Alias Don't Take Anything for Granted
After years of daily classroom routine, teachers tend to do things automatically, without even noticing that they do them that way. These can even be bad habits (talking to students while continuously wandering about the classroom, using a monotonous tone when giving feedback, or just repeating “good job” even after a mistake, etc.), and a supervisor, after a classroom observation, can (and should) help notice and correct these. However, there is also a long list of good habits we usually do without thinking about them. When I was asked in 2011 to coordinate 12 teachers and recruit new ones, I had to realise that these good habits are not so obvious to everyone.
So I’ve put together a quick list, and I’d ask all future or newly recruited teachers to take a look at it before their demo lesson or their first real class:
Use the Board
Sicily has taught many of us that we cannot take it for granted that we’ll have a blackboard/whiteboard in the classroom in a public school (let alone in a public office where you’re supposed to teach clerks). But if there is one, let’s at least assume the teacher makes good use of it. Write on it: every new word, every new grammar structure and its analysis must go on the board. Students might recognise a word, but they need to see it and write it down in order to remember it (or its spelling). The board is your saving grace even in critical situations: you can play games at it even with bigger classes (spelling race, Hangman, Pictionary, Blockbusters, etc.), or you can draw on it and elicit a word without switching into students’ L1. A good part of your lesson preparation should be spent designing your whiteboard plan.
Use the Coursebook (or Any Other Material Your Students Have)
You might not be lucky enough to have a book to follow (which makes life easier), but if your students were given a coursebook, why not use it? What sense does it make to give them piles of photocopies and leave the books untouched? Have you ever seen those photocopies at the end of the school year? You don’t have to teach the student’s book from cover to cover, but you’ll definitely find a good text to read, an excellent grammar explanation with exercises, or a great picture to describe. Take advantage of them.
Keep Eye Contact with Your Students
I never thought I’d need to explain this to new colleagues, but - due to nervousness or cultural habits - some teachers talk to students without looking at them. I remember some university lecturers doing the same while walking up and down in front of the auditorium. However, language teachers teach effective communication to their students, so when talking to your students, sit down and look them in the eye. You’ll be surprised how much easier it becomes to hold their attention.
Pay Attention to ALL Students
Your aim is not to get the correct answer from one student, but to make sure that ALL students know the correct answer (and are able to work it out on their own), even if they don’t speak up right after your question. Very eager students will make you feel comfortable, because they ensure there are no silent moments in your lesson. Nevertheless, they can lead to a disaster: their eagerness will demotivate the other students, and that’s not what you want. So keep all your students active. If one has answered the third question in a row, give them a couple of minutes to relax and call on other students. This leads to another point:
Learn Your Students’ Name
I have a German first name with a Hungarian surname, and I live in Italy. After years, I don’t really mind if somebody calls me something different from my name, as long as it sounds similar (Emma or something like that will do). So perfection isn’t the main issue. But after the first couple of lessons, you should be able to recall your students’ first names. If your memory doesn’t help, put a blank sheet on your desk and jot down the students’ names in seating order while taking attendance at the start of the lesson, then use this as a cheat sheet. You might know them all by heart before you need to mix them up for the next speaking activity.
Elicit Continuously
There’s a huge difference between my mother-in-law and me when talking to my kids. She overuses modal verbs (“you must do this or that”, “you can’t do this and that”), while I continuously ask questions (“can we do this?”, “which one do you want, this or that?”, “what colour is this or that?”). Language teachers need to make the same shift: instead of teaching/lecturing, they’re supposed to elicit. As one of my colleagues would say: don’t talk for longer than 20 seconds without asking a question (read his post here).
Correct Mistakes
It sounds obvious, but don’t take it for granted that every teacher does it. You should. Error correction is what makes the real difference between a teacher and a foreign friend. You don’t have to correct every mistake, but you need to correct some — let’s say the most typical ones — from lesson one. Then, with some extra reading, you can learn tips and tricks on when and how to correct mistakes.
Give a Task Before Listening/Reading
As a native speaker of a language, you might be able to read or listen to something without any expectations, previous lead-in or comprehension questions, and give a summary afterwards — but ESL students are not the same as you. Even at a higher level, it can be difficult for them to simply understand a text or recording. They use the picture next to the text to make assumptions about its content, and they need a reason for listening or reading. Just think that they have to tackle the accent/dialect and speed of speech of different speakers, tone and intonation that might contradict the words, background noise, new vocabulary, tricky grammar structures, etc. — all this while fearing they’ll miss something or misunderstand a word. So help them, and teach them to help themselves. Analyse visual aids and the title, let them listen twice, asking them to listen for something specific each time. The first time, something simple (a number, the speakers’ intention, the main topic of discussion — the gist of the text); the second time, give them more detailed questions. If you look at any modern coursebook, the writers follow the same methodology. Point out whether the answers to the questions appear in chronological order in the text, and explain how to eliminate incorrect answers to arrive at the correct ones.
