A TEFL Teacher’s Two Critical Skills
A TEFL Teacher’s Two Critical Skills
If you can do both of these, you’re an amazing teacher.
As language teachers, we usually spend two hours or less per week with our learners. Prioritising certain skills is essential.
I believe that an ESL teacher’s main skill-sets are:
1. To construct an effective language learning environment.
This is more of a ‘hard’ skill and easy to train. This is demonstrated through ‘learnable’ activities, for example, setting up communicative activities using good classroom management and creating a safe environment where it’s OK to try and fail.
2. To motivate students by communicating emotion and building a connection.
A ‘soft’ skill, this is much harder to learn (you usually bring it to the table all by yourself). This is demonstrated by displaying passion in and for your teaching.
It’s this connection that makes the student practice English outside the classroom, that gives them the love of learning a language. It ultimately motivates them to stick with the long-term slog that is learning a language.
It’s also what separates good teaching from great teaching.
See you again in two weeks.
Whenever you're ready, there are three ways I can help you:
1. Learn how to plan better, faster and stress-free with my book Lesson Planning for Language Teachers (90 ratings, 4.5⭐ on Amazon).
2. Develop calm students, a relaxed mind and a classroom full of learning with my book Essential Classroom Management (16 ratings, 4.5⭐ on Amazon).
3. Improve your teaching in five minutes daily with my Reflective Teaching Practice Journal (4 ratings, 4.5⭐ on Amazon).