Alice Pilkington qualified as a CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certified teacher in October 2009. She started working in Rome before moving to Istanbul, where she’s spent the past three and a half years teaching English to “everyone from 8-year-olds to company executives; students to bored housewives”. Having taught in two very different countries to a diverse range of English learners, Alice shares with us the five lessons she’s learned:
"I am probably not emotionally suited for this job. I take everything very personally and if a lesson goes wrong or an activity I have taken time and energy to plan doesn’t work, I feel like a complete failure. It’s a trial and error experience but when things go wrong, they can go very wrong, and it really makes you doubt your abilities as a teacher.
Having said that, the lessons that do go well can make up for these negative feelings. I shouldn’t take things personally; the majority of my colleagues don’t and it saves them a lot of sleepless nights"
"There are very few feelings that I’ve experienced that compare to seeing a student use a word that you have taught them – it makes you feel like a proud parent. Equally, seeing a student improve over a series of months is so joyful.I have been teaching English university preparation students for the past year.
In September, they could barely say what their name was and what they did over the weekend. Nine months on and they’re capable of reading academic texts and speaking at length about marketing strategies and environmental problems. It’s a wonderful thing to observe"
"Turkish students love hearing about how you appreciate their food and cultural traditions. Equally, they are genuinely interested in understanding how things operate in the UK and enjoy hearing personal anecdotes.I tend to be very open with my students – even about my personal life.I think it is partly because I have striven from the very beginning of my career to be seen as their equal.
Turkish students are used to having a huge respect for teachers, and there is a hierarchical system in schools here, which I can never go along with. In my first lesson with most students, I tell them that they must call me by my first name (usually you refer to teachers here as ‘hocam’ which means ‘my teacher’ and shows respect) and this can take a long while for them to get used to."
"Lessons that you spend hours preparing for generally don’t go as well as you had hoped. There were several times when I’d spend hours cutting and sticking things on pieces of card and placing pictures all over the classroom, hoping it would get some vocabulary action going, only to start the class and receive no response from the students.
Conversely, lessons where you don’t feel very motivated or have no idea what you are going to do until you get into the classroom (which I call the ‘flying by the seat of your pants’ lessons) can turn out to be the best ones. I once had a lesson in which I was, admittedly, rather hungover. On the way to the lesson, I grabbed a book called ‘Taboos and Issues’, full of discussion topics, which I used as a basis for a rather impromptu lesson on addictions, which was very successful indeed."
"Teaching English is a love/hate profession. There are weeks when you absolutely loathe it and want to quit, but then within the space of a lesson or two, you get inspired by something completely unexpected, rediscover your joy for it and love it again."
Read our posts 'Key lessons on teaching English in Spain' and 'Teaching English in France'.
When you’re teaching English to young learners, you might find that there are a few students in your class who are struggling. But sometimes it can be hard to tell why. Is it because their language level is low? Or are they finding classroom work difficult because of a general cognitive difference, like dyslexia?
Taking English exams can be intimidating and challenging. Everyone has their own set of strengths and weaknesses, and it's common to make the same kinds of mistakes in an exam.
It’s possible to make use of this though, and improve your English from the mistakes you make. Today in our language learning blog, we discuss how we can use exam errors to perfect and improve your English.
Firstly, you want to establish what your weak and strong points are. Write these down somewhere each time and build up a record. It's essential to take note of the mistakes you make and try to see if there's a pattern.
Perhaps mistakes happen on:
These are only a few examples, but recognizing patterns or similarities can help you focus on areas that need improvement or extra attention.
Making mistakes in an exam can really impact a person's confidence, but if you can, look back and rationalize why that mistake was made. It can help your confidence in the future. Sometimes mistakes are made just because of a misinterpretation, perhaps a question wasn’t read correctly, and you realize you knew the answer after all.
Remember, the situation of being in an exam can be stressful and you may not think or respond in the way you normally would outside of the exam room, so don't be too hard on yourself.
Mistakes happen in the real world every day, and being able to look back at them and examine them critically is a valuable skill.
As we’ve already mentioned, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. It can be a great idea to compare your mistakes with others; they may be making the same ones.
You can team up and try to tackle them together, or you may know someone whose strength is in your weak areas (and vice versa). It's helpful to team up and help each other. They might have some handy tips and techniques for you to try.
It's good to switch up techniques at times and your errors might be giving you some guidance on doing so. If you tend to make errors with your spoken English, consider study techniques that work on that – like using recall or incorporating music to strengthen your speech.
Perhaps memory is an issue, so using tools like flashcards can help you. Some techniques focus on and help improve some areas more than others, so there isn’t one solution for all. Make sure to experiment and see what works for you.
Perhaps an obvious one, but just repeating and practicing the questions/tasks you’ve gotten wrong in the exam is a good approach. By doing it over and over again, with some persistence, it ends up being retained in your long-term memory.
You may want to study variations of the questions you struggle with, as exams tend to alter their questions and you don’t want to be thrown off in an exam if they reword/change the question slightly.
The next time you review your exam results, remember these steps, look for patterns, examine your thought process and don’t be afraid to ask others for help. With enough practice, those errors should be things of the past.
In the era of the Great Resignation, there are lots of factors that influence whether or not someone chooses to stay with their company or decides to accept a job offer from a new employer.
Whilst fair pay remains a constant in this, feeling included, valued, and cared about by colleagues plays a significant role in the decision on whether to stay or go.
