 Hi! Hey everybody! Welcome! I'm back this week with another live session. My name is Linda. I'm here for I-T-T-T and we are going to talk about the top 10 mistakes English teachers should avoid in the classroom. So top 10 mistakes we see many teachers do in the classroom and they should be avoided. So I'm going to walk you through exactly what those 10 mistakes are and what we can do to avoid them or to improve ourselves, right? Teaching is not something that you can just kind of pick up even after doing this Teflur TESOL course which is great for obviously learning all of these concepts and you know getting the basics down but teaching is something that even after that you approve upon lesson after lesson after lesson and it's a lifelong process basically. You get better all the time the more you do it and yeah we're still going to make some of these mistakes probably even after teaching for a couple of years but it's about recognizing them and then being aware of them and improving them. So that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. Don't forget to like and subscribe, you're already here, you're already watching. If you're not subscribed yet, if you haven't liked our page yet, do so. You have nothing to lose, you're already here. So thanks for that and also we do have a 30% off opportunity. Where is it? Right here. Today you can save 30% off of your Teflur TESOL course today from ITTT. So you can go ahead and scan this QR code but I'm also going to share a discount code for you in the comment box. So you can take advantage of that if you're not yet Teflur TESOL certified and you are thinking about teaching abroad. This is something that you should take advantage of. What else? Let me think. Oh yeah. And if you're listening to this as a podcast episode, thank you so much for the download. We always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes. We are available on all major podcast platforms. So if you're into podcasts, check them out on iTunes, on Spotify, Google podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts from. And you can just type in Teflur and TESOL podcast by ITTT and you'll find us there. You'll also find the discount code in the podcast description. If you're listening to it as a podcast and you can't see me right now and you can't see the QR code, no problem. Alrighty then, let me ask you guys, where are you watching from today? This is something that I always ask because we do get a lot of new people every day. A lot of people I know already and I know where you are and some of you might know where I am, but some of you might be new and I want to get to know you and I want to know where you are watching from today. So we have Amitava here. Hello, welcome back. Saying, hello, Linda. How are you faring now? You are looking fresh, lively, lovely, and radiant as ever. Kudos to you and keep it up. Thank you so much. And I think you mentioned the headband last time, where the headband was. I think it was you, Amitava. So guess what's back? The headband is back. So just wanted to mention that I listen and I listen to you guys and I want you to be happy. So I put the headband back on today. We have Rudeen. Hi, watching all the way from Thailand. Awesome. That's awesome. What part of Thailand are you watching from? What city are you in? I'm hoping to visit this summer. Awesome. Yeah, I am in South Korea. It is 10.30 a.m. here in South Korea on a Friday. I'm excited to hop into the weekend soon. But let me put the slide back here to what we're going to talk about today so that everybody who's tuning in now is aware we're going to talk about 10 mistakes, top 10 mistakes teachers should avoid in the classroom. So maybe give me the hands up emoji if you're already a teacher and maybe you can contribute something today. So give me the hands up, the raising hand emoji if you are a teacher currently and then maybe you can make some comments. Maybe you have made these mistakes before and how you dealt with them. You can add something to our conversation. So it would be cool. So everybody hands up, raise your hand, raising hand emoji if you are currently an English teacher or any other teacher. So maybe we can do this together. Awesome. Rudeen. All right. Rudeen is a teacher raising hand. Awesome. Cool. So maybe Rudeen you might have experienced these mistakes before and you can also let us know what you did in order to improve them or avoid them or maybe what other, what other mistakes there are. Juliana as well. Juliana is watching from Illinois again. It's still cold in Illinois. I see and she says I love your outfit so much. It makes you look like 18 years old. Oh my God. It's hilarious. Thank you. You're so cute. Brett. Oh, Brett is here. Hi, Brett. How are you doing? On time, you made it. Awesome. Okay. Amitabha is in Kolkata, India. Yes, I remember. Sorry, I didn't mention you about the hairband. It was someone else. Oh, it was someone else. I'm sorry. I thought it was you. Anyway, somebody mentioned it. So I was like, you know what? It fits with my outfit today. Anyways, I'm just gonna put it back on. So we got three raising hands emojis. Awesome. All right. Cool. So we have three teachers in the house already. I kind of include myself as well. So that's awesome. Cool. So maybe you can share your own experience if you've experienced these mistakes and what you did and maybe there's some additional mistakes we could add to our list today. Who knows what's gonna happen. This is always fun doing these live sessions because they always kind of turn out differently than what we think, right? Sort of, I guess. So let's jump