Burlington, Michigan TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

Unit 19 covered Teaching special groups This unit was a helpful summary of the possible groups of students a teacher might end up teaching. I have taught a range in my life, but I'm not as familiar with the young children. So the insights given for teaching children, as well as beginners were very helpful. Also, I do have an interest in teaching directly to companies. So the information provided as well as the sample Need Analysis worksheet were quite insightful and helpful. It gave me a lot more confidence to pursue this option. The unit summary follows: Types of classes - > Beginners - Teaching beginner students requires special consideration. Beginners usually fall into one or more of the following categories: 1. Absolute beginner 2. False beginner 3. Adult beginner 4. Young beginner 5. Beginner without Roman alphabet > Individual students - There are pros and cons to this and it requires a different style of teaching than teaching a group. However, more and more are turning to private teaching. > Teaching children - Children usually lack motivation and discipline. It can be hard to keep the class on track. However, even though adults are usually more well behaved, they can also tune out when they are bored or cannot keep up. Children simply make this more obvious. Children can learn things more quickly. Considering how parents teach children is a good start for teaching young learners. They need learning to be fun and they need a lot of repetition. They need to know their boundaries right away, which a teacher must be consistent with, but also the teacher needs to give a lot of reassurance to the young learner (and the older ones too!). > Business English/English for specific purposes (ESP) 1. In this setting, the company is often providing this class or footing the bill, but not necessarily. If the company is sponsoring the class, the needs and expectations of the company will need to prioritized above the needs of the individual learners, while still taking into consideration the individual needs of the learners, who are often called "clients" in this setting. 2. Attendance can be quite sporadic and it could be that the class does not receive a high prioritization from within the company and from the individual learners. 3. Usually the clients will require basic English communication skills, though some will do more phone work and some will do more presentation work, and many will be somewhere in between. But a thorough needs assessment and negotiation will help to create tailored lessons that could help the clients to see the value of attending and actively participating in the lessons, as well as properly meeting the expectations of what will be achieved though the classes. 4. A teacher must be careful to maintain professionalism and a respect for all students alike, in spite of their position in the company. A person with a more responsible position may not be able to learn as quickly, attend as many classes, or focus as well, as someone in a lower position. So care must be taken to ensure that no one feels disrespected or humiliated in front of others and especially front of their own subordinates. Monolingual vs a multilingual class - Teaching English as a foreign language in a foreign country will likely always mean the younger students come from the that country and have the same native language. But this is not necessarily the case for a company settings. Many foreign companies have many different nationalities working for them. Perhaps the main language of most of them is Chinese, or Korean, etc., but not all of them. Also, for the classes taught in the native English country, the classes will often include students from many nationalities. Neither of these situations are better or worse - they just sometimes require a little different approach. But if at all possible, avoid using the mother tongue in the class.