All teachers of English should know that an effective, useful and at the same time interesting class cannot be possible without certain points.
Here are 5 tip for the teachers of English how to organize the work in the class :
1. Start with a warmer
Your students may come in to your classroom at the beginning of the lesson with their previous subject still on their mind. Therefore, we need something to get them thinking in English, t0 make our lesson more effective. It may be a review of the previous lesson, a topic connected to today’s lesson, or simply something fun to put your students in a positive mood.
2. Each activity needs a lead-in stage
Lead-in stages are important not only at the start of the lesson, but they are actually needed for each task. Again, this is to create interest in the task and to ‘warm students up’ to it. Lead-ins may simply be asking questions about the task I context / characters / grammar point etc. but the aim is to prepare students for what they are about to do.
3. Use Instructions Checking Questions (ICQs)
Teaching English is different from teaching other subjects due to its communicative nature. Our students need communicative tasks in class, but this very idea of in-class communication may be unusual for some students. Therefore, when we set up tasks, we need to give very clear instructions. Instructions should be brief, always provided with an example or demonstration, and most importantly, we need to check that students understand what to do.
Instructions Checking Questions are questions which test whether students have understood the task, and some examples are: Are you going to write or speak?’,’ Where do you write the answers?.’ How many questions are you going to ask your partner? We know how much our students have understood based on the way they answer our ICQs.
4. Lanauage Presentation: PPP
The three main stages of a language lesson: Presentation, practice and production. The main point which is often overlooked / forgotten about in the presentation stage, however, is pronunciation. As with vocabulary, it is important to make students aware of pronunciation issues with things like contractions (I’ll I won’t / I’ve been etc), confusing pronunciations like can/ can’t etc.
5. Elicit as much as possible
There is a very well-known quote from Benjamin Franklin, and it says: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.” By eliciting language from students, we are involving them in the learning process. By being involved, there is a bigger chance that they will learn more effectively than if the teacher simply stood at the front of the room and told them everything, lecture-style.
IMHO these are very important pieces of advice for the teachers of English. Maybe you will add something more? Please, share your thougts with us in comments. ↓↓↓