in then. Oh, and I'm gonna turn this off. Where are you right now? Good. Let's turn this off. And I'm just gonna get into our slides. So for someone who is watching for the first time, just let me introduce myself real brief here. My name is Linda. I'm a travel writer and content creator under the name Linda Goes East. I also have my own website, LindaGoesEast.com. And you can find me at Linda Goes East on Instagram. We are very active. So if you want to reach out to me privately without asking here a question in front of everybody, feel free to do so on Instagram. I'm originally from Germany and the US. My mom is German. My dad is American. And I have lived in China and South Korea for the past seven years. In Korea, almost seven years. Next month, May is always my Koreaversary. So next month, I'll be here for seven years. And I'm also a Teflentesal Marketing Professional here for ITTT, which stands for International Teflentesal Training. You can find us at TeflCourse.net. And also, we're on Instagram and also all the other social media platforms. We have a couple of different handles on every different platforms. That's kind of confusing. But on Instagram, if you want to find us, we are at International Tefl Training. And what is ITTT? If you just kind of stumbled upon this live and you don't know what ITTT is, ITTT is a leading Teflentesal course provider worldwide. And I know that many of you who are watching right now are already certified. You have taken the course or multiple courses with ITTT. So you know the drill. You know what's up. So that's enough about me. We did this. Want to mention this just briefly again, we do have 30% off today as well. Any Teflentesal course, if you are not yet certified and you want to teach English abroad or online, this is a certification that you will need. So if that's something that you are planning to do, today is a great opportunity to take advantage of this 30% off. You can also check the comment section for this link. If you can't scan the QR code, this is the link Teflocourse.net slash apply and then the Facebook Live Linda ending. This will get you 30% off. Again, if you're listening to this as a podcast, you'll find this link in the podcast description. That's about it. Good. Let's jump in. So top 10 mistakes English teachers should avoid in the classroom. And as always, you know these live sessions take 45 minutes, maybe today because we have 10 items to go through. Not sure. We'll see how it goes. You can ask questions at any time, make comments. And there will also be a Q&A section at the end where you can ask more questions and questions not related to this topic about teaching Teflocourse anything in that. Okay, Fauzan is back. And I think Fauzan, you were the one with the hairband. Yes. So that's why I put it back on. I hope you like it. And we have LaTurk watching from the Philippines. It's nice to see you again. Hashtag lovely lady. Oh my gosh, you guys are killing me today. This is hilarious. All right. Thank you so much. It's so funny. Okay, so top 10 mistakes. We got a couple of people turning and tuning in late today. Fauzan, LaTurk, all cool. You haven't missed anything yet. Just the intro. So today we're going to talk about the top 10 mistakes English teachers should avoid in the classroom. And again, if somebody tune in late, give me the raising hand emoji. If you haven't yet, if you are currently a teacher or teaching tutoring, anything like that, give me the raising hand emoji, like Rodine here and Juliana and Brett so that I know who's teaching already. That'd be great. Okay. Good. Then first off, why is it important to fix teaching mistakes? Why should you care? Why is this so important? Everybody makes mistakes. So why should you even care? Why should you bother? Well, I picked three main reasons here. Why you should care and why it is important to fix them. Okay. LaTurk is raising his hand as well. Very cool. Okay. So the first one is avoiding mistakes. If you don't make any teaching mistakes, it's all about creating a safe learning environment, giving your students a safe, like creating a safe space for your students. They feel as comfortable as possible to have confidence to speak in English. There are a lot of students, they maybe feel shy and it's all about a good and safe learning environment for your students to have enough confidence to feel safe to speak English and to participate. So that is the number one reason why you should care about these mistakes. And then the second one is make the most of the time available. So the least of these mistakes you're going to make, the more time you're going to have for the important stuff, right? If you fix all these mistakes, everything goes smooth. You make the most of the time available with your students. You don't have to worry about any other stuff that might interrupt, disrupt your class. So you can give your students the most of the time available to the ultimate goal number three here, ensure effective learning, right? So all of these number two, number one, number two, number three kind of is a chain reaction to ensuring effective learning, right? That's the ultimate goal as a teacher. There's nothing worse than teaching and your students just don't understand, right? If your students don't understand, it's usually not the student's fault, right? It's the teacher's, not maybe fault, but the teacher's issues with not being able to communicate the things that you want to teach them in a way that the students understand, right? So this is what you always need to be aware of basically. Juliana says, I always give my students more time to