What Should Every

English Teacher
Know?
A good teacher can inspire hope,
ignite the imagination, and instill a
love of learning.

Brad Henry

What Should Every English Teacher Know?

Teaching in general is a job that affects not only the students, but the
society at large. Teaching English in specific should not be a subject
that students study for grades, but it is an essential skill in this century.
A teachers most important job is to plan a well-balanced course and
to focus on the most important material for the students. We, hereby,
try to present to you some tips on that will help you in your teaching.
Please feel free to send us any ideas or thoughtful inputs that can be
of benefit to your fellow teachers.

Important Characteristics of Teaching English:

1.

The teacher is the most important element of the learning process as the classroom

is basically the only significant source of language input and usage.

There is a mixed learning need. English is learned not for communication but for

2.

examination and grade needs

Since the language is studied as a compulsory subject the motivation and

3.

achievement may be low

The Teacher and the Course book:

We are obliged to use a course book. This can have its advantages but can also propose

limitations.
Advantages:

1.

The course book plans and the teacher presents

2.

The course book provides the sense of progress

3.
The course book allows the students to work as independent learner for some time
Disadvantages:

1.

Some course books are not well organized

2.

Some course books do not provide suitable learning activities

3.

Some course books do not provide enough exercises or activities

The Most Useful Language Teaching Techniques

How to Teach Listening and Speaking:

Listening and speaking are related activities. The student has to listen to speak

Students need to memorize useful words and phrases that can be used outside the
class and become fluent in their use in addition to important phrases for language
learning like: Can you please say that again?, How can you say in English?

Role Playing: After having memorized all the survival words and phrases students
start to practice small role plays using the words and phrases (e.g. meeting and
greeting people, asking for directions).

Problem-Solving Activities: Then, students can practice problem-solving activities

that could be linked to the texts they are studying, such as: Suggest ways of helping
someone with their study. Take care the students will often want to speak in Arabic
rather than English.

Pair Conversation: Most of the speaking that we do in our lives is friendly. This activity
needs practice and repeated. Topics could be: Talking about yourself and what you

What Should Every English Teacher Know?

do Talking about a movie you like Giving directions, etc.

Dictation: It provides feedback on listening. The text should be familiar; preferably

from the reading texts that the students are studying.

Read the whole dictation aloud, and the students only listen.

Read it again phrase by phrase and wait for a while after each phrase

Read the whole dictation aloud again for the students to check their writing.

The students are given time to check their writings

Listening to Stories. Try to find stories that are of interest to the students. Even if the story
seems simple to you read it on your own first before reading it to the students. Read
them loudly and clearly.

Prepared talks. Give the students prepared talks and conversations that they can act
together in class. After several students do it aside, they can do them in front of the
class.

Telephone Call. Let two students sit back to back. Ring a telephone bell (do the
sound with
your voice). The students start conducting a phone call, including the greeting at
the start and the end.

Same or different pronunciation. Try to spot the words that they learn and make them
practice the pronunciation of similar or different words, e.g. right and write, read and
read, etc.

Correcting Spoken Mistakes: As a general rule: Do not immediately correct the students.

Fluency is more important. Give the feedback after the student has finished
speaking. Mistakes could be because of the time pressure, speaking in front of
others, and thinking of content and language at the same time.
How to Teach Reading:

Reading Aloud. Students should be given time to read aloud in class.

Benefits of Reading Aloud:

Enhances fluency

Better understanding of what is read

Builds self confidence

Improves reading skills

Intensive Reading. This involves reading texts slowly and carefully. During the

reading the student picks out the unfamiliar vocabulary and the grammatical structures.

Reading for fluency. Students read their assigned texts several times then start to answer

the related questions. For reading fluency development, the material must be easy.

Read and Listen. Let the students choose a story that they bring to class and read it aloud

to their classmates. Check the story before the students read it aloud to make sure
it is appropriate and suitable to the students level.
How to Teach Writing:
Writing is one of the most difficult language skills, because in order to give proper
feedback the teacher has to recognize the error.

Copying. It starts with letters, then words, then sentences. Copying benefits developing

words and sentences and also its a practice for spelling and dictation.

Dictation. It could be of words, phrases or sentences.

Writing Process. Teach the students this important framework for any writing assignment:

Decide on the writing goals. Decide on the main ideas to be communicated (What am I

trying to say?)

Think of who will read it. (Who am I writing to?)

Gather the ideas you want to include in the writing and organize them in a logical order

(What are the main ideas that should be in my writing?)

Turn the ideas into written text (Have I organized the ideas in a good way?)

