No matter if you are working in an educational institution for several decades, or have never stepped inside the classroom as anything other than a student, teaching English in a foreign country such as China has a fair share of challenges. Mentioned below are a few common mistakes you need to avoid if you wish to experience only the perks associated with this profession. Please check them out right now.
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Making One Lesson Plan for All the Levels
Even if you do not relocate, and opt for English teaching online in China, it will be wrong to assume that you can handle every student in a similar way. One way to prevent this is starting a course with conceptual tasks and evaluating the level of the students. You then get a chance to tweak your existing lesson plans or making one from scratch accordingly.
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Talking Too Quickly or Too Slowly
You may pronounce the words out or repeat yourself, but, speak only in the way you would like to be spoken to when learning a different language. Speaking at an abnormally fast pace will confuse the students. Speaking at a snail’s pace and breaking down even the simplest terms will hamper how English really sounds.
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Preoccupied with Grammar
As a teacher, you may tend to obsess with the infinite grammatical rules of English. The students out of your homeland wishes to first grasp the language, so, do not bog their brain down with unnecessary details. They do not have to know about clauses for instance at the moment.
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Forgetting the Aim of Students
You must review the goals of every student before the course begins. Everyone is going to use English for different purposes – some to pass an assessment test, some to get into a particular school, some to simply converse. English is a sort of skill that your students are going to use in the real world sooner or later. Keep that in mind when teaching.
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Focusing Short-Term
The new teachers often focus on creating the day-to-day lesson plans. If you want to prosper, you must think about the long term objectives for each semester or class.
An excellent way of retaining students’ attention for a prolonged period is by having a common thread throughout the class – earning points and getting rewarded based on the points at the end, receiving stars for good behaviour, vocabulary contests for additional credit, etc. Such consistencies determine the tone of the class more than your actions in just one day.
The recruiters offering lucrative jobs of English teaching online in China said learning a new language can be quite fun if you remember to set proper standards for the classroom. There will always be hurdles, but, sharing your mother tongue with eager students abroad allows you to feel the happiest at work. You are the expert, everyone is looking up to you, so make the most out of it.