practice the L2. Yeah, that's about creating a safe learning environment. Yeah, very good. So that's just right of the bat. I think this is pretty clear, makes sense why we should avoid these mistakes just to create this ultimate effective learning, safe learning environment, and making the most of the time available because some classes can be very short and you don't want to take too much time away from that by doing these mistakes. Okay, then let's look at number one. The first mistake that many teachers make is being the nice fun teacher. And who has made this mistake before? I have. So this is basically trying to, yeah, be the nice fun teacher. Usually it's when you go abroad in a different country, you're the foreign teacher. So you're trying to be like the nice fun foreign teacher because all the local teachers are like strict and mean. And you're trying to be this, yeah, this fun person who comes in, which sometimes is a good idea. But overall, it just tends to be if you kind of are, if you put yourself on the same level as your students, like a friend level, they are just not going to be, yeah, they're not going to be motivated enough to probably learn. They're not going to respect you like the other teachers. So let's have a look at that being the nice fun teacher. And yes, what will happen is if you do that, you will lose control of your classroom, of your students. So you don't want to lose control. If you lose control of your students and they don't see you as a respectable teacher, there just won't be any learning. And this happened to me in the past for sure. Because I'm trying to be, yeah, like a nice fun teacher. I want to, because especially where I taught in China and in Korea, those kids, they have a very hard school day. They learn so much. They have so many teachers. They have a lot of classes. It's very different compared to how I grew up. So I always kind of feel bad for them. And I try to just be a nice fun teacher, kind of a change from their usual daily life. But sometimes just backfires because you lose control. They just come in and they think it's party time. And you have, as a teacher, you have stuff also that you need to get done, right? They need to take tests. They need to learn something. So this is not always the best approach, even if you want to give them that experience. So what a great way to kind of do this while you can still be a nice teacher is to set your standards from the start. So you should introduce a set of rules and stick to them. And that's very important. Introduce the rules at the beginning of your semester or school year, whatever, to your new students and stick to them. And be sure to follow through with the consequences. So rules and consequences. And you really need to follow through with the consequences. And once you do that, your students, they will behave and it leaves more room for real fun, fun time along the way. So they will kind of respect you for that. For, you know, for following through also with the rules. If they see, oh, it has consequences, then they, there's just mutual respect, you show them respect, they also show you respect, right? So this is the first thing. And then there's some examples here I found. So I don't know if you can see this very well, but basically these are examples of classroom rules that you can introduce in your classroom. And you can do this at the beginning of like the school year or the semester as like a class project, you know, you come up with here they have like five rules or 10 rules depends and hang them up in the classroom. And then you always kind of have it there visually for the students to see. And you can point to it, you can refer to it. And it's very clear what the rules are and what the consequences are. Another great way to do this is to get sticker boards. So that's also something that I used at my school always, when they did a good job, you give them a sticker, and maybe if they don't do a good job, if somebody's acting up, you can also remove a sticker. So these are things that work really, really well. And yes, this is kind of something that applies more to younger students, because this is usually where these problems tend to arise more often, compared to adult students, because the adults again, they likely want to be in your class anyway, they pay for it with their own money. So and they want to learn. So it's kind of a little bit different when teaching adults. But this is definitely something that applies to teaching children, teenagers, just young learners in general. And these things tend to work really, really well. So that was the first thing. And I'm sure all of you who raised your hand, all of the teachers here, they can kind of, yeah, they can kind of identify with that. And you've probably experienced similar things before. So I want to know from the people here who raised their hand, if you ever introduced any classroom rules like this, if you have any sticker boards like this, or any other kind of reward system, or rules. So let me know in the comments now, everybody who raised their hand, if you've ever enforced systems like this, and how did it go? How did it work for you? You can also do this, obviously, when you teach one on one, if you only have one student, you know, if you, for example, give them kind of like a slight extra work, if they don't do their homework, just have their consequences and clear rules. All right, Julianna says, I usually ask about their learning capability first, and then create an effective lesson plan for them. Of course, I will go over all the plans with their parents. Good. Yeah, lesson planning