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Top Tips for Teaching English to Young Learners

02/18/2023

hi welcome Linda here from ITT back this
week with another live session I hope you're doing well thank you so much for joining me today I'm happy to see you if
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information on there so everything for you on our socials ah crystalline is
here hi crystalline how are you doing good to see you I love this purple hair on you it looks
so amazing I love it someone's asking are you Flemish no I'm
not Flemish actually I'm not interesting I've never had that one before thank you
though that's cool all right so this is what we're going to talk about today Young
Learners and top tips for teaching English to Young Learners because
teaching children is a very um big thing teaching children Young
Learners is a big field of efl if you want to teach English abroad or also online you're very likely to encounter
children along your teaching Journey so no that's all right
that's fine crystalline says I'm doing great so far and thank you so much
awesome yeah I really love it I want to try that hair it looks great
all right nice um yep so that's basically the agenda today
and um as you know as always feel free to leave
your comments and I'm gonna get back to them and um yeah we also have a 30 person off
opportunity as always 30 off your tefl or tesol
course we only share this during our live sessions and it's also here in the upper right hand corner if you want to
scan this QR code you can do so but if you can't scan it we also have a link so
I'm going to share that with you now in the comment section and this link will get you 30 off any
tefl or tesol cores from Itt so it looks like this Facebook live
bonus Linda at the end and it will lead you straight to the application page and
you fill out your application um and it also says congratulations you qualify for 30 off or something like
that so um yeah you know that you will get 30 off of that
um yeah I'm also going to share this again at the end um because we have people coming in and
out and I don't wanna I don't want anybody to miss that so um yeah
what is next next up just a quick introduction about myself who I am
because I know we have a lot of new viewers here today so this is me my name
is Linda and I am um so I do many different things I always like to introduce myself this way I just do many
different things uh one of my main things that I do is I'm a travel writer content creator and also language
teacher um if you're interested in that sort of thing so travel content especially Asia
um you can go to Linda goes east on Instagram Atlanta goes east east because I'm very
interested in Asia and I've been living in Asia since um pretty much 2012. I started out in China and now I live in
Korea but I've already been in Korea for like it's my eighth year this year 2023 is my eighth year
um before that I was in China and I also run my own website lindagosis.com and
there I share travel information for people who want to travel around Asia
um also solo travel around Asia and places and also teaching English abroad
all of these things and I'm originally from Germany slash the US my mom is German my dad's American and I'm based
in South Korea veneer yeah like I said this is my eighth year so very exciting I really
like living here um it's a lot of opportunities especially for teachers or people you
know who could speak multiple languages it's very useful you can always find a lot of opportunities and kind of I
started out with ITT I took my tefl course with ITT i t t I always have to
count the t's um ittt back in 2014 and I just Googled
you know tefl course and iact was one of the ones that came up and the reviews were great and I just decided to take
their course and then I also started working for ITT
ittt ITT um later on um so ITT stands for international tefl
and tesol training and we are a leading Teflon tesol course provider for people
who want to teach English professionally a broad or online or in other countries
then you're in the right place here so yeah
and uh what else um yeah our website is tefl course.net I
also want to mention that so yep um I think that's enough about me if you
have any questions let me know as always in the comments feel free to comment I love answering you guys questions at any
time there will also be a q a um part at the end where you can ask more questions
um but that's about it and please guys still let me know where are you right now where are you watching from let me
know I'm always super curious where are you watching from today let me know let me know please where are you
watching from where are you at I want to know who I'm talking to so I'm in South Korea I'm kind of I'm not in Seoul I'm
like an hour and a half south of Seoul the capital um in a city called chengju it's kind of
in the center and um uh
yeah that's where I'm and it snowed last yesterday and last night so it's actually really pretty outside I'm right
in front of my window it's blue skies oh it seems to be very windy the clouds are moving very fast but it's also snowy
outside it's very nice all right we have somebody here from Belgium unfortunately I cannot read
Russian I'm so sorry I really want to say your name um Belgium um is that why you thought
I'm Flemish and I guess I I was born and raised in Germany so maybe also that's why
um interesting oh my sister is from Seoul she's never been there though oh cool maybe you can
visit one time oh yeah all right thank you Jana maybe you can come and visit with her that'd be so fun
cool okay and we have taco in France
and Lynn in Minnesota nice oh how's the weather in Minnesota is it also really cold I bet
nice Yana yayana you and your sister you should come and visit Seoul that would
be fun okay fine okay so good group here right
uh France Belgium Minnesota Korea really good cold and snowing yeah
that's what I thought kind of like in Korea I'm sure you have more snow than Korea though
uh we have a question here from Fiona just let me get to that and then we jump right into our topic today so Fiona says
do you know where I can get training so I can tutor online I only did it face to face until the covid now Everything Has
Changed do you do videos I'm in Scotland Everdeen from Edinburgh oh nice I really
always wanted to visit Scotland I'm super into it so I really want to visit hopefully soon
but yes so our courses are also good for teaching English online we actually have
um a special tefl course and if you go to tefl course.net
um let me just share the link with you we have a special course that is specifically for teaching English online
which is the 170 hour course and I'm going to share the link with you
so you can check it out and I'm going to include the discounted 30 off Link at
the end of that link so when you click on it you also get 30 off with that one
so which is this one um go ahead and check it out but I also took this course actually I also got the
online certification because similar to you I was teaching um in person and then covet hit right
and I never saw myself teaching English online I was never really interested in that um but because of kobit in 2020 I
started teaching English online as well and now I'm still doing it I really really love it it's so much fun
um you get to meet so many people from other countries the platform that I teach on is mostly uh Japanese people so
