Demands on the teacher

A language teacher must be aware that this work is very demanding, both intellectually and physically. Vital qualities are:

1. energy;

2. a desire to teach;

3. willingness to prepare materials such as visual aids and hand-outs;

4. an ability to transfer his knowledge interestingly and imaginatively.

Teaching Structure.

1. Get into the situation quickly.

2. Ask the vital check questions, i.e. make sure the students understand what you are doing.

3. Vary your drilling techniques.

4. Use as many aids as necessary to make your lesson meaningful (ask yourself a question “What have your students learned today?”).

5. Towards the end of the lesson, hand the drilling over to the students to allow maximum students’ talking time (questions must be strictly controlled and subject matter relevant).

6. Allow for a further practice during the free stage, but with the teacher still in control.

Points to Remember

1. At all stages elicit and encourage with a minimum amount of

teacher’s talking time.

2. Develop ways of checking whether the student understands what he is saying, even though what he says may be linguistically correct.

3. Have students engaged in a brainstorming activity (i.e. a group activity designed to generate as many ideas as possible).

Points to Avoid

1. Teacher talking too much.

2. Not having grammar points at one’s fingertips.

3. Lack of expression, drama and variation in voice.

4. Lack of variety in techniques of presentation and questioning.

5. Inadequate drilling and cursory questioning.

6. Lack of consolidation material.

7. Abstract questioning (e.g. Do you know what absent-minded is?)

8. Expecting students form questions without practice.

9. Overlooking stress and intonation. Inadequate pronunciation correction so that students are not aware of their mistakes.

10. Lack of creativity and imagination.

11. Inadequate text types (spoken and written).

12. Overlooking recycling of discourse topics.

13. Lack of interaction between teacher-student/student-teacher/student-student.

Джерела:
Близнюк М.І. Курс лекцій з методики викладання англійської мови. – Чернівці: ЧДУ, 1999 – с.