What makes a good teacher?
In general, it is best to try to achieve a balance.An exuberant personality may neglect learners’ needs;a quieter teacher may be more responsive but also less colorful and memorable.A careful planner may lack the spontaneity and flexibility necessary to respond to learners’ needs, while improvised lessons may be chaotic or lack clarity and focus.There are times when you need to explain and give information to your students and other times when you encourage them to discover for themselves.The balance you aim for may be different according to your students’ needs–and ultimately this attention to the needs and wants of your students,and willingness to adapt to meet them,is what makes a good teacher.
It is important for you to find a teaching style which is right for you and that you feel comfortable with.It is impossible to teach in a way you feel instinctively to be wrong,but you also have a duty to your learners;to respect their individuality and to offer a range of teaching techniques and activities to suit different learning styles.In practice this means what we call ‘ principled eclecticism‘*[1].Eclecticism means that you can pick and choose techniques and classroom activities,instead of sticking closely to a ‘method’.However,merely picking techniques at random without some reason for choosing them would lead to chaos.We must have some guiding principles behind our approach to teaching.These principles will decide which techniques and activities we select and which we reject.
Guiding Principles
Modern English language teaching (ELT) does not offer a standard (method) to follow in all classes or prescribe exactly what you should do but offers certain guiding principles which form an ‘approach’ to our teaching.
*We learn a language in order to communicate ( this means that the language you teach should be meaningful,natural, and useful to your learners.)
*We should respect the individuality of our learners( learners learn in different ways,so that the role of teachers is to respond to their different needs.)
*Learning should be a positive experience (Our job as teachers is to provide interesting,motivating,enjoyable, and engaging learning activities for our learners.)
*We should enable our learners to reach their full potential (As you develop as a teacher you will elaborate and extend these principles and add more of your own,to form your own personal teaching philosophy.)
*Principled eclecticism; Using a variety of techniques and approaches rather than sticking rigidly to one approach – specifically as a result of beliefs about teaching, rather than just as a product of carelessness.
References
**Jill Hadfield’s Book about Teaching English
Related posts:
- Article:First Year Teacher Travails
- Elt Methodology-The Natural Approach
- A note on contextualizing teaching, learning and teacher education
