Teaching a Foreign Language. Tips.

” If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.  If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart. ”  – Nelson Mandela.  

Students learn by doing and by imitating others.  Foreign language teachers must therefore use the target language in the classroom, as often as possible, until it sounds and feels natural to the students.  The teacher should also use a variety of techniques to cater to the various learning styles of the students.  Teachers of foreign languages should cover the four language skills in every lesson.  They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.  Listening and reading are receptive skills while speaking and writing are productive language skills.  Students must be able to understand and produce communication in the target language.

Teachers must speak to the students in the target language in the classroom.  This works best for learners who have reached an intermediate or advanced level of proficiency in the target (foreign) language; but it is still very helpful for beginners if it is tailored to their level.  The goal is to immerse learners in the target language as much as possible.  Arranging trips to a country in which the foreign language is spoken will provide total immersion for a period of time and accelerate the development of the students’ receptive and productive language skills.  They will also realize that foreign languages are not dead subjects but living languages spoken by millions of people everyday.  Teachers need to sensitize students to the culture of the countries  in which the target language is spoken.

Teachers must create an environment and everyday situations in the classroom, which make learners use the foreign language in a real-world setting. There must be authentic dialogue, discussion, pair work, group work, and role play centred around situations created by the teacher.  These may include conversation, in the target language, relative to shopping, asking for and giving directions, personal daily routines, school life, family life, social activities, and so forth.  Of course the teacher must give them the requisite vocabulary and grammar to memorize first, for each topic.  This explanation of the main elements of each topic should be done in the students’ first language.  Communicative drills and activities are very useful.

The teacher must create a relaxed and tolerant atmosphere in the classroom, in which students feel comfortable and accepted even when they make grammatical errors.  The main goal is communication.  The grammar can be corrected in a collaborative manner at the end of each situational activity.

After the communicative activities mentioned above, the students can proceed to written exercises based on the same grammar and vocabulary they were using.  The teacher can create relevant worksheets and exercises that students can use for practice.  Oral repetition and games are also important.

Teachers can also arrange for students to communicate via email with their counterparts from a country which speaks the target language, and encourage them to surf the internet, watch videos, films, TV programmes, read stories, and listen to radio broadcasts in the foreign language, even if they do not understand much at first.  They will understand more and more if they persist.

Enthusiasm is contagious.  If teachers show passion for the foreign language this will motivate the students to work harder.

 

 

Resolving Student Feuds

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” It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other. ”  – Jesse Jackson.

Unfortunately, student feuds tend to be an inevitable part of school life.  They occur frequently and must be dealt with promptly because they can cause serious indiscipline, fighting, physical injury, bullying and other forms of conflict among students.  It often happens that the students carrying on the feud used to be good friends before.  The feuds are often started by malicious gossip or relational problems among students, so it is imperative for teachers and administrators to discourage gossip and teach conflict resolution as a vital skill for students.  Much of the gossip is spread electronically these days.

Most of the teachers and school administrators to whom I have spoken, agree with me that quarrels and feuds between girls last longer and are more difficult to resolve than those among boys.  In my various  efforts to reconcile feuding girls I have often discovered that they had not spoken to each other for months or years, but they continued spreading gossip about each other during that time.  At times, the words or events which triggered the feud may seem quite trivial to an outsider, but many girls do not easily forgive each other.  Many boys seem to get over their grudges more quickly.  In any case, sometimes all it takes for feuding students, male or female, to fight, is an accidental touch or push.  This happens as a result of the deep resentment they feel towards each other and the need to retaliate for perceived wrongs, disrespect or insults perpetrated by their adversaries.

To resolve student feuds, the teacher or school administrator must act as a mediator.  The mediator must bring the feuding students together in a private office or room and let them talk about their mutual problems in a controlled environment.  The mediator has to rigidly control the discussion and the environment or the situation will get out of hand and degenerate into further conflict.  He or she must get the opposing parties to listen to each other. This is very important.

During the discussion, the mediator must insist that the feuding parties speak directly to him or her only and not to each other.  This prevents further conflict during the discussion.  Let them express their feelings for each other and their grievances through the mediator.  They will often discover that they have been operating on a basis of misinformation, hearsay, and false assumptions.  The goal is to get to the truth of the matter.  When their emotions are under control they can be allowed to speak directly to each other.

When the real root cause of the feud has been determined the mediator should ask each student what he or she can do to solve the problem and prevent its recurrence.  The mediator’s next step is to get each student to commit to the implementation of the stated solutions.  The mediator can offer additional solutions if necessary, get the feuding students to apologize to each other as necessary, and direct them to come back and give him or her progress reports on the resolution of the feud, from time to time.  He or she must also deal with any student who is not genuinely trying to resolve the feud.

Teachers and administrators must show students who are engaging in feuds that conflict can be resolved.  They need to know that they can coexist peacefully even if they do not always like each other.  This will also bring about an improvement in school climate.  My final suggestion is that the guidance counsellor and parents can also assist in resolving student feuds.  The measures outlined in this post are sufficient to resolve any student feuds once the opponents apply them in good faith.

 

 

 

 

 

Teacher Self-Reflection at Year End

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” O, happy the soul that saw its own faults. ”  – Mevlana Rumi Quotes from Rumi Daylight.

Systematic self-reflection by teachers at the end of each school year is a vitally important part of their ongoing professional development.  It is self-managed and if it is approached in an honest and open-minded way it will lead to definite improvement in teaching and learning.  It allows teachers to hone and fine-tune their craft by consolidating what works and improving or eliminating what does not work in their teaching.  It gives teachers a chance to start over afresh at the beginning of each new school year.  Note, however, that teachers can engage in meaningful self-reflection at any time of the school year in order to improve  the teaching and learning experience.  A thorough analysis of what worked, what failed, and why,in both cases, conduces to future success.

There are two keys to productive teacher self-reflection; namely, a list of effective questions which form the framework of the reflection, and the implementation of pedagogical changes after the reflection.  These changes drive the desired improvement in teacher performance.  Here is a list of typical questions for teacher self-reflection:

• How do I rate my teaching during this past year?
• Did I achieve my stated goals this year? Why? or why not?
• Did I complete the required syllabuses? Why/why not?
• In which areas was I most successful? Why?
• What was my biggest improvement? Why?
• Where did I fail? Why?
• How can I improve grades among my weaker students?
• Am I catering to the different learning styles of my students?
• Do I need to improve or update my knowledge or skills in any area of the curriculum?
• How can I improve my teaching, and student learning in my classroom?
• Is my classroom management good enough?
• How do I get parents to become more engaged in their children’s schooling?
• What did students find most difficult? Why?
• what was my biggest source of frustration? How can I change that?
• How can I decrease my stress levels while providing high quality teaching?
• What is the most important thing I learned about teaching this year?

What other questions would you add to this list?

Teachers must always set goals which foster improvements in teaching and learning.  They should not teach the same unchanged lessons year after year without any self-reflection at year end or attention to varying student needs.  They should seek to produce constantly improving and evolving versions of their lessons from year to year.