Kennewick, Washington TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

In this unit we will look at the most common problem situations that teachers can encounter in their classroom. As it goes, in each new teaching position a teacher will be faced with meeting several new classes for the first. These classes are vital for the teacher to establish rapport with the students and set the tone for the rest of the course. Classes can be categorized to two groups such as a new group and the existing group. In new group the students will not know each other, and work will be need to establish a common ground between the classmates in class. As for the existing group, the students are already likely to know and be comfortable with each other and familiar with the EFL training. During first lessons, an experienced teacher will not resort to the course book but will use other activities which would lead to establishing rapport between the students and between the teacher and the class. Teacher would need to find out about the students as this will allow the teacher to be able to plan future lessons to cater to the students’ interests. Teachers will also find out about the students’ aspirations with English and this would enable the teacher to tailor the course to meet the needs of the class. Teachers may use a number of activities to such as questionnaire or surveys, board games, pass the ball game and/or needs analysis. In questionnaire, the teacher can let the students interview each other using a pre-set questionnaire and then present it back to the class. This will allow the students to know about each other and if the teacher monitors the activity closely, they will learn more about the students’ ability in the English language. In the pass the ball game, the teacher will toss a soft ball to one of the students and asks him/her any question and that student whom answer the question will then toss back the ball to another student and asks that student a question. In a classroom, students would naturally be bored with the idea of just learning every minute of their time, so it is ideal to have warmers in classroom. This is to warm up the students and this would create an even more energetic and enthusiastic classroom. For instance, teachers can use hangman, Pictionary, tongue twisters, memory games. It is vital to keep them fun but short. One of the biggest problems that the teachers face in a group where the students are at varying levels. If the school has a competent entrance level testing procedure, the chances of this happening will be reduced but not prevented in all totality. There are a few ways that the teacher can deal with this by using different materials, where the difference in ability is wide, the teacher may wish to split the students into two groups. The teacher can give different material to each group, appropriate to their level. If the materials are based around the same themes, then the class can be brought back together at other stages. Teacher can also use same materials but different tasks. Here the teacher will give the students the same material but give the stronger students longer, more complicated tasks appropriate to their level. Many teachers may also prefer to let each student to find his or her own level within the class. Such an approach means that the students will be studying and learning the same material and, as a result, the gap in level shouldn’t increase. Teachers can also pair stronger students with weaker ones as this strategy seems to be preferred by teachers. Larger classes can present the teacher with a number of problems from trying to involve all students equally to classroom control. Teachers here can use worksheets, group work, clarity, choral repetition, appoint group leaders, dynamics. Few teachers would choose large classes over smaller ones, as it makes a difficult job even more challenging. However, most teachers, at time in the careers, will find themselves dealing with groups of 30 to 100 students. As discussed in the previous unit, the use of the students’ native tongue can be problematic in monolingual classes. This is usually not ‘malicious’ but more a case of wanting to communicate something that they feel unable to express in English or wanting to explain something to help another student. However much the teacher may understand and sympathize with this, his or her job to have the students practicing and improving their English language skills. There are a number of things that the teacher can do in such situations that is to make sure the activities that is being used are at an appropriate level and that the students have the necessary language to cope and the explanations are to be clear to all class members. Teachers should then encourage the use of English where appropriate. Teachers should practice to only respond to English. Constantly remind the students that they will need to use English.