Make Sure They Know the Correct Answer
You might ask a student for the correct answer in an open-class feedback session and assume everyone else heard or understood it. But that’s rarely the case. Students talk to each other even in these moments, they might get distracted, they may still be checking the text for the answer, or they simply can’t make it out. So repeat the correct answer, or — better still — get the student who answered to repeat it loudly and clearly, or write it on the whiteboard. Working on a question and never finding out whether the answer was correct can easily discourage students.
Make Students Take Notes
It’s rare to have such a well-structured book that you don’t need to add anything. Teachers usually have their own way of visualising new structures, and this is what they put on the whiteboard. But it’s enough to think of a new lexical item with a tricky spelling pattern: students might understand what you’ve written on the whiteboard, but they won’t remember it after an hour or a day. So make sure they take notes and copy every important detail from the board into their notebooks. This matters for adults too, not just young learners. That said, check that they don’t copy everything from the whiteboard — guide them and make clear what’s important to have in their notes for revision at home.
Check Homework
You might not always assign homework, but whenever you do, clarify how it will be corrected. If the book has an answer key, ask your students to check their answers at home — this saves classroom time. If the answers aren’t given to students, and the exercise has a limited number of possible correct answers (a closed exercise), decide whether you can copy the answers for the students or write them on the whiteboard before the lesson, then ask them to correct their own work in class. This also saves time, since you only need to discuss the questions students got wrong. Where the homework questions are open, you’ll need to go through the possible answers with the students — leave enough time for this in your lesson plan. Finally, if the homework was free writing, you’ll need to collect it and prepare a feedback lesson or session. Speaking of feedback…
Give Feedback on Written Homework and Tests Too
There’s nothing more demotivating than working on a homework assignment and getting no feedback, or only a superficial one: “Well done”, “Try harder”, or “12/20”. Stop for a second and think about this: your student found time in their busy schedule, or sacrificed their free time, to do something you asked them to do. Respect that, and find time to correct these assignments as soon as possible (in my previous school, one week was the maximum allowed). The same goes for tests: don’t just hand back the test papers with a result (e.g. 79%) — prepare a lesson, or at least an activity, that addresses the problem areas. Try to get your students to explain to you and each other why an answer was incorrect, and reteach any points that students hadn’t grasped before the test.
Think in Advance about HOW to Run an Exercise
You might want students to listen to a track, but some of them will find the transcript in the book and read along while listening (turning the exercise into a reading activity). Or you want students to answer several questions and start reading them aloud, but the students just stare at you over their closed books. Plan in advance when to instruct students to open/close their books, open/close their notebooks, write or just listen, and when to start/finish each exercise.
Don’t Let Chats Go on for Too Long
One of the weakest explanations I’ve heard from teacher candidates after a demo lesson with no progress through the syllabus or book is that “students wanted to talk, so we had a conversation.” Aside from the fact that conversation isn’t the same as chit-chat, there’s a reason courses follow a syllabus: you need to get things done. Even on a course where the teacher can design the whole programme, there must be a starting point and a destination students need to reach by the end. Moreover, chit-chat usually involves only some of the students — typically the more extroverted ones — is done in open class (so not all students are active), often means too much teacher talking time, and trains only two skills (listening and speaking) plus maybe some vocabulary. Even grammar clarification tends to be ineffective without targeted practice. So don’t assume you’ve had a good lesson if it mainly consisted of chatting about everything and nothing. Focus on your teaching aims and target language.
Be Genuinely Interested in Your Students
This is obvious to most active teachers, but still shouldn’t be taken for granted. Some (newer) teachers misread students’ interest in them and start to see themselves as the centre of the lesson. Needless to say, the teacher runs the lesson and might sometimes feel like a showman (you can’t keep tired adults awake from 8 to 9.30pm without a bit of that), but they’re not the star — your students are. What’s more, since students need to learn how to use the language, get them talking about themselves; listen to their opinions and their life stories. Your interest must be genuine, though — students might not understand your language perfectly, but they do understand your intonation and other non-verbal signals.
Lead into New Topics, Set Context
Say you know you have to teach the Present Perfect today, and you plan to do four exercises from the student’s book and workbook. Even so, you can’t start your lesson by saying: “Today we’re going to look at the Present Perfect — here’s the form…” You need to lead into the topic, create a story (set context) that brings students to the form, which can then be elicited from them using a sample sentence — ideally one made up by the students themselves. Even when moving to a new topic, do it smoothly, asking questions that guide students towards the next lesson phase.
Finish Your Lesson with Elegance
Don’t assume your students will automatically realise it’s time to stand up and go home. When you finish the lesson (or when time’s up), assign homework (write the relevant page and exercise numbers on the whiteboard), remind them of any upcoming tests or assignments, thank them for their cooperation, and say goodbye. You can keep chatting with them while collecting your materials and walking them out of the room — this gives the end of the lesson some style, and also ensures you get your five-minute break before the next one.
Winding down
Don’t worry if you can’t keep all these points in mind during your first lessons. Set yourself an action point for each coming lesson and work through them one by one. Step by step and day by day… This list is open, and if you can think of any new ideas, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
