5 Tips For The First-Time TEFL Teacher

Teaching the English language for the first time can be an intimidating scene, particularly when it’s a monolingual group and you know nothing of their language, or it’s a multilingual group. Newly qualified TEFL teachers with online TEFL/TESOL courses can support their students with these five effective tips for teaching English for the first time.

Here, we have gathered some of the best suggestions for new TEFL teachers to help settle their nerves ---

1.     Expect The Culture Surprise

When you travel to a new country, you will face some stressful events like – you might not have any friends or family close by, you don’t speak the local language and so on. So, it is normal to experience culture shock and if you mentally prepare yourself for this, you’ll be able to deal with it better.

2.     Early Preparation

Formulate your ESL/EFL lessons methodically and, if required, over plan. Prepare more than enough classroom materials for your scheduled lesson. Remember, there’s nothing worse than planning the lesson in the eleventh hour. Don’t fright if you run out of materials otherwise, you will get nervous more on your first day itself. Thus, always try to have something extra up your sleeve!

3.     Build Connection

In any kind of classroom, the most significant thing is connecting with your apprentices, then comes the lesson plan, your language objective, or your coursebook, etc. Do a needs analysis when you first meet your learners. Go for learner-centred lessons, add relatable topics and make the lesson more engaging. Try to build the relationship while getting to know your students.

4.     Be Flexible

Stay equipped to familiarise yourself and be flexible. Prepare yourself for any queries that your learners may have or prepare yourself to face common typical complications they may face in the classroom. Observe, when you reach your first school; observe as much as you can. This will help you to understand many things in future.

5.     Enjoy

If you’re bored in your lessons, quite naturally your learners will also feel bore, you won’t like it, right? Therefore, try to integrate activities as well as games that are entertaining into every lesson. Always give students schoolwork, even adults, try to find out what interests them and deliver homework based on that.

Some Extra tips ---

• Keep your instructions clear, understandable and simple. If you want to be polite, “please” and “thank you” will work.
• Make sure you comprehend any particular grammar point you aim to explain. Your learners will have doubts, for example, several students complicate the meaning between past simple and present participle.
• Don’t pressurise your students into speaking before understanding anything, let them listen first.
• Remember, your students may need lots of repetition and puncturing, this might seem uninteresting to go over the same sentences again and again, but it is essential.
• Provide as much context as you can, like visuals and videos, don’t just lecture them how to say something rather show them that. This way, they will be able to relate more to such things.
• If you don’t know a particular answer then tell students that you will find out and get back to them on that. You don’t need to have an answer to everything always and it’s natural.
• Make sure your students leave the class wearing a smile.

As a skilled TEFL teacher, trained with online TEFL/TESOL courses, you not only have to be persevering and positive by nature, but also need to be alert to the reasons why certain errors happen. Try to be creative and think outside the box to make sure your instructions are engaging, communicating, and entertaining for everyone involved.

We hope you find these suggestions accommodating as you start your TEFL career.