is something we're also going to talk about? Yeah, that's also definitely important. So this was just the first one, which was about being the nice fun teacher, setting rules, don't lose control, and sticking to your rules, and then following through the consequences. With anybody here who raised their hands previously, just wondering if any of you have done this before and how it worked, or if you haven't done it, and how it kind of backfired. Definitely with younger students, this system works really, really well with these reward systems, also in my own experience. Young learners, they will do anything to get a sticker, or like some kind of reward. So it's very easy to kind of get on this level where they respect you and they are motivated to do something in class while it's still being fun. So I think that's ultimate goal. Okay, so this was number one, then I'm going to move on to number two. If you still make a comment about this first point, I will read it out loud for sure. Okay. Number two, and this is kind of what Juliana just touched on with the planning. So the mistake number two that we see with many teachers and with something that probably all the teachers have been through is planning your lessons too quickly. This might be because you don't have enough planning time, perhaps, or just because you have so many classes, you don't spend enough time on it, or just your lack of experience, but lesson planning is really very important and is just going to be, yeah, this agenda that you can always refer back to and follow through with. There's a clear plan of what you should be doing on what day and where you should be in the future. So this is very important. So don't plan too quickly. Don't rush the planning stage of your lessons. That is very important. So you will often get training actually in lesson planning. And if you take a Teflor T-sol course, there's also a big section on lesson planning. And then you'll also get additional training, usually of lesson planning at the school that you work at, because some of them already have lesson plans available, curriculum available. And they have these set lesson plans for their teachers to use. So every school kind of does this differently, but they usually give you some kind of training. So you should take note of that. And if they don't, then you can use the lesson plan templates that you received during your Teflor certification course from us, ITTT. You can also use them. Like I said, in our course, we go over lesson planning quite extensively. So you can print those out and use them also for your classes if they don't provide that at the school. And then also what you can do is ask your colleagues. So especially as a new teacher, lesson planning might be a little bit overwhelming because you don't really have a concept of how long like time-wise some activities might last. And this also depends on the students. So some students, they might do an activity much quicker than other students. So if you don't, if you plan your lesson, but you don't really know the students yet, it's also kind of hard. So you always also have to have some kind of back up activities in your sleeve if they work through it too fast, for example. So this is something that you'll also learn kind of over time. But just it's important not to plan your lessons too quickly. So don't rush through it. The planning stage is very important. I have met many teachers who didn't plan their lessons at all. They would just walk in and then kind of wing it, which I guess is fine sometimes, but usually you need to, your lesson plans, they need to make sense, right? Because you have a goal to reach for your students. And you need to keep the goal in mind and then structure your whole curriculum based on this goal. And we're going to talk about this more in depth as well. And yes, Brett is saying colleagues are more than willing to share tips and ideas. Exactly. So that's kind of also how I learned a lot of stuff from my colleagues. They share their experience and because if they worked at that school with those students for a while, so they know the school, they know the activities, they know the curriculum, they know the students, they, colleagues usually are a great resource to help you with your lesson planning in there. Yeah, more than willing to help you with that. And also share lesson planning and just how they do it at that particular school to have a look at some pictures here, lesson planning. So you should go from an empty lesson plan to this, a filled one. I mean, everybody has their own concept. So it might not look exactly like this colorful and with these shapes and stuff. You're going to work through, work out your own style eventually. And these are the ones from ITTT. For example, they look like that. You can also print these out and use them in your classroom. But like I said, many teachers, they don't even use lesson plans. It's not very popular. They just, yeah, they just have a textbook and they kind of follow the textbook. But then what happens, your lessons are just going to be very monotonous and boring if you just follow a textbook. So just following a textbook is never a good idea. You can structure your lesson if you have a textbook around the textbook, have the textbook as like the core, and then other activities that are fun around that topic. So that's always a good idea. Okay, so this was number two, don't rush with your lesson planning. Okay. The third mistake here is using the same lesson plan for all levels. So now you have a lesson plan and you just use the same one for all the levels. It's not going to