Best Practices in Teaching English language learners
There are five key skills that any teacher can develop to set all students up for success. A teacher who focuses on strengthening these skills will find teaching more enjoyable and more fruitful.
In fact, no matter what or who we teach, these are five essential teaching skills that will benefit the teacher and learners.
These skills are covered in depth during our TESOL Certificate course along with a host of other positive teaching practices. TESOL Trainers provides K-12 professional development on all of these topics.
In fact, no matter what or who we teach, these are five essential teaching skills that will benefit the teacher and learners.
These skills are covered in depth during our TESOL Certificate course along with a host of other positive teaching practices. TESOL Trainers provides K-12 professional development on all of these topics.
5 Critical Teaching Skills
| Skill #1: Giving Clear Instructions: As any teacher knows, giving effective directions is critical. Though this seems simple enough, just think of a time in your life when a teacher asked you to do something and left you more confused than enlightened. Now, consider the challenges of giving instructions to a group of students who don’t speak English as a native language. |  |
Giving effective instructions is more than just informing students about what they are going to do. Strategies like chunking instructions, modeling, and visual aids make everything much clearer. Developing the teaching skill of providing clear instructions has a lot of benefits:
- It provides students with a variety of ways to understand the instructions
- It supports lower level language learners
- It increases the sense of safety
- It gives students more quality time to practice the language.
TESOL Trainers offers PD on Giving Clear Instructions
 | Skill #2: Making sure students understand: Checking to see if students understand what is going on or what a list of vocabulary words mean also poses its challenges. Just think of how many times a teacher asked the class, ‘everyone understand?’ and, while no one did, no one asked for help. |
Checking for comprehension is critical in being able to measure what the students’ needs are. Strategies such as getting students to show, model, use, and demonstrate give a teacher a sense of how to proceed. Comprehension checking pays off in many ways:
- It creates a more student-centered classroom.
- It increases student opportunities to use the language.
- It helps the teacher see who’s getting what.
- It provides the teacher with a clear direction.
| Skill #3: Breaking things down into manageable chunks: Making sure the lesson and the language are digestible enough for the students is the secret to happy, successful students. Just think of your childhood. When you walked behind an adult and tried to follow his footsteps, was it always easy? |  |
Scaffolding students into success happens when we are able to break down the lesson just enough to move students from one phase of the lesson to the next without losing or confusing them. Teaching in digestible chunks produces so many rewards:
- Students tend to take greater risks – success breeds success.
- Students feel more confident.
- Students demonstrate more competence.
- The teacher is able to assess students’ needs more effectively.
- The speed at which learning takes place increases.
TESOL Trainers offers PD on the Gradual Release of Responsibility.
 | Skill #4: Creating opportunities for interaction: Teachers can’t learn the language for the students; they need to do that themselves. That’s why opportunities are so important. Just think of a language class that you’ve been in. Did a teacher ever cover a ton of vocabulary but never give you time to practice? |
As teachers we must make every moment in the classroom an opportunity to actively practice the language. Students need a variety of opportunities to interact with the language in order to internalize it. You can imagine the benefits of looking for ways to maximize the number of opportunities students have:
- The class becomes more student-centered.
- Student engagement increases throughout the lesson.
- The sense of community increases.
- Students take more frequent risks.
TESOL Trainers PD: Engaging Students Effectively
| Skill #5: Noticing what helps and hinders student learning: This teaching skill is perhaps the most crucial. Paying attention to what we do as teachers that helps or hinders student learning helps us grow as teachers. Ideally, we notice these things as the lesson unfolds and respond accordingly. In reality, this realization may arrive some time after the lesson ended or it may have never entered our consciousness. |  |
In order to develop as teachers, we not only have to become critical observers of learning but also conscious teaching practitioners. The mere act of teaching a lesson and thinking, ‘Opps. That didn’t go well’ does not inherently mean tomorrow’s lesson will be any better. Developing teaching skills demands conscious attention to past experiences, present assumptions, and future actions.
The more we train this awareness, the more we tend to inform and transform our teaching practices. There is, perhaps, no such thing as a perfect teaching lesson; but every lesson is the perfect opportunity to learn. Ultimately, we find ourselves noticing this 'in the moment' and are able to respond to what the students' needs are.
The more we train this awareness, the more we tend to inform and transform our teaching practices. There is, perhaps, no such thing as a perfect teaching lesson; but every lesson is the perfect opportunity to learn. Ultimately, we find ourselves noticing this 'in the moment' and are able to respond to what the students' needs are.
Essential Teaching Skills
Certainly, there many other skills that we should constantly hone as teachers: error correction, classroom management, teaching learning strategies, etc. These five teaching skills are worth developing as they have a powerful impact on all others.
When we provide clear instructions, things go so much smoother. As we continuously check for understanding, we keep our students and ourselves on our toes. When we scaffold a lesson, we encourage risk taking. Giving students a ton of opportunities just makes sense. Finally, the more we pay attention to what supports or stifles learning, the more we learn about teaching.
For more on the essential teaching skills, visit our sister blog - Everything Teaching TESOL.
When we provide clear instructions, things go so much smoother. As we continuously check for understanding, we keep our students and ourselves on our toes. When we scaffold a lesson, we encourage risk taking. Giving students a ton of opportunities just makes sense. Finally, the more we pay attention to what supports or stifles learning, the more we learn about teaching.
For more on the essential teaching skills, visit our sister blog - Everything Teaching TESOL.
TESOL Trainers is your scaffold to success™
We are an educational consulting firm that works with educational institutions in the USA and abroad. We provide high quality professional development from Working with English Language Learners and SIOP strategies to Reflective Teaching Practices and Multicultural Education. Our programs can be designed as traditional-style professional development, online, or a combination (hybrid course) of the two. In addition, TESOL Trainers has been offering the SIT TESOL Certificate course to people interested in teaching overseas for the past 14 years. Contact us for more information on we can help you support excellence in teaching and in learning at your institution or how you can become a TESOL certified teacher.
If you are interested in learning about our world-class remote professional development for K12 teachers, check out this webpage or contact John Kongsvik directly.
If you are interested in learning about our world-class remote professional development for K12 teachers, check out this webpage or contact John Kongsvik directly.
Author
John Kongsvik is the director of TESOL Trainers. He works around the world with educational institutions in providing TESOL training, SIOP professional development, and much more.
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