This article is illuminated about how teachers should start not start but run their lessons with their students. How do you think which methods are appropriate for their students and situation? Let’s start with four words. Those words are a bit longer to keep in your mind but we have the simplest way to keep your focus is to remember that language teaching is a GAIM:
− Goals
− Assessment
− Input
− Motivation.
Goals.
Especially most language teachers start the course or lesson with one of two goals: get through the book, tell or teach them what the teacher knows. The first problem with «teaching the book» is that language books are written for possible audience of tens of thousands of students, so yes there is a good chance that a book written by native-English speakers from Australia who are teaching students from US may not meet all needs of Russian or Uzbek students who are learning English in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, from a teacher with an Uzbek accent.
A second common option is to teach what you know well; some language teachers teach their student what they know but they do not try to know what students want to know. Because their teachers did like that. Those kind of teachers actually enjoy studying language and many people who need to learn a foreign language do not study it just for the joy of the process.
It is said that many teachers prefer to start courses or lessons without any goals because of mentioned two problems. However, I would like to recommend another option.
If you want to have very effective courses or lessons, you must set clear and strong goals for your students. However, I think you do not always need to articulate these goals to the students, you must know yourself every time in your mind. You should ask from yourself what, exactly, do you want students to be able to do at the end of the courses that they could not do at the beginning of the courses? What exactly, do students need to know in order to pass the course? How well do they need to know it? After all, you manage to set best goals.
A good goal must be measurable, when you repeat, «I want my students to know English and make the world better» you cannot become a good teacher and it cannot be a goal for language teacher. I think instead of this term you may define, in measurable terms, what «know English» means for students at a specific level.
Your course goals must be relevant and practical as a language teacher. You may want your students to like you and give you good evaluations, but you cannot set that as a goal because it does not necessarily have any relevance to their goals in learning a language. That is why your goals should be relevant.
While a good course curriculum will define the general educational goals for the course, your job is to break those goals into units that are being met through everything you do in the class, from setting policies to assigning homework. Sometimes we need extra time explain our theme because of lack of time during the class in that situation you should organize your course curriculum very well. Furthermore, in order to reach your best goals teacher should motivate and evaluate their student. When or how can teacher motivate the student? You can begin class with a mixer or game. The game increases student’s motivation. Nevertheless, your game should be related to your class theme. If your game is not directly connected with the lesson, do not worry because that kind of games can evaluate your student and help them feel self-confidence; make connect with their group mates. I recommend, do not use that type of games many times at lessons. Even if this type of games gets them close to each other, sometimes ruins the best curriculum of courses.
In addition to it, your good course curriculum should tell students what they should learn, read, write and you should follow it as a teacher. If your course curriculum tells students that they are going to learn 600 beginner vocabulary words in 7 weeks, then you should spend a lot of time on vocabulary strategies and practice. If your course curriculum informs students that they will learn to make conversations, you should probably throw out some of those vocabulary lists, no matter how much you or your students like them. As a teacher, you have an ethical obligation to help students meet the goals that the course is designed to enable the students to reach these goals.
Assessment.
Imagine if you are a singer and you are going to held new concert to your audience of millions in New York. Therefore, you should make a tour in order to make a precious tour at first you should consider below terms:
Which day you held the concert; how long will the concert go on; how many songs will you sing, and the order of songs for example: I will sing a song about my hometown and other. I think all of them can enable you reach your goals very successfully. In shorten, considering is assessment in this analogy.
Coming to the lesson, in order for each lesson to have appropriate goals, you must do assessment in every lesson, and you should probably do it many times in a lesson. Assessment can be two types: formal and informal assessment.
Formal assessment involves giving official grades for task for instance: homework, quizzes, and speeches {it can be prepared at home}, testes. Informal assessment involves consciously noticing success or failure.
Informal assessment is difficult to convert into fair grades for a course, but it is often more accurate than formal assessment in predicting the student’s ability to use target language at specific level. On the other hand, formal assessment can be fair but I should mention that usually students prepare their tasks at home perhaps with the help of dictionary, internet and other books, their brother, sister or mother who know target language. Addition to it, it takes more time to prepare and evaluate. Informal assessment has only one goal that is to help the teacher teach more effectively. If you want to reach this goal, you need to plan to do informal assessment, do it then act on the result.
Formal assessment should be clear, valid, reliable, and fair. If you want your assessment to be clear you need to have a good direction and explanations that the student understand in a way that is facile. For example, at first you should say «this is a test on past-tense verbs» and you ask from one of your student «what did you buy yesterday?» if your student answer «I buyed a book at a bookshop.» Then you correct his or her grammar mistake {about past tense}, article, preposition mistakes. In that situation, the student feel it is unfair. Because above you said, the test will check past-tense verbs but during the test, you checked not only that but also article and preposition mistakes. As a result, the student will complain that they were misled. That is why your formal assessment should be clear.
