Unit 1

WORKSHEET – UNIT 1

Task 1 – List 5 qualities that a ‘good’ teacher should have and give reasons for your choices. Which of these qualities do you consider to be more important, and why?

There are many qualities that can make a person be an effective teacher in and out of the classroom. Here are some of them:

1.     Kind and Patient – A teacher should genuinely care for the learning of the students. The “teacher” must not teach just for the sake of finishing the lesson and getting paid for it, but should make sure that the students are really learning something or not.

2.     Lively and Interesting – For young learners, it’s very helpful to bring in fun and excitement into the classroom. Teachers are more effective if they can vary their teaching styles and incorporate some interesting activities like songs and ESL games.

3.     Knowledgeable – A “good” teacher should also be knowledgeable on the subject matter that he/she is teaching. Teachers cannot claim to be experts on everything but it helps to read and understand the subject matter before taking on the responsibility of teaching something like business English or IELTS/TOEFL classes.

4.     Sensitive and Understanding – When correcting the mistakes of students, a teacher should make sure that he/she is not offending the students. Teachers should try to understand the culture of their students and ensure that error corrections will not impede on the learners’ motivation.

5.     Fair and Consistent – A teacher should be able to involve all learners throughout the lesson. Teachers should avoid asking the same people all the time for their input as this would make the shy learners feel even more out of place.

I believe that all the above qualities are important but in the ESL world, it’s very important that a teacher be patient, interesting, and knowledgeable. You need patience and interesting teaching styles for young learners’ classes and you need patience and knowledge for teaching adult classes.

Task 2 – State what you consider to be the five most important roles of a teacher. Describe each role and say why you think it is important.

A teacher plays many different roles in the classroom so it’s very important for a teacher to know when to switch roles throughout the class.

1.     Manager/controller – Teachers are expected to act as managers for “teacher-centered” lessons like explaining or lecturing about a new topic or concept to the students. This role is important at the beginning of a new lesson/class but it should not always be the case. Teachers should be careful when taking on this role and avoid too much “teacher talk time”.

2.     Organizer – Teachers become organizers when they try to give instructions for an activity and put students into pairs/groups. This is very important in the ESL classroom because classes can become noisy if the students are not aware of the tasks or don’t know how to go about with their tasks.

3.     Prompter – A teacher becomes a prompter when the students suddenly run out of things to say or forget the words while answering. In this case, the teacher can try to help by offering different choices of words. This role is essential because it can avoid situations wherein the rest of the class is becoming impatient and bored while waiting for a student to think of the correct word to say. However, teachers should be careful not to take the initiative away from the learners and end up spoon-feeding the students.

4.     Assessor – When a teacher starts measuring the progress of the students, he/she is acting as an assessor. This is very important because learners want to know how they are performing in the class. Adults want to be aware of their mistakes and parents of young learners want to know how their children are doing in class. In this case, teachers should make sure they are fair and consistent in their assessment and should not give false hopes to the students just to please them.

5.     Observer – With some activities in class, a teacher doesn’t need to involve himself/herself actively. Rather, he/can just move around the class, observe the students, and take notes. Again, this role is important because it gives the students more “talk time” rather than “teacher talk time”. It allows for more speaking practice in the class. It gives the teacher the opportunity to check on the mistakes that are consistently being done by the students and monitor student participation.

Task 3 – List 5 qualities you would expect to find in a ‘good’ learner. Which of these qualities do you consider to be more important, and why?

A “good” learner should have the following qualities;

-         A willingness to listen to the language

-         A desire to learn

-         A desire to experiment with language

-         A willingness to ask questions

-         Acceptance of error corrections

I believe that a learner should have a desire to learn first and be willing to listen to the language before he/she can become truly receptive of a new language.

Task 4 – What are some of the major differences you would expect to find between adult and young learners?

There are many differences between adult and young learners but some of the major differences include motivation for learning, attention span and behavior problems, language awareness, life experience, and learning experience.

Adult learners are usually very motivated because they know what they need and they enrolled because they wanted to. On the other hand, many young learners don’t have a high motivation to learn English maybe because they were forced by their parents to learn the language.

Regarding attention span and behavior, adult learners have longer attention span than children, of course. You can’t expect young learners to sit still for a long time or do only one type of activity for the whole class whilst in an adult class, it is possible to do one activity for a longer time. There are also fewer behavioral problems in an adult class than in a young learner’s class.

Adults also have a tendency to compare or match the new language with their native language which can cause some problems. Sometimes, when they speak, they would try to speak English the way they would their native language - through direct translation. Young learners are far more able to absorb new language through context and usage similar to how they acquired their first language.

Life and learning experience also differs greatly with these two groups. Adults have a lot of life experiences which would naturally result to more in-depth discussions in class, given the right language support, of course.

Task 5 – List the levels of language ability that learners are often grouped into and give a brief summation of each level:

1.     Beginners – Students with zero knowledge of English or have a very basic knowledge of English.

2.     Elementary – Students are able to construct simple sentences and use simple language structures to talk about common topics.

3.     Low Intermediate – Students are able to communicate on a wider variety of topics but still has many errors. They also lack general fluency.

4.     Intermediate – Students are able to understand and communicate on a wide range of topics but still needs to work on fluency and accuracy.

5.     Upper Intermediate – Should be able to communicate on almost all topics with ease. Learners at this stage still need to work on accuracy.

6.     Advanced – These learners have a very good command of English.

Task 6 – Give as many reasons as possible why students are motivated to study English. The reasons that you give do not have to be in the unit reading material.

Students are motivated to study English for a variety of reasons. Some of these include the following;

-         Job prospects/promotions

-         Travel abroad

-         Study or Live abroad

-         Preparation for exams

-         Better communication with foreign colleagues, friends, partners

-         Innate desire to learn foreign languages

-         Improve fluency or conversational skills

-         Meet new friends

-         Feel “sophisticated” J

-         Acquire a new skill

-         Improve business opportunities