work. It's going to save you time. You think it's going to save you time, but then eventually you're going to, you're going in the class and you see what worked for this class doesn't work for this group of students and you're actually going to have to redo it on the spot, maybe even. So we want to avoid that. This takes precious time out of class time that you should be spending, should be spending teaching your students something. So just know that you can't teach all levels of students in the same way. This does not, this does not mean that you need to plan every single lesson from scratch. You can always tweak a lesson plan and switch out activities to make it suitable for each level. But it's usually not a good idea to use the same lesson plan for all levels because yeah, higher levels are going to find lower level activities too easy. They, they work through it too quick and it's not challenging enough so they lose interest. So these things, but you can take one lesson plan and then like tweak it and tailor it to your students. And also very important here, if you are a new teacher, you don't know your students yet, but you need to plan your lessons. You need to know your student's level, right? So how can you do that? You start a new course with a level test. This level test will assess the student's level and then you can prepare your lessons accordingly, right? Without this knowledge, it will be very hard to plan your lessons. Okay. And this is usually what lesson, what level tests look like. You can find many different level tests online. You can just Google level tests or sometimes the school that you work at will already have level tests available to you. So you can use that. And then typically this is sort of like the level, English levels that you would group your students in. So it goes from A1.1 all the way to C2.2. This is a very common kind of level, English level, the English levels so you have the basic and the intermediate and advanced. And then once you know what level your students are, you can better plan your lessons around that, right? So let me know, guys, the people who raised their hands. Have you ever used a level test in your lessons before? And how did it go? Did it help you? Or maybe you started a new class and you didn't use a level test and then the activities you planned, the lesson you planned did not match the student's level. Did that happen to you? Let me know in the comments. Usually the school that I worked at, it was pretty clear what level the students are and they provided the lesson plans. So at the school that I was working at, I did not have to do level tests, but they actually had level tests, I think once a semester anyway as part of the curriculum. But when I started teaching one-on-one students and I did not know those students, then yes, I did give them different level tests to see and determine. And sometimes you can either give these level tests out before the lesson. So you asked them to complete it at home, send it to you, you review it, and then you plan your lesson accordingly. Or what I like to do is have them do the level test in front of me or even with me. And then I can even better understand their thinking process while they work through the level test. Because sometimes they are not sure about a question and they struggle maybe between two answers and then I see it and I can better understand, oh, they struggle between this and this one. So maybe this is something, this grammar point or this whatever is what they're struggling with. So I actually like that even more. All right. So nobody used level tests before? No way. No comments. No level tests. Don't be shy. You can let me know. Or if not, you can say I haven't. Give me this emoji. No. But yeah, maybe this is something that you can do in the future if you haven't tried that out. It is really going to make your lesson planning process a lot easier. You can also, instead of having this formal looking level test, just prepare a couple of different variety exercises and activities and kind of do that as a level test for your students. So one would be like a grammar activity. One would be like a listening activity or this activity, this activity, whatever you're teaching. And then you can also kind of figure it out for yourself what level they are with your own feeling, intuition, sort of like that. Juliana says, I did not use regular level tests, but I made a similar one on my own. Yeah. So that's also great. Yeah. Level test. Even if you make your own level test, that's awesome. That's great. Okay. So I think was that number three or four? Okay. That was number three. So now number four, this I think is a very, very important point. So listen up. Number four, mistake that a lot of teachers make is either talking too quickly or too slowly. Okay. Avoid, avoid that too quickly or too slowly. All right. So what happens when you speak too quickly, your students, the listeners, they get strange too much and they get tired of listening to a very fast speaker. Now sometimes when we're really like in our element and we were feeling ourselves, we're teaching, we love what we're doing, we get excited and we just speak at like a super fast pace and especially native speakers do that. You need to tone it down. Chances are, especially if you're teaching lower level students, they don't understand what you're talking about. So you need to kind of tone it down. On the other hand, if you speak too slowly, your listeners are going to get bored too easily. They are listening to a very low, slow pace and they get bored and they lose interest and they just don't