Teaching For Success: Learning and Learners Week 2

This week's main content was "Knowing the subject", and I think this is a very sensitive issue for all teachers, not only English teachers. In this course, the participants' comments showed it: Many teachers feel insecure about their own knowledge of the language. In my experience, some teachers' antidote for their lack of confidence is a mixture of keeping their classes in a "safe zone" (teaching only what is in the textbook, staying at very basic levels, not challenging the students, nor themselves), and most of the times end up teaching the same class over and over again, which eventually will become in a boring and bitter experience, for both the teacher and the students.
Challenging our own knowledge, getting out of that safe zone, is one of the teacher's most important duties.
In order to do that, the British Council suggests scanning the students' previous knowledge. This can provide the teacher with a starting point in designing and planning the classes or the whole course.

It's not the "amount" of it.

Having evaluated that, reflecting about the bit of language that is going to be taught could be guided by these simple questions:

Because there is a difference between "beach" and "bitch".

The trick here is that the teacher should cover all of them as quickly and smoothly as Flash. Otherwise, the class could become a lecture, and there are two steps missing yet:

• Check understanding
• Practice
• (I would add feedback, of course)

Now, checking understanding has to be part of the natural routine of the class, part of the learning process and part of the practice. The teacher can take advantage of this to make students participate and correct themselves in a respectful way, and also build up collaborative work and self-awareness amongst the students.
Practice, on the other hand, must be the most time-consuming part of the class.
I will soon write about these two last points, and the last I added about feedback, because I think it is necessary to do so in detail.