Some English lessons crash and burn from just a dozen small mistakes. I’ve seen it happen many times in large classes with new teachers (and even some experienced ones). They make a few small, innocent mistakes here and there and those add up to make their ESL classroom management harder and harder. Then, they get frustrated as the lesson goes off the rails. Don’t make your life more difficult by making these four common ESL teaching mistakes.
Loose Materials
One of the easiest ESL teaching mistakes to make is forgetting to tell students to clear their desks. As a basic rule, children are easy to distract and are also unable to split their attentions. Young learners really need to focus on whoever is speaking in order to understand and absorb what’s going on in a foreign language lesson.
Unfortunately, I’ve observed many lessons fall apart as several students play with papers, pencils, books or toys while their teacher is teaching. Pretty soon they can’t keep up and then they’ll need special attention (often not possible) to catch up so they don’t become bored or frustrated.
Solution:
Get students to clear their desks at the start of each lesson. Make it part of your lesson opening routine. Also, make it a habit tell students to clear any materials they aren’t using, including textbooks, from their desks. If you hand out papers for an activity, such as Bingo, make sure to collect the papers afterwards or have them put the papers away afterwards. Some children will doodle over almost anything when given a chance.
You may find that students are initially slow to put materials away, but your students will get faster as they learn your expectations. Make it a routine that you practice and many students will eventually happily anticipate your requests. To do this, remember to praise the class when everyone puts their things away quickly.
Poor Positioning
In large classes it’s easy for students to feel left out and become disengaged even by simple things. One of the most common ESL teaching mistakes teachers make is when they sit or stand where their students can’t easily see their face or materials. This discourages children quickly because they can’t follow what’s going on unless they can see what’s going on.
As an observer in many lessons, I’ve seen handfuls of children craning their necks to see what’s going on with their teacher. After a few minutes of this they often give up, fall behind, and tune out the class.
It’s easy to neglect students at the periphery of a large classroom – especially at the sides and back. For me, I’ve actually always struggled with the front-row students. I’m 188 cm tall and I usually stand on a raised platform in Vietnamese public school classrooms. That means that I often tower over the kids. Sometimes the kids in the front row are just around my knee height. If I’m not careful they’ll spend the whole lesson bending their heads back uncomfortably just to see up my nose.
Solution:
Pay close attention to viewing angles as you’re setting up, especially the extreme front, back, and sides of the classroom. If you can, make sure to stand so everyone can easily see your face and materials. This may mean you need to move or rotate around to give everyone at least a short chance to easily see you and your materials.
Just be careful to not talk to much about a flashcard or handout before letting everyone get a good look at it.
Also, in preschools and some classrooms it’s often possible to move students around. You can have them push their chairs back or rearrange seating so everyone can easily see you. This is great option because it means you don’t have to think about it much more for the rest of the lesson.
Limited Eye Contact
Making eye contact with your students is crucial for measuring their interest, understanding, and drawing them into the lesson. Unfortunately, a lot of new teachers develop poor eye contact habits when they first enter classrooms. This leads to another of the four common ESL teaching mistakes teachers make.
Some teachers, like me, are initially nervous in front of students. I used to cope by looking over the heads of my students while I talked. I didn’t make eye contact with any of them. This prevented me from collecting much information about the mood of my class or how individuals doing.
Other teachers get in the habit of only looking at a select few students. They mainly focus on their high performers and the students who are “getting it”. This is because everyone naturally needs and wants to feel successful, including teachers. When teachers make eye contact with their best students they get positive reinforcement. They see someone who’s understanding and even enjoying class and that makes them feel successful.
However, this leads to these teachers to often ignore many of their other, lower-performing students. Those students don’t make them feel successful, so they tend to look elsewhere. Sadly, this often leads to weaker students feeling left out, neglected, and then starting to act out.
Solution:
In large classes especially, it’s key to develop good habits such as scanning and locking. As you speak make sure to scan across rows in a set pattern. Try to make brief eye contact with each student as you go. You can lock on to individuals for a bit longer here and there as needed, but keep in mind that you need to look for weaker students. It might even help to go in with a plan; who are you going to try to look at the most.
Finally, make sure your pattern includes the corners of the classroom – these students are the most likely to be unintentionally neglected.
No Smiles
Smiling gets kids to like you. A smile communicates that you’re happy to be in class, you’re having fun, and that you like your students. Children learn better when they’re feeling happy, safe, and with people they like. Generally speaking, the more you smile then the happier your classes will be. Your positivity will produce more positivity in the students.
The opposite is true as well. I’ve observed many teachers start and run through their lessons without any smiles. And that’s another one of the most common ESL teaching mistakes.
Lessons almost always go more poorly when the teacher doesn’t start with a smile or smile often. I’ve sat in the back of many lessons and felt the students’ energy drop when a teacher came in with an apparently foul mood. That bad start usually lead to worse outcomes later in the lesson.
Remember that negativity from you will come back stronger from your students.
Solution
Smile! I give a big grin at the start of a class – especially with new classes.
I also make sure to clear my mind before walking into every class, even when I’m having a terrible day. If I bring in any negative energy then my students will mirror it right back at me – and I don’t want that.
Thanks to smiling there have been many days that started badly but ended wonderfully because I managed to put on a smile and the kids returned it tenfold.
