My Teaching English blog
vladka

In this section you can see the latest postings from my personal blog.

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Sick and Tired

I have been teaching English language for 2 years. I am teaching adults as well as teenagers. I think that I am enthusiatic teacher, however, I can't handle my teenagers. Sometimes I think that I am better at teaching adults. I can motivate them, catch their attention or create friendly atmosphere. The problem is now with teenagers. One thing is that there are almost 30 students in my class. The other is that even though I try to motivate them and use various teaching materials, including games or projects, they are not interested. They are always using their mother language, speak together, and complain when I want to do something with them. It is really difficult because I love my job but it is too much demanding and stressful.  

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Comments

Submitted on 9 October, 2008 - 18:29

Hi there, working with adolescents is surely a challenge. With this age group it is really critical to motivate them by:

 

  • giving them some choice in what they do from time to time
  • personalize the tasks, ie calibrate activities to their world and interests
  • help them to see the progress that they make and the goals that they want to reach
  • be flexible
  • promote learner-centered and learner autonomy environmnet
  • create a relaxed atmosphere and build a real relationship with them
  • keep things moving and interesting, lots of task variety and change in pace
  • use TBLT so that there are outcomes and a purpose for activities, not just a lanugage task
I actuall think at this age is it also important to incorporate Web-based projects and activities to prepare students for the 21st century: collaboratoin, problem solving, inquiry, critical thinking, etc. And we can do this by working with students via blogs, podcasts, digital storytelling (movie making), creating content in virtual worlds and other Web spaces, etc. Keep trying things until you hit something that seems to work, then build more from there. 

 

 
Frank in Mexico
Blog: http://franksblog.edublogs.org
Network: http://metamexico.ning.com/

Submitted on 16 October, 2008 - 07:05

Hi,

I was trying different activities but it seems they have no interest in English as such. They refuse to talk and often they reply using the phrases connected to death or killing or envy. I mean, I ask them to form example sentence in present simple and their reply is "I hate you". I gave them task "describe a good teacher" and they said " the one that let us talk (mother language), eat, laugh, doesn't give us work to do or any homework. So what can I think of that?  

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