Ensayo

AN ASSIGNMENT FOR ONE LESSON
Most of the people say that teaching language is an easy task, that you do not need to have experience for teaching; however, it is very important to have experience and knowledge. It does not mean that you have to know everything about the language, but at least you have to be trained to be a teacher; for example, because it is important you need to know somethingabout classroom management – your attitude, intentions, personality and your relationship with the learners.
According to my experience, it is not an easy task to be a teacher. You have to take into account many things. The first thing you need to do is to ask yourself some questions: Do I really want to be a teacher? Am I a patient person? If the answers are affirmative, go ahead, but if youbecame a teacher maybe because you feel that you have the knowledge of the language be careful because you are going to face many problems that you did not take into account. One thing is knowing the language and another thing is knowing how to transmit the knowledge. I have been a teacher for more than ten years and I sometimes I feel that the class did not work as I wanted or I had planned and Ikeep reflecting on how I could improve to be successful. If you are the kind of person to whom students do not matter, do not be a teacher, because you are not going to enjoy your job, your students will notice this and this will affect them in their learning, and might even make them dislike the target language.
As any teacher, I have had some good points and some bad points. So, the question wouldbe how I could improve my teaching when I have not had success.
Well, I have achieved my objectives most of the time; for example I have taught the present progressive and I have got good results. I usually introduce this topic (present progressive) by miming a lot of actions and students observe the actions and try to guess. After that, some students come to the front and perform actions andthe rest of the group name the actions they are seeing. Then, I show to the students some pictures about actions and ask them to repeat after me. This method is based on basic vocabulary (1) (Krashen / Terrell 1983). Then I ask questions to the whole group, e.g. What is he / she doing? (showing the pictures) and students answer. Then I ask questions individually to make sure everyone hasunderstood. After that, I write some sentences on the board: e.g. I am writing on the board, He is talking in the classroom, They are studying English. Students read the sentences and I ask them to observe the sentences and try to deduct the grammar. If they have some problems doing it, I lead my students to deduct the instructions by eliciting. This method is based in deducting (2) (Chastain, Ausbel,1968).
I consider that one of the best ways to teach children is using the TPR method (3) (Asher, 1974), because it is based mainly on miming, repetitions, modeling; and learners follow directions from the teacher without translating. Students enjoy experience in language.
I have taught the Simple Present and I have got good results too; for example, the aim of teaching this topic is to get studentsto learn simple basic questions and answers about everyday life using frequency adverbs, but the problem that I have had is when I introduce both the Present Simple and the Present Progressive. I think this is due to the lack of practice. I usually try to have more practice and to focus on time expressions and frequency adverbs, but I sometimes feel it is necessary to have more time to practice inclass, like having more games or songs, etc.
Well, with my lesson preparation in advance, I can gain time achieving all my aims in less time: I can anticipate problems like checking the CD player and the CDs in advance to make sure they are in good condition to avoid wasting time in class, and there are a lot of things that I can check from what I have planned in my lesson plan: Aids, e.g....