I have a lot of Japanese students some Korean students Chinese students so
mostly Asian because the platform that I'm on is mostly for people in Asia but
um that's what I like so I don't I'm not mad about that but that's the kind of the beauty about online teaching you get
to meet so many different people which is so so cool so yeah uh this is the link sorry Fiona for you
check it out this is the chorus for teaching English um online
all right good then let me get rid of this Banner here we don't need that
anymore right now um and then I am
yeah jumping in let's jump in top tips for teaching English to Young Learners
um I've taught children of very different ages I think the youngest
student I ever had was two years old which is crazy um so yeah and then the old well the
oldest were adults but like Young Learners I'm going to talk a little bit about the age range we're gonna talk
about as well so just quickly today's objective so what I want to kind of take away from
this today just to get a better understanding of how to create fun
effective and especially age-appropriate English language learning experiences
for young students so this is basically today's objective what I want you to
take away from today um so that's what we're going to talk about how to create fun lessons what you
should incorporate um how to make it age appropriate for Learners and all of these things kind of
works what sort of activities you can you can do um yeah basically all of that that fun
stuff and what we're gonna talk about first so we get a better a better idea we need to
understand Young Learners so who are Young Learners and what are kind of their issues and
then we can take that and look at the activities and the Hands-On things that
we can do so understanding Young Learners and I'm going to make myself smaller so you can read this I hope it's
still not too small I think it's okay um but let's have a look at the developmental character characteristics
of Young Learners and Young Learners uh well here it says six to twelve I would
actually say literally zero to 12 probably our Young Learners
um so sometimes the age ranges depending on you know the the book or whoever
talks about this topic it varies some experts have different opinions about what Young Learners are some people put
it as high as 18 years old or even
yeah I think 18 is probably the highest somebody would put it um but I would here it's just like I
said six to twelve I would even go lower than that like I said my youngest student was two years old and definitely
the information that I'm covering today also um would apply to that so I would say 0
to 12. uh probably would be the age range that we're going to talk about today in terms
of Young Learners and yeah here in yellow listed the things that make up
the mind or the um characteristics of a young learner that you as their teacher
should be aware of so as we all know right children have very short attention
spans right so that's very important to know and that's I think one of the most important things uh and one of the
biggest differences compared to teaching adults or older um children
that their attention spans are short so you really need to take that into consideration and that's why you really
should mix up uh the activities as much as possible so that they don't get bored
and that they can stay focused and motivated and that's also something we're gonna talk about
uh all right Daniela uh let me take this question real quick
Daniella asks what would you recommend between the Young Learners course versus the business English one so
um I took both of them and I also took the online uh course um it kind of depends on you know where
you want to go what kind of students do you want to teach and also maybe the country that you want to go to or
whether or not you want to teach English online like I said Young Learners is actually a very big field of English
language teaching and especially if say you want to go abroad and teach English in Asia Asia most of your students are
probably going to be children most of the positions for English teachers in Asia are going to be children so then
the Young Learners course would make a lot of sense however if you're like no I only want to teach English uh to adults
I'm not interested in teaching English to Children then obviously maybe the business English course would be better
for you if you want to go in that direction so it really depends on you and what you want to do all of them are
extremely useful that's why I took actually both of them but the one that I took first was the Young Learners course
because I was already teaching children at the time and I knew that I was you
know staying in Asia and Asia you teach children more so I took that first but then I also ended up teaching uh taking
the business English one and I also taught business English after that so both of them are extremely useful it
just depends on you uh what you want to do and also the destination where you want to go to
all right great question um let's get back to that so like we said the first thing was the short
attention spans right uh we all know this children have short attention spans so that's the number one thing to kind
of think about and then um also that they have um difficulty
with abstract Concepts right that's why it's important to bring in
um actual like props and flash cards and little things they can see physically in
front of them basically and yeah they learn through play they learn through play and Hands-On activities because of
that um they also this works so incredibly well they get highly motivated by
rewards and praise of course so rewards and praise is extremely important for
Young Learners more so than any adult Learners
um of course you should also praise adult students but with Young Learners you
really have to continuously praise them and say good job good job you know great
um and we're going to talk about that more also uh later on with reward systems
um Young Learners they also enjoy learning through music a lot and there's also something we probably all know that
music Rhymes and any kind of song works extremely well and this is really a big
thing you should incorporate into your lessons as well any kind of music or song
um you know to help with new vocabulary I mean just think about Head Shoulders Knees and Toes and those songs they just
work incredibly well to learn vocabulary and are fun
um they also have limited vocabulary of course and difficulty expressing themselves right so we're also going to
talk about this how to uh you know deal with that but basically using easy language you can't
talk to a young student the same way as you would talk um you know to an adult student
obviously you have to use simpler words easier words a lot of visuals these
kinds of things so also the next Point here they are very visual Learners and they respond well to pictures and videos
right we all know this too um and they're also not capable of debrising and critical thinking this is
where some classroom management techniques will come into play so I think these are the most important
things that you should know and recognize um that are the characteristics of Young
Learners and I know that many of us know most of these things already but it's just good to kind of internalize these
things again and really think about what that means for us as teachers for our
