Teaching Methods for English Teachers

Introduction
Their eyes are on you. Waiting, watchful, they follow your every move. You begin to sweat as you realize that everything you say and do will affect the outcome of the rest of the year. You are about to begin on the most important adventure yet: you are about to begin a year’s worth of lessons. Are you ready? Do you have the “map” you’ll need to get this adventure started? Will you make it to the “X” on the map? Possibly one of the most important “tools” for a teacher is their teaching method.

The Battle Between the Two Parties
Liberals believe group work is a more effective teaching method. They believe in student-centered curriculum, which is good for student motivation, but is not a highly efficient method.

Conservatives believe individual student work is the most effective learning method. They believe in subject-centered curriculum, which is the best of what has been thought and written. It uses common elements, familiarity, and makes good progression. However, the world is not organized into subjects.

1. The Lecture Method
Possibly the most popular and widespread teaching method is lecturing, in which the teacher gives information and the students listen or take notes. Lecturing is a useful way of imparting a great deal of information quickly, but it is passive for students. Keeping the students’ attention is a major dilemma educators have to face. The best use of lecturing is in combination with other methods; this helps your students retain their interest and attention, allows for more student participation, and emphasizes different learning styles.

2. Small Group Discussion
An equally popular teaching method is small group discussions (or cooperative learning), in which students are working together in groups to solve problems, giving knowledge a much-needed social context. It makes the students responsible for themselves and each other, and creates a community of learners and writers.
There are drawbacks to small group discussion, such as a louder classroom and the occasional giggling of friends in the same groups. These drawbacks can be easily corrected by careful splitting into groups, and constant reminders to keep the noise level low.

3. Questioning Method
This method requires the educator begins the lesson by introducing some provocative idea or question and the students respond. One of the best ways to generate discussion is to ask an open-ended question (one which can't be answered by a simple "yes" or "no"). Questioning tends to be a universal teaching strategy.
There are drawbacks to this teaching method, such as lack of class participation due to discomfort from speaking out loud or misunderstanding the questions given to them. Having a student reword the question or giving the class time to react to the questions are good solutions to these drawbacks.


4. Inquiry/Inductive Teaching
Inductive teaching is an investigative learning process that asks students to pose questions, analyze data, and develop conclusions or generalizations. This teaching method requires educators to “teach kids how to think.” Critical thinking skills are becoming more important; thus, constructivism was created. Constructivism is an approach to teaching and learning based on the premise that cognition (learning) is the result of “mental construction.” In other words, students learn by fitting new information together with what they already know.