Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in China? Are you interested in teaching English in Linhai, China? Check out our opportunities in Linhai, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
This unit covers the different methods of teaching as well as the approaches to expanding on a lesson plan. While a variety of methods are covered here, and the question of which one is best is asked, that any method of teaching that works will depend on the environment of the classroom and the students within it. You can not go into a class expecting to use one method, such as the silent way or task based learning, and not be prepared to change methods if those approaches do not achieve any results. A truly prepared teacher is ready to use any of these methods in an adaptable plan to help their students to best succeed. I personally am a fan of communicative language studies, both teaching and learning, since they keep the students involved and it is what made my own college language course so involving and exciting. However I would not limit myself to those since I know people learn in different ways.
I appreciate the ESL planning method because it makes the most sense to me. Engaging students with questions to get their minds working is a great way to explore what they know while waking their minds up. Each of the examples used here, like flashcards, drawing, pictionary, gap fill, and asking for the question were all methods I remember my own teachers using back in grade school with my own english classes. While the straight forward method of engaging, then studying, followed by activation will work in most situations, I feel I could easily use the boomerang method from time to time when my students will be in need of expanding on the lesson before completing it. A rather difficult section could also be readily handled with the patchwork strategy, being able to back up and introduce new content along the way through the topic.
I appreciate the ideas for the engage phase as well, and while I've never done the fizz-buzz one personally, I did recognize the memory games and alphabet relay, as well as I spy. These are all great game ideas that I know well and would be able to make use of quite readily. The consequences game in particular I can see students enjoying as they make up funny stories. The study phase games like word search and hangman are great starter ideas, fun at any age, and any of these can easily lead into the communication and story building ideas of the activation phase of the lesson.
One part I found helpful was the comment on giving feedback and to be careful to know the difference between mistakes and errors. While some students crave feedback, others can find it frustrating, so its definitely a good idea to limit how much correction is given. Letting them correct themselves or another student is the best way to let them see the mistakes so they will not repeat them and make them permanent within their minds. I like the correction code sheet, and will probably have one up for my students to refer to so they know what to fix and can easily resolve any errors.
