Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Alabama? Are you interested in teaching English in York, Alabama? Check out our opportunities in York, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
Unit 4 is based on teaching materials and includes a brief overview of teaching aids and authentic and non-authentic teaching materials. The unit also addresses how to use teaching materials in lesson planning, how to source and select written and Internet-based teaching materials, and includes a discussion on how to maintain order and discipline in the classroom so that these materials are effective during the lesson and activities. I found the sections on authentic and non-authentic materials very informative. While I understand the definitions of these terms, I had always shirked at the phrase, "non-authentic; " it seemed to connote teaching materials that were inferior or somehow fraudulent. And having hand-made most of my own realia and other teaching props, I took that connotation personally! But I do understand and appreciate the denoted distinction between the two materials. I also agree that authentic materials can be much more engaging for young students! I remember keeping dozens of random items as souvenirs from my college trip to China simply because the items were written in Chinese! The same sentiment is true for students when they encounter real world objects from English speaking countries. My students are always more interested in photographs of me and my family when I teach 'family' lessons than they are in the curriculum-provided photos. The lesson photos are of models that are complete strangers to my students. But my photos are of their very own teacher, complete with her husband, daughter, and cats, in her American home!
I also found the 3 points of consideration when making your own non-authentic materials very useful. In my teaching, my version of non-authentic materials are props that I use to emphasize vocabulary and grammar elements in my online classes. So I made lots of pictures of nouns and action verbs that I hand draw or make out of craft foam sheets then glue to a popsicle stick. I then use these props in my video-based lessons. I always have to consider several factors first; how will I use this prop, and how frequently? If it will be used frequently (at least 4 classes per day) then I should laminate it so it stands up to being put in and pulled out of my prop organizer, swatted at by my cats, or stolen by my daughter. I also have to consider color and size. Is my prop bright enough and big enough to be visible on my student's screen? Does my prop convey the right idea about the vocabulary? And lastly, is it simple enough that I can easily reproduce it in the (likely) event it is indeed destroyed by a cat or toddler?
Lastly, I appreciated the brief section on classroom management and discipline. Before I taught preschoolers, I taught adult students and my biggest classroom management concern was balancing my adult students' talk time with my own and ensuring I covered all the necessary material for each lesson. I am fortunate in that my current preschool teaching is mostly one-on-one, and a parent is usually present or nearby. So I rarely need to discipline students. But as my career progresses, I will have the need for these management techniques!
