I need advice about teaching English

hibby

I am working in an office in Japan, and I have been asked to give English lessons to my colleagues. I am not a teacher and I have no previous language-teaching experience or training, so I would really welcome some advice and suggestions.

My lessons start next week: Tuesday lunchtime for "intermediate" level learners and Wednesday lunchtime for "advanced".

Each lesson is to last 45 minutes and have no more than 5 students. It is intended to be "conversational" lessons.


If you were in my place, how would you structure the lessons? What kind of preparation would you do? What kind of material should I bring to the class?

Also, do you have any advice about creating a good "atmosphere" for learning in the class? Japanese people in an office environment are very formal and rule-bound, and it would be great if I could shift them into a different mode at the start of the lesson.

Thanks a million in advance for your help.

Feeona

Well you could start off very simply by printing some English menus, and basing a few lessons around ordering food in a restaurant. So in your first lesson you could base it on brushing up on food vocabulary and simple phrases. Don't worry if the lesson is too easy for them, you as teacher need the chance to assess them and see what they need to learn, and a menu lesson is ideal because it's something they'll definitely need. You could then branch out, some of your students might want to talk about restaurants they've been to before etc, so you could organise a 'critique' lesson in which you let the students sample foods (which you could get from a vending machine, doesn't have to be fancy) from your 'restaurant' and they then act as restaurant critic. It's all just a bit of fun, and it'll allow them to practise using descriptive language in a relaxed setting. These are just a few ideas.......as you teach your students you'll get more ideas because you'll have a better idea of what level they're at, and what they're interested in.

Best of luck!

Leonid

Get 700 classroom activities. (It's a book)

Read up on error correction.

Encourage them to correct themselves and each other.

For the first class, do some get to know each other activities. (Consult the internet)

hibby

Thank you both very much for the excellent advice and suggestions.

I probably won't buy a book - I am not getting paid (extra) for this teaching so I'm disinclined to spend money on it. However I will try to find out about these subjects on the internet, especially the "get to know you" activities.

drvantramp

1. have a clear objective for each lesson (WHAT)
- a good way is to have a one liner in your head or ideally on paper stating what they will be able to say at end of lesson,
eg. to be able to say where I live (more advanced will be exact same but with more vocabulary/longer sentences)

2. with objective in mind, now think HOW will you show them - speaking/writing/reading/listen/mix etc. and materials - powerpoint/book/worksheets etc etc.
visual the lesson - what will they be doing/how will they learn what you're teaching? break it into 4 x 10 minutes chunks of activity -make sure you are not doing all the work!

3. If it is adults and more casual, start slowly and build up solid foundation - don't be over ambitious



only advice, do it the way you feel comfortable with.....