What makes a good esl teacher?
rosenkrantz asked:
I taught English as a second language for a year in South Korea, and I am planning on applying for a year in another country. One of the questions is “What makes a good esl teacher. The second one is, “What makes a good lesson?” You could probably write a book on these two questions. What would be good, concise answers
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I taught English as a second language for a year in South Korea, and I am planning on applying for a year in another country. One of the questions is “What makes a good esl teacher. The second one is, “What makes a good lesson?” You could probably write a book on these two questions. What would be good, concise answers
December 22nd, 2009 at 5:39 am
For the good ESL teacher question:
“I’m going to provide a list of the qualities and characteristics of a good ESL teacher or ESL tutor. In my experience, I’ve come across some teachers that I would not recommend to students for various reasons, but mostly because they lacked one or more of the essential characteristics of a good ESL teacher.
If you’re considering becoming an ESL teacher, ask yourself if the following characteristics apply to you. If they do, you are well on your way to becoming a good ESL teacher or tutor.
1) Patient
Enthusiastic
2) Flexible
3) Curious
4) Empathetic
5) Intelligent
6) Cooperative
7) Knowledgeable
9) Resourceful
10) Genuine
These are the top 10 qualities I feel a good ESL teacher or ESL tutor must possess.
You’ll notice that I didn’t include anything specifically about education in this description of an ESL teacher. While education and teacher certification in ESL are essential for some specific jobs, they are not essential to teach English to speakers of other languages (ESOL). For example, if you really want to become an ESL teacher and you don’t have any training, you can volunteer at local organizations that provide tutors to people in the community who want/need to practice their English language skills.
Of course, ESL teacher training will help you to become a better teacher (and to get a paying position), but it isn’t always necessary in order to teach English to speakers of other languages.”
For the lesson plan question:
“The best ESL lesson plans, whether you’re writing them yourself or using someone else’s plans, should have the following elements:
(1) A main topic
(2) Objectives
(3) “Study”
(4) Student activities
(5) Evaluation
Main Topic
A main topic for each lesson is essential. Whether the lesson lasts for one hour or three hours, there should be one main ESL topic. For example, the main topic could be prepositions of place, modal verbs, the Simple Past, pronunciation, etc. Virtually anything that English language learners need to learn to communicate effectively could be the main topic of the lesson.
If you have a long period of time and you want to cover two or more main topics, then you will have two or more parts to your plan or two or more separate plans. Either way, you must have all of the elements.
Objectives
Even the best ESL lesson plans cannot cover every aspect of an ESL or EFL (English as a Foreign Language) topic. The objectives will help to limit the scope of the lesson. The number of objectives will vary depending on the length of the lesson and the main topic, but will probably range between two and five objectives.
Three Guidelines for Lesson Plan Objectives
(1) Lesson plan objectives should all relate to the main topic of the lesson.
(2) Each of the objectives should be measurable.
(3) Each objective should be student-centered.
Here are some examples of objectives for lesson plans for the main topic of the Past Perfect verb tense.
1. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to distinguish Past Perfect sentences from Simple Past sentences.
2. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of the proper form of the Past Perfect by writing five sentences in the Past Perfect.
3. By the end of the lesson, student will be able to demonstrate correct usage of the Past Perfect by speaking (or writing) three sentences correctly using this tense.
You’ll notice that these are all related to the topic of the Past Perfect tense. They are all measurable. The teacher should not have to guess whether the ESL students have met the learning objectives. An objective that states, “By the end of the lesson, students will understand the Past Perfect,” cannot be measured. (How do I know if the students understand it or not if they don’t somehow demonstrate what they have learned?) Lastly, they are all student-centered. Objectives in the best ESL lesson plans do not look like this: “Teacher will teach the Past Perfect.”
“Study”
The best ESL lesson plans will have a limited amount of time devoted to this element. The “study” part of the lesson plan can be the steps the teacher carries out to teach the lesson. It could be a short presentation by the ESL teacher or it could be study from a grammar book, etc.
ESL Student Activities
The best ESL lesson plans will have the most time devoted to this section of the lesson. This is the part where the student practices the topic of the lesson and uses what they have learned from the “study” part of the lesson.
Activities could include cloze exercises, ESL games, writing, speaking, etc.
Evaluation
The purpose of an evaluation is to check to see if the students have met the lesson plan objectives. The type of evaluations used in the best ESL lesson plans will depend on the format of the class, the length of the class, the topic of the ESL lesson, and other factors. Evaluations can r Debra G