TESOL training helps a lot for IELTS teaching

Being eager to improve my teaching in IELTS, I participated in the Tesol Course this May, which was really helpful for my IELTS teaching. The course mainly includes the skills of how to teach vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading and listening. Besides, it also demonstrates me “What a great teacher is .” Generally, the course is really practical and now I am going to write down my feeling for this course.

What’s a great teacher? Many people used to think that being a great teacher should have much knowledge and know how to teach their students well and that the most important thing was to improve the academic performance of students. However, in the current society, being a great teacher is no long what it used to be. Parents, schools and students as well as the whole society are looking for more in teachers. They want a professional, responsible, kind, patient, talented and hardworking one. Before the class, what I value for a great teacher is not about knowledge, not about patience or not about profession because those are the basic elements of being a teacher. The thing I value most is having morality since there are many news reporting teaching treating students unequally, abusing them or even doing some illegal or immoral act to them. Being a teacher,at least, should have certain degree of morality. But this course tells me that great teachers know how to bring out the best in students. It says that a poor teacher complains, an average teacher explains, a good teacher teaches and a great teacher inspires, which enables me to have a deeper understanding of what a great teacher should be. I would try my best to contribute something to my students, school , my family or even the society.

Vocabulary skills are really practical for my teaching, especially those who are coming for IELTS examinations in an early age (15-17 years old). For this early-aged students, they need more motivation for learning. The skill of using thinking map in learning vocabulary is really helpful since the vocabulary in IELTS is really difficult for them. Traditionally, teachers would use list of words to teach students about the vocabulary. However, it is highly difficult for students to memorize those vocabularies. There are many kinds of thinking map such as bubble map, tree map , brace map and bridge map, which are great for learning vocabularies since it is vivid for students to learn more vocabularies easily. What’s more, the activities of vocabulary consolidating are also very important since learning vocabulary is not confined with input of vocabulary and output of vocabulary.

The skills of speaking is really vita in my IELTS speaking test. In China, although students learn English for really a long time, they cannot speak English or they don’t even anythings to talk about the topic in IELTS speaking. There are many many TESOL speaking activities that can be used in the IELTS speaking class. I would like to take thinking hat for example. It tells the students THINK ways to brainstorm about the things that they are going to say about in IELTS speaking class or examination. By using this hat, they can really think and talk a lot in the class. The most important I learn in TESOL speaking course is that if my students speak Chinglish, I not only need to correct them, but also need to ask them to repeat the right one so that they can change the wrong expression in speaking. The mistake they made in the life was imitated from others. Even though it is hard for them to change, repetition really helps.

Offline courses are really wonderful at least for me and I think I made a great decision on offline learning because it is the fastest way for me to acquire knowledge, but also I can learn many experience from classmates I met in this class. There are many ways of kids education I can learn from other classmates since they they are quite experienced in triggering the potential of kids. What is most meaningful is that they share some examples in teaching children English. Meanwhile, they would also recommend some books related to kids education, which are extremely helpful for my daughter education. I think I am so lucky to meet so many great kid teachers as I did learn a lot from them. Even though I am not teaching kid in my daily jobs, I would like to learn something or two to teach my daughter English. I would like her to improve under my guidance. This is my first time to be a mom, I do not have too much experience and I am always trying and learning to be a good mom for daughter. I would like to be a role model for my daughter. And I believe what I have done, what I have learned and what I am looking forward to would have great influence on her. I hope I can be a great teacher and a great mother for her.

In conclusion, TESOL is really beneficial for me since it not only gives me an opportunity to improve my teaching in all English learning aspects including vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading and listening, but also enriches my friend circle. Challenged as being a great teacher is, I would never never give up.