ESL Teacher's Confessions

  Student practice: Attitude towards pupils I think as a student teacher, it is important to reflect and establish an attitude towards learners. These five months of teaching practice had been very different from what I've been used to. A major difference was spending the whole day with the same group of students. This was strange at first as in my previous jobs and teaching practices, I would spent maximum an hour with a given group with in specific grade. Before, it was challenging to really get to know 20+  learners in six different classes. Whereas, with the same class I was able to get to know the students more at a deeper level and know their personalists, characters, interests, strengths and weakness and learning styles. I will say it that it made lesson planning a lot easier to  as I knew the class well, but it came with a lot of challenges.   My attitude towards learners was very similar to those of the past. I always try to be open-minded, see and trea...

 Student practice: Who are EAL students?  Welcome back to my blog! In today's post, I wanted to discuss and clear any doubts about what EAL students are. As you might know, I am completing my teaching hours at a British school here in Warsaw. This means that the students can be classified as EAL which stands for "English as an Additional Language". This means that the majority of learners are communicating in English as their main language medium. In addition, they have all of their classes and instruction in English, such as maths, science, drama and physical education. In this school, there are a handful of students who are native English speakers as they come from countries such as the UK, America and Ireland as well as many international students who come from countries such as Brazil, Dubai, Korea. There are also a number of Polish-speaking students who choose to communicate in English. As one can see, teaching these students can be seen as, at times, difficult as th...

  Student practice: challenges I have faced  During my time at the British School, I’ve had so many experiences and learnt a lot of things along the way. In this post, I aim to reflect on my time there and share with you the challenges I’ve faced.  First of all, it was challenging to teach other subjects other than English/French. As I have mentioned on this blog, I have been an ESL language teacher for five years. So, when it came time to support or even teach a different subject, it was overwhelming. At times I was really frustrated, for instance, I didn't remember a particular maths method and strategy. I had the feeling that I failed as a teacher because I wasn’t able to provide effective support thus disappointing my students and the head teacher.  I have never taught maths, and it was a long time since I myself was a student learning this subject. A lot of the time, I had to recall my days as a young student as well as asking for the head teacher for assistance...

                                                                        Student practice: self-evaluation   This is not my first teaching practice, but it has been very different from those from the past. However, after five years, I still found some areas of improvement and ways where I feel like I can improve in.  I experienced being an EAL teacher, which is some ways, is very different than an ESL teacher. As an ESL teacher, my main focus was on language and ways to develop necessary skills in learners. Students with English as an additional language(EAL) already had those language skills and require something more. At first, it was challenging for me to introduce CLIL lessons and move on to more complicated topics such as maths in English. I think that this expe...

                                                                        Student practice: Error management During my teaching practice at the British School, I have noticed a lot of differences in the way teachers deal with students’ errors. First of all, teachers always focus on learners’ strengths instead of dwelling on their weaknesses. I found that it encouraged learners to continue to work hard and they are not discouraged that they are not smart enough. This growth-mind set really benefits the learners and teacher. The teacher can use or focus on their strengths in order to improve their problem areas. They are more encouraged to push themselves to get into a certain point because they know they have a good support system in the class and they will not receive harmful j...

                                                                   Student practice: Teaching materials Teaching aids and materials are one of the most important tools that every teacher should have a multitude of in their back pocket. They have an effective impact of students’ learning, comprehension and building their knowledge on a particular concept or topic. Materials facilitate students’ learning process which aids learners to grow and deepen their understanding. I have noticed that teachers at this school rarely use course books in the classroom. They occasionally use the maths course book, but not all the time. Instead, the teachers use a number of authentic materials from the internet or from other places such as YouTube and even create their own. The teachers also adapted mate...

  Student practice: Teacher and Student-talk During my observation of the head teacher,  I have noticed a few things about the communication in the classroom.  I noticed that the teacher was one of the main forms of language input, even though they were generally native speakers, the still students replied on her pronunciation and choice of words to implement in their own speech. I saw that the role of the teacher was to guide instructional events, and used teachers talk to determine what students know and what they still need to know. This in turn, allowed the teacher to use questions, prompts, and cues to help students complete tasks. I have seen a few key characteristics of the teacher’s talk or speech as she introduced material, repeated important information, explained key concepts, defined words, gave an example, clarified, questioned and encouraged students. I liked that the teacher used other ways to encourage or push students to use their own thinking to come up ...