last days I have been attending a course before classes start. During it I have seen that teaching is not as easy as I thought, it needs a lot of preparation along the way, teaching needs to be improved day-to-day.

Moreover, become a teacher requires to be an open-minded. During a discussion that I had one of these past days at school, I told my teacher and classmates that as teachers we need to share our information (something that I really appreciate from my teacher Ellen, who taught me that and who practiced it during my TKT course, she really set the example) not just with our students but also with our co-workers. However the teacher’s opinion was another, why? Because he has been living reality, and unfortunately he told me that it is hard to practice it in the teachers’ world.

For example, if you as a teacher improve as much as you can and you become the best teacher in the school, for that reason you will get a better payment and earn much money than your co-workers…

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Consequently they will desire to get your place, so they will do whatever they need in order to get yours! Amazing, eh!

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That’s why sharing knowledge, techniques, resources is not the most common thing in the teaching path.Planning, writing and talking about it is easy, however practicing it in real life it’s hard!

In my opinion, if you as a teacher don’t want to share your knowledge with your co-workers, at least share it with your students, they will appreciate it along their lives! It’s the best part of working as a teacher…that you will have a chance to change your students’ lives in some way…

That happened to me this last course, and believe me it was the best experience I have ever had in my life!

 

A little grammar before your first TKT exam!

Even though most of the people speak and write and read and understand English, the problem becomes when we have to identify words by their names, call them by their correct root, and categorise them!

The most difficult for me since the beginning of the course it was the grammar!

However, as we want to become teachers we need to know how to identify them in order to explain them to students, so I decided to make a brief review about these words and their categories.

In the next exercise you will find questions and some answers, but in case that you cannot identify or choose an answer because you don’t know what it refers to, you can click on the link of the word and find the meaning out.

So, have fun and go beyond just reading!

YOU WILL FIND THE NEXT VOCABULARY ON THE EXERCISE BELOW:

• DETERMINER
• COMPOUND NOUN
• CONJUNCTION OF CONTRAST
• COLLECTIVE NOUN
• LEXICAL SET
• TRANSITIVE VERB
• CHUNK
• POSSESSIVE PRONOUN
• ADVERB
• WORD FAMILY

GRAMMAR

 

Unit 33: Giving Feedback

Feedback is giving information to someone about their learning and/or showing them that you have understood (or not) what they have said. In the classroom, teachers can give feedback to learners, and learners can give feedback to teachers or learners can also give feedback to their classmates.

When teachers give feedback to learners, they give them information about their learning. Teacher feedback can focus on learners’ language or skills, the ideas in their work, their behaviour, their attitude to learning or their progress. The written or oral feedback should include guidance on how learners can improve their work.

Now let’s see some example of teacher feedback to learners.

TEACHER FEEDBACK

 

Unit 32: Correcting learners

We correct learners sometimes when they have made a mistake and we want to show them that something is wrong. There is a range of correction strategies and techniques we can use to indicate (show) that there is a mistake, and the ones we choose depend on a number of different factors, for example the aim of the activity, the age of the learners and the language level of the learners.

Keep on mid that over-correction can result in learners not wanting to say anything in class because they are afraid of making mistakes.

Let’s see some strategies and techniques to correct learners’ mistakes in class.

In the exercise below you will find the next vocabulary:

FINGER CORRECTION	GESTURES/FACIAL EXPRESIONS	ECHO CORRECTING
IDENTIFYING	DELAYED CORRECTION	IGNORING ERRORS
REFORMULATING	RECASTING	GIVING THE RULE AND EXAMPLE OR DEFINITION
SELF-CORRECTION	CORRECTION CODE	-

CORRECTING LEARNERS’ MISTAKES

 

Unit 31: Grouping learners

There are different ways in which we can organise our learners in the classroom. For example, learners can work on their own, as a whole class, in pairs, in teams, in groups. Organising learners into different working patterns is what we mean by “grouping learners”.

There are many Interaction Patterns:

*T=teacher, *S=student , *Ss=students,* (-) = with

• Whole class (T-Ss/ Ss-T)
• open pairs (S-S)
• closed pairs (S-S)
• mingles (Ss-Ss)
• groups (Ss-Ss)
• teams (Ss-Ss)
• individuals (S-S-S or just the: S)

Whole class activities enable students to practise the language at the same time, these are good for increasing confidence, especially amongst shy or weaker learners.

Individual activities give students a chance to work at their own pace and to focus and organise their thoughts.

Pair and group activities provide students with opportunities for developing longer turns and fluency through interaction.

Let’s see some of the reasons while using Interaction Patterns.

