I'm taking a course to become an English Teacher in Spain and I have to write a summary of all the lessons I attend during the course. Once I have all the summaries I'll have to hand them in to my teacher and I wouldn't like to have any grammar mistakes. Could you take a look and check everything is OK? thanks in advance. By the way, I haven't checked my punctuation so you will probably find many mistakes in this field. One more thing, I would be interested in knowing your opinions about the things said in the essay. Here you are:
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT:
DEVELOPING SPEAKING ATTITUDES
After spending a quarter of an hour in the class, I started thinking I had gone to the wrong building or maybe classroom. Everything was completely different from any previous classes I had had at University. The atmosphere had nothing to do with the one you found at University. In this case, even though it was a Saturday morning, the students were relaxed and eager to learn. But the atmosphere was not what struck me the most. Once Luís Fernández entered the class and introduced himself, two thoughts came to my mind. First, I thought that maybe I would not learn a lot with him but at least I would have great fun. Second, I thought that was the kind of teacher I had always wanted to have when I was at school. Someone who could make the student feel at ease, which is specially necessary in an English class.
To my surprise, I did learn some valuable advice that day. One of the things he said was that in order to become English teachers we had to know more than a native speaker. I was not surprised to hear that, since I have always thought non native speakers have to be familiarised with the way grammar works in order to teach it. Whereas native speakers do not have to since they learnt English naturally and without great effort. Even though I agreed with Luís Fernández in this point, he said some things which I absolutely disagree with. For instance, the idea that we have to be aware that some of our students will never be able to learn English, no matter how hard we try to teach them. My experience in teaching English is very little but I think that anybody can learn something if he or she wants to. Maybe those who have difficulties in learning will have to work harder and will need more time than the average student but, in the end, they will get to speak English. Maybe what the teacher meant was that some students are hard to teach no matter how much effort we make because, after all, the ones who have to make the effort are the students themselves.
Some of the things that were said in class that day changed the way I teach my classes now. The teacher said that we have to get to know our students. Know what they are interested in, what worries them or what motivates them. Even though I consider I have a good relationship with my students I try to keep some distance because I don’t pretend to be my student’s friend. I do speak with my students about many things but I try not to talk about my personal life or to make them talk about theirs. Since Luís Fernández gave us that piece of advice I try to know more about my students and their likes and dislikes and I can say it helps create a better and more relaxed atmosphere.
We not only have to know our students but also help them know one another. This way they will be willing to use English to explain one another what they like or what they have done this weekend. Moreover, they will be given the chance to put into practice those structures and vocabulary we have taught them.
In order to put into practice all that was said in class, we did some exercises. The teacher told us that if our students are not concentrated and relaxed, they won’t be able to learn anything. A good way to keep their attention is to ask them to close their eyes and relax at the time we are explaining or whispering a story. With this exercise the student relaxes all his/her body and mind too. Once the exercise ends they are fresh to learn again. That day we had the chance to put it into practice and even though I was more sleepy after coming back to earth, I do think it may be an original and interesting way to create a good atmosphere in class.
Although this session was not supposed to deal with how to mark and correct our students’ exercises, the topic was already introduced. We were given a fill in the blanks exercise to practise modal verbs. After doing the exercise individually we corrected it altogether and realised that, in some cases, there was more than one possible answer. This way we learnt that marking an exercise is not a simple task and sometimes it is better to give a mark instead of correcting every single mistake. Specially with young students who are not interested in writing properly but in getting a good mark. Moreover, this way we safe time since correcting can take us long and, as Fernández said, all teachers have to find time to keep learning and studying to become better professionals.
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