2012年4月27日 星期五

Verbal Correction Technique


Correction is one of the most essential parts of teaching English or anything other subjects. With the following verbal correction technique, you can correct your students without having them feel embarrassed and makes learning fun and effective!

As we all know, learning is a comprehensive process that requires all the senses. Some students might not have keen hearing and are not able to catch your corrections. If so, you need to combine visual aids and physical movement to help them.

“Let your fingers do the talking.”
The main concept of this technique is that “You can use your hands to indicate where a student has made errors in a spoken sentence. Using fingers as words or syllables: to indicate where the error is in a sentence is by using your fingers to represent words.”

For example, a student has come up with the sentence “I is a tall boy.”
Then,
I--- thumb
is--- index finger
a--- middle finger
tall--- ring finger
boy--- little finger

Go through the sentences with your student and let he/she knows which words represent which fingers. When you say “is” waggle the index finger and use a questioning tone, then carry on to the next finger. Repeat the process if your students are still puzzled. You can also ask them to correct it into the right form.

2012年4月25日 星期三

How to choose the right materials




Have you been asked to pick up the materials for your school or your private tutoring students? Do you know what to look for when making this kind of decisions? If you don’t, please continue reading this week’s blog entry! If you do, please read it too and make sure you got it all covered!

Language learning process is never static, instead it is dynamic. Therefore we need to the help of instructional materials and teaching aids. Instructional materials could be text books, and lesson plans. Teaching aids include visual aids, audio aids, and audio visual.

In order to choose the appropriate materials, we need to figure out the general objectives and specific objectives of teaching English. For example, grammar focused, or skills of reading, comprehension, writing and conversation.

The characteristic of good instructional materials should include the following:

  1. Supplement of Oral Teaching
During conversation class, the verbal statement made by teachers sometimes might not help clarify the view points. A pre-stage visual/ audio material might help students to get into the situation better. Student can also review and practice at home with it. Also, the audio/visual teaching material can sometime serve as a mood-changer in the classroom and keeps your students excited.
  1. Effective Learning Aids
Audio Visual aids involve more than one sensory organs of the learner. By using multi sensory organs, it helps improving retentiveness and making learning permanent.
  1. Time and energy saving
When teacher only demonstrates one skill such as verbal, it will take longer time for students to understand the content. Sometimes visual aids such as flashcards or pictures will make students understand it easier and faster. It saves more time and energy of both teachers and students.


If you enjoy this week’s teaching tip, then you have to come back! Because we are going to talk about how to pick up the right text book!




2012年4月18日 星期三

Test Anxiety


Teaching and testing often goes hand in hand. (sadly….) For some students, test anxiety is a real-life nightmare, especially for big exam like TOEFL. As a teacher, it is important to train your students how to get over their test anxieties.

Here are few tips that can help easing the anxieties:

1.      Know you material
Don’t let the test/exam be a total surprise. Help your students to be familiar with the materials, question formats, testing tool---score cards, computer, etc. The two-hour exam is not the place or time to figure out how to use a mouse.

2.      Learn actively, not passively
Students are more comfortable taking the traditional roles---passively taking notes. However, you must force your students to be active learners. Memorizing old examinations will not help the students at all. Involve your students in the hands-on running of the class, so they are never sitting down for any length of time. Active learning needs active movement!

3.      Set goals
Test requires dedication and diligence. You should set up standards with your students. Standards could include time, score, etc. These standards can help your students to be more familiar with the test and also easier to track their progress!

2012年4月16日 星期一

10 Easy Tips on Teaching Grammar Pt.3



7.  “Teach idioms, reductions, and slang to intermediate level students.”
Most of these idioms, reductions and slang did not follow the grammar rules. In order to avoid any confusion, it is better to teach these after they reach a higher level. Students need to understand the rules before they learn to break it.

8.  “Have your students peer-edit each other.”
Have your students edited each other’s work, it can train them to proof-read. Furthermore, it can remind them where to look for mistakes or not to make one. Another advantage is that it won’t overwhelm your students with sea of red marks---if your students made lots of mistakes. When they edited it before the paper get to you, they would have the chances to correct their mistakes.

9.  “Bring a concise English grammar handbook.”
Tired of students kept asking you the same questions and they just couldn’t remember it….. I know I am! Having an English grammar book in class provides the opportunities for students to look up the answers themselves. By doing so, your students will remember and actually “own” the answer.

10.  “Never say you don’t know the answer to a question a student has about grammar.”
By saying “I don’t know” devalues your position as a teacher. The best way to handle a situation like this will be “This is a good question and let’s deal with it next time,” and then go home, do your research, find out the answers. Next day give a mini 5 minutes lesson on the subject.

One more week till Global TESOL college’s amazingGrammar specialization courses! Hurry up! Sign up and learn more about teaching grammar!

2012年4月15日 星期日

“I Decided to Just Teach”


Here is an article I read the other day. It is something we teachers should all ponder on!


“I Decided to Just Teach” by    C. M. Thurston


A teacher I know, who wishes to remain nameless (presumably out of modesty), started teaching last year at a school where everyone was worried about improving state test scores. Teachers were fussing, fretting, and doing everything they could think of to help their students perform well. They structured lessons around what was going to be on the test. They gave lessons in test-taking. They gave practice tests.

The teacher I know decided that she had entirely too much to worry about, as she was teaching new subjects in a new grade in a school new to her. She was overwhelmed with responsibilities. “I just plain didn’t have time to worry about the tests,” she said. “I decided to just teach.”
At the end of the year, guess whose students made the most progress in the school, as measured by the tests?

Hers.

Okay, maybe she just lucked out. But maybe she succeeded because she did not focus on improving test scores. She focused on teaching and learning. Instead of boring her kids with practice tests and endless worksheets, she focused on keeping her students interested and involved. Maybe, just maybe, her approach is a sound one—to just teach.

It’s something to consider.

Cheryl Miller Thurston, Ideas That Really Work!  (Colorado: Cottonwood Press Inc, 2009) 13

2012年4月11日 星期三

10 Easy Tips on Teaching Grammar Part 2





Here are more tips on grammar teaching!

4.        Once students have acquired enough language to understand the process, start teaching them the rules so they can apply them for themselves.”
Before they acquired enough language skills, your students won’t be able to understand the rules. Some more tangible grammar rules such as is/are, he/she etc. can be taught at beginner level. However it could be confusing to explain to your student the difference between adjective and adverb. A teacher’s role is to facilitate the process of learning. So the more students understand, the better they are able to tell when the form and the function are used.

5.        “The higher your students’ speaking abilities are, the more they need to study grammar.”
Some teachers/ students* believed their advanced students should be free-talking, conversational only class. However, we never really acquire our first language completely, so there is no point in a student’s life where he or she needs to stop learning.
* Many advanced students often request conversation class to maintain their English abilities. Though they might only request free talking, it is important to combine grammar into conversational class. Since these students are more advance, they would appreciate and understand the grammar rules better.

6.        “In a classroom setting, never correct a student’s error more than twice.”
Some students might feel embarrassed and shut down. This happens quite often in Taiwanese classroom setting, since “face(面子 mianzi)” is a key factor in the culture. If the student is still making the same mistakes, move the error correction into a much more private setting. Language leaning should be taught in a safe and comfortable environment.

If you enjoy this week’s tip, please leave your comment and come visit us again next week!

You may know the rules of grammar, but do you know how to teach them effectively?
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