Home
30.10.2008
Teaching English
... what happens when one changes the role of a student for a role of a teacherOne of the many things I realized in Canada was that I like teaching. Thus, when I was back home and thinking about getting a part time job it came sort of naturally to say "Ok, I'm gonna teach English!"
There were basically three main reasons for that. First, in my opinion teaching is a really interesting thing to do. Secondly, I wanted to use the English skills I had learnt in Canada and finally, it looked like somebody would pay me for doing those two! Then I asked my classmate who teaches Spanish and English if the company she's working for is looking for new teachers. She said yes, so I went to an interview, had a try out lesson with two other teachers and then I was "ready" to teach myself. I was supposed to substitute for another teacher in a class of beginners. Moreover, there should have been around 7 students – women with the average age of 35. It turned out later that theese are the typical students that study English in such courses. Unfortunately, there were no men in the class I had, so I can't tell whether the following difference between the female and male students is true or not. ... The typical woman comes to the class with a notebook, textbook, her own dictionary and lots of pencils and highlighters. On the other hand, if you ask the typical male student to write something down, he takes a creased piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans and asks the woman in front of him for a pencil. However, one should know that this story comes from a female teacher and I'm still waiting for the chance to check it out myself. But it sounds probable :)
When the lesson started I was feeling a bit nervous, but it actually would have been strange not to feel nervous. Futhermore, I've got the following experience from the orienteering competitions. If I'm not feeling nervouse before the start, it means I won't do well in that race. So, I was teaching the stuff I had prepared and everything was running smoothly. There were only two exceptions – I almost ended the class after 60 minutes instead of 90 (It was like we don't have enough time to finish this .... but hey, maybe we still have half an hour) and then we did an exercise (listening to a song and filling in the missing words in its lyrics and singing that song afterwards) that I thought would make the students relax. However, I think it actually made both them and me relax. I enjoyed the lesson and I hope the students weren't scared too much, because it was their first class this year. Hopefully, they came back again.
Now I teach 5 students and we have classes every Thursday. I have a feeling that we all learn something from every lesson – they hopefully something about English and I about teaching. I find it really challenging to come up with an exercise that fits the level of the students. For example, when teaching about the present perfect, it's hard to figure out what to teach and what not to teach. If one tells them too much, they'll think it's too complicated and they'll soon give up. On the other hand, if you don't tell them enough, they'll think: "Oh, that's so easy" and then they will have trouble with the exercises (and you don't dare to tell them that nobody really cares about this tense in America). I also found out that it's good if all the stuff you do with the students is somehow connected. For example, if they learn something about the present perfect it's nice if it appears in the article they are supposed to read. Then the next lesson they learn some new vocabulary and if they want to use it, they need the present perfect again. Therefore, they learn it even if they didn't do the homework :) Futhermore, I've heard a funny comment from a teacher: "If you're happy and smilling all the time, the students will buy everything you say." He said it as a joke, but it's so true. If you look like you don't understand what you're teaching, the students will become suspicious and they won't learn anything. On the other hand, if the teacher is relaxed the students relax as well and then they learn a lot. I also think that one learns the most when one figures it out oneself. I don't really know yet how to apply this to teaching English, though. However, I hope the news the students are asked to prepare for the beginning of every class work a bit in that way.
After I tried to teach students myself, our high school classes became very interesting – especially English. Now when one is a student again, one's point of view about the teacher changes. I started to look not just at WHAT they teach us, but HOW they teach us and if one looks at that after one tried to teach oneself it's really interesting. Now you can ask how effective this exercise is or how much do the students like it. I feel there's lots I can learn from my teachers, because they've got lots of experience. It's a pity that in English we mainly go over the final exam conversation themes like London, American History or Lifestyle or we do some exercises focused on some tricky grammar problems, because I can't use any of those for my students. If you have any tips for interesting English tasks or activities, I'd be glad if you write them to the comments.
As a bottom line I want to mention that it's lots of fun to teach students who are willing to learn something. However, I really don't want to be in the position of a high school teacher who sometimes has to teach although the students seem like they don't want to learn anything.