I was accepted to work as a teaching assisstant at the university sinceI graduated with a first class hounors degree in Linguistics , and I'll be doing my masters in that subject too .I'm going to teach both English and French languages but I'm aware that my English is not good enough for that. However, I'll start my job in 2 weeks and I really have no idea how to do it .
Are there any websites that would help me as a teacher ( since all my students will be 19 - 20 years old ) . I'm going to teach them all the basics in English and most of them don't know how to speak it at all, and that's my challenge. Since I have no practical experiemnce , do you think it'd be good if I translated things for them or should I speak only in English in the class?
Thanks in Advance.
Hi Amélie! My wife is an English teacher with a Master's degree in the subject, and I studied linguistics at university as well, so we spend a lot of time talking about teaching language.
The first thing I would do would be to read up on different methodologies of teaching language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_pedagogy, then go speak to the department at your university about what methodology they prefer. (Most departments have pretty strong opinions.) As long as you can justify your preferred method with some research, I think your professors will support you.
I wouldn't stress too much about not being a perfect English speaker. To me, this means that you might want to use other resources for the students to imitate rather than yourself. Maybe you could find a TV show that your students watch and want to understand in English and use that as your primary source. This sort of thing will probably be up to whether your department cares how you teach, or if they have specific things that have to be taught in each class.
Thanks Kat!!
Hi Zach, Thanks for your comment.
I'm aware of all these teaching methodologies, but I don't prefer to follow a specific one. I usually mix between all of them according to the point I want to explain . I don't think that my department prefers a specific methodology but they do have a specific curriculum I have to follow . Anyway I'll discuss this with them next time.
Can you recommend any TV shows that would be suitable for such classes ?
You are very welcome! I hope it helps you in your teacher position.
