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Hello, my name is MookDa. I am currently a student at Liberty learning elemetary education. I have a part-time job teaching English to older ESL students. I started off teaching almost ten in 2015 at KKBI (A Bible School in Thailand), now I am left with five. However, starting this August, the school director wants me to teach English to about 7 people (ages ranging from 22-60). I have six months to teach them first grade to sixth grade. He wants me to teach them 4 hours a day (Monday through Friday) and a grade per month.

As you can tell, this is a very big step for me. I think I am suppose to make a lesson plan, but I do not even know where to start. What do I teach them? One grade per month? How is that possible? Do I teach them grammar, conversation, or what? How am I going to teach such a wide range of ages English? I have regular students that are 50+ and that is hard enough because I have to teach them with a teenager who is a quick learner. So not everyone reaches their full potential. The old students take one hour to learn a few words, which only takes a teenager 10 minutes. Therefore, i have difficuly teaching as it is.

For me, I am not the best teacher I could be. However, I need guidance of how to be a good teacher. I have never learned in a real school. I was homeschoold and then went straingt on to online schooling so I do not know how teachers normally teach and their techiques. Therefore, it is hard for me to understand how and what to present and teach students in this category.

By the way, the purpose of this project is for them to be able to speak, read, and write English to a sixth grade level in order for them to be able to continue studying the Bible in English.

Is there anyone here who can give me advice on where to start, what to do, what to teach, what books to use, and etc? I would really appreciate all the help I can get. I know that being a good teacher is hard, but I want to be it so that others will be able to live to their full potential.

Thank you very much.

Hello MookDa,

My advice is to choose a course book and use it as much as possible. You won’t have the time to put together every lesson yourself, especially not for four hours of teaching a day. Course books are written by experts and usually cover all aspects needed: grammar, vocabulary, speaking, writing…. It will be useful to have the accompanying teacher’s book too.

Lesson planning will be essential and will be much easier with a course book. If you choose a good one, the lesson will be planned for you.

When students are at a higher level, you can choose a passage from the Bible and plan a lesson around that. I’ll be happy to give you ideas when you get there.

You are asking all the right questions which means that you are on the path to becoming a very good teacher. You probably just need practice. If you want to read about teaching, look at books by Jim Scrivener, Jeremy Harmer. You can also look at the book by Lucy Pollard in the link below.

All the very best,

Susan

Nice Post




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Umair

Hello, I have some experience teaching mixed groups, it's really challenging and requires a lot of imagination. Use more language games and cooperative forms, when your 22-year-olds will help the seniors. And give them a placement test in the very beginning, maybe they have already tried learning English or at least know something already which will also turn useful. Stick to planning - that's my most precious grain of experience. A good a course book will help you, but you also have to be, like, a pedant, in a sense. You have to know before each lesson, WHAT you are going to give the students, HOW you are going to do it. Try always to prepare something interesting in each lesson - a game, a quiz - as a revision maybe, or presentation of the new material. If you try to turn every lesson into a gift for your students, you'll make it. Good luck - Mirra

Good ideas.

You can check out English grammar section of our website, it's going to be really helpful. Also, check out the blog, this will be a very useful resource for you.