Teaching hacks and where to find them

Congratulations, you have graduated! Packed with a teaching diploma and little to none teaching experience, you are probably tutoring, starting to work online or looking for a full-time offline job. In any case, you need some teaching hacks, hands-on tips and solid theoretical base from something that wasn’t published 80 years ago. Ideally, you need it fast. So…where to start from?

Novice teachers are quite often tempted to take huge workload. They are full of energy and ready to face challenges. As a result, they end up juggling groups and individual classes of all ages and levels, not to mention the variety of coursebooks. Ideally, try to start small. Teaching a couple of groups with thorough reading of the teacher’s book and keeping a reflective journal will be much more beneficial for you than dozens of chaotic classes. If you don’t have an option of starting small, here are some tips that might be useful.

Talk

First things first: talk to colleagues. They usually say “experienced colleagues”, but quite often a piece of advice from your peer novice teacher can come in extremely handy. If there is such an opportunity, watch someone else teaching. Discuss what you’ve seen and keep a list of things you’d like to “steal”. These might be interesting speaking activities, effective classroom management techniques, unusual interaction patterns and what not. 

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. The English teachers community is huge now and present on all possible platforms and social networks. Search by hashtags like #englishteacher or #elt and the result will come soon. Some examples that spring to my mind are the @english_teachers_upgrade community on Instagram* or Skyteach blog, for sure.

Besides the colleagues, talk to your students. The more you know about them, the more understanding about what’s going on in your classroom you’ll get. Run needs analysis and try to build rapport — that will definitely pay off and make your teaching experience more pleasant.

Read

Reading is the easiest way to get to know methodology essentials as well as current trends of ELT. If you university courses haven’t provided you with any good reads, try the following first:

• Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener
• How to Teach English by Jeremy Harmer 

These two are the must-read for all English teachers and will provide you with a great toolkit from classroom management tips to teaching skills. If you want to dig deeper into teaching particular areas or skills, the “How to…” series might be of use:

• How to Teach Speaking by Scott Thornbury
• How to Teach Grammar by Scott Thornbury
• How to Teach Vocabulary by Scott Thornbury
• How to Teach Writing by Jeremy Harmer
• How to Teach Listening by JJ Wilson

This is more than enough to start without getting overwhelmed. If you still need a grammar guide to be more confident about your students’ tricky questions, the following reference book will provide you with simple explanations and examples of everyday language usage and common mistakes:

• Practical English Usage by Martin Swan

Learn

Never stop learning. When it comes to language, we have to learn non-stop, even being teachers. Especially being teachers. Try to be in the know of current ELT trends, follow the news about any professional community gatherings, conferences or workshops. There are online platforms like Futurelearn и Coursera which will provide you with a huge variety of courses on hundreds of issues, including ELT-related ones. Cambridge English offers webinars for teachers, as well as Macmillan. However, try to be selective and don’t fall for anything that promises you a certificate of attendance. Start with well-known trustworthy institutions and opt for the topics that are bothering you at the moment. 

Reflect

If you are doing a CELTA course, for instance, you will have to write not only lesson plans but also self-evaluation after each teaching practice. It helps to assess what was successful and what went wrong. This is great practice that can be incorporated into your teaching. Even if you don’t have time for writing detailed lesson plans and filling in lengthy forms, you can get by with a simplified reflection journal. In this journal, you can write down the most successful moments, useful activities and book references not to experience the good old “I’ve seen a perfect activity but I don’t remember where!” kind of feeling. Reflective journals are also great for reflecting on drawbacks or even failures. If you try to identify the reason of what has gone wrong, it will definitely help you to avoid that in future. Keeping such journals in a digital form will enable you to have a quick access to your very own story and list of activities and useful comments.

Take

…an exam or a course! Even if your language is impeccable, you might still lack some knowledge of methodology. Think of taking a TKT test or a CELTA course, for instance. We have written about these two here. These courses will help you gain some theoretical knowledge and develop your teaching skills.

TKT is a series of theoretical tests which includes 3 core modules and 3 specialist modules. The former cover Background to language learning and teaching, Lesson planning and use of resources for language teaching and Managing the teaching and learning process. The later are TKT Young Learners and TKT CLIL which stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. You can prepare for these tests yourself and take them in any order.

CELTA, which is the most widely recognised English teaching qualification in the world, focuses on developing practical skills. It is usually a face-to-face month-long course where you have to teach real lessons and do assignments, lesson planning and other paperwork. CELTA is perfect for new teachers and those whose native language is not English.

Finally, don’t forget to enjoy the ride. With you and, to some extent, because of you students will pass exams, get jobs, broaden their horizon, explore new cultures, get visas, win contests, travel anywhere they want, study abroad and — some of them — will even make their dreams of becoming a teacher come ture. Are you still being unsure? Just start teaching!

Where do you get teaching tips and hacks? Sharing is caring 😉