new to teaching... any advice?

Congratulations on your new job, oriental, & welcome to A2K!

I'm just taking a term break from teaching right now & it's a bit hard to get my head about thinking about the job! :wink: It's very demanding, isn't it?

I'll be back later, to see how your thread's going. Hopefully others will join in on your discussion.

The best of luck to you in your new position.

Re: new to teaching... any advice?


The most important thing to remember when you're teaching a second language is that you are NOT a teacher. You're a facilatator, Oriental.

When people learn a new language they don't need to be taught ABOUT the language. That doesn't make them better at language, it only makes them better at knowing a bit about the new language. That NEVER translates into actual language production.

The next most important thing is that your students practice real language in a real context. People's brains are excellent at sorting out the grammar of language but these same brains are terrible at analysing grammar, even their mother tongue grammar.

At some point, after copious [lots of] practice in real contexts, second language learners just start to fly all on their own. This never happens when they are taught grammar and analysis of language.

In order to do this you only have to keep in mind one thing. If the students can't see the language, ie. if there is no actual context/situaition, then don't practice that language.

It's easy to do real language. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and playmates the world over do it day in and day out with new language learners, aka babies.

It's only adult "teachers" who would ever think of teaching in isolated sentences with no context. "Give me a ball" when there is no ball, just a sentence scribed on a blackboard or mouthed with no meaning.