Check what has been written (Is my writing correct and easy to read?)

Comments. Give encouraging comments to the students on their writing.

How to Teach Pronunciation and Spelling:

Helping the students to see the relationship between the spoken form and the
written form is an important part of beginning to learn to read. Pronunciation can
be improved through:

Listening to the language (songs, serials, news, movies, etc.)

Singing along with the songs

Reading and taking care of the written form of the words

Speaking the language a lot

The teacher has to have a good knowledge of the sounds of the letters and be able to
describe the position of the tongue and the part of the mouth that produces the
sound. This is called phonetics

Theis the most common word in the English Language. Out of every 15 spoken words
is the. The first sound of the is always difficult to Egyptian students in specific;
it is commonly pronounced as ze. It is worth pointing to the students that the
position of the tongue in the is similar to and " ;"that is the tongue has to
be slightly protruded between the teeth. This same sound occurs in several other
common words like that, this, then, they, there, etc. But do not turn it into a

What Should Every English Teacher Know?

serious activity that would take a lot of time, but it is worth raising.

The goal of pronunciation is to be able to speak clearly understandable language, so too

much correction, will make the student not wanting to speak.

Pronunciation errors are affected by the errors of pronunciation of the Arabic
language. Errors in pronunciation could be because:

Dont know how to say it correctly

Worried and nervous of speaking in front of others

Lack of practice

Distractions

If the student has several pronunciation problem (th, p, ) focus on one problem
at a time. It helps if there is some physical way in which they can remember to do
this, like making an agreed upon sign for the common mistakes.

When dealing with the pronunciation problem, decide if the problem is on the level

of a letter or a word. Sometimes wrong pronunciation because the spelling is

misleading; e.g. one, past tense of read.
How to Teach Vocabulary:
If a teacher teaches 10 new words, the average student will probably remember 3 or
4 of them. Learning a word is just a step, using it is more important.

Guessing from the context. This requires using context clues and background
knowledge to try to guess the meaning of an unknown word. For example, if the
student doesnt know the meaning of the word baker, he can try to guess it from
the sentence if it goes like this: Ahmeds mother asked him to buy bread, so he
went to the baker and

Word Card. Even though some teachers may not find a difference between a word

card and writing on the board and would feel that it is a waste of time and effort, yet
word cards are very important as they put more importance on the word and allow
the students who have visual intelligence to relate to the sight word. The word card
contains the word in English and the Arabic translation on the other side. Let the
students do their own word cards of the high-frequency words from their level. The
students look at their cards and try to remember the meaning of the word, if they
dont they turn the card and look at the meaning and return the card again.
How to teach Grammar:
As long as we teach" "in our schools due to the vast difference between the
colloquial spoken Arabic and the written classical Arabic, students do not feel
comfortable in learning any foreign language unless they clearly understand and
study the grammar rules of this language.

Do not relate the English grammar rules to the Arabic ones, they are completely

different. This will confuse the students.

Explain to the students that in the English there is no any

sentence must consist of a verb, subject and object.

Verb to be is not "", it is a verb that is placed in the sentences that dont include

any actions; sentences that are facts or state. E.g. He is tall. She is happy. In other
words, sentences that are considered as

Clearly explain that adding ing to the verb means that it not a verb anymore, it

becomes a gerund not a verb. Thus, a sentence like I eating is never correct.

How to Plan a Lesson:

Teaching from a course book does not mean that you do not need to plan your
lesson. Lesson planning is not only for the coming lesson, but should involve what
will be taken in the lessons over a period of time.
Guidelines:

Begin the lesson with a teacher controlled activity that can help the students settle

down (e.g. dictation, read aloud activity)

Change the focus of the students at least twice in every lesson; the variety of

activities makes the class more interesting (eg. Individual reading, pair role play,
group activity of speaking and listening, etc.)

Clear instructions and set procedures to facilitate transition between activities

Similar formats for activities so that the students can move smoothly and quickly

from one activity to the other

The students must know the purpose and objective of each activity. A brief

Resources

explanation at the start of the activity will greatly help

Hadaway, N., Vardell, S., Young, T. What Every Teacher Should Know About EnglishLanguage Learners (Pearson Education, Inc. Boston, MA 2009)
Haynes, J. Getting Started with English-Language Learners: How Educators Can
Meet the Challenge (ASCD, Alexandria, VA 2007)
Hill, J., Flynn, K. Classroom Instruction that Works with English-Language Learners
(ASCD, Alexandria, VA 2006)
Nation, Pau. What Should Every EFL Teacher Know (Compass Publishing, 2013)