Nashville, Illinois TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

This unit covered characteristics and personality types that make for a good teacher or student, levels of language fluency, and different roles that a teacher may take during a lesson. I was able to reflect back on what I experienced in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher. The students I worked with were definitely ranged from beginner to elementary (or more advanced for those who attended English Language schools or lived abroad). As a teacher, I personally tried to give praise to help the students feel good about their efforts, and also built a rapport with them. To do so, I frequently interacted with children outside of the classroom environment, playing with them at recess, eating with them during lunches, and so on. I know first hand how short young children's attention span is, and how much more excited the youngest students were, compared to a level of anxiety that some of the older students had. Prior to this unit, I didn't have a full grasp of what defined each level of fluency; having learned Japanese, I had a tendency to just "estimate" my own levels (now I feel like I'm intermediate to upper intermediate based on the criteria mentioned in the unit). As the "Assistant Language Teacher", I worked hard to participate by going around and practicing the conversation material with the students as much as possible, and observing them in their groups. Many of my family used to be teachers, and they have said it is very important for teachers to care about their students.