Thu, 25 Jun 2020

Why and How Should We Learn Teaching Skills?

It is easy for anyone to profess knowledge in a language, but teaching it is an entirely different story. When one doesn't even know the complexities of one's learning process, understanding how another person can come to learn may be a walk in the dark or frustrating to either the student or teacher and the results of a teacher unwilling to become a good one are unattractive.

This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Katya S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.

My Point of View

In my personal experience, I have come across students who had despaired of their English learning process, and come to think themselves incapable of learning the language due to several factors such as having to sit through tedious and low-quality classes, being misplaced into levels that were not adequate for their development, and just generally disinterested and non-dedicated teachers. These people needed healing in their process because there had been a certain amount of trauma with the language that never allowed a proper development. Even some long term language speakers still feel very uncomfortable communicating with the language when they have suffered these traumas. Furthermore, how frustrating it is for a student who has spent many years learning, to realize that after all this time, they have been executing some aspect of the language entirely wrong, or have their life complicated when in some foreign situation, they are not understood due to a language problem. It is difficult enough to adapt to some unfamiliar situations, and will only be made more trying when the supposed preparation for these situations was poorly carried out. A properly educated teacher, who knows what he is doing and is passionate about the success of his students will hopefully avoid causing such difficulties in someone's journey.

Also Read: Stories for Teaching English to Different Groups of Students

How to Improve the Results

While it may initially seem complicated to be a great teacher, a few simple solutions can be employed by the teacher to improve his results. Making sure you explore the resources and activities you can use can make all the difference. Ideas are abundant in many spaces, given out freely by those who have come before, and simply taking some time to explore them, adapt them, and put them into your arsenal of tools for your classes can easily enhance your teaching. It is important to always have a mindset in which you ask yourself whether what you did worked well or not as you go along. Simple sticking to what you are doing without any sort of change does not allow for growth. Finally, something as simple as watching and observing the emotional and physical state of your students can give you a lot of clues as to how they are doing and whether they are learning as they ought to be or not. Simple and direct casual, or formal questioning of how they are feeling with their progress can also be a great approach to learning to do your part better.

As the meaning and positive results in what you are doing carry weight in the state of well-being, there could be benefits to proportioning a high-quality product with one's teaching. One could live out a dreary and dry life working as a teacher, or one could find great fulfillment in what one does. A mere focus on a paycheck or passing the hours could make for an unpleasant existence while seeing the progress of someone else finding new joys in new heights, in a more efficient, logical, and wholesome way can lead to a human finding worth within his laboring hours.

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All in all, should a teaching job be done poorly, both teachers and students are negatively affected in the present and long term. Therefore, it would be worthwhile to employ strategies that will allow you to be an outstanding teacher.

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