In the exercise below you will find the next vocabulary:

INTERACTION PATTERNS	WHOLE CLASS	OPEN PAIRS
CLOSED PAIRS	MINGLES	BRAINSTORMING
BINGO GAME	READING AND FILLING IN A CHART	CLASS SURVEY

INTERACTION PATTERNS

 

Unit 30: Teacher roles

Teachers needs to behave in different ways at different stages of a lesson to manage the classroom and to successfully guide learners through the lesson. These different ways of behaving in and managing the class are called teacher roles. Teachers adopt (use) a number of different roles in every lesson. Teacher roles vary depending on the teaching approach (way of teaching) used and on the teachers’ and learners’ preferred learning styles and learning needs.

Let’s find out the teacher roles during a lesson.

In the exercise below you will find the next vocabulary:

Planner	Manager	Monitor / Observer	Facilitator	Diagnostician
Language resource	Assesor	Rapport builder	Teacher role	Active role
Passive role	Supportive	Unsupportive	-	-

VOCABULARY

TEACHER ROLES

 

Unit 29: Categorising learners’ mistakes.

We can categorise learners’ mistakes in accuracy and appropriacy in a number of different ways. We can refer, for example, to what is missing from a word, sentence or utterance, what is wrongly used, what is unnecessary and what is inappropriate.

In the next exercise we will have to find out the learners’ mistakes and the areas in which they have to work.

 In the exercise below you will find the next vocabulary:

PRONUNCIATION	VERB FORM	SUBJECT-VERB
ARTICLE	ADJECTIVE	SPELLING
PREFIX	INTESIFIER	ACCURACY

CATEGORISING LEARNERS’ MISTAKES

 

Unit 28: Identifying the functions of learners language.

The functions of learners’ language are the purposes for which learners use language in the classroom. These purposes include taking part in tasks and activities, interacting with the teacher and with each other. Learners make use of a wide range of language functions as they take part in different aspects of a lesson, for example:

• greeting
• explaining
• suggesting
• checking instructions
• negotiating
• agreeing
• disagreeing
• prompting

Let’s see some of them in the next exercise:

LEARNERS’ LANGUAGE AND FUNCTIONS.

 

UNIT 27: Teachers´and learners’ language in the classroom.

Classroom functions are the purposes for which we use language in the classroom. These functions are many and varied, for example explaining and instructing. for each classroom function there are different exponents we can use. The choice of exponents depends on the learning context and purposes, the learners’ needs, their age and the level. When we choose language that is right for the situation and our audience, we say that we use language appropriately.

In the exercises below you will find the next vocabulary:

Discourse	Exponent	Getting learners´attention	Instructing	Modeling
Encouraging	Nominating	Prompting	Utterances	Swap
Set a question	Stimulate discussion	Report back	-	-

VOCABULARY

LANGUAGE IN CLASSROOM.

 

My next teaching goals…

The first time I entered the Ellen’s class, well the time when we were tested for the TKT course, I didn’t have any idea about what teaching would involve. I remember that I wanted to know what a teacher does and how the teacher teaches. Through the course I noticed so many things; most of them were so amazing, I never thought that a simple class could involve a lot of things! I learned that teachers have a lot of teaching approaches which can help them to improve their classes. But the most interesting about the course is that I learned that a teacher´s job is not just teach, it is beyond than that: teachers can change students’ life!

Now, the most important (besides the strategies that I acquired during this course) it’s try to find out my goals, how I would achieve them, and how these are going to help me along my teaching life, some of my goals are the next ones:

(Obviously, once I had achieved the first goal of my life: get a job as an English teacher! Oh!)

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• To develop my teaching style using TBL more than the PPP approach.
• While planning my lesson plans, focus on the learner-centre learning.
• Teaching using variety of materials in order to develop my students’ learning styles.
• Build rapport since the beginning of the term.
• Be conscious that if my teaching style is not working well, change it or if the problem is with the lesson plan, be able to change some stages.
• Show humility if I need help from other teachers.
• Keep up-to-date with english language (e.g.idioms, vocabulary,etc)
• Incorporate technology in classes or in homework (e.g.quizes, questionnaires, games, etc).
• Create a comfortable class environment for my students.
• Using as many as possible interesting aids to work on classes, e.g. realia, computers, stick wall, posters, pictures, games, etc.

My main goal is to make a change in teaching, I’m willing to learn new things from my students and at the same time I want to learn with them.  Even that we can find a huge amount of aids, methods, and information to teach, it’s amazing that there are still selfish teachers (those teachers who love to be the teacher-centre of the class, those who are not able to change their techniques and those who don’t want to share their knowledge).However excellent teachers are emerging from the beautiful teaching world, changing the same boring teaching style that has been existed since many decades ago! And they are excited to make a change in students’ life and to share their knowledge not only with students but also with new teacher generations. Be part of it!