Transforming teaching method for students to learn English

By Justin

　　Teaching methods within English training schools in China differ greatly to methods taught elsewhere. Whilst in formal educational institutions, there is an uneven proportion of spoken language between the teacher and the students, thus resulting in students in school receiving fewer opportunities, if any, to practice speaking. This has unfortunately translated into an uneffective mentality to learning, where students are conditioned not to speak up and the teachers have less patience to encourage students to participate in class. It can be argued that in English training schools, the balance is somewhat better in that there is an incentive for teachers to help students as their pay is tied to results. However I believe there is a lot more that can be done to effectively transform the teaching methods used in classes. I will briefly outline below one specific area which would greatly improve students participation and absorbtion of class material.

　　Whether you are teaching to read, listen, speak or understand spoken English, your effectiveness for students to retain a significant portion of knowledge relies heavily upon your chosen method of review and revision. Whilst it is common to find teachers that review at the natural end of a subject or topic area as a way to finish off the term; this practice is often difficult for students to recall what he or she learned upto a month ago. Therefore, a much better approach is to practice continuous reviews through the taught course.

　　One example of effective reviewing is inter and intra lesson revision. What this means is that at the start of the class and after the break, the teacher will introduce the lesson outcomes giving students a clear idea what is expected from them, and an appropriate amount of time spend on each outcome. At the end of the lesson allow at least 5minutes to perform a sum up of the lesson, pointing out specific outcomes and where, if any, attention is needed.

　　Any homework following the class should be an extention of the class for students to reflect and complete for the next lesson, where a short review will benefit the student's absorbtion. Where possible, future class topics are linked into past taught content. For example, the linked topic 'hometown' from part 1 when describing a 'childhood friend' in part 2. One quick and easy way to review homework and to get students to participate is to pair them off with each other, one person speaks and one listens. This allows more time to be spent teaching new content during the time allowed. When the pair have finished, the student who was listening is asked to give a summary of what they have heard and this acts as a guide to see how much effort was spent on homework and to the students listening ability. Once the students are used to the idea you can introduce new criteria, like correcting simple grammar mistakes (he/she) and review of sentence structure (beginning-middle-end). This way the feedback is more welcomed and absorbed readily, whilst reducing the effect of negative feedback to students morale; turning it into a more constructive and motivating learning environment.