What?! I Need to Teach English?! 6 Tools for Surviving Your First English Classes

Surviving or thriving? Which one is more important?

When it comes to finding the correct kind of career, many people want to thrive, not just survive. Everybody wants a job in which they can thrive. No matter how long they work that job, they never tire of it. That’s thriving. However, when you look at the way life works, usually there is a period of time in every job where you are just surviving.

Surviving comes before thriving.

That’s the way it is with English teaching, anyway. English teaching is sort of like getting thrown into shark-infested waters. You need to learn to swim. And fast. Some people know a bit of what they’re getting into before they start teaching, but most don’t. If you happen to be teaching in Southeast Asia, and possibly other parts of the world, most teachers are not given a lot of time to prepare before being thrown into teaching. Neither are they given a lot of information about their classes beforehand, like what the levels of English are, the amounts of students, or the materials in the classroom.

Some experienced teachers may thrive in situations like these. When you are used to thinking on your feet and have a bag of tricks handy, adrenaline will kick in and you thrive when placed in front of thirty-five 10 year-olds whose entire repertoire of English consists of “Hello, how are you, I fine, thank you, and you? Sit down, please.” However, for most of us just starting our stint of teaching, the adrenaline is a bit too much for our amygdalae and we either freeze, faint or flee.

That’s why we need to start off by surviving. We can always thrive later. But without surviving, there is no way we can thrive.

So, here is a small bag of tricks to help you survive. These tricks are not guaranteed to work in every situation and classroom, because English teaching is never a cut and dried thing. We are human beings teaching human beings and the variables in each situation are uncountable. However, they are tips that may help you survive that first unexpected English lesson.

Imagine with me. You are in an Asian country and have just been told that you will be teaching 30 youngsters at a temple school in about 30 minutes. You have no flashcards or books. What are some ways you can survive?

• Brainstorm vocabulary. One very basic thing you need when teaching is something to teach. Surprise! Sit down and brainstorm. Write down 15 vegetables. 15 animals. 15 ways of transportation. 15 places. Choose one of these categories. This gives you a skeleton to work off of and words to teach. (You can work on teaching grammar functions or other things besides vocabulary once you are out of survival mode.) Once you’re in the class, you will be able to assess the student’s ability and build on that skeleton. They don’t know any of the words? Teach them until they do. Do they know all these words? Have them practice making sentences or conversations. 
• Practice introductions. Even though many children know how to introduce themselves in English, they are shy to do so and often need practice. Going around the room and getting each child to introduce themselves does several things. First of all, it buys you time to think what you should do next. Secondly, it gives you an idea of what the level of confidence and English skill is of the children. Thirdly, even though you will only remember about 2 distinct names of all of the 30 children, you have begun to build a semblance of rapport with the children. After each person has introduced themselves, you can start introducing vocabulary.  (Note: if you are in Thailand, be sure to tell the children to tell you their nicknames. Thai names are extraordinarily long and difficult understand, even to a fluent Thai speaker. Also, tell them that when they are introducing themselves in English, there is no need to say “ka” and “krap” (the polite particles that Thai people say at the end of a sentence). This is only confusing to English speakers.

• Pictionary. If you have a whiteboard and a marker, this game is excellent for reviewing vocabulary after the initial introduction of the vocabulary. Split the class into two groups. The group to correctly guess what you are drawing gets a point. If the students are confident enough, have the teams take turns sending a person to draw. Time the person and see how many drawings they can do while their team guesses within a certain time frame. This game can also be played as Actionary.
• Conversation. Sometimes we get thrown into teaching situations where you are told to teach conversation, since this is often a very sought after skill.  However, teaching conversation when there is no vocabulary in a student’s head is like hunting polar bears in Africa. It’s impossible. What you can do, though, is teach vocabulary, and then work it into a dialogue. All you need is a whiteboard. For example, teach ten food words. Then, on the board, write a short, simple dialogue between two people discussing food, using the words that you used. Since most students (in Asian culture) hate reading aloud by themselves, split the classroom in half. Have one side read one character’s part of the dialogue, and the other side read the other character’s part. After doing this several times, you can tell the students to split into pairs and read the dialogue off to each other. An additional activity you can do if you have a computer and a printer, is type and print off the dialogue and then cut the dialogue into sentence-size pieces. Split the class into groups and have each class arrange the dialogue back into the right order. All of these dialogue activities can work well if the children can read, but is difficult if they can’t.

• “I am going to the….” This game works well when you have a lot of room to move around. It’s also perfect for teaching “places.” After initially introducing the names of different places, for example, “beach, market, post office, police station,” make signs with the names of the different places (or use flashcards) and hang them up at various points of the room. Stand in the middle of the room and close your eyes. Count to ten while the children run to the different signs. After you have finished counting, say, “I am going to the……..” and say the name of one of the places. Whoever happens to be at one of the places you name is automatically out of the game. Once they get the hang of the game, you can also have one of the children stand in the middle and be the caller if they are confident enough. This also incorporates speaking and listening practice. You can also get the children who are “out” to call out the question, “Where are you going?” before the caller says, “I am going to the……”

• Drawing pictures. This is more than just trying to find something to fill the time. Many students are visual learners, and especially when you don’t have the time or the resources for flashcards, one thing you can do is get the students to make their own flashcards. What you will need is paper, something many of them should have already. Get them to split their paper into about 9 sections per page, and then in each section, write down one of the vocabulary words that you already taught, and have them illustrate that word with a picture. This allows the students to interact with the vocabulary. By drawing the vocabulary word and writing the word alongside it, the first steps are taken in cementing the meanings into their mind. It is also low-effort on the teacher’s part. (The down side to this is some students will be finished in 7 minutes, while the others are still dividing their paper into sections. However, you can get those students to practice reading off their words to you as they wait.)

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And there you are, 6 tips to help you survive those first classes. The funny thing about English teaching is that it can become slightly addicting. This depends a bit on your personality, but if you are someone who enjoys a challenge just for the sake of a challenge, is not afraid of looking stupid or making mistakes, and enjoys interacting with students (who usually by the end of the class turn out to be 10 times less scary than they did at the beginning), then you might just end up loving your time as an English teacher.

*All pictures are from Pixabay.com