Teaching with Confidence

Kandyce Coston 
 
It’s been great to have the chance to listen to language teachers and experts share their knowledge and experience. I attended a session today called “Teaching with Confidence: Making Researched-based Instructional Delivery Decisions.”  The session focused on how to apply certain research-based principles to the language classroom. However, I think we can apply them to our course design and delivery as well.  Here are the main points of the discussion. 

1. Pair work is important.
2. Comprehension precedes production.
3. Chunking. Take big concepts and put them into bite-sized pieces.
4. Students learn best when they construct knowledge. This idea is connected with inductive learning. Grammar is a means to an end, not the end.
5. Students learn best from students.
6.  Change things up frequently but keep info in same context.
7. Be sure to have clear directions and model activities.
8. Check for comprehension and accountability after activities.
9. At risk students need repetition.
10. Students need practice making questions.
11. Teaching culture needs to be integrated… focus more on similarities, not differences.
12. Nothing succeeds like success. Catch students succeeding and point it out to them.