Sunday, October 16, 2011

An Effective Teaching Strategy Is Essential For Effective Lessons

There are many new teachers who failed badly in conducting interesting and effective lessons, because they lacked an effective teaching strategy. Being a teacher can be a very challenging and enriching career for a lot of people. To many people who aspire to be one, it may seem to be a simple and easy task to achieve.

However, being a teacher who is able to conduct effective teaching lessons is definitely not an easy task to achieve. This is mainly because it's very difficult to capture the full attention of the students throughout the whole day. For a typical student, the time to concentrate fully can only last up to two hours. This means that schools are spending more efforts to employ teachers who can engage their students in interesting lessons and helping their teachers to learn effective teaching strategies.

One of the basic teaching strategies is to conduct lessons that interest your students. Bored students won't remember much of the lesson. Refrain from giving long lectures that will only encourage your students to wander to slumberland. Instead, keep students involved and interacting with them in English. Some students may prefer to listen quietly as they are shy to make any comments. If this kind interaction makes your students nervous, provide plenty of support by giving clear and very specific directions. In addition, make your lessons livelier by adding games or using real-life objects such as a telephone, cook book, or musical instrument. You can also bring your students out of the classroom for a educational tour. This will greatly increase their attention lifespan and assist to absorb the knowledge easily.

Another effective teaching strategy to attract their attention is to provide some rewards during the lessons. Studies have shown that students will be able to learn better when they perceive a personal reward. To boost internal motivation, remind them of the benefits that English can provide, such as English-speaking friends, better job opportunities, easier shopping, or less stress at the doctor's office, and then teach language that will bring them closer to those benefits. External motivation can be achieved by praise and encouragement as well as tangible rewards like prizes or certificates. These rewards have been proven to be very effective in encouraging the students to put in extra efforts in their daily learning.

Learners will remember material better and take more interest in it if it has applicable contextual meaning. This means that good teachers should be able to relate the teaching materials to daily usage or practical examples. By providing appropriate applications, students will be able to remember them better and longer. Arbitrary rote learning (word lists or grammar drills) may be useful in solidifying language forms, but unless there's a real-world application, sooner or later it's likely to be forgotten.

Experienced teachers usually motivate their students to build up their self-confidence. In other words, teachers should allow them to use their own ability to complete a task. If they lack self-confidence, they tend not to take risks, and risk-taking is necessary in language learning. By trying out new or less familiar language, they may find that they are indeed capable of more communication than they thought. On your part, you can encourage them to interact more by reducing feelings of embarrassment when mistakes are made, and give far more compliments than criticisms. You can also instruct them to perform tasks that are easily achieved so that everyone is guaranteed success. This will help to develop their confidence gradually and increase their learning abilities. Constant practice of these effective teaching strategies will increase your teaching abilities and help your students to absorb the lesson knowledge more efficiently.

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