Teach English in YinjiAng Zhen - Meizhou Shi

Unit 12 covers teaching the productive skills (speaking and writing). For the lesson to be most effective, the teacher must create the need and desire, in the students, to communicate. Students may sometimes be reluctant to speak because of a lack of confidence, a fear of making mistakes, peer intimidation, a lack of interest in the topic, and/or cultural reasons. The unit describes the importance of incorporating both accuracy and fluency activities into one?s lessons, encouraging both the correct use of language and the creative, free use of language. Some examples of speaking activities in the classroom include: discussions, role-play, drilling, prompting, debates, and communication games. The unit also discusses different types of games (competitive, cooperative, communicative, linguistic) and makes some suggestions of traditional games that can be adapted for lesson purposes (hangman, pictionary, charades, etc.). I will need to remind myself that when facilitating a writing activity in the classroom, it will be important to consider how spelling, punctuation, and handwriting may present challenges for my students. When facilitating a free/creative speaking activity, I will need to remind myself to wait until an activity is finished before any corrections and to not over-correct. I will also need to try to predict what students will bring to activity and foresee any problems they might have as well as remind students of any structures of vocabulary that might be useful (and perhaps leaving it on the board for reference). I also think it is important to, after an activity, provide feedback and focus on what students were able to do rather than what they weren?t able to do, encouraging confidence and further participation.