TEACHING ACROSS PROFICIENCY LEVELS

-The ACTFL proficiency guideline have come to be a widely recognized proficiency standard in language- teaching circles.

- The ACTFL guidelines were created to expand on the FSI levels so that listening, reading, and writing would also be included. The guidelines have one other important diffrence: they are not connected with any one proficiency test.

TEACHING BEGINNING LEVELS

Teaching beginners is considered a challenge for the teacher. It is very stressful when you dont want to make a mistake with beginners because you know that this mistake can be reproduced in others. There are some steps for teachers to teach beginners:

Students' cognitive learning processes

The teacher need to encourage his/ her students to practice the new language that they are learning, can be simple words, sentences or whatever the teacher believe is good to practice.

The role of the teacher and talk

Beginnig students are highly dependent on the teacher for models of language. Students are able to initiate few questions and comments, so it is a responsability of the teacher to get the ball rolling. In a second language  context where instruction is acrried out in the target language, virtually all of your class time will be teacher-controlled. In a foreign language situation, where students speak the same native language, some negotiation might be possible in the native language, allowing for a small amount of student control.

Student's  creativity

Depending on the level the students are going to be able to produce some words or express what they feel. The thing is that the tecaher need to stimulate self-confidence in his/her students because sometimes they are afraid to say something and it is a problem because they are not going to show their knowledge about something.

Techniques

For beginning levels short and simple techniques must be used, repetition and other drilling.

For intermediate levels the teacher has the opportunity to increase the complexity of things because at that moment students are supposed to know more things.

For advanced levels the teacher could apply some different techniques because the students are wiser in some things. They are gonna be able to pronounce well, and they gonna have some new vocabulary.

Some skills are going to be developed for example speaking, writing, reading, listening and grammar.
Each of them depend on the level. The students since the beginning are gonna start learning one of them until they are in an advanced level.

TEACHING ACROSS AGE LEVELS

There are many things that are different at the moment of teaching. One of them is age, is not the same teaching children, that teaching adults, and obviously it is totally different when you want to teach teenagers.

TEACHING CHILDREN

Teaching children is very difficult because you need to improve many things at the moment of transmit the knowledge. Children tend to get bored easily, and in that case the teacher needs to have creativity and imagination in order to have the control of his/her students. Kids sometimes are so intelligent, but there are some cases where the students do not learn anything and it is because of the techniques that the teacher give to them. 

We also have different methods that are good to improve the learning process, such as Suggestopedia and TPR. Those methods are very useful for the teacher because the students can learn to follow some commands. We need to take into account that little kids repeat all the things that we do and say, that is way we need to have good techniques to make the class interesting and comprenhesible.

TEACHING ADULTS

Although many of the rules for teaching chldren can apply in some ways to teaching adults, the latter age group poses some different, special considerations for the classroom teacher. Adults have superior cognitive abilities that can render them more successful in certain classrooms endeavors. 

1- Adults are more able to handle rules and concepts.

2- Adults have longer attention spans for material that may not be intrinsically interesting to them.

3- Sensory input need not always be quite as varied with  adults, but one of the secrets of lively adult classes is their appeal to multiple senses.

Some management "do's" and "dont'ts":

- Don't treat adults in your class like children by calling them "kids" 

- Don't discipline adults in the same way as children because adults have more capacity to analize a situation and try to be mature in that aspect.

TEACHING TEENS

Teaching teens is more difficult that terat with children because teens are an age of transition, confusion, self-consciousness, growing, and changing bodies and minds. Sometimes they like to do whatever they want and they do not follow directions. But obviously tenns are more mature than children and the rules or directions can be more strict but you as a teacher does not treat them like they can not do anything because they complain for every single word you say.

In this moment of learning process teens need to decide what they want to be for the future and all of this depends a little of the teacher and the dfferent ways that he/she may apply tomake more interesting the process.

ACTIVITIES FROM TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE (HASTCHI PATSCHI)

WHAT I LIKED FROM MY PRESENTATION

Total Physical Response is a good method that can help the teacher to make funny the way to teach the target language, that is why we implement some different games and in my case i liked that i tried to use a nice game in order to practice how to make some simple questions that sometimes are a little bit difficult for some people. This kind of game is for children but is good when we do not forget what we saw previously. I liked the way to play this game because it was so good and at the same time we practice that is the most important and was the goal for this method.

WHAT I COULD HAVE IMPROVED

I think from this i could have thought in different ways to play the game to avoid a mess in the classroom or maybe I could have changed the method to implement the activity. But I think that the game was good because not only learned some important things but we had fun that is one of the things that pretend this method. I think sometimes I lose the control of the classroom and I think that with better directions I could have had better results.

DID I FEEL COMFORTABLE?

Yes I did. I felt so good because I practiced this game with children and I realized that they learned from me. So at the moment to present it I was relax because as we know working with children is not easy and if they could learn from my activity so my classmates will do it too. I enjoyed it because I would like to teach children in the future. But I felt comfortable with the activity and all the things I did. I will put into practice this activity with people who want to learn another language in order to teach them how easy can do to learn a target language.

WHAT I THINK ABOUT THE ACTIVITIES MY OTHER CLASSMATES PRESENTED.

The game that my partner presented was good too because is useful when you want that your students follw commands and at the same time they could listen very well. Simon Says is a very common activity but sometimes we do not give importance to it because we think it is too simple but it is not. So we can implement this activity with children or when adults, it doesnt matter the age, the important is to learn.

Suggestopedia activities were useful and good. I like Masiel´s activity about the song but sometimes it is difficult to find a good song with common vocabulary but is was good. The role-plays also are good when we are learning and i think they help us to improve many things.

Carmen´s and Ileana´s activities were nice too because we use our memorization with the sentences that our classmates said. It is another way to learn target language.

