Tóm tắt

Learning Teaching is a book that can help you learn to teach in more effective ways. It is also a book about a kind of teaching where you are also learning. However, it is not a book about the right way to teach. Indeed, there is no scientific basis yet for writing such a description of an ideal teaching methodology. Instead, we can observe teachers and learners at work and take note of strategies and approaches that seem to be more beneficial than others, not necessarily in order to copy them, but to become more aware of what is possible. The act of teaching is essentially a constant processing of options. At every point in each lesson, a teacher has a number of options available; he or she can decide to do something, or to do something else, or not to do anything at all. In order to become a better teacher, it seems important to be aware of as many options as possible. This may enable you to generate your own rules and guidelines as to what works and what doesn't. Language teaching happens in a wide variety of locations and contexts, with a wide variety of colleagues and learners, and whatever I describe in this book, I'm certain you'll find something different every day of your teaching career. For that reason, no book like this can definitively tell you how to do it. You can get ideas and step-by-step guidelines and a little inspiration, but bear in mind that everything you read also needs to go through the filter of your own understanding and be checked out in terms of the local context you work in. Thus, rather than saying This is how to do it, I've tried to say 'Here are some ways that seem to work. You'll find lots of ideas and options in these pages, and it's largely up to you what you want to take away from them. I aim to give you a 'toolkit of possibilities. Situations and examples are mainly drawn from the world of English teaching, but the ideas and techniques may also be useful to teachers of other languages. The book is primarily aimed at teachers starting out on a training course or in their first year or two of work, but I hope that you will find something interesting in it wherever you are in your career. The order of chapters in this book may partly reflect the order a new teacher finds topics of interest and importance when learning to teach. I aim to give you some essential background information and core survival techniques early on. To encourage you to engage with the material in the book, there are many tasks