What Makes a Good Foreign Language Teacher?
In what way do people usually choose their future profession? While they are at school and making the decision doesn`t? threaten yet, everything seems to be cloudless. But one day you go to school for the last time. What to do after? You realize that the time to choose one job out of hundreds has come. It`s a hard choice, but nobody can make it for you. Usually a person asks himself a lot of questions. What is he good at? What does he enjoy doing? Does he like meeting people? Does he prefer using his hands?
Why do young people choose teaching as a career?
Many young people choose teaching as a career. It`s not surprising: after the parents the teachers may be the most important persons in your life. I don`t feel like underestimating the teachers of other subjects but foreign language teachers are quite different. It`s natural. The lesson of a foreign language, where pupils can write, read, speak as well as sing songs, play games, paint pictures, organize performances, cannot be compared with any other lesson. Teaching is not at all easy, but teaching a foreign language is a real challenge to your character, abilities and talent. No wonder that foreign language teachers are sincerely admired and loved by most pupils at any school. A good foreign language teacher is genuinely interested in what he is doing. If he isn`t, he won`t be able to organize discussions and debates in class or use language games.
Teaching a foreign language is a constant stream of decisions.
For pupils it`s very important to experience real communicative situations in which they are taken seriously as people. Learning is more efficient if the learners are actively involved in the process. The degree of a pupil`s activity depends on a teacher, who tries to arise pupil`s curiosity, to make him laugh and to take the tension out. If a teacher has a sense of humor, if he smiles at his pupils, they won`t be afraid of making mistakes, they won`t get nervous and will be eager to work. A good language teacher integrates theory and practice and learns all the time. He learns from life, from colleagues and from his pupils. John Steinbeck, writing about his school days said: “I`ve come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and you know how few great artists there are in the world”.