Chris Westergaard TEFL Advice

I've always thought of teaching as being a collection of skills. To be a good EFL teacher, you need a lot of innate qualities like empathy, charisma, creativity...etc., but you also need a plethora of classroom skills. These can include error correction, eliciting and concept questioning, pace, rapport, lesson formation, and a whole host of others. Often times teachers peak in the skill department while their general knowledge of language teaching increases. Most MA programs in teaching rarely touch on skill development and only focus on increasing your general knowledge of EFL theory. If you want to get better in the classroom, work on your skills.
What I recommend while teaching is to focus on a few of them at a time. Read up on different techniques, let's say error correction for example, and practice them while you are teaching. All good teacher are skilled teachers. You can know everything about EFL methodology, write dozens of books on the subject, but that doesn't necessarily make you good in the classroom. If you actively work on improving the dozens of skills that make an effective on a daily basis, you'll see a vast improvement in your teaching ability.

Cheers,
Chris Westergaard
The Language House

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