Sunday, February 03, 2008Preparation
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ESL teachers spend a great deal of time preparing for lessons. Being well prepared before teaching a lesson will not guarantee that a lesson will go smoothly, but it will definitely help.
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Teachers review the lesson objectives, explanations, and exercises so that they may deliver the lesson confidently and clearly.
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They also try to anticipate possible questions, or concerns the students may have. This second point is perhaps the most difficult. Sometimes students will get caught up on a word, expression or concept that the teacher never anticipated. Instead of a quick and easy explanation the lesson’s focus suddenly changes to ensuring they understand the challenging point.
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This happened to me once when I was teaching a holiday cooking lesson. The students were unable to completely grasp the meaning of the word “yield”. No amount of explaining, or trying to demonstrate with examples could make the concept clear. The students consulted their own dictionaries, but still didn’t seem to have a solid understanding of the word. We spent about 10 minutes discussing the word “yield”, not a great deal of time really, but when teaching a 90 minute lesson, losing 10 minutes makes a difference. We had to rush through some of the other explanations in order to complete the lesson.
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No amount of reviewing the lesson in advance would have led me to expect the word “yield” would be a problem. But the next time I teach the lesson I won’t be surprised if the “yield” concept comes up again.
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POSTED BY Cecelia Sumi AT 5:27 PM
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