listen. And this is also something that you need to adjust based on what kinds of students you teach. So you would probably speak a little bit differently to like beginner students versus like advanced or intermediate students, right? So also keep that in mind. But then when you're teaching beginner or lower level students, don't oversimplify. And this is also something that I have done in the past for sure. So this is something like leaving out the articles of the his or her and mimicking the patterns in which your students speak. And this is actually very counterproductive. While, yes, they might understand better, maybe, but it is counterproductive because it fails to model the correct use of the English language. So you should avoid doing that, even though maybe it gets the message across faster. If you speak like a lot of people do this, you speak in the same pattern that they speak in their native language or how they speak in English. But it's just, again, counterproductive and you should not do this. So let's have a look here at the speech speed. So again, not too slow, but not too fast. It needs to be just right. And teachers, they ought to speak at a regular pace, talk, taking short pauses at the end of sentences. That's a good tip to keep in mind. When you take short pauses at the end of a sentence, you can kind of wait and also body language kind of check in with your students if they have confused faces or they have like, you know, nodding faces or they get what you're saying. And the pauses also allow them to ask questions if they didn't understand the word or whatever it is. So this is kind of a good tip. Your speech speed, keep it just right and take short pauses at the end of sentences. Don't go too slow or too fast. And this is sometimes really hard. Like I said, when we get excited about something, we tend to speak too fast. So we just need to remind ourselves to kind of keep it. Take a step back a little bit. Okay. And I think, yeah, raise your hand if you have been guilty of this one. I certainly have. Yeah, I have done this mistake many times and then or even if you tell a joke, right? There's been so many times where I've told like the most amazing bomb jokes, but my students didn't get it because it was too fast or jokes in general are kind of difficult for that's like the high level of language learning if you get the jokes, but something like that. So just keep that in mind to kind of tone it down. And also then like I said, you want to be in this just right level, but then maybe for some students, you need to be slightly here or slightly here, depending on your students level advanced students, you could be slightly here maybe for lower level, you want to be slightly on this range. And the short pauses, don't forget that. All right. So this was the speech speed. Next up, we're going to talk about thinking too short term. That's mistake number five. Many teachers, they think too short term, right? So usually when somebody takes a class, you're the teacher, you're not going to just teach them three times and that's it, right? So really think about long term and what the goal is and how to get your student to that goal, basically. So don't teach without a set plan. We already talked about this. So you need to think long term and plan out the entire year or semester or course, whatever, how long the course is. And to find the goals and when you need to reach them. That's also very important. What are the goals? And then when, what's the timeframe we're working with, right? Cause every class can be different. There are some classes that are like three months, four months, two months or an intensive one month course depends or you have like a whole year, very different. Your approach would be very different. So you should have a curriculum. Now, most of the time a curriculum is almost always necessary. And when teaching English abroad, many schools, they have their own set curriculums and schedules that the teachers they need to adhere to. So know exactly when the students need to take a test or an exam and plan your lessons accordingly. Now in many schools, this will be laid out for you. So you don't really need to worry about it. But still you need to keep that in mind. When is the test and what do the students need to know for this test so that you cover that in your lessons. Many schools at my school, everything was planned out for me from headquarters. They gave us the curriculum and every single lesson plan for every day. So I didn't have to really worry about that. But that is not the norm. Many schools, they will require their teachers to come up with their own curriculum. And then you need to know these things and you need to keep that in mind. I think I don't have, yeah, I don't have another picture or something for that. So but I think that's pretty clear with this one. So this applies to usually teachers who don't have that curriculum or support from the school that doesn't offer that because many schools, like I said, they do want their teachers to come up with their own curriculum more often than not. So then you really need to take your time, sit down. And then also like we said before, ask your colleagues, or even if you don't have any colleagues, because sometimes you're the only foreign teacher at a school, you can ask your local teachers for help, or you can ask, you know, in here, when we meet in our little TEFL group, or you can reach out to teachers online and ask how they do it. So lots of different ways. We just don't play it by ear and go into every class without just with one lesson plan without having this set