The Art of Teaching
English Language
Harmer (2007)
interrogates if “the teaching language is an art or science?”. He actually
incorporates both point of views and agrees that the teaching language can be
both seen as an art and science. The methodological aspects that is
understanding the language system and finding the best ways to teach it can be
seen as a science. And, yet teaching can be understood as an art also. For
example, the rapport building with the students can be seen as an art. I have
to agree with Harmer (2007), and add that teaching English language in
different learning environments (schools, academies and companies) has to be
seen more as an art and, more general, I think that a good teacher should
explore the use of art in the classroom as it may help to activate critical
thinking in students.
First of all, a
good teacher has to build a good rapport with the students. It can lead to a
good class communication and interaction. It can positively influence both the
teacher and the students. A teacher can learn some basic tricks that can help
him to achieve a good communication with the students such as remembering their
names rather than pointing at them each time he wants to make them talk. A
teacher should also be very patient and be there to listen to his students,
their needs and interests. The awareness of the students' needs should be the
priority for every good teacher. During the first class, it is advisable to
assess students' prior learning, motivation and, also, objectives they look
forward to attain. Also, find out about the student as a person and ask about
the students' age and level of English (from beginners to advanced students) as
well as the students' educational and cultural background. In the communication
activities, every student should participate. Never leave behind the quieter
students or less self-confident students. A good teacher knows that the
participation and interaction of all students is important. Also, it is
important to maintain the students' motivation during the class. It can be
reached if Teacher Talking Time (TTT) is
lower than Student Talking Time (STT). It is necessary to make the students
talk and make them use the language they learn. As the consequence, it can be
helpful if the teacher starts the class in such a way that the students'
interest is aroused and engages them from the very beginning. So how it can be
done? One good example would be to maintain the element of surprise when the
teacher arrives in the classroom. Although a clear start to the lesson is
necessary, we can immediately gain the students attention by introducing an
activity which has an element of surprise by using eye-catching visual
materials. It all depends on the teacher's approach and what teaching method he
will decide to use.
Nowadays, the
teachers are able to choose among many different methods and can also choose to
use a combination of different ones in the classroom. Although the choice
of methodology may vary, it can be
useful to keep in mind the use of the receptive and productive skills in the
class. The receptive skills, reading and listening, are the acquiring skills
and initially a student will use these first before being able to understand
and make use of so called productive skills, speaking and writing. The receptive
skills that a beginner student receives and acquires are also known as the
passive skills. Beginners usually start with receptive understanding of the new
concepts and only in the next learning stage is able to produce and make use of
when he actually produces the productive skills on his own. In my opinion, there should be a balance
between the both group of skills as it will help a student to build all four
relevant skills necessary for a good knowledge of English. For example,
beginners firstly need to have an input of a language before they are able to
produce the acquired target language. Therefore, it can be also used a lot of
mimic, repetition, and some translation into L1 at beginner's level in order to
help them to learn the main concept in L2. Different skills acquisition leads
us towards the choice of language areas to be thought for different students'
age and level. The different language area can be thought in different stages
and it can imply both explicit and implicit learning. For example, if we use a
reading activity students will explicitly acquire new vocabulary and it will
permit the teacher to implicitly teach grammar rules and sentence structures.
Teacher's approach and the language area choice should vary between teaching beginners
and more advanced students, and different age. Though the goal will remain the
same – target language acquisition it is necessary to adopt teaching to
learners' needs and objectives. For example, teaching English to kids will be
different from teaching adults. Kids acquire language in a natural way, usually
subconsciously, through games, songs and stories by imitating what they hear
and see; and adults language acquisition requires more students' and teacher's
effort due to many factors like previous studies background and therefore
previous personal experience, the knowledge of some other L2 language and
therefore its interference, the motivation, etc.
