Art Of Teaching

The most effective way to teach English is to split your lecture into four parts:

1. Speaking and use of English
2. Pronunciation and fluency
3. Grammar and writing
4. Listening

My recommendations for each group:

1) To master speaking and use of English I recommend reading phrases, sentences, verses, prose passages and extracts from newspapers in a loud voice with proper pronunciation and intonations.

 2) Next step is to encourage the students to master pronunciation and fluency by making them do loud reading where the teacher checks their pronunciation at every step.

3) We need to encourage the students to write on a regular basis in English and check their mistakes whether grammatically correct or not. [You can start with single sentences and proceed to paragraph writing by increasing their level of difficulty].

4)  We need to encourage the students to pay attention to audio books or YouTube videos a number of times, and make note of phrases and words which they do not know. They can repeat this session a number of times. This way you can expand their vocabulary and augment their understanding of English.

It is suggested that the teacher addresses each point in an alert way and be totally focused. It is recommended that each skill needs to be practiced for at least 15 minutes.

For example, practice one vowel sound for 15 minutes and one connected speech pattern for 10 minutes. Thereafter encourage the students to speak in pairs paying attention to the vowel sounds.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A TEACHER OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE:

1. Spotlight the teaching process on development of the communication skills which is the core purpose of any language teaching. It is necessary to make the students understand and use the communication of thoughts, ideas, concepts, and feelings and express them adequately.
2. It is necessary for the teacher to use engaging materials from everyday life with which the student can relate, use contents that can be used by the students in their daily lives.
3.  The teacher needs to make sure they are planning for teaching the five basic skills at the same time (speaking, understanding the oral language, reading, writing, and the social use of the language).
4. It is grammar which is very important for a language. You can say it is the adhesive of the language; it is what keeps the language together. Merely memorizing phrases or words are not enough. Students need to know how to put those words jointly in a way that makes sense, how to create sentences with those words, and since writing is also part of the language they will need a respectable level of grammar knowledge so that they can express their skills in writing.
5. When a teacher is teaching a language she is also teaching a culture and a way of thinking. It is therefore very necessary to give the students required cultural references so they can understand the language in a broader sense. Please note that language and culture go hand in hand.
6. The teacher should have a fair knowledge of phonetics as it is an essential element of the spoken language.
7. The teacher needs to make English classes full of fun by use of audiovisual content, games, providing ample opportunities for interaction among the students. Also students should be taught the proper use of body language, objective movement within the classroom. The teacher needs to understand that some concepts like the use of the prepositions are better taught by movement and objects. Make use of images to teach words instead of translating the words into the local language. There is a need to force the students to use their abstract thinking.

Grammar is what tells the students how to say things in the right way:

When we say: “My name is Geeta” instead of saying “My is Geeta name”, the students need to understand that this is Grammar at work. So it is necessary for the teachers to ……

1. One way or another, make the children know what grammar is.
2. Get the significance of grammar through to the children.
3. Tell the students that speaking in the right way matters.

Grammar is not wicked:

 Make the students understand that grammar is neither evil nor difficult. It is like medication and regulation which you need in your life compulsorily. Grammar is not your foe but your true friend in the disguise of coercion and revulsion. There is a reason why we need to study every grammatical rule. It is therefore for the teachers to make the students understand the reasons behind the rules. For this the teachers need to be versatile in grammar themselves, only then students will follow suit and take grammar seriously.

The teacher while teaching grammar needs to be linking grammar to real-life needs and let me tell you it is the ultimate way to teach grammar. It is possible when you think hard and improvise on your lessons.

For example – If you are teaching adjectives in lower classes tell them the story of Little Red Riding Hood and as you are telling the story put on the adjectives like Little, Red along with the nouns like Girl, Dress etc. on the board. Then ask the students what colored dress was the girl in the story wearing? They will say Red. Then tell them that Red is adjective as it is a describing word and so on. After they understand the describing words from the story, give them practical examples from the class room situation like the blue bench, white wall and so on. There after give them worksheets to gauge their understanding.