teaching uh what kind of effect this will have on our lesson planning and on our class
classroom management strategy so that's very important just kind of think about this again yeah think about you when you
were younger um or any other younger siblings or cousins that you had and how they are
um and then you can also take that experience into your classroom so anybody wants to add something to
this list or any other like a comment or experience please let me know to here
hello Linda how are you now I'm doing great how about you thanks for joining
us all right good so then once we kind of understand
what Young Learners are and how they are their characteristics
um we can then have a look at also why it's important to create age-appropriate lesson plans for them so
age-appropriate lesson plans are tailored to their developmental levels
so all of these things that we just talked about you need to think about these things and then
create appropriate lesson plans for these so you want to make your lesson plan as
engaging as possible so the more engaging the more effective it will be you need to take into account also your
students interests and abilities interests very important this works
really well you know with current like Disney movies whatever is like in right
now you can incorporate like these characters or stuff about them into your lessons that's what I do or you know
whatever like baby shark was a thing a few years ago like whatever like there's always like a hot thing right now
um that they love right or some kind of character movie character cartoon I
don't know some kind of thing um you can use that their interests and it's already more exciting to them
um obviously provide appropriate challenges as well so don't make it too easy but also don't make it too hard so
have challenges but also a support system for them and then Foster
um positive and inclusive Foster a positive and inclusive learning
environment that's also very important um that everybody's welcome here and
it's just a very positive experience for these children it's very important a lot of especially in English uh foreign efl
in English as a foreign language teaching many of these kids they only use English in your classroom and it
might be strange to them to use a different language and they might not feel as confident so having a positive
and inclusive learning environment is really really key here and from there you can really help the
students develop a love for learning through all of these um games that we're gonna play and talk
about um and also build your students self-esteem and confidence here and just
make learning the learning process more efficient when you keep these things into consideration
all right uh Jana has a question here asking do
you have videos where you are teaching oh I actually don't I don't think
no I don't have teaching uh videos of myself teaching but we have other examples of other people teaching on our
YouTube channel you can check that out um cool uh then oh Fiona Fiona has a
question let me take that real quick so Fiona says hi thanks for the link
um I'm already a qualified tesol tutor already not full tesol although I did it years ago do you have shorter courses
with ideas tips how to tutor online I think a lot of people would like ideas like this yeah so if you are already
um tefl or teso certified you can do a specialized just a Top-Up course and
this is a really short one 60 hours um let me also send you that link and
you can see the information there so this is for people who are already certified and have the minimum 120 hour
course uh let's see
let me paste that link here for you
yep here looks like this so these are the
specialized ones and here as you can see there are three here we have teaching business English teaching Young Learners
and teaching English online so you can take these um individually and
they're very short 60 hours only and like I said the requirement is you
already need to have a tefl or tesol qualification to take these
if you don't you would go through the um 170 hour course which is the 120 hour
course plus the specialization okay good great question
all right let's uh make this bigger again and now once we understand all of
these things let's uh look at how exactly we create engaging lesson plans
how does this all work what does this look like um some tips and tricks here what you
should do for Young Learners let's have a look uh oh I really hope this is not too
small um but basically these are a lot of really great tips and I'm going to show you some pictures also and where you can
find some resources and um ideas so obviously for Young Learners using
games and activities are great and also that involve multiple senses are really
really great so with children you can really activate all of their senses um and that really increases the
learning process even further um so that's really fun and then also using real life examples to connect the
topic to the students experiences because this is that they cannot really imagine or process abstract information
so you want to have as much real life examples you know as possible I mean the the textbook example here would be like
the the fruits and vegetables that you bring in or like the props the plastic
fruits or you know wood fruits the props um when learning about fruits and
vegetables or you bring in like the real thing um you know whatever it's reasonable but this is like the classic
example right bringing those things um yeah you could also do things like Show and Tell here you know so they
bring in things um just having like the real thing in front of them is very important it
really enhances like the learning environment of course you cannot do this with everything um so I'm not saying you always have to
include all of these things but you know little pieces here and there if you include those into your lesson plans you
um you're good to go basically also with Young Learners it's very important to encourage group work and
collaboration so that is something that works really really well with Young
Learners they like to do things in a group and that kind of further enhances the learning process as well
um of course then sometimes you have some classroom management issues people
fighting or children also some of them are very competitive
um but that then further increases also the learning they really want to learn and they want to be the best and yeah
yeah but it can all it just can also be a really nice experience to have them work in groups
um also nowadays what we see a lot is using technology to enhance learning so we have these big interactive white
boards and this is something that we used at the uh the English-speaking kindergarten that I used to work at we
had this big white board and the school had their own like interactive lesson materials so you could pull up like all
these videos interactive things and you know sometimes you can even touch things so that's always really fun and we see a
lot more of these things available now in classrooms and if you're teaching English online
you have so many unlimited opportunities here with using technology Zoom has so
many amazing features or even the thing that I like to use is Myro it's
basically a whiteboard an online whiteboard I'm just gonna put it in the comments my row
but it's called I use this for online teaching as my whiteboard and it also has a lot of features you can include
