TEFL Courses in London

Blog Text/Images

Day 2

So, today is the first day of “proper” input and, for the trainees, the eagerly anticipated first lesson.  In input I did some a session on Receptive skills, that’s reading and listening.  It’s a good first session as the structure that emerges is fairly clear and simple, easy to grasp and implement.  It avoids the scary stuff: grammar neatly.

I look at reading and people always expect that a reading lesson will involve students in reading a text aloud.  Nothing could be more terrifying for a student and with a moment’s thought it becomes apparent that reading aloud is a pronunciation exercise; pronunciation is part of speaking, a productive skill, nothing to do with reading.  Reading aloud actually impedes comprehension as we worry about how we are saying things rather than focussing on what we are reading.  When do we ever read aloud anyway; when will our students ever need to read aloud in English?  Once we’ve agreed that we aren’t going to ask our students to read aloud we can look at what we can do to help students become more efficient, more effective readers or listeners.  We can look at the different ways we read things, for example we read the TV pages in a different way to the way we read the editorial pages in the newspaper.  One Golden Rule is established: that we ALWAYS set a task for students BEFORE they start reading/listening so they have a reason for reading/listening and know what they are looking for.  I think it is probably the only actual Rule in teaching.  In almost everything else we are driven by pragmatism not dogmatism.

As the afternoon approaches the nervous energy increases as people contemplate their first lessons.  They’re almost always OK, people are a bit nervous and typically this makes them speak a bit fast.  Students are a bit reserved as a result, they don’t always quite know what is wanted of them but they want to support the teacher so they usually work out what to do and muddle through together.  The better lessons are the ones where the teacher does less, putting the students at the centre and stepping back to allow the students time and space to speak and use language.  A friendly smile and a speaking slowly are all that’s really needed in this lesson.