There’re 9 dimensions of teacher knowledge and skill:
- Language proficiency factor.
As it’s noticed the most FL teachers are not native speakers, but it doesn’t really matter. The thing, making teacher a good one is his ability to provide good language models and maintaining target language in a classroom, giving good and correct explanations in the target language
- Speaking the role of a content knowledge,
all of us may notice, that it refers to what teachers need to know about what they teach.
However, here we should distinguish disciplinary knowledge (phonology, grammar, etc.) and pedagogical content knowledge (a basis for language teaching, such as classroom management, teaching “4 skills”)
- Teaching Skills
A teacher has to have a repertoire of techniques and routines that include a complete plan of a lesson.
- Learner-focused teaching
Teaching is a kind of performance. It must be oriented in a student. Effective teachers develop a sense of community among their students using group-based activities and student’s life experience.
- Pedagogical reasoning skills
It’s a specialized kind of thinking that teachers possess to make use of in planning and conducting their lessons.
- Theorizing of practice
A developing of personal beliefs and knowledge, putting them in order to get a better result.
- Developing principles and a teaching philosophy
According to Bailey, it’s a further stage in theorizing from practice, when teachers formulate principles that they refer to when planning and evaluating their teaching and to the personal philosophy which guides their decision making
- Membership of a community of practice
Maybe the most important thing. ‘Cause every teacher needs to have some collaboration with other teachers for sharing and developing his own principles and methods.
- Professionalism
Teaching is not just a thing that can be done by any person, who knows language. It’s a way of living and an agree to make career and develop yourself within your profession from day to day from task to task you give and complete.
Please, comment on the article and ask your questions.
English Club Advanced 
I’d like to ask you for your opinions about this question, this topic of FLT core dimensions. What do you believe to be right and most important about this?
And What’s the main point to be followed during your FLT practice?
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To start with I can say that this article is very efficient for me. What has grasped my attention the most is that to be a good teacher of English it is not necessary to have a native like command of English. So, I feel relieved now)) I agree that to be a professional teacher one should be able to provide good language models, give accurate explanations in the target language. What else makes teacher a good one, in my opinion? First, teachers should love their subject and have excellent subject knowledge.
I would like to discuss “Professionalism” as a part of core dimensions of teaching expertise. Of course, Teaching is not just a thing that can be done by any person, who knows language, but that is also an indispensable part of teaching. To be professional means to be VERY, VERY good at what you do, not only knowledgeable, but also open and respectful to students. I can also say teachers are certainly role models for students, so they must be at their best in front of kids. So, there are various roles a teacher has to play. One of them (as it was stated in the article too) is that of a facilitator. He should impart all the knowledge and skills related to a particular field. So this aspect should be followed during our ELT practice.
And some words about Pedagogical reasoning skills, I support the idea that a teacher has to plan his lesson. As for me I usually prepare synopses for me to be more confident at a lesson. AND WHAT ABOUT YOU? DO YOU SUPPORT MY WAY OF PREPARIATION TO LESSONS?
To conclude I would like to say that we ARE to be happy because we are future teachers I’m serious. No doubt, you’d like to ask WHY? Because we are so to say the architects of future generation. (Gen Z) So, the future depends on us.
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First of all, to my mind, this article gives us, a new generation of teachers, the way to improve our still-developing pedagogical skills and abilities. Here in Ukraine we have been mostly taught by the old-school teachers, therefore we take their methods for a model. Though trying to become more “European-like”, we should seek for the best experience they have and apply it to our life. These dimensions of teaching are of such a kind.
Second, the most noticeable dimensions for me are professionalism, theorizing of practice, and developing teaching principles and philosophy. Let’s at first have a look at professionalism. As for me, it includes two other dimensions: pedagogical reasoning skills and teaching skills. As we know professionalism means becoming a lifelong pedagogue, who looks for new methods, tasks, ideas in every instant of the life. Also a professional is one who can get out of any difficulty during a class, who can make a great lesson out of almost nothing. Now let’s proceed with the ability to theorize of practice. This skill is what every young teacher should develop in him-/herself, because knowing how to understand what is going on in class and to apply it in your future work is very helpful, as it will make conducting lessons easier with every year and will prevent you from doing the same mistakes. And one more dimension important for every teacher, I think, is developing principles and teaching philosophy. The pedagogue, who has his/her own opinion, attitude to definite behavior and actions is seen by me as a person to be respected. So, I think that professionalism, ability to theorize of practice, and teaching philosophy might be useful and important for me.
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I think that this article is very useful for us as future teachers of foreign languages. It focuses on the main things teachers should do at their classes and on the main skills teachers should possess. I knew about the importance of language proficiency factor and professionalism, the role of content knowledge and teaching skills even before reading this article, so this information wasn’t new for me.
What I was really interested in, reading this article, was pedagogical reasoning skills. At first I didn’t understand it. Of course I read the definition that it’s “the specialized kind of thinking that teachers possess and make use of in planning and conducting their lessons” but until I read the example of such skills I couldn’t realize the importance of this ability. Now I know that it is what teachers do every day planning their classes, but only a creative professional teacher can plan a very interesting lesson out of nothing.
One more important thing in TEFL is learner-focused teaching. We should always remember that we teach students who are addicted to entertainment, so to keep them interested in our classes we should use different helpful tools such as videos, pictures, songs, films and even games. But we should keep in mind that all these tools should be connected with the content of our class work.
To conclude, I’d like to say that it is important to follow all 9 main dimensions of foreign language teaching expertise and practice, but as it is impossible to follow all of them at once we should understand which of them are the most suitable for a definite class and try to use at least them.
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First of all, such articles are very useful for us as future teachers, and we are to make use of other teachers’ experience. For me, the main point is theorizing of practice (but this fact somehow argues the whole essence – we can create our own dimensions based on our experience). The thing is that every student is unique and only our practice can help us find some methods, special for each of our students. Only our experience can show us how to present information in a most suitable way for our students, how to make them interested. Yes, teacher’s work is very hard, but the rewards it brings are really incomparable. For me, this method is closely connected with learner-focused teaching, which is also one of the most important ones. Surely, it doesn’t mean we are to dance in front of our students but to make them united and interested in studying. And the next important point to be used during our ELT practice is membership of a community of practice, and it is also somehow connected with theorizing of practice, because we are to share our experience and our special methods for different types of students with other teachers and to take some experience from their practice.
To crown it all, as for me, it is important to pile all the information as for efficient teaching and we are to have it in our minds for our ELT practice, but the real understanding will come with practice.
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Becoming an English language teacher means becoming part of a worldwide community of professionals with shared goals, values, and practices. That is why we should pay great attention to all these dimensions of teacher knowledge and skill. But in my opinion two of them are the most important – theorizing from practice and professionalism.
First of all theorizing from practice helps us to develop our personal system of knowledge, beliefs, and understandings drawn from our practical experience of teaching. It involves reflecting on our practices in order to better understand the nature of language teaching and learning. A work in a professional field is a very painstaking but it gives us experience which we cannot get anywhere else.
The second dimension which is extremely important is professionalism. English language teaching is not something that anyone who can speak English can do. It is a profession, which means that English teaching is seen as a career in a field of educational specialization, it requires a specialized knowledge base obtained through both academic study and practical experience. We as teachers get required knowledge and only we can teach student professionally. The experience we get during our studying provides us not only with knowledge but also with pedagogical skills, psychological skills and experience which we get from our teachers.
As we can see there are a lot of requirements for EFL teacher, some of them are more important, others are less. But we should remember about them and be a role model for our students.
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