In higher classes you can give them a picture or a short story and tell them to pick out all the words which are nouns or pronouns and the words which describe them.

Teaching a Student to Write with Correct Grammatical Use:

In English language, if we are reading a book that uses a lot of vivid imagery, we talk about those words which represent imagery including the use of adjectives, adverbs, verb choice, noun groups as well as other skills which writers use to build a picture in the reader’s mind.

Suppose we are reading a book that uses a lot of short sentences and paragraphs to add to the rapidity of the work, and build anticipation, we talk about the effect of sentence length on writing.

If we’re discussing an exposition and the writer uses rhetorical questions, imperatives which appeals to the reader, we are discussing persuasive devices.

So if the teacher needs to teach a specific grammatical rule, she needs to make sure that she finds a text, a novel, poem, short story, article, review etc. that will demonstrate that technique well.

The Most Practical New Method of Teaching English:

What is the most practical new method of teaching English as a foreign language? Please note that the best known method which is the Communicative English teaching is also a passive method.

 In a class with 50 students, each student will participate in active conversation for a minute maximum but even that will not cover all the students in the class specially the back benches. The remaining time will be passive listening to the teacher’s explanations or listening to the other students’ conversations in faulty English.

 Don’t you think this is the reason for the low retention rate?  So we have to think of ways to increase the time of active conversation in a class for each student.

With an aim to accomplish this goal we need to introduce a new teaching method that was never used or published before.  Presently it is protected by two patents in the US and one in China.

The new teaching method is Active Learning of English skills. It introduces concurrent replication of pre-recorded texts, which all students can do in tandem in the class using mobile applications. With Active Learning the time of active conversation in a class for each student is increased. Technically, it is quite possible. 

Please refer to this article: https://elearningindustry.com/active-learning-for-language-learning-english-fast.

In the above it is seen that the training consists of speaking English texts audibly many times while at the same time reading the text and listening to the recording. In this application the learners can share recorded sessions with their associates or teachers. Every lesson uses three types of texts:

1. Pre-recorded lessons on various topics and drills.
2.  It is unique that lessons can be added by a student or a teacher.
3. Inspirational poem recorded by a native speaker.

The communicative approach can be said to be the most common English teaching method.

 It is a practical approach in a way that it encourages learners to start speaking straight away. It possibly favors ‘fluency’ over ‘accuracy’, and promotes self and independent correction, very high student discussion time, and contained by genuine and realistic situations. This is the most practical way. However, in general it places stress on verbal communication and less on the other skills, but I would say that speaking is the most practical of the skills.

THE LATEST TEACHING METHODS OF ENGLISH:

• Fascinatingly, many of the latest teaching methods are some of the oldest methods we have.
• What is at present being researched and developed, external of mainstream schooling are techniques and approaches that were seen outside of the mainstream for centuries.
• There are many new developments and systematic experiments being conducted to find out what is the best method to tutor and smoothen the progress of English learning. But the ultimate truth is that we still know very little about how learning really takes place on a neurological level.
• Though learners are all different but it is necessary to teach them according to their age and personal wishes on which aspect they need to focus on like verbal communication or conversation.
• The best way to teach English is to engage the students, find something in common with them, and make sure they are motivated to communicate and learn.
•  It is necessary to facilitate their learning by the considerate that there are three types of learners, visual, auditory and kinesthetic and teachers need to adjust their teaching activities accordingly.
•  Teachers need to try to understand grammar as best as they can themselves before teaching, and steer clear of teaching by reading a grammar book in front of the students because this will bore them.

 It is a known fact that ……

The turf of English Language Teaching progressively recognizes the importance of dedicated information and content. This means that teachers will need to use cross-disciplinary and cross-curriculum content in their teaching. It will be mandatory for teachers of English to teach both English as a communicative language and the content. This is with the help of new learning materials and books which will comprise of more multicultural content. This will provide the students with broader perspectives and they will be better learners of the English language.

So, Happy teaching, all English teachers.