Depending on the level of the students, this question one way or another arises before every teacher. in English and, despite the fact that the need to minimize the native language in a foreign lesson is obvious, solving this problem requires some effort. Let's try to figure out how to make the most of English in an English lesson and not switch to your native language unnecessarily.

Firstly, to the teacherit is important to understand that no matter what stage of education the student is at, conducting lessons in a foreign language is not only possible, but also necessary: It is the constant use of English for solving educational issues, discussions, clarifying goals, as well as for games, comments, questions and assessments that is an indispensable condition for the development of language skills in students. If children get used to the fact that in an English lesson all conversations, answers, questions, as well as explanations and comments take place in English, you can expect that they will gradually become involved in this process and even at an early stage of learning the language will try to construct phrases in English .

An important concept in talking about the use of English in the classroom is the so-called. Teacher Talking Time (TTT), that is, the time of the lesson when the teacher talks. Of course there is also Student Talking Time (STT)– student talking time. Since it is obvious that it is the student who needs training and development of language skills in the lesson, his STT, “talking time,” should be maximized by reducing TTT, “teacher talking time.” Thus, the teacher faces a difficult task: to speak less and at the same time in English. And here are the means you can use to solve this problem.

Grade language – simplify your language and speak a little slower

Firstly, in order to speak English in a lesson with children who have just or recently started learning the language, everything you say must be simplified: use as much as possible the vocabulary that the children already know, as well as “international” words - something that sounds about the same in English as in Russian. This is an excellent and incredibly useful practice for you (later you will be able to switch to different levels automatically), and for students: you will speak to them in English, using what they already know, and children will get used to skipping or guessing unknown words (an incredibly useful strategy for using English outside of school).

For example, you need to give instructions for completing a task in pairs. Probably, turning to an English-speaking teenager, you can say: “Take your handouts and when you"ve read the task fill in the first column with information about your hobbies." It is unlikely, however, that the average fifth grader will understand such instructions.

You can simplify it like this:

Or, for example, a student asks the meaning of the word dangerous.

Instead of the unadapted “it is something that can harm you or cause problems,” you can simply say “it”s bad for you. Fire (draw fire on the board) is dangerous: ouch! (You can show how you pull your hand away.) Angry dog ​​(draw a dog’s face with bigger teeth on the board) is dangerous (point to angry dog and teeth). At some point in your explanation, someone in the group will definitely guess. Encourage students to come up with ideas, even if they are not entirely correct. Show with gestures that the student has almost guessed it and needs to try a little more. Praise everyone involved—not too much, but be sure to show that you appreciate their efforts.

Use gestures and pictures – use gestures and pictures

As you already noticed from the previous tip and its examples, gestures are an indispensable attribute of simplifying language. And this is absolutely natural, because in life we ​​often use gestures to reinforce what is being said. Of course, not every English teacher can portray an angry, toothy dog, but most common verbs and objects are not difficult to demonstrate. And what is difficult to depict is sometimes easy to sketch on the board: love looks like a heart, angry - like a smiley face with knitted eyebrows, and windy - like curls in which a couple of leaves are floating.

There are some gestures you will use quite often, and once children remember them, it will become a very handy tool. In this way you can show the tense of the verb: past - point your thumb behind your back, present Continuous - point with your index finger in front of you.

Plan and break down what you are going to say - plan in advance what you are going to say

Plan what you are going to say in advance: Most importantly, be sure to plan instructions for difficult or new tasks. First, state what needs to be explained. Then break it down into steps and think about at what point you will voice it. After that, simplify the text as much as possible.

For example, you need to explain to students how to play a game like Happy Families (this is a type of game where there are cards on several topics in a set and each player, having identified a topic for himself, collects it during the game by exchanging cards with neighbors). If you focus on the starting level of students, you can prepare the following explanation:

(Surely one of the children has already understood what game you are talking about, and happily duplicates you in Russian: nod and show that the guess is correct, but do not allow the discussion to be translated into Russian).

2. Each student takes 5 cards (slowly, say and show 5 with your fingers and pretend that you are taking the cards).

3. Hold your cards like this (raise your hand with the cards and show how to hold).

4. Student number 1 takes one card from student number 2 (again, take your time and show specific children who takes out cards from whom).

5. Now, student number 2 takes one card from student number 3... – and so on. Monitor the class to see if the children have understood the instructions or if it is better to repeat something again.