For a good teacher
it is necessary to be prepared and have in mind a teaching syllabus orientation
for the lessons. Also, it is advisable to maintain a record of what has been
taught. For example, record keeping can be useful in order to evaluate how
successful an activity has been in terms of students engagement and learning
outcomes. It can help us to design class activities based on our professional
experience. In my opinion, the combination of Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT) and Task-Based Learning (TBL) are a good choice of class methods to be
used in the classroom. They permit students to acquire and produce a language
thanks to different communicative activities and performing real-life tasks and
more students gets exposed to language the opportunities for language use will
be higher. Moreover, it will permit the teacher to engage the students in
different situational-communicative activities and games and motivate them to
use the target language (speaking skills). It will also encourage the students
to participate more and interact among themselves and in that way build their
self confidence. In this case, a teacher acts as a playmaker who tails
knowledge by guiding and the most common students' activity is a role play
(based on different roles students play)
or a debate (students own opinion on different topics). We can introduce and
present the chosen method and different situational-communicative activities
through a plan of lesson. I think it is helpful because it reminds a
teacher what steps to follow and enable him to keep an eye on activities
development (when it is supposed to start and end each activity). Although, an
on-going lesson may change its initial teacher's intention, a plan will be
useful as something to fall back on. A good teacher need to be flexible that is
he need to adopt to changing circumstances that may occur during the lesson
performance and, at the same time, he has to be creative in order to cope with
any unexpected events that may occur.
A good teacher can
also introduce art to plan a lesson. Different form of art will help keeping
our methods and activities fresh and interesting for both students and
teachers. Also, art can be introduced to talk about other target language
concepts. For example, plan a lesson with the theme of war and piece for a
group of intermediate-level students. The lesson can be introduced by some
visual art – a picture or painting or video - Picasso's Guernica painting, for
example. We can ask students what they See-Think-Wonder about it (What do you
see? What are your thoughts? What does it make you wonder?) or How does the
painting make you feel? It can be also introduced the historical facts behind
the painting. Moreover, we can add another activity and put some pictures with
quotes and students can chose whether they refer to war or peace, etc. Many
other activities may be introduced in sequence and activate students critical
thinking and make them start to communicate and interact. And, another element
I would highly recommend is some listening activities. They can be useful for
students to familiarize with the pronunciation and different English language
accents.
Another example for
teaching materials that can be used in the classroom is realia that is
the real objects we can find around us and use it to “explain” to a student the
meaning of target language and it is widely used for beginners. The use of
different newspapers articles is also highly advisable. They can be find online
and it is important to relate topic to target students needs. For example, we
can use Financial Times for Intermediate - Advanced Business English
students. Nevertheless, we should pay attention not to put too many information
in one lesson. We should concentrate on one topic and introduce it through some
a sequence of communicative activities. At the end, in order to check up the
students comprehension, we can ask some concept-checking questions or so called
wrap up questions to asses whether or not the students have learnt the
objectives of the lesson. Also, in order to asses learning outcomes and
students' difficulties they may encounter during the class, the teacher should
pay attention on student's reaction when we introduce some a new concept or an
activity and the eye-contact may also play the crucial role.
Some students'
difficulties can arise from affective factors that may influence positively or negatively
on students' L2 acquisition. It depends a lot on learning environment created
in the classroom and some methods can be useful to help acquisition barriers
such as suggestopedia – playing relaxing music in the class. Emotional
factor plays a crucial roles it defines student's personality and less self
confident and shy learners will have to put more effort in L2 acquisition. The
other language acquisition interference are related to external factors and
students' exposure to language outside the classroom. Learners also tend to be
constantly influenced by the pattern of L1 who tends to interfere L2
acquisition. Spanish-speaking English language learners makes errors in their
interlanguage by borrowing structures from their mother tongue.
Giving students the
opportunity to interact with the teacher and with each other, planning lessons
that include activities that promote these opportunities and explore art in the
classroom from time to time, and target language placed in a context of
meaningful learning tasks are all ways in which L2 acquisition is supposed to
be applied in the classroom.
Book reference:
Harmer J.
(2007), How to teach English, Pearson Education Limited, Essex, England
Online
references:
Teaching English
– British Council Teachers' blog