curriculum. Okay. Number six, also, I think something many of us have been guilty of, obsessing over correct grammar. So yes, we are English teachers and correct grammar is very important, but it is not number one up here priority usually, right? Unless you are specifically teaching a grammar class. So it always depends. But you should not really obsess over correct grammar at all times. There is a time and a place for it. And it's not all the time. So don't correct every single mistake. While you should definitely correct mistakes, especially in written work, homework, or anything written that your students do, definitely corrected there. It's not recommended to be just as strict in conversational English. Because if you stop your students after every sentence, and you over correct, they are likely going to be demotivated. They are going to be shyer and shyer and shyer and unwilling to talk. And that is really what you don't want. So keep in mind that fluency is more important than accuracy. This is something you can keep in mind. So a student, what is better? Ask yourself. A student who is more fluent than accurate can be more successful at communication than someone who is more accurate than fluent, right? Because if someone talks to you, but it's in broken English, but you still get the gist of it, but it might not be grammatically correct, but you still understand what they want and you can repeat, respond back, then that's success, right? Whereas if somebody is just kind of takes their time and not very fluent, but just thinks about all what grammar do I need to use and it takes forever and it just kind of ruins the fluency, it's not very successful. So fluency is more important than accuracy. Why? Because communication is a fluid concept and it involves more than one participant and the other participant might still be able to understand the communication even if the rate of accuracy of the speaker is not very high, right? So fluency should always be the goal here. And what I like to do with correcting a lot of people, like if you do an activity where it's like a group activity, you walk around the classroom and you kind of hear big mistakes that they make, don't interrupt usually, but kind of take note of it. You can even write it down and then during the feedback session, you can write all of the things that were wrong that you heard on the board without calling anybody out specifically and you go over these mistakes with everybody that is very useful. Or what I also really like to do is I if a student makes a mistake, they say something wrong, I repeat it to them as a question with the correct word or in the correct structure or kind of somebody says like, oh, I go yesterday to supermarket. Then I say, oh, you went to the supermarket yesterday, something like that. Kind of like this example. And then they can, they usually repeat it. Oh, yes, I went to the supermarket yesterday. So this usually works really, really well without calling them out and saying, hey, this is wrong, you should say this. So don't obsess over correct grammar. That is number six our point, very important. And again, remember, fluency is more important than accuracy in most cases. Unless again, you are teaching a super strict grammar class where you really need to focus on it kind of different scenario. But regular English class don't obsess over correct grammar. Number seven, seeing each student as the same. I think we can all agree, we are not all the same, nor are all children the same or all whatever adult students. So not every student is the same. They're all different. They all have different struggles, different needs, different talents. And so you should never see each student as the same. And this is I think what makes a really great teacher that again, we talked about this already, don't use the same lesson plan for all of your classes. And especially after, you know, you can use the same one maybe as you used before in a different class in the beginning. But then after a couple of lessons, you will know your students better. And then you can tweak your teaching style and also your plan to fit their needs better. Because not every class is the same. They might even be the same level, but not every class is the same. So might another group might respond to games more, while another group of students might respond to showing videos more. So it really depends. And with time, this comes with time, with time, you will just know exactly where the strengths and weaknesses lie in every single student that you teach. So again, don't use the same, don't treat every class as the same, but then also within that class, don't teach every single student the same way. And this can obviously be challenging because you are here and you're responsible for maybe up to 30 students. So how can you not, how can you give everyone individual attention? You can, you should. So some students, they might require more help with writing, while others, they need more help with their reading skills. So while, yes, you have these activities that you will do with everyone together, you should also include some activities where you have a little bit of room where you can say, Hey, this student needs more help with writing. So now is a good time, they can practice their writing more, while these students, they should practice their reading more to kind of have a balance and know. You can also give individual students different homework exercises and inform their parents of what needs to be improved. Also very useful. So if you know, Oh, this, this kid really needs more practice reading, definitely let like the