6. If you have 4 cards from 1 topic (speak slowly and show all the numbers on your fingers) – 4 birds or 4 animals – the game is finished, you are the champion!

Give examples and models – show yourself how to complete tasks

One of the most convenient ways to avoid long and complex explanations, especially when we're talking about about the instructions for the task, - demonstration of its implementation. You can either do it yourself, simply by doing the first point of the exercise out loud, or ask someone who has already guessed it. For example, if you start solving a crossword puzzle, you can do this:

1. Let's look at the crossword (take the crossword and demonstratively look at it).

2. Read number 1 Across (turning your piece of paper or textbook towards the children, point with your finger which section you are reading from) – “This is something you wear on your head” (read the task out loud).

4. Okay? Now you finish the rest. Make sure everyone understands and give the task. If one or two do not understand, repeat it to them again without distracting the others.

Use and display classroom language– use “lesson phrases” and make sure they are always visible to children

Classroom language, or “lesson phrases,” are the most common phrases that you and your students say in class.

Typically, the list looks something like this:

Sorry, I don't understand.

I don't remember.

What does ____ mean?

What's ___ in English?

Can you say that again, please?

Can I have _____, please?

Help me, please!

To ensure that children always use these phrases, you can write them and hang them on signs near the board, hand them out on printouts and ask them to paste them into notebooks, or simply write them on the board, take them apart and ask the children to copy them into notebooks.

Help learners say what they want– help students formulate English phrases

This is probably one of the most simple ways switching the class to English: when a child says something in Russian and cannot formulate it in English, translate and ask to repeat it. This is a good strategy because the student gets good model and actually pronounces it himself. This should not be done in the case of some long comments that are not related to the course of the lesson, but if necessary, the strategy is absolutely justified.

At the same time, teach students to ask specific word, which they do not know, and to formulate a phrase with it, nothing will always be absolutely correct.

An English lesson in which the native language is used minimally and only when necessary is not an ideal picture, but a joint work of students and teachers, without which results in learning a foreign language are impossible. At the same time, by trying different techniques and analyzing your actions and students' reactions, you can establish an effective working atmosphere in your lessons and create an English-speaking environment in which students gradually develop their skills.

Anatole France very accurately noted the importance of an unusual presentation educational material, saying: “The knowledge that is absorbed with appetite is better absorbed.” Many experienced and novice teachers are wondering how to conduct an interesting lesson? Such that the children would be afraid to be late for it, and after the bell would not rush to leave the class.

How to awaken students’ “appetite” for new knowledge? How to make each lesson interesting and unusual? How to competently use well-known pedagogical techniques and techniques to teach memorable lessons? Our material is devoted to this topic.

Secrets of preparing and conducting an interesting lesson

So, every lesson should arouse the child’s interest. Yes, yes, exactly everyone. History and English lessons should be interesting, open lesson and traditional. In this case, the effectiveness of school teaching increases noticeably, and new material is easily absorbed. We will tell you how to prepare and conduct productive and fun lessons.

• Plan the lesson taking into account the age characteristics of the students, their emotional mood, tendency to individual work or group classes. Everyone's concept interesting activity must have creativity.
• Put yourself in the place of a child, do not limit the flight of your imagination - and non-standard solutions will definitely come up. And impeccable mastery of the material and pedagogical improvisation will allow you to conduct the prepared lesson in an interesting way.
• Always remember that a great start to a lesson is the key to success! Start the lesson actively (maybe with a small surprise!), clearly formulate its objectives, check homework, using .

• An interesting lesson is always divided into clear fragments with logical bridges between them. For example, do not dump a portion of new knowledge on students, but smoothly and logically move from one stage of the lesson to another. Each individual part of the lesson should not be lengthy (on average, up to 12 minutes, with the exception of explanations of new material).
• Use a variety of techniques to create an engaging lesson. Using a computer or electronic projector, you can simply and easily make both open and traditional lessons in any discipline interesting. Thus, presenting a significant event on the big screen or watching military newsreels will help the teacher teach an interesting history lesson.
• Be flexible! Equipment breakdown, student fatigue or unexpected questions- these are situations from which the teacher must be able to quickly and competently find a way out. For example, in order to relieve tension in the classroom, you need to have simple and fun tasks on the topic (preferably in a playful form).

