How to teach English effectively in a class?
Are you an English teacher struggling to keep your students interested? Is it really difficult to teach English in a class in an effective manner where you can grab the attention of all the students? Irrespective of the fact whether you are teaching kids or adults here are a few tips that might be helpful in keeping your students engaged throughout the lesson and help them learn the language effectively.
Try to understand your students
English is not the first language for many learners. It is always a good idea to try to understand the background of your students and how much exposure they have had to English. The teaching approach would be very different for students depending on whether they are complete beginners or had some previous training. An insight into their social background can be helpful in curating lessons accordingly.
What can you do?
Keep it simple – It is always a good idea to start with something simple which your students can understand easily. Try to use simple sentences while giving instructions.
Make learning fun – Do you find it interesting if your teacher just walks in, reads the whole passage and goes on explaining without getting the students involved? It’s the same with your students also. Just reading and explaining something though necessary might not work always. So, to avoid boredom in the class it is important to create activities that would keep them interested and also help them learn and remember what they have learnt.
Let them write – Ask your students to write about different topics in a few sentences to begin with. You can give them a simple topic or ask them to choose a topic of their interest.
Ask them to tell stories – Story telling is a very interesting way of learning. It’s not just the kids that love stories, even adults enjoy them. Students can tell simple and short stories in English or they can even translate stories from other languages that they know to English and tell them in the class.
Let them play a drama – Drama is another very engaging and interesting way of learning. You can ask your students to play a drama that is given in the textbook or they can come up with something based on a lesson. This would help them write dialogues and script for the play. This not just helps in learning English but also helps in bringing out hidden talents of your students which can boost their self-confidence.
Ask them to communicate in English – It is very easy to learn a language when we use it the most in our day-to-day communication. Hence, ask your students to communicate in English. While communicating with your students start with simple words and move on to higher-level vocabulary as they get comfortable speaking English on a daily basis.
Let them learn from their mistakes – No one masters a language without making mistakes. Let your students make mistakes and learn from them. Use appreciation and encourage your students instead of pointing out their mistakes rudely.
Finally,
These are just some of the ways you can effectively teach English in a class. You can use your creativity and practice different methods to engage your students and help them achieve proficiency in English.