Edinburg, Texas TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

Unit twenty was a short unit that went over first lessons, warmer activities, how to deal with classes of mixed language levels, exceptionally large classes, native language use in the class, how to deal with reluctant students, and how to deal with difficulties with listening texts when they arise. First lessons should be used to establish rapport, find out about your students, find out about your students needs and aspirations, and finding out the individual English level of each student. Warmer activities are short communicative activities to get students motivated like Hangman, Pictionary, Tongue Twisters, or Memory games. When you are teaching students of multiple levels there are four typical approaches and a good teach can mix and adapt them to fit the needs of their class; these approaches are using different materials, using the same materials but with different tasks, doing nothing and letting the students find their level, and pairing strong students with weak ones. Teaching large classes limits the ability for individual instruction and teachers should instead implement techniques such as using worksheets, pair or group work, and choral repetition to get the class involved. We also discussed the reasons why students may revert to their native language and some ways to prevent confusion and encourage the use of English as much as possible. We also discussed that when you have a class of students who appear reluctant to participate you should first allow students time to practice their language use and then employ pair work and role play when you can to help break down that barrier. Lastly, we discussed that often difficulty with listening texts does arise and how it is vital to pre-teach potentially difficult vocabulary to minimize issues.