• How to conduct interesting lessons for high school students? Don't be afraid to break stereotypes! Don't be afraid to experiment and improvise! Avoid templates! After all, the lack of interest in the lesson is most often due to the fact that students know all its stages in advance. This chain, which is pretty boring for the guys, can and should be broken.
• Don't do all the work for students to avoid silence and help them! Encourage constant student activity. Give children simple and logical instructions for completing tasks of any complexity. Make the most of every task.
• Use group work: such activities are not only interesting, but also teach children to make collective decisions and develop a sense of partnership. This form of work is often used to conduct an interesting open lesson.
• To teach interesting lessons, constantly search and find unusual and amazing facts for each topic that are not in the textbook. Surprise your students and never cease to be surprised with them!
• Create and constantly update your own methodical piggy bank the most successful, interesting and exciting tasks and forms of work, use entertaining material in every lesson.
• Thematic games will make lessons interesting in any classroom. The game creates a relaxed and relaxed atmosphere in the lesson, in which new knowledge is well absorbed. For example, by passing a small ball along the rows, you can arrange an active blitz poll. A role-playing games will help you conduct an interesting English lesson.

The focus is on the personality of the teacher

It is no secret that children often develop an interest in a subject thanks to the bright personality of the teacher who teaches it. What does that require?

• Leave your fatigue, worries, and troubles outside the school door! Open up to communication with students! Children really appreciate appropriate and accessible humor in the classroom and dialogue on equal terms.
• Behave outside the box! Go beyond the usual boundaries, because the personality and behavior of the teacher in the classroom are extremely important. Do you traditionally wear business suit? Wear a bright sweater to your next lesson! Is energy always in full swing? Conduct the lesson in a calm manner. Do you prefer to explain new material while standing at the board? Try to tell new topic, sitting at the table. As a result, children will follow the teacher with interest, subconsciously expecting something new and unusual from each lesson.
• Bring more interesting examples from personal experience, because a teacher, first of all, is creative person and an extraordinary personality. Vivid life examples are remembered much better than fictitious ones.

We hope that our recommendations will help teachers in preparing and conducting new, fun lessons. Remember that the desire for personal and professional self-improvement is the basis for successful and effective pedagogical activity, a guarantee that everyone new lesson will be interesting.

How often, after taking English courses online or completing courses, do you find that you have not mastered your language skills sufficiently? Or perhaps you teach yourself and notice that sometimes not all grammatical rules are absorbed by students to the required extent, and the study of vocabulary does not bring results - words are forgotten or are not recorded at all in the students’ memory.

What is the reason for the effectiveness of our lessons?

How to teach an English lesson so that students remember as much as possible useful information? Let's consider key rules building lessons.

• Analyze the English lesson plan as a whole. The most important condition What should be observed when drawing up lesson plans is a step-by-step language learning: any one topic should be inextricably linked with others. If, for example, having studied passive voices, you will not return to this topic during the next classes, then we can say with confidence that this topic will be forgotten by students. The same is true with vocabulary. Often, having studied vocabulary, say, related to the topic “Shops,” they never return to it later. Thus, phrases learned during work on the topic will be forgotten by the end of the course because they will not be included in the active vocabulary.

• An excellent example of how to plan lessons correctly is the course system. famous school EF English First, which organizes English language courses in St. Petersburg, Moscow and a number of other Russian cities. All lessons are inextricably linked, and there is constant active work on using the learned speech models throughout the course. For example, vocabulary learned by students in the High Flyers course, designed for children 7-9 years old, is actively used in the next EF Trailblazers course, which is studied by children 10-13 years old. In this way, a rich active vocabulary is formed.

• The effectiveness of lessons largely depends on how diverse the lessons are in form and content. The teaching methodology is constantly enriched with new techniques and technologies that are successfully used by the teachers of the EF English First school. Widely used during lessons gaming technology, especially in English lessons for children, are used interactive whiteboards, course participants participate in creating presentations, and have their own video and audio lessons. For teenagers and adults, the school organizes weekly events in the Life Club - parties, birthdays, holidays and seminars, where students can develop their language skills in an informal setting.

• Each lesson must have a stage during which students are convinced that the knowledge gained will definitely be useful in life. Such a strong connection to life situations demonstrated beautifully in the EF Real English course, where each lesson explores specific life situations.

• Reward system. It is important for any student, regardless of his age, to be encouraged during his studies, while creating additional motivation. Anything can serve as an incentive: points, grades, some symbols or badges that are handed out during classes. EF English First has created a special program called ″Progress Report″. This report provides all the information about the student’s progress in the form of a graph. Thus, each student clearly sees what he has already mastered, what needs to be repeated, and what peaks still need to be conquered.

