At Break Into English, one of the most important things we ask from our teachers is to be great motivators. Online English lessons should never be too easy or repetitive: students must be challenged at all times.
There are many ways to keep the motivational level of students high. Here are a few that we ask our teachers to follow during their Skype English classes.
how to motivate your students by rewarding them
As a teacher, you should regularly encourage your students, but only if they deserve it. Contrary to what many teachers think, it is a mistake to reward your students all the time. Teachers should be nice but demanding: they need to give an honest assessment of their students’ progress, so that each one knows what they are doing well and what they still need to improve.
Your Activities Need Clear Goals and Instructions
Students must know how an activity is done before they do it. The best way to make sure an activity is clearly understood is to act it out with one of your best students. The others watch and then try to reproduce what they have just heard.
It is also important to explain why your activities are useful. If this is not done, students will not be fully involved in the activity.
Motivate Your Students by Never Becoming Predictable
Students should never be able to predict what will happen in class and answer questions mechanically. Monotony and repetition are the teacher’s worst enemies. If you surprise your students, they will pay more attention to what is happening in class.
A good element of surprise you can include in your lessons is to make intentional mistakes to see if your students correct them or not.
Another good technique to keep students interested is to give information about a text or a picture to half of your students. The other half must then find out what information they are missing by asking questions.
Do Not Always Use the Same Techniques
When teachers discover a good technique, they tend to overuse it. This is a mistake, because even if you have the best technique in the world, your students will become bored if they are always asked to do the same things. Variety is essential to maintain a high student attention level.
Encourage Friendly Competition
Friendly competitions are a great way to generate interest. You simply have to find a good game and to divide the class into teams of near-equal strength. Competitions work well only if students have a similar level and an equal chance to win.
These are some of the many methods Break Into English teachers use to motivate their students during General English or Business English classes. To find out about other effective ways of keeping your students on their toes, you can learn more about our teaching method by visiting our website at the following page: http://englishclassviaskype.com/method/. You can also watch parts of our Skype English lessons here: http://englishclassviaskype.com/videos/. We hope this will help make your classes more interesting!