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This is how our TEFL graduates feel they have gained from their course, and how they plan to put into action what they learned:
Establishing rapport I want to start from William Arthur Ward?s words ?The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires?.
It is vital to inspire confidence in the students to make learning process effective. A teacher must know when to be firm and when otherwise to leave the students alone. Effective educational process demands students? willingly participation and contribution. It is easily reached when the students are in relaxed atmosphere and get on well with the teacher. The last point puts another question under observation:?How does the teacher get on with the students??
A teacher is someone who understands students? problems, so the main teacher?s task is to find out these problems. Boredom, low self-esteem, peer pressure and family problems can be named as major reasons in causing disciplinary problems in the classroom. One of the criteria for establishing rapport is creation of favorable classroom climate and formation good interpersonal relations between students. You shouldn?t be a good and wise speaker but must be an excellent observer. Establishing rapport is a building, each brick of which is a student?s weaken or strengthen point.
Lack of respect for the teacher can be counted as an obstacle for healthy communication as well. It is solved quite easily. Show students the same respect as you expect from them. There is a special method in psychology for revealing the child?s hidden potential. It is named ?Pygmalion?s effect?. Everyone knows the ancient myth about the sculptor, who chiseled a beautiful statue, Galatea, and then made it alive with the force of his love. This method can be effectively used on students. If a teacher treats with a student as with a capable, respectable, smart and disciplined one, the background of formation this person from the student is created and the myth becomes a reality. Otherwise, the negative attitude is the same mechanism but it works in other direction.
A formation good interpersonal relation between students is quite hard task while you are dealing not with adults but young learners. The vast majority of adults already have their place in life. They are confident, motivated and ready for being taught. Establishing rapport with adults begins from the very moment of your first step in the classroom. Your appearance, manners and voice do invisible work before you sit down. You shouldn?t forget one main thing ? they came, it means that they already accept you as a professional. Never lose their confident in this point.
Children like to establish rapport themselves, so give them this opportunity. They are quite fearless and friendship, noisy and getting bored quickly, frankly and open-hearted, eager for games and attention. They are never able to accept you as a professional but always accept you as a friend.
Teenagers are different. They have their own system of values. Finding life as a limitless entertaining they vaguely see the benefits of learning and often approach to the teacher as someone who tries to replace their free time with a heap of study activities. Establishing healthy and productive relationship with them is showing them that learning process can be fun and cognitive both.
The poets of ancient East said that the students are like a fruitful garden and a teacher is a gardener. At first the trees are small and weak but getting grown and strong they gift the gardener with ripe and juicy fruit.
