Introduction
Although it's very important for any teacher to be flexible and adaptable to teach any kind of students, teaching beginners is totally hard and tough without a permanent patience and simplicity, especially if those students are adult absolute beginners. There is a huge difference between zero and absolute beginner students. Zero beginners are those who most have exposed to the language at some points in their lives. On the other hand, we sometimes come across absolute beginners who have had so little exposure to English. Such students can’t even handle the most basic greetings, verbs or vocabulary. To learn, those students need not only a knowledgeable and creative teacher, but also a patient and friendly teacher who can engage them in the learning process and encourage them to keep on.
Whether you are teaching a complete group of absolute beginners, or a few within a group of false beginners, here are some essential tips to deal with beginner students of English language.
1. Keep your language simple and avoid showing off your Linguistic skills.
2. Repeat your questions and give the students a short time to think and process your question. They are new to English and they need time to understand before responding.
3. Stay active and and involve your students in a lot of active and fun activities to engage them in learning English.
4. Be friendly with the students because on significant learning can occur without a strong relationship between the teacher and the students.
5. Try to understand the different learning styles of your students and design your materials based on their needs.
6. Use a lot of body language. The students are in their first stage of mastering English language which means they have little background. Therefore, miming, acting, using realia and movement are essential.
7. Be a teacher, a parent and a facilitator and celebrate the small achievements of your students.
This is the main idea of teaching English language especially grammar. Show more than you speak and if you have to speak, make it simple and suitable to their level. Don't worry if your students cannot understand everything you say. Just speak slowly and use lots of body language to convey clear instructions because, with absolute beginners, understanding and conveying basic meaning is much more important than using perfect grammar. However, learning a language is not a linear process and nobody is perfect in the process of teaching beginners. All what you have to do is to encourage and engage your students, be patient and listen to them, try to understand them and avoid correcting them in an embarrassing way. All at all, keep it simple, simple and have fun.
All at all, learning a language is not a linear process and nobody is perfect in teaching. Every teacher has his/her way to deal with beginner students. I have summarized here the most important techniques and I hope you had gotten some benefits for your professional career.
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