Feb 5, 2014
Classroom Management 3944 Views
Classroom management systems (and especially positive behavior support) promote an orderly learning environment for students. They enhance students' academic skills and competencies, as well as their social and emotional development.
Teachers should have the following goals in mind:
Develop caring, supportive relationships with and among students.
Organize and implement instruction in ways that optimize students' access to learning.
Use group management methods that encourage student engagement with academic tasks.
Promote the development of student social skills and self-regulation.
Use appropriate interventions to assist students who have behavior problems.
Effective classroom management systems work best using these six practices:
Post, teach, review, monitor, and reinforce expectations.
Actively engage students in observable ways.
Identify the behaviors that are an integral part of the instructional agenda, more specifically: what behaviors are required for goals to be reached; ...
Feb 5, 2014
E-Learning/CALL 2873 Views
If you are a teacher reading this, then you will have probably experienced the glassy look. This when you are talking to a room full of students and they all look like they are paying attention but you can tell by the look in their eyes, that they are not. They are probably daydreaming about their next holiday.
When this happens, it can be frustrating. You will be trying your best to get the message across and you want them to understand what you are saying but you know if someone asked them what they did in class, they would have no idea. They probably wouldn't even remember what you were wearing.
When you ask a student why they zone out, they will probably blame you. You have talked at them for too long, or the topic was boring or the personal favorite, "Well, I will never need this life, so why listen?"
What can you do?
The answer to this is proactive learning. This might be a shock if you are used to standing there with a projector and a clicker and then talking for the length of ...
Jan 24, 2014
Teaching Methodology 6571 Views
The term modern foreign language (MFL) is used to distinguish between foreign languages that are currently in use such as French and German and dead classic languages such as Latin, Classical Chinese, Attic Greek, and Sanskrit.
One of the most popular methods to teach MFLs is the language lab. A language lab is an audio-visual or audio installation that is used to aid language teaching. Students get to learn through audio, video, flash-based games, and the Internet. A standard language lab features several student terminals that have PCs with headsets that have microphones attached and a teacher’s master console. The teacher is able to control the entire system. The teacher is able to track learners’ work and to alter materials to fit students’ individual requirements. Students are able to record their own voice for future playback and to interact with teachers and other students.
There has been a shift away from the PC-based, software-only language labs that are located in a single ...
Jan 12, 2014
Career Development 2803 Views
These days, care is taken when one embarks on the project of hiring teachers. When everyone claims to be certified and qualified English speaking teachers and yet their curriculum leaves so much to be desired, little wonder everyone has resorted to hiring teachers who have the TESOL certification. It is comfortable to assume that there are no other supervisory boards for teachers on an international level thus making it easy for scammers to emerge; the fact is that not everyone who speaks well can teacher with same fervor. Teaching is an art, therefore teaching with impeachable English grammar is amazing!
It is conducted by Trinity College in London. It is a commonly taken teaching qualification in the field of English language learning and teaching otherwise known as ELT. The beauty and perk of this certification is that if you successfully obtain this qualification, you are entitled to travel anywhere around the world to teach. Also TESOL certification is only applicable to those ...
Jan 11, 2014
Classroom Materials 3604 Views
If you have ever been in a classroom environment, you will know that there are times when it is a nightmare. The students won't be listening, they will be chatting over you and if you have younger students, then there could even be screaming.
On those days, teachers are more likely to go home and feel like pulling their hair out, rather than having a sense of helping people and achievement. They will probably feel like giving up. If the teacher is new, then this could break them.
The key to reducing days like this is having complete control over the classroom environment. Some more experienced teachers will say that this comes with making the students know that you are in charge and screaming at the students, but there are other ways. There are teachers out there who have complete control and they haven't raised their voice once.
Those teachers will say that the key to their lesson plan is complete engagement. The students are so focused on their lesson, that they don't have time to ...
Jan 11, 2014
Teaching 3291 Views
There are companies out there who are busy working on new technologies because they want to make life easier for the teacher. You can argue until you are blue in the face about whether this should be done, but this is something that is going to have with innovative technologies.
Now, lets take a trip down memory lane, a trip to when you were at school. The year is 1990 and a teacher's job is very hard. Let's look at the day from their point of view.
They go into the classroom and manually take the register. Now, the class begins. They are on their feet all day because they have to work at the chalkboard. They have to write endlessly on the board because they have to stop and change for different classes. They might have to do the same lesson over and over again for different students and this will mean drawing and writing the same thing over and over again.
Their life is very monotonous. Their legs and arms are probably aching. But, their workday doesn't end there. They will have to ...
Many students who aspire to learn English, often concentrate on accent instead of concepts in the language. But, concentrating on accent makes it difficult to learn and follow the language. Therefore, they are either adapting the wrong ways to learn the language or moving away from learning it.
This trend of focusing on the accent rather than focusing on the language, is becoming common among young graduates. This shift in focus from language to accent is creating a wrong impression on the language (good accent means good English) and is misleading students on the way of learning English (getting right accent is enough to learn).
Good accent does not mean good English
Students aspiring to learn the language assume that having a good accent means speaking good English - even an illiterate person in an English-speaking country, who may not have the skills of the language can speak in his native accent. While, the intelligent and educated native speakers, though good at accent, will ...
Jan 11, 2014
Other 2841 Views
I took my SAT2 maths and physics tests a couple of days ago, after just 4 days of preparation. I didn't really plan to maximize the chance of myself getting prefect scores as I believe overdoing revision is a horrendous waste of time, especially when there are many more important things I have to work on, and they are a lot more interesting than just repeatedly stimulating the retrieval process of different sets of already-encoded data to enhance the performance of their corresponding search algorithms in my brain. And I can't predict the future, and therefore I can't say for sure that I will get 800 for both subjects. But it is highly unlikely that I won't do well. The pre-university syllabi of mathematics and physics are rather elementary. (Topology is not even in the A-level H3 maths syllabus. And SAT maths L2 doesn't even have calculus.)
Something pretty interesting happened before the test when I was in the examination room.
Awaiting the test to start was quite a mundane thing. ...
Jan 6, 2014
Other 2902 Views
The TESOL Certification – Teacher of English of Speakers of Other Languages – is a Certification needed by people who want to travel and teach English language around the world. People who desire to teach English as a second or as a foreign language need this Certificate. The Certificate is awarded after taking a course, which can be part-time over several months and up to a year, or full time, over four or five weeks’ time. The Certificate is recognized in several countries around the world, so the candidates will be able to teach English in any of the recognized countries.
By taking the TESOL Certification, the candidates will learn the basic skills in English, which are needed to start teaching the English language as a foreign language. It does not require any experience of teaching English in order to qualify for this course, as the course itself makes an introduction of the candidates to the theory and practice of English teaching. The courses also teach the ...
I once had the opportunity to interview a language learner. This student was enrolled in a full-time, intensive language program. She was learning her second language because she was going to go into an international political science course. She loved the idea of working for a large corporation overseas.
At the beginning of the course, this learner was highly motivated, excited to get up every day and go to class. By the end of the course, she dreaded spending another day in a small room with the same people she had been learning with over the past several months. When asked, she still had a deep desire to continue her international studies program, but she could not stand the thought of another day in the language program doing the same tasks with the same teacher and the same classmates.
As this learner's experiences demonstrate, different aspects of your language learning environment can impact your motivation.
These aspects can be broken down into three broad categories:
...