The activity that Melissa presented I liked because at the same time you learn new vocabulary from a reading you develop this habit. To sum up each of the activities presented were necessary to learn different ways to teach.

METHODS IN DIDACTICS

WHAT I LIKE FROM MY METHOD

My method was really interesting for me because we need to be a good teacher to show it. Why? because a good teacher has imagination and creativity. Through different activities or games we can develop many thing in our students. TPR is like a listening comprehension, so you need to pay special attention to all the things that the teacher is going to say in order to know how to related them with each command. It is not neccesary to dictate many boring things, you just need to create a good environment in the classroom and the rest will be easy.

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE FROM MY METHOD

Well from my method I did not like that almost all the time the students do not have the opportunity to participate and express their ideas. In this method th teacher is active and he is the doer of all. The students have to repeat the games or the commands that the teacher does. For me that is not correct because in this way we can not know the kind of students we have. We can not realize if someone has a problem learnig something or if someone does not understand what we are teaching about the target language. We need to express what we think in order to learn more and faster.

WHAT I UNDERSTOOD FROM THE OTHER METHOD ( SUGGESTOPEDIA)

I understood that suggestopedia is a teaching method which is based on a modern understanding of how the human brain works and how we learn most effectively. This method can be developed by showing pictures or throuhg the music. It is very important in that method to estimulate the human brain trying to reduce the stress too because this an easy way to learn faster.

Another point that is really good is that this method shows the things in a modern way and that is why entertain the students and make them interested in learn another language. The teacher is going to be the most important character teaching this method because all the things depend on how he/she can transmit the knowledge. Based on the way that the teacher present his/ her material in that way the students are going to learn.

I think for the person who developed this method was really important that the students feel relax in order to be more concentrated in the different activities they will do. For me this topic with TPR are a little bit related. Why? because one of the goals of TPR is to reduce the stress of learning a new language and with this is almost the same because you need to find the relaxing space to learn faster a second language. I like very much this method and I realized that the teachers job is really amazing, taking into account that is going to be like that if we love our profession.

THE EXPERT IN ANYTHING WAS ONCE A BEGINNER

This quote is very interesting, because we realize that all professionals today were once beginners. Teaching today is a nice option is not for everyone, because we think it is too difficult or is insignificant. If we find out, if there were no teachers, no profession would not exist anymore. There are doctors, architects, engineers and many other professions. 

All they had to learn many things during their studies because maybe no one had any idea of the things that could be studied. So a teacher learns from the experiences you have with your students, from the experiences of other teachers. We are studying to become professionals in the future, at first we did not know anything about our future profession but the experiences have taught us that we all make mistakes, but the most important is to prevent happen again. 

Many people say that the error of an engineer is destroyed, the mistake of a doctor is buried, but the error of a teacher is transmitted from generation to generation. To be a good teacher we should love our profession, we must know what we want to teach our students, so that these good knowledge is transmitted and allow them to be better people every day. A learned person is never born, no one in this world is perfect. Being a teacher is not just a profession but a passion that we should feel in the soul.

We should never be afraid to be beginners at something, or that we do not know about something specific, it is better to be ignorant once, to be ignorant all your life. When we have the humility to say that we know nothing about something, we will achieve to become good experts, because we could be brave and face life with courage but above all with humility.

HOW TO BE A GOOD TEACHER

Teachers are assigned the status of God in our scriptures. According to the great Saint Kabir, a teacher is greater than God because he guides us to the eternal God. His guidance is always of an utmost importance in a student’s life. Every field in life asks for guidance from a seasoned teacher, and English counts in the same category. Being the current global flavor this calls for a good teacher who can waft his student through the rough tides and finally get him settled on a safe coast.

Teachers are a key element in learning English. Their influence plays a fundamental role in a students’ progress, or a lack thereof. To make their students leap great heights and excel in their subjects, students must adhere to certain credentials.

Crucial factors like classroom atmosphere, student- teacher relationship, tolerance, patience, passion and other aspects, should be taken diligently. For English teachers, being good at the language is not the only yardstick to measure their efficiency, they should possess phenomenal teaching techniques as well.  These techniques include specific teaching behavior and the handling of students’ diverse temperaments. Adding to this, it is important to maintain an appreciable rapport between the two stakeholders, that is, the teacher and the student.

A positive attitude in a teacher makes all the difference. Such attitude helps the students in excelling in life and gathering some of the zest from their instructor.

Designing an effective plan is also a key to success. Keeping in mind the students’ requirements and expectations from a particular course, its particulars’ should be designed. Whether a student needs attention in vocabulary, grammar or tenses, a good teacher is the one who can crack the hardest nut, and help her students overcome any difficulty he/she is facing.

Since different students learn in different ways, it’s important for an English teacher to employ a judicious mix of his teaching techniques to extract the best out of his students. For example, if a teacher wants his class the learn articles, it is important to use methods to suit students who need an explanation, and students who need some practice. It is important to create a right balance. It’s like juggling different techniques in the right way.

English teachers should learn to be flexible. This is because, teaching a foreign language is a dynamic exercise. Teachers should also adapt themselves to the constant changes the language is going through, and thus incorporate newer techniques in their teaching style.

Classroom management is an important thing to be taken care of by the English teachers. Time management and ensuring discipline in the class is one of his various duties. It should be ensured that every single student is bestowed with the equal amount of attention.  

The atmosphere should be lively and should be animated. There should be creative discussions, enhanced with intellectually stimulating discussions. Students should be praised when they perform well and be motivated when they are not doing too well in studies. Students who are well above their standards should be encouraged from time to time to take on new challenges, thus to maintain their interest in he language.

The complexity of English as a second language needs a qualified teacher and an appropriate classroom environment. Overall it can be said a good teacher is at the root of the success of a student.