videos and songs and it's very interactive it's really really nice
um so with this kind of stuff the world is really your oyster you can do what you want it is so exciting for children
or even what my students really loved if you Google like ESL games or something for the classroom
you have like cool like little games that you can play in the classroom and you can make teams for examples that
also really works well and the students always really enjoy that
um then we have using visual aids of course we talked about this already images
videos or even diagrams work really really well with children and then also
you want to incorporate movement and physical activity I think sometimes that kind of we forget about that
um because it kind of can get out of hand when you have children moving around they can go a little bit riled up
and crazy um so sometimes you you need to read the room sometimes when you know your
students and you know today might not be the best day to do this activity then you know but
um yeah just incorporating any kind of movement is great A lot of clapping activities you could do especially with
like uh phonics and things um spelling when they clap for every
syllable of the word that's very common or um any I mean clapping is super easy
they don't have to really get up and it's still movement um and then of course things like mime
are popular or when you learn any kind of verbs they can come and you can all
do all swim you know you can do the movements together run jump so these
kinds of things if you incorporate like little things like that it's already um so much greater
um then also of course we talked about this already and we mentioned that a little bit but music and songs to teach
new vocabulary literally there's so many English like songs out there for
children pretty much for every kind of new vocabulary you can just type that into YouTube uh you can put it up little
songs that they can follow usually they have a dance attached to it too so you
can kind of have like a two in one here and that works really well to kind of introduce new words because they just
sing along follow along and then that works really really well as well
then we have of course storytelling and role playing um you know fairy tales any kind of
story books um my the the school that I worked at we had a big library and we would have
reading lessons there as well you could you could get books from the library for pretty much any level
you can show the book and you can maybe read like a page together that works also really well and of course role
playing maybe for a little bit older children role playing is great
um they can come up with their own stories maybe like you would go through you know the beginning of a story and
then they have to come up with the ending of the story and have a role play or whatever
um so these kinds of things or role-playing things like um buying something at a store these are
very common role play activities that works really really well um
anything like that and then also using Hands-On materials like manipulatives so
manipulatives are things like letter blocks magnetic letters
um dominoes puzzles dice flash cards even Play-Doh or clay anything that they
really can touch that they can do something with so these are really really great
um things to do okay Fiona says thank you it's 2 A.M here so hope to watch this again soon oh
thanks so much thank you Fiona have a good night foreign
good and depending on you know a lot of teachers if you are teaching
um a loan or whatever your situation is a lot of schools will provide you with
these kind of materials a lot of times you have to kind of build your own portfolio with little
um props and little games and letter blocks and things I also have a jar of magnetic
letter blocks here that's just something nice to have um you know around the house I guess as
an English teacher you can use these so that's really really fun good okay I hope maybe this gave you a
good idea and some ideas for creating Hands-On activities I also have some
pictures here and um I really love to use Pinterest for these kinds of things
um so literally you can type in whatever it is you're looking for so
like inter efl or um you know efl
I don't know color activity or something and something will come out so there's so many really cool things and you can
get a lot of inspiration um from Pinterest so these are a couple
of cool things that I found we talked about using five senses which is the first one which you have touch here
smell sight taste really really good and then um also again about the five senses
something with Mr Potato Head here which is cool you have to build his face
um I thought that was kind of neat and then we talked about dough clay or Play-Doh
so we have that here too um the number three and again you can do this with letters they have to form like
little letters or with animals or anything like that that works really really well
um up there with the alphabet there are some Hands-On activities um I think they put on little marbles on
all the words that start with a B looks like it
um and then also phonics ideas I mean really Pinterest will be your best
friend I think for teaching English to Young Learners uh definitely sign up if
you haven't yet and just you can type in anything in the search and I mean this just getting this I think took me five
minutes so imagine if you spend an hour on there you will have so many things to
work with in your classroom
okay then let's have a look at how to make learning fun for Young Learners so here
we have two kind of ideas um these are games and activities to support learning when you first learn
something and then games and activities to practice the language the what you've
already learned and then practice that so for um supporting learning we have using
songs and channels to introduce new vocabulary in grammar so we already talked a little bit about that but you
can find a lot of songs free on YouTube to use for new vocabulary a lot of
teachers also make up their own songs if you are good at that you can do that
um of course also crafts and art activities to practice vocabulary and grammar in a creative way are really
good to introduce new um new uh words uh I think also one
great way is uh to introduce something new with video perhaps or flash cards
I'm really like it's up to you and your imagination what
you want to do here then we have the games and activities to practice language so here you can use popular
things are games like charades and hangman and bingo very very popular for
um vocabulary words to use to practice and then again we already talked about this
but incorporating movement and physical activity wherever you can incorporating
technology like videos and interactive whiteboards or apps are great for
practicing the language and then also using storytelling and acting to practice language and encourage
creativity is great using puzzles and matching games are always really fun
ideas for children um to reinforce vocabulary and grammar
Concepts those are really really great and flash cards and memory games to practice the vocabulary but you can also
practice grammar things and sentence formation you can have cards of different words and they have to put it
in the correct order for example things like that and again we have incorporating real life scenarios and
