Is it easy to be a good teacher of TESOL?

   Before answeringthat, we should know what a good teacher of TESOL look like. Here are mythoughts before I came to the TESOL training. The key words are knowledgeable,funny and kind.

Firstly, teachers must be good at their subjects. Secondly,teachers musthave sense of humor and make their class full of joy. At last, teachers shouldalways be nice to their kids,in order to make students feel being loved andlike you. It is not that hard for normal teacher who with teaching experiences.

But after these days learning, I have to say: I was too naive. The Studentis a very big and various group. If you want to be a good teacher of TESOL, youhave to know your student group very well first. Here come the TESOL agecategories and acquisition and teaching levels. They are two steep，tall mountains which make new teachersshrink back at the first sight.

TESOL AGE CATEGORIES

1.Early Children Development-Toddler and Age 5

Toddlers are not able to say complete sentence to express themselves. Theywill use short words and phrases that omit unnecessary modifiers and articlesin order to convey general meanings. For example, the child would say” doggone” in the place of “ the dog is gone.” So we could notforce children at this age to speak complete sentence by their own. But theattention and memory of children at age of 5 expand dramatically, which lay thegroundwork for classification and discrimination.

2.Elementary Age Development-Ages 6-9

Children at this age are developing skills,such as gross skills and fineskills. Gross skills are movements that involve the body as a whole such asjumping, running, and swimming. Fine skills are movement that occur betweeneyes and hands(especially the fingers) in such activities as writing,drawing,and cutting. They also develop recognition skills and social skills. Tobe a good teacher, we can organize activities of pairs or groups. It is a fairway to cultivate these skills effectively.

3.Junior High Age Development-Ages10-13

Children are able to communicate with others clearly,but potentially loseinterests in their studies. When it comes to their mistakes in the class, we’dbetter use positive suggestions instead correct them immediately.

4.High School Age Development-Ages 14-17   

Math, Science, and Social studies are emphasized at this stage. Teachersshould use different methods to help students learn different subjects.ForExample, in order to let the students learn cultures of different countries. Wecan prepare movies or music in the classroom,but pay attention to the giving ofchoices. Learners

ACQUISITION ANDTEACHING LEVELS

1.The silent Stage

   During the silent period,the students should never feel forced to speak. We can use Total PhysicalResponse for teaching children of this age. For example, students are going tolearn about words with one syllable,such as jump,fly, clap, stop. Studentswill do what teachers do and say what teachers say topractise the words with actions. Firstly, teacher will command anddo the action himself/herself. Secondly,students will do with teachertogether. Then,teacher chooses on student to do theaction. Next, teacher will command and students do theaction. At last, students will do the activity withpeers.

2.The Early Production Stage

At this point, students will havethe capacity to comprehend up to thousand words and start to communicateverbally using simple words.For example,we can use flashcards. Firstly,students will repeat all the word after teacher and practice the pronunciation.Secondly, students will say the phrase out when they see the flashcard. Butwhen they see the card with a chair, they have to change their seats silently.The one who did anything wrong has to pick a card from the card pile and saythe phrase loudly. In this case, students can review or practice words orphrases efficiently and without pressure.

3.The Speech Emergence Stage

   The students can nowcommunicate about three thousand words and able to answer questions in completesentences. Jumping to the flashcard is a pretty good activity for practicingsentences. Firstly, teacher will divide the class into two groups. And makethem line up by two different sides. Secondly, put all the flashcard on thewall around the classroom between these two groups. Thirdly, each group willhave to jump and do the gap filling one by one. There will be one sentence witha missing word and also a picture which matches the sentence as a clue,like “This is my ___.” Fourthly, when the first one gets stuck, thesecond one starts from the beginning. The first group which gets all the groupmembers passing over all the sentences correctly wins the game.

4.Intermediate Fluency

Fluency ofStudents on this stage is enhanced. They can not only speak complicatedstatement but also ask simple questions, such as What color is the horse? Isyour dress pink? Can you see a black cat? Teacher could divide them into two groups.One group will be the small circle, the other will be big circle. They face toeach other. The big circle will ask questions on the card, and the small circlewill answer. Then switch, students in different circle will move to twodifferent directions and ask again. When all the questions are asked, these twocircle will switch and do it again.

5.The advancedProficiency Stage

   By thisstage, second language speakers usually have fluency equal to those of firstlanguage speakers. For this case, we can make more room for cultivatingthinking abilities and leadership or help students master high qualityexpressions.

   What? Youhave been on the top of these two mountains already? Are you a good teachernow? No, not yet!

Comprehensible Input and Output

Last but not least,welcome the most important thing which all parentsworry about---students’ Comprehensible Input and Output .

What are they? Stephen Krashen’s “Comprehensible outputTheory” is a popular idea among numerous second language acquisitiontheorists. Learners learn something new by “intaking” . They graspthe new knowledge that is little beyond their level of competence to enhancetheir previous knowledge. “Comprehensible output Theory” is thecontextual cut above what the learner has already established. Students can addtheir own ideas to make new sentences from the target sentences. Forexample, “This is my bag.” He can change it into “ This ishis bag.”The more inputs, the more outputs. They both help us to learn languagewell. Comprehensible output is based on comprehensible input. No inputs, nooutputs.

If we want to be a good teacher we have to give our students enoughcomprehensible input and make them say more comprehensible output in class aswell.

How about now? Do you have an answer to my question? Or, do you know howto be a good teacher?

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