In order to have a valid formal assessment you should consider all abilities of your student. If you are teaching on reading, you want to measure reading ability, and you can give a test to your students who have not a good speech to make a speech about reading passage that requires reading and writing their response to the reading passage. Consequently, you test writing as well as reading. If in your class, there are students who able to give an oral report about the reading you may give test that requires reading and making a speech, then you are measuring speaking as well as reading. I think valid tests are honest test.
Formal assessment tests should be reliable. Reliable tests produce fair results every time. However, it does not mean if you take a reliable test from your students, you can check fairly. Let’s take oral interview test for example: this kind of test requires interaction between two people, the personalities of the people or even the time of day. All requirements above I pointed out can affect the result of test. For instance, students who take speaking tests after lunch are likely to receive worse score than students who take the same test in the morning because, after lunch, both the students and the teachers are likely to be tired. So fair, reliable, valid, clear tests give all student who have taken the course an equal chance of passing the test.
Input.
We know input is something, which we take and put in our mind as information. Any kind of information not only information but also sound that we can hear or listen to, anything that we can see or watch, something that we can feel by our body but not by our feels can be input for our mind. For a baby voice of his or her mother is a peculiar information in a way he or she hears. Then this voice come into baby’s mind as a first input and baby start to imitate this voice. In this situation, baby’s mother is a teacher; teachers from the past should give information to students that it should be new and original then student put this information in their mind in order to use it in a way of a target purpose. Nevertheless, language is so complex that input itself is not enough.
During our life, we sometimes face different situation, sometimes we see the view without wanting, sometimes we desire to watch this view ourselves nobody force us, and all of those can be input for our mind. Coming to these facts, input can be three types: conscious, unconscious, ideal input.
Conscious input can put into our mind when teacher lead or sometimes force us to listen to his or her speech as a result we try to keep the facts of his or her speech because we know after the speech teacher may ask us some questions related to the speech and it is called a conscious input. For example:
During the lesson Teacher says, «Well, you may note my speech during my report» Moreover, you focus and memorize them. That kind of input goes directly to the unconscious part of your brain. However, when you start to listen to and take a note your teacher’s report and you get new information from your teacher into your mind it can be conscious input.
I pointed out above that «well, you may note my speech during my report» can be unconscious input. Unconscious input goes to our brain optionally. In the statement, «note my speech» would be conscious input but the sound, the grammar of a command, the intonation, the linking of words, imperative construction… those are all unconscious input.
Moreover, there is another input that ideal input can be belong to both of input «conscious and unconscious». Ideal input enters your unconscious mind, but can easily be changed to become conscious. If it enter your conscious mind it can change and able to become unconscious input. Nevertheless, I should say that the best right level of input is ideal input. Because ideal input happens when we not only want but also do or read voluntarily and gets something to our brain. We know that when we do something with our desire we do this excellent and never forget this work and time. That is why ideal input is the best level of input. We can see that teacher should lead students to study voluntarily for this I think teacher should satisfy and love their profession. It is just like that, teacher manages to follow and guide student himself or herself.
Motivation.
Motivation is the greatest power for everybody not only for student. If somebody motivates you, you are able to climb Everest even you have not good physical condition. We know that people want to hear praise, be understood rather than drilling like that «you should learn», «you should be clever» and other. It is clear that after hearing these kind of statement nobody wants to study and he or she suffer from this question ‘ am I not clever». This situation is very difficult to solve.
A teacher must encourage the student to take the risk necessary to result in learning. However, one problem some teachers do not understand what really encourage and motivate students. Teacher gives a present student for his or her successful studying at the end of course, but he or she don’t think that student tend to this present and next time he or she study and learn for just gifts from teacher. I would like to say that if teacher really wants to motivate their students, creates situation at every lesson in which their success at communication will really solve a problem or build a relationship or change one’s mind.
Many foreign language students express feelings of isolation or loneliness when they begin or truly study another language, especially if they are trying to build relationships with others through that foreign language. As a teacher, one of your most powerful motivating tools may be kindness for lack of a more scientific word. Don’t hesitate to talk to students personally, as humans, in or out of class. The desire to communicate is what will help them learn the language in the end. Be kind of person your students want to communicate with.
References:
- Jeremy Harmer «How to teach English» New edition: Harlow: Pearson education Ltd.2007.
- Larsen-Freeman, Diane. Techniques and principle in language teaching. © Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Arthur Hughes. Testing for language teachers.© Oxford University Press, 1989.