examples to make learning more relatable and meaningful
so yep these are the things that we can do to make learning fun and then let's
talk a little bit about the classroom management side of things what you should be aware of when teaching Young
Learners so here are some techniques for managing a classroom full of Young Learners 10 12
15 20 30 Young Learners depending on how big your classes are very important here
based on what we talked about in the beginning and their characteristics
so first it's important to establish clear rules and expectations and this is
where things like rules posters come into play and I put one up here again I found this also on Pinterest you can
type in pre-k or efl rules poster and things will come out so I thought this
was really cute this looks like something you know for really low level beginner
um even with the pictures on him and just two words very easy to remember and this is something you should refer back
to uh maybe even multiple times throughout the day when there's something you know someone's not
listening um it always also points pointing so you're just listening ears or something
and then the whole class repeats so make it fun um but also kind of make it clear hey
these are the rules and this is also something you can do together you know on on your first day as the class really
establishes these rules early on so the students know and make it easy again age
appropriate adapted to their level this is a really basic one with pictures and
just two words so I think this works really really well and then once they uh you know are
getting better uh the next year you can kind of change it up and make it a little bit harder with whole sentences
and things like that that's one thing the class rules and then also one important thing are the
the reward systems so children work extremely well with positive
reinforcement and praise we talked about that that they really love something
kind of Hands-On that they can see how well they are doing they really love that and I like to use a reward system
like a sticker board so this is something like this here and in my old school we had every
student had their own like actual physical sticker book at the front of the class it was like under the white
board so they would always kind of see their own sticker board and whenever they did something good they gave a good
answer or they were you know sitting nicely listening nicely whatever helping
someone um they would get a sticker and then at the end of the day all of their collected stickers they can come up and
put it on their sticker board and then once that sticker board is full there would be some kind of reward right
up to up to you to decide what the reward is um so at our school that was kind of
like just the school how they did it when the sticker board was full they would get I think some kind of vouchers
and then once a month they had a market day at the school and they used these vouchers to buy little pencils and
little erasers and little notebooks and stuff like that or little toys
um but I now that I teach online or private students I also adapted the
system for one of my students online we have online a virtual uh sticker board
and once that is full we play a big game for the whole next lesson so that's kind
of the reward and um that student really loves that as well it works extremely well
um yeah and then also for the classroom management things like I said using gestures and visual aids so you want to
have things like these these class rules hung up in your classrooms they can see it and again point
looking eyes listening ears quiet mouth gestures a lot of gestures
right um and just using this is great for classroom management again using diverse
teaching methods lots of different activities and this had to do with the short attention spans that we talked
about in the beginning Young Learners have very short attention spans so you really need to mix it up
um and this can be very daunting for new teachers because you don't know a lot of activities yet or it can be quite
challenging when you know uh you're doing something and then the whole the young students they just
it's a mess and they don't pay attention and like you know it kind of gets out of control so it can be very very
overwhelming but the more often you do it the better it will be and you should
always have a few extra activities on hand um that you can do in case one of the
activities that you wanted to do doesn't work always have something extra up your sleeve basically
and also use Interactive Group work this works really well for classroom
management they kind of keep each other in check a lot of times of course if you
have two students you know who can't work together very well they they create
trouble together then separate them put them into different groups um but I think these uh how many five
techniques for classroom management for Young Learners are really really important and
you should definitely keep that in mind um and again Pinterest for researching
reward systems there are many different reward systems out there um and different classroom rules posters
and stuff you can find on there as well for different levels so I highly recommend checking that out
great um again if you have any questions throughout the live sessions don't hesitate to leave your comments if you
want to add something I know many of you are already teaching out there and you all have your own experiences and many
people do it differently I do it a certain way because the school that I worked for did it that way and then I
put my spin on it and now I do it like this obviously this is not the only way to do things so um if you have any other
ideas that would be great I love to learn something new and just share something you know different different
perspectives different ideas with other people oh thank you Parker says very useful
tips a very good morning from Pakistan hi very good morning from Korea
thank you so much for being here parkash okay and then so this is already the
quick review what we talked about and the main things that you should keep in mind
from today's lesson so emphasize on visual aids interactive
activities and games games games games games will be your best friend to mix it up and get the variety in there again
also incorporating real life examples is very important and also personal
experiences that's also very important every time I kind of talked about myself
with my students they all they were all ears they were like oh what did Miss Linda do what is her experience they're
always curious to learn about you as well um again age appropriate and interesting
materials make sure they are age-appropriate and level appropriate they're not too difficult but they're
also not too easy and still a challenge um providing immediate feedback and
recognition that's what we talked about right now giving out praise and then these the stickers if you want to do a
sticker board whatever reward system you're using do that
um then uh just encourage them the whole time encourage active participation you
can also do that a few little techniques um some days you know there's always one
student who always has their hand up so um you can do like oh this only oh only
Anna knows the answer is Anna like you know you can encourage other students to
also participate because only and I know the answer here you know um and then get more people or oh this
