English in the context of teaching
Examine the role of an EFL/ESL teacher in a specific teaching situation (obviously from your own experience if possible).
you can cover the role not only in the classroom but in
the institution or even further, in the community or society as a whole.
This is going to explain the role of a Persian speaking teacher who must speak English in the context of teaching to make learners speak with their teacher’s language, which is English.
To show you what I mean:
Young learners aimed to learn natural English and get more fluent in speaking to make their ends meet.
On the other hand for adults in upper intermediate and above, it is aimed to get more accurate. The first thing that comes to my mind is to explain what EFL is? It stands for teaching English to foreign speaking language .
Considering learner’s goals is one of the facilitators, to put in another word :it is better to find out why are the learners gathered together ,it helps you to understand why are you there? What kind of material is proper for them? What you should teach? What is the appropriate level of difficulty of that class?
Is your chosen appearance suitable for them or not?
One of the factor you’d better to pay attention is getting more familiar with learner’s
characteristics, and at the same time analyzing yourself to find out the answer of this question “do I have the potential to get along with them or not?”
To give tangible example; there is a group of toddlers you are going to be their teacher.
The greatest thing which is important for us is to attract them and keep them in class ,the prepared material should be eye-catching and convey some basic meanings, based on their taste and their interest you should have the power to lead them to your planned path, while you are trying to keep their attention and interest, all of concerns are lead to have the highest productivity in the class, for example ,
you are teaching some verbs in the context of holiday resort, but they don’t listen to you ,in case you find their interest (like football) you can switch your plan through that context and feed them with their favorite flavor ,also you should analyze that ;are you capable to manage all of these at the same time, can you catch two birds with one stone? If you are an extrovert type you can survive easily.
The last item but not the least is your appearance that they should accept, if they do; they will embrace your teaching and your words. The more your appearance is colorful and trustable the more
you attract them.
Based on my own experience I must say once they accept you, there is a paved way for you to face with difficulties. The core of our words refers to the brilliant part of our job which is motiviation.
As we mentioned above you should consider that without motivation a question will come to your learner’s mind :
why am I learning English? They keep asking themselves: why am I in this class?
In case they don’t find out any reasonable answer, we must say that you didn’t put your effort in the right path, if you sparkle their motivation, all students will attend your class by their body and soul.
The next factor is confidence ,this is your duty to give them confidence to express themselves in front of you, so please do not ruin their character ,sometimes it happens consciously it could be about your own feeling toward some learners ,but as an advice you should put all of your interests and tastes behind the door and become a new one in your class, for me as an English teacher it is proved that you are the prophet in your class ,if you follow the mentioned above factors (giving confidence, motivating them) whatever you say, whatever you do is fully acceptable and they will follow you. Besides, it is your responsibility to make a dynamic class by considering the fact that you are not a lecturer, you are an instructor to show them the way and give them hint and let
them to do the rest of the procedure.
Give them responsibility in the class to make them feel they belong there ,as long as they have this peace of mind that they are trusted, you can flourish their abilities in English, also their talent in specific skills in English learning .the other thing which needs your consideration is called evaluation, you should evaluate everyone in you class and give them some pre designed tasks which are proper for them ,for instance there are two students in your class and you are teaching them vocabulary and spelling ,one is good at memorizing the other is quiet good at spelling ,based on your lesson plan the set assignment is practicing spelling test, but if you consider the self-evaluation you will understand that this homework doesn’t work for both, for the one who is good at spelling you can’t apply your assignment, so it is better to give them different homework up to their strong and weak points .
This strong and weak points play a crucial role in your teaching, for example: there are some students with low self-confidence ,in this case you need to exaggerate their strong points to help them to have a state of mind and sometimes give them a hint about their weak points, but about high self-confidence learners you can maneuver on their weak points because they are
trying to lessen their mistakes.
To me as an EFL teacher you should increase their creativity by giving more space in class to encourage them. You’d better sometimes put this responsibility on their shoulder to design
some activities, fantastic result will surprise you.
As the result such experience cannot be easily vanished from learner’s mind, to add it, I often write next secession’s topic on the board, while they are enjoying their break time I want them to tell me their ideas about the written topic, then in next secession when I’m in the
middle of my teaching process, suddenly their engines start to recognize the whole story.
It is important to note that they try to show their little knowledge by participating in the brain storm part.
We safely assume that teachers have to update themselves by the help of technology, because if you immune yourself to any given chance to update, it is guaranteed that your teaching
method is in the danger of fossilization.
Movrarid Saheban