Recently, on one forum, I came across a discussion among teachers about the problems of teaching English: “...We are deceiving both parents and students. In reality, under existing conditions, it is hardly possible to teach a foreign language. This largely explains the decline in interest in learning the language among the majority of students in high school... Indeed, it is difficult to love a subject that is impossible to learn. And all our conversations about some kind of communicative techniques, etc. remain just conversations..."

Criticism continued to develop in this direction. At the end, the teachers exchanged views on textbooks"Happy English", Starkov, etc. Most teachers complained that these aids were impractical. Yes, however, this is not the most optimal solution, so you can understand these teachers. But the main thing is that having discovered the shortcomings of one or another technique, do not stop there, but look for alternatives and approach your work with love and creativity.

From my own experience, I know that the problem is not only in textbooks, but also in teaching methods. You can start by formulating questions.

• Why is interest in learning a language falling among most students?
• Why are they so difficult to train?
• Why, unlike other subjects, do students have more and more difficulties with the English language (especially with pronunciation, colloquial speech and memorizing words)?

Is not full list problems. You can probably guess what the reason is? Students lack incentive and motivation! As an experienced person, I know what these two things mean for students and students. Stimulus and motivation are very powerful tools in effective teaching foreign languages, and not only for children, but also for adults. Alas, we often forget about this important fact and we begin to criticize all sorts of aids or students’ abilities.

How can we find a way out of this situation?

Many will immediately answer that it is necessary to undergo an internship abroad. Yes, this is the perfect solution. But what if your financial situation does not allow it? Then you need to choose the optimal path. Let's define the stages of this path.

1. Find out the student's goal. It is imperative to find out for what purpose he wants to learn the language. If the student has not yet decided on the answer to this question, you need to help him clarify his goal. It is this first step that greatly influences the learning outcomes. So, based on the specific intention and desire that the student strives for, it is necessary to effectively plan the training program and, accordingly, create powerful motivation. Weak and incapable beginning students especially need this.
2. Each person receives an individual creative approach, i.e. right choice methods and manuals. Some tutors, especially novice teachers or students giving lessons, work on the principle of “one manual and one method.” As a result, classes turn out to be routine and boring, and therefore ineffective. How to solve this difficult problem with a wide range of different textbooks these days? Based on my experience, I will try to help you useful tips in choosing not only manuals, but also modern techniques and various resources on the Internet.

And to test their knowledge, I recommend Nelson’s book to my students English Language Tests. With this book it is very convenient to determine First level and the direction of further advancement of students. These tests are especially effective when reviewing everything you have learned. I always use it. And, by the way, according to my method, knowledge testing occurs after every fifth lesson. This is much more effective than reviewing at the end of the course.

How can a novice tutor create his own methodology?

So, we have already chosen the textbook, and now let's find out how to create unique technique, creatively using simple textbooks and different programs. For example, how I do it.

1. I plan an interesting lesson in advance.
2. I successfully combine the topic that I chose for the lesson (for example, from Headway) with audio materials on the same topic, for example from the website.
3. We are not in a hurry to write down new words on paper right away. First I conduct a dialogue using these words. Thus, new words are memorized instantly and firmly in the student’s memory. And then he himself, without looking at the dictionary, writes down the words in his notebook. I strongly recommend that you do the same, and see for yourself the effectiveness of the technique.
4. Then, to fully consolidate the learned words, I test the student using the Lingvo Tutor program in ABBYY Lingvo 11. Using this program, I compile a dictionary of new words in advance.
5. After explaining the grammar, I write sentences in which I use fresh grammar, both in the correct form and with errors. And the student corrects mistakes and, as a result, clearly remembers the correct use of the rules.

How to successfully deal with a disobedient or incapable student?

1. I try to be creative with everyone and use a variety of fun and interesting ideas. Among them are my own and those that I take from different sites. Here is one of them.
   For tutors who are not yet familiar with this site, I highly recommend visiting it. There you will find a lot of useful and interesting things. I think it wouldn't hurt you to know about interesting experience teachers and tutors from different countries.
2. I use different programs for teaching foreign languages. I don’t have a single lesson without a computer and, accordingly, without these programs. Moreover, I use programs both online and offline. There is one of my favorite American programs for teaching foreign languages ​​(I will talk about it in the next article), thanks to which I have noticeably improved the quality of my classes, and, accordingly, my financial situation. Since after using this special course, the students began to highly appreciate my work, for which I am very grateful to them.

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