answer is really difficult or this question is really difficult who has the answer to this one I think I'm gonna
give two stickers for this answer and then you're gonna have a lot of hands up so um
just little things like that um again also using diverse teaching
methods don't just stick to one um you know use a variety to keep it fun
and interesting provide opportunities also for natural language practice
um you know try to have a natural conversation with your students or using songs and let them sing in a natural way
incorporate music songs and Rhymes really good group work again is really
good and the technology in the classroom you can use a lot of different things nowadays a lot of opportunities for
technology in the classroom like I said especially also online the virtual classroom has so many opportunities it's
really really interesting um so these are the main takeaways from
today's uh live session I hope that that was something interesting and that you learned something new and please if you
have any additional comments or feedback please please add that um here are some more examples and ideas
of actual things you can do but that's something we already talked about a little bit but just um you can have a
read through those things and also let me know what you think um what some good ideas would be
uh yeah
so and now it is time for the Q a let me know
of course this was a uh quicker teaser
if you are more interested in teaching English to Young Learners of course we
have this course and many of the things that I talked about today are in this course as well of course the chorus goes
into a lot more depth than today's session so today's session was a brief overview of Young Learners and what that
all means and a few little techniques here and there and just understanding we are 48 minutes in already so um thank
you so much for being here and yeah I'm not leaving yet so we still have time to answer questions and taco says thank you
really interesting thank you I appreciate it I hope there was
something interesting in there I know a lot of people already know this information but keep in mind we are all at different stages in our teaching
Journey so there are a lot of people who are here who are listening to this for the first time
um and have no idea about it there are some people who've already taught children and this is all uh you know not
new information maybe for a lot of people just keep that in mind we're all at different stages in our teaching
English Journey yes Jana has a few questions before
she leaves of course I'm still here and the Q a session is still uh is just kicking off now so now is your time to
ask the questions uh so first of all are these courses
only for native speakers no no so they are for native speakers and fluent
English speakers so uh from what I can tell you're you're fluent in in Korean I
almost said fluent in English so definitely you can take these courses you don't have to be a native English
speaker to do these courses and there are also many online platforms or countries where uh you can teach English
and you don't have to be a native English speaker
um then the next question is did you encounter people teachers that just lived for many years in an English-speaking country but while
English not being their mother tongue um
yeah I know several people yes I would say I I'm probably no more you
know foreign because I live in Korea I've lived in Korea for so long so I know many people living in Korea who
come here as English teachers um or in China you know people who moved to
China to become English teachers and many of them were native English speakers many of them were non-native
English speakers from other countries so it's very very mixed mixed people and um
that's why I really enjoyed this career path because you can really meet people from all over the world it's really
really interesting um yeah Jana says their slight accent
doesn't bother the future employer well that's why they have interviews right so
you don't just um you know send your application and then they book a flight for you and you come
over and you start teaching they have um interviews before and you know maybe
some employers would be bothered depending on how strong your accent is it depends some it depends on the
employer so some schools are very particular about that they even go that far as to say we only hire American
accent teachers or we only hire British English accent teachers some schools are
like that I would say they're fewer not that many schools are
like this particular um the the school that I worked at we have people from everywhere we had
people from the US from the UK Ireland from Australia South Africa
um you know so all different kinds of accents and I also think that this is something
that's changing in the tefl world whereas an accent is not seen as
something bad because everybody has an accent right even Americans have
different accents in America or in the UK there are many different accents in the UK so nobody speaks exactly the same
and um yeah Jana says I've always wondered I'm
not worried about my accent no worries everybody always asks if I'm from the U.S pick up my English from France
sitcom oh yeah oh a lot of people actually say
that they learned English by watching friends that's interesting yeah
um so it depends on the employer that's that's the answer I would say it depends on the employer
but they have interviews before they hire you and they will speak with you and then um you know if they don't like you for
any reason they would not hire you it's just as simple as that
um if you are a non-native English teacher um we always recommend you know the more
qualifications you have the better so for non-native um English teachers you want to have an
English proficiency certificate if possible like a Cambridge certificate or
TOEFL and IELTS any of these things that will really give you a boost as well
or if you went to school you know if you went to University in an English-speaking country those kinds of
things they will also give you a boost
I hope that answers your question all right thank you so much let's see
who has another question who has another question
um Jana says I gave the tefl course tip to my Irish friend he's now eight years
in China teaching English oh great cool
thanks a million for the answers you're welcome Danielle hi Danielle how are you doing
I'm doing fine would you encourage Young Learners to use AI tools for learning
English I've just learned about this chat GPT app today
um I mean why not I think um AI is uh can be good right
so why not if that helps you everybody learns differently so what might work for you doesn't work for me what works
for me might not work for you so things like that but if you know if you can learn let me know how you use it to
learn English that's that'd be interesting can it create like it can probably create like quizzes you could
also use it as a teacher to create material I think that would be great create like
uh you can create all kinds of things I think with that
that will help you with your teaching preparation I think all right parkash has a question is it
important to choose American or British accent for Young Learners during their English learning Journey or should they
continue with their natural accent um I would say also American or British
