7 Pasos para enseñar ingles a Principiantes

7 tips for teaching English to beginners

Teaching beginners can be a daunting prospect, especially when it’s a monolingual group and you know nothing of their language, or it’s a multilingual group and the only common language is the English you’ve been tasked with teaching them. Nevertheless, not only is it possible to teach beginners only through English, it can also be one of the most rewarding levels to teach. To help you succeed in setting your learners firmly on the path to increasing proficiency, here are 7 tips for teaching English to beginners.

Tips for teaching English to beginners

1. Keep instructions clear and simple

It can be tempting when addressing a class of students, especially ones that you’ve only just met, to explain activities in your politest language. After all, no one likes to be rude. However, a student who has only a few words of English, if any at all, is not going to appreciate the courtesy of (or even understand) “OK, so now what I’d like you all to do, if you don’t mind, is just to stand up for a moment and come to the front of the class. Oh, and please bring your book with you. Could we all just do that?”

Instead, make instructions crystal clear by using as few words as necessary and by gesturing whenever possible, and break down series of instructions into smaller units. If you want to be polite, “please” and “thank you” will do. “Everybody – take your book, please. Stand up. Now, come here, please. Thank you.”

2. Let them listen first

More than likely, your students will want to start practising speaking pretty much from the get-go. However, it takes a while for one’s ear to ‘acclimatise’ to the sounds of a new language, and not everyone will be so keen; don’t pressure students into speaking before they’ve had lots of opportunity to listen to you using it (which doesn’t mean you should just be rambling on at the front of the classroom – with beginners more so than with other levels, you really have to consider what you say and grade your language).

3. Drill, repeat, drill, repeat, drill… you get the picture

Beginners need lots and lots of repetition and drilling, especially as they get to grips with the sounds of their new language. It might seem boring to go over the same sentences again and again, but it’s necessary. When practising a new sentence, try back-drilling, breaking the sentence down into manageable units and then building it back up working backwards from the end of the sentence to the beginning; this helps to ensure that your intonation is natural and that you get elements of connected speech right. For example, break down “Would you like a cup of tea?” as follows:

tea > cup of tea > like a > like a cup of tea > Would you > Would you like a cup of tea?

4. Establish classroom language early on

Classroom language – Can you speak more slowly? What do we have to do? I don’t understand. What does…. mean? How do you say… in English? – is usually associated with teaching children, but it really helps with adult beginners as well. No matter how friendly and relaxed you make your classroom atmosphere, learning a new language can still be very daunting, especially when you feel you’re not completely following what’s going on, or that you might be called on to say something that you don’t feel ready to say. It’s much better to equip students early on with classroom languagethat will help them navigate the lesson smoothly.

5. Avoid metalanguage

There’s no point students knowing the terms past simple, irregular verb or adverb of frequency if they can’t use the actual structures or words they refer to. Don’t tell them how to say something, show them. Give as much context as you can (visual prompts work very well). Furthermore, make sure you check they have understood by asking questions that test their comprehension – never ask “Do you understand?” as a)many people are reluctant to let on that they haven’t understood and will pretend instead that they have; and b) a student may think they have understood when it fact they haven’t.

6. Don’t forget that your students are fluent in their own language(s)

This may seem a trivial point, but it’s all too easy when listening to somebody speaking broken English to forget that behind the errors and the mispronunciation is a person with cogent thoughts, no doubt articulate in their first language, attempting to communicate his or her opinions or ideas.

As teachers, we not only have to be patient and proactive listeners, alert to the reasons why certain errors are being made while filling in the gaps in less-than-perfect communication, we also have to steer clear of adopting the Me-Tarzan-You-Janeapproach to teaching, bastardizing the very language we are aiming to teach. Rather than degrading our language we have to grade it carefully so as to keep it comprehensible while maintaining its naturalness, rhythm and spirit, ensuring all the while that, as far as possible, we actually converse with our students and listen to what they have to say. After all, even from the very first lessons, from the ‘A’ in the alphabet and the ‘am’ of ‘to be’, communication is the goal.