Teaching English in a Foreign country: When Teaching English in a Foreign country and learning a new language, being able to speak is one of the most rewarding and progress-defining skills one can have. It is also the most challenging aspects of learning a language. In general, being able to read, write and understand a new language comes more quickly than being able to speak it. Because of this, it is important that students practice speaking in their classes as much as possible, and if possible, that they speak during the majority of the class. A successful speaking activity involves, students speaking a lot, everyone speaking the same amount, students wanting to speak and teachers following the lesson.
Our Teaching English in a Foreign Country program has the best reputation and high quality therefore allowing us to guarantee our graduates paid job positions in Argentina with local institutes upon successful completion of our TEFL TESOL course in Argentina. We have direct employment contacts worldwide for those students that desire to get their certification in Argentina and move on to teach elsewhere. During the course students will be working with local institutes in order to complete the observations and practice teachings. These institutes, after having met and worked with our trainees, frequently hire them to continue working after the TEFL course has been completed.
When Teaching English in a Foreign country, what exactly is meant by ‘teaching speaking’ to students?
- Enabling students to organize and structure their thoughts in the English language
- Teaching how to correctly sound and pronounce words and sentences
- Teaching how to correctly use language rhythm, sentences stresses and intonation patterns
- Teaching students how to use the language quickly in order to create fluency
- Enabling students to speak with confidence and giving them the ability to correctly express themselves
Activities to teach Speaking:
- Discussions, role-play, brainstorming, story completion, storytelling, interview and picture descriptions.
Dialogues/Conversation Classes:
Dialogues enable learners to relate to real-life situations, allow them to practice pauses, reactions, intonation, rhythm, pronunciation, new grammar structures, and help them improve listening skills. Dialogues and classes based on conversations also help in the process of memorization and recall.
How to Teach listening when Teaching English in a Foreign country?
Listening is not just hearing noises and sounds; it’s the skill of understanding a message and creating communication. We often, as listeners ourselves, underestimate the importance of listening and it’s complexity when learning a new language because we feel the end foal is being able to speak the language; however, one does not exist without the other. There are two parts to the listening process; The Sender (the one who sends the message) and, The Receiver (the one who receives the message)
In order for the listener to receive the message, they must break down and interpret sentence structure, vocabulary used, slang, mistakes in dialogue, and the speed of the message. We often do not realize that a process of listening exists, since we do it without thinking. It is vitally important when learning a new language to re-learn effective listening steps in order to improve the learning process. Effective listeners connect, understand, question, predict, look between the lines and reflect.
3 Types of Listening:
1 – Passive
The receiver absorbs what he/she hears like a sponge but offers no acknowledgement or feedback to the sender
2- Acknowledgement
The receiver hears what is being said and picks out the general idea or points being made in order to offer some acknowledgement or feedback
3- Active
The receiver is listening carefully to all the information that is being sent to him/her, and he/she is able to understand it and offer detailed responses and feedback.
3 Approaches to Listening:
- 1 – Gist (gaining general ideas/meaning)
- 2 – Selective (obtaining only relevant information)
- 3 – Intensive (carefully hears every word being said)
How to teach Listening:
1 – Pre-Listening
Prepare students by introducing the topic and finding what they already know.
2 – Listening
Students may listen for specific details or a general idea of the topic.
3 – After-Listening
Review the topic of the activity and remind students exactly what they are.
Songs:
Songs are a good way to teach in an educative and entertaining way because they incorporate many of the language skills including:
- 1 – Listening (to the song)
- 2 – Reading (following the lyrics to determine the words)
- 3 – Writing (filling in the blanks)
- 4 – Speaking (singing the song)