English these are also not the only two English accents that there are in the world right
um I would say let them discover their own accent that's why at my school you know
we had like I said teachers from all different countries so we had many different accents and kind of the
students in the beginning the students didn't really notice that that there was
a difference but as they got older they were like oh this teacher says it like this and that teacher says it's like
that you know why is that and then we explain to them well because this teacher is from Ireland I am from
America so we say things differently um so but then they would just pick you
know whichever pronunciation they prefer uh and they would go with that
so I think let them decide uh on their own what which what kind of
pronunciation they prefer they will figure it out and they will just naturally slip into
their own and what they prefer that's a good question though thank you
for an English teacher with an American accent they don't like British accent there oh they don't oh
okay interesting okay
hmm yeah with the accents I think that is
just kind of overrated you know do not worry too much about your accent American accent British accent
I don't think that matters much what matters is your um you know your grammar if your grammar is good if you can speak
fluently if you can have like proper conversations that's important I don't
think having this or that accent is important that's not what matters
last question what was your biggest obstacle starting teaching in class
let me think about that for a second
um I think really so I first taught in China
also children um and then I came to Korea to also
teach children I worked on an English teaching uh kindergarten I think like really for me personally and this is
just me personally everybody's experience will be different um I think classroom management is very
important um especially for Young Learners so adult students you don't necessarily
have to worry about classroom management because they adult students they really want to be
there and they usually pay for your class they want to be there they want to learn
so they behave uh with Young Learners It's usually the parents you know taking
them to that school it's oftentimes something that they don't particularly want to do right
um so sometimes they act out or they just are not motivated so that can be a
challenge so just knowing like these little techniques that you can do
you know to get them motivated to get them interested I think sometimes that can be challenging but it's also about I
think that that's something that happens over time every every class is different every student is different so the more
you teach them the more you get to know them and they get to know you um then you'll find out what kind of
person they are what do they enjoy and that will help you in your lesson planning and that will make your lessons
better after a couple of times once you know them so the first few times when you don't really know them yet the
classes aren't going to be perfect probably but that's uh that's just normal that's
just normal you have to get to know them they have to get to know you that's why it's so important to establish these
class rules right at the beginning um so that they know basically who's boss these are the rules you have to
follow them if you don't follow them um you know something's gonna happen if
you follow them you get Rewards okay so I respect you
so please also respect me so if you're a mutual respect I think that's kind of what I always aim for
so that's kind of difficult and what method do you apply for the
pronunciation um well you can do pronunciation drills
you know uh usually depending on the country that you work in that you teach
in you will kind of figure out oh like the Korean speakers Chinese speakers oh
they have like this problem with this pronunciation our pronunciation F pronunciation and then you know you will
know this after a while of working in that country you know and then you can work on that drills you
know whenever you introduce new words have them say it like a couple of times very clearly uh drill a couple of times
repeating the words um and just listen out for the
pronunciation when they say it wrong oh how you know how do you how do we say
that correctly always also repeat right say the word
have them repeat it I think that works really well and a lot of times with Young Learners I
I tend to be like not too strict with these kinds of things for a lot of them these are you know English they don't
use this at home they only use the they only use English in your classroom for a lot of them so they don't have any other
way of learning and it's very new to them a lot of sounds in the English language don't exist in other languages
so it might be just hard to replicate for them but usually kids are very smart and kids pick up new languages very fast
so um that too but yeah I would say vocabulary drills
and just correcting them not over correcting them but just when it's really bad correct
them that's what I personally do um
Linda have you ever used a British accent when speaking
uh so my dad is American and I've spent a lot of time in the US so my accent is
an American accent um of course um I think we all kind of tried to do a
British accent before we you know we try I I'm actually fascinated by accents I'm
very fascinated when especially in movies right when actors from different countries uh play roles and they have to
change their accents um it's very fascinating to me um so I used to watch there's this lady
it's a very old video now I think on YouTube um but this lady called Amy Walker and
she has a video out of all the different like English accents and she does them
flawlessly it's it's amazing um you can search on YouTube Amy Walker English accents or something if it's
still there it's a very old video I've watched that long time ago but that was very
fascinating to me so I always uh I always admire that I cannot really do a British accent so I'm not gonna do it
um but of course I tried before just for fun then Jana says do you encourage knowing
the local language of the place you're teaching and use it in class mix it up a little or would you say it's a no-go
um so there's two sides so if you for me I
moved abroad to China I moved abroad to Korea um so
for you personally when you live in a foreign country it's always a huge plus to know a little bit of the language of
course so if you know hey I'm moving to Korea take some lessons before you arrive is
great right so that you can know yes please no thank you this please whatever you can communicate
a little bit that's always great for you it makes your life abroad a lot easier
um in class I would say no I would not use I personally do not use
um other words unless absolutely necessary if there's like something they really do not understand
um and I know the other word I can just say it it's no big deal but I tend to not do that because usually especially
with Young Learners once they know you understand once they know you know their
language they're gonna get lazy they're not gonna try in English they're just gonna speak their own language and you
want to avoid that so at our at the school that I worked at we had an
English only policy so in this school everyone was only allowed to speak English total immersion
um so some schools are like that some schools they don't have a problem with you also using their language for me
personally I just don't think it's a good idea because like I said especially Young Learners
they once they know that you understand their language they get lazy and they don't make an effort to speak English
so I would avoid it if you can Daniel says the Scottish one the
Scottish accent is really hard to get and imitate yeah it's so fun though I I
love Outlander the show and uh which takes place in Scotland most many time
or like parts of the show the people are from Scotland and um it's it's really fun to listen to their language or their
accent yeah that's cool okay one more question
I have time for one more question and then I think I'm gonna head out
but um thank you so much for asking all the questions it's really really interesting and really fun to answer
thank you Jana and everybody Daniel
I appreciate that parkage Fiona everybody who had really great questions Daniela
Lynn thank you so much so one more question guys and then I'm gonna say
goodbye but I will be back next week and next week we're gonna have a full
q a session for the whole hour because next week is the first Friday of a new
month and every first Friday of a new month we do q a for the whole time
and a general tefl diesel information anything that you're curious about
all right Jana says minimum class course online to be a perfect teacher in my
opinion ooh well it depends is it your first
time teaching English online or teaching in general uh
you know this will really differ and Vary from person to person so I started
teaching English online like I said in 2020 before that I was already teaching in
person and of course a lot of the techniques that you use for teaching in person you
can also use online but you also also have to learn a lot of new things especially the whole different way of
how a lesson is a lesson like Works in a virtual classroom there are no worksheets there
are no you you don't have a board you can't write anything on a board so you have to use all these virtual tools and
there's so many features and stuff so I think that takes time getting to know like the platform and everything what
you can do because once you understand the tools that you can use that are
available to you um then you can know oh I can what I can
do in my in my classroom what kind of activities I can do what what you know
what stuff I can plan um so I think it takes time to understand your your online platform and
then from there um yeah there's just a lot of things also the technology so it took me a lot
longer to get ready for an online class I would I would sit on my desk like 15 minutes before the class starts probably
or even maybe my first class I was there 30 minutes before and I was like getting everything ready
um you know going through the less material again um and then it came down to 15 minutes
and now it's like oh I have to teach in five minutes I'm gonna sit down now so um the prep time I mean depends
yeah all right thank you for your questions
it was nice meeting you hopefully I'll see you again next next week we'll have a more q a that time you can ask me all
your questions again or new questions of course more questions have a nice day
there you did a great job here oh thank you you also did a great job in asking questions
thank you I mean Thomas says Linda I have an important question to ask you I want to
know whether there are any basic income in quality inequality or discrimination between native and non-native speakers
for teachers who receive offers to teach abroad that's a great question
um I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer this of course I do not have a actual comparison
um I can tell you that there is definitely some a difference in pay and
salary between people who are Tesla certified and not tefl certified this is something that I personally experienced
so I had a tefl certificate when I applied for my school and my colleague
who started work at the same time didn't and I actually made more money so that
is true that with a Teflon you actually earn more money um now with your question the difference
between native and non-native English speakers um I actually have a really good video
for you this is from I think two years ago me and my then colleague Lisa if you
remember her we did a video together the differences between a native English
teacher and a non-native English teacher and we went through that and
um I believe sometimes I'm not quite sure any more of her answer but uh she
said it depends of course on the school on the location but some cases yes
non-native English teachers made less money but in some cases they made the same money or some even made more
because they had more qualifications so it really depends but um go and check out this live session
that I did with her because we talked about these differences and it was super interesting
because she obviously is a non-native English teacher and she's taught in China and online and I
same but I'm a native English teacher so um that was very interesting and it was
one of the first like videos we did it was a long time ago so search for that
in the playlist it's very very far like in the back let me see if I can find it
but it's with us together um
ah this is a really good live session so it will answer a lot of your questions I
think amitaba and I really hope I can find it quickly uh yeah I think I'm almost there
oh here I found it so this was December 4th 2020. native English teacher versus
non-native English teacher let me share that with you in the um in
the comments and you can have a look very interesting and I think like I said it will answer a lot of your questions
and I'm gonna tell us this thanks a lot for all your kind suggestions and support and all the times to come here's
wishing you a happy weekend thank you so amitaba copy and paste this YouTube
video link and then have a look at me and Lisa we discuss native English
teacher versus non-native English teachers um you know what are the differences from our own experiences and pay and
salary definitely was one of the things and um Lisa talks about that there so I
hope that will help you okay all right then this will be it we are in one hour and 12 minutes so thank
you so much for all of your questions I really appreciate you guys always being here and asking so many questions and
tuning in every week I really really appreciate it and please tune in again next week when we have even more time
for Q a and information about tefl tesol um I would really love to see you there
so any questions that you have please save them for next time and ask me then
um and yeah thank you so much for today and I hope you have a great weekend uh
don't forget to like And subscribe and if you're interested in Teflon tesol training
um use this 30 off link and let me just share the whole link with you one more
time in the comments this will get you 30 off any tefl or tesol course from ITT
so this is a great start um especially now it's a new year so if your goal for 2023 is to get tefler T
Cell certified and to start teaching English as a foreign language this code I think could be your first step don't
pay full price save money with this code and then I hope to see you all again next week thank you so much and I see
you all next week again I hope all right I'm out thank you guys bye



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