parents know. Or if you have a co-teacher, most of the time when we teach abroad, we have a local co-teacher, like in my case, a Korean co-teacher who communicates with the parents, let them know, give them extra stuff that they can practice at home. So this is something you definitely learn over time as you get to know your students better. But if you recognize somebody has a weakness or somebody has like a special talent, don't ignore it, but like encourage it further, help them out more by giving this extra time schedule in your lesson plan, having this time where you have maybe 10 minutes of time where you can hand out these individual tasks to somebody. Okay, Tavares says, I'm enjoying this a lot. Top notch teachers. Awesome. Yes, we are all top notch teachers here. Okay. Oh, I missed this. Juliana says, I never do that in my class, but I like to make a relevant story about that. It really helps my students understand how to use the grammar, the correct grammar in any language they learn. Great. So how do you make a story about it? That's interesting, a relevant story. So a relevant story about a grammar topic, that's really interesting. Okay. Cool. Thank you for sharing that. LaTurk says, even teachers make mistakes. Knowing what to avoid in the class is necessary to be effective. I appreciate all your tips, Linda. So helpful. I'm guilty of mistake number four, talking to quickly. I appreciate the most of your advice for mistake number seven, seeing each student as the same. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. I mean, I have done probably all of these mistakes as well, some more than others obviously. And I still sometimes do, but like I said in the beginning, it's about not being perfect. Nobody is perfect. We all, we are still going to make some of these mistakes in the future, but it's about recognizing when you make the mistake, you recognize, oh, that was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. How can I not make it in the future? What can I do better? So this is what we're about here. So awesome. Good stuff. Thank you guys. Okay. Number eight, ignoring your students' goals. So we kind of already touched onto that a little bit, but define the goals of your students. So that's very important, right? I always, when I get new students, like one-on-one students in particular, I always ask them, why are you learning English? What is your goal? Do you want to learn like, do you want to practice travel phrases for traveling? Are you taking a test? Are you wanting to move abroad? Because then the goal is very different and you need to tailor your class accordingly. So every group of students has different needs and goals that need to be fulfilled by the teacher. So this is your responsibility. You need to understand the goal and then plan your lessons accordingly, right? So usually, you will know what the goal is before you even start teaching them, because if you work in a school and you teach a certain subject, you will know what the goal is. The goal is to, I don't know, pass first grade or whatever. Or if you teach in a business school, yeah, the goal is to work on telephone English or whatever it is. So you usually know what the goal is, but if you don't, just ask the students a couple of questions, what it is they are wanting to do with the language. And then stick to, that's also very important, stick to what your students actually need, right? You don't have all the time in the world. You're very limited time wise. You only have maybe an hour a week or an hour every day. It depends on, you know, where you teach. So stick to what your students actually need. Be sure you know exactly what the students need and don't spend too much time on teaching them things they will not need, right? At the same time, make sure that they learn all they need to reach the goals. So don't leave anything out from what they need, but don't also spend too much time on things that they are not going to need to reach their goal, right? So that's very important. Like here, I put this image for English literature. If you teach a regular English class and somehow you end up talking about English literature, then you're not going to need that. So don't spend time on that. Just move on from that. Also, if a student has like a question about something, maybe you know in your curriculum, you will learn later. Don't spend time on it now, because you know you will actually teach this later. So you keep the flow of your class and it makes all sense. I hope that makes sense. So this is number eight. And I do have a graphic for you guys. So this is something you can keep in mind for goal setting and goal setting in general, also for your personal goals, actually, this is the smart approach. So you might have heard this before. But yeah, so if you keep to this approach for goal setting, you're on the right track. So specific, clearly state your goal or clearly ask the goal from the students measurable, ensure you can measure success. So you should, how do you measure success? Tests. So in your curriculum, add tests in, in attainable. So set goals you know you can achieve. So if you have a beginner student who tells you, yeah, I want to be able to pass the C2 highest level English test in six months, probably not attainable. So you maybe tell them, look, your level is here right now. We can't get you here in six months. Let's just aim for here first. So just keep the goals attainable, not too high. Are relevant, set your goals relevant to the class. So again, this goes back to stick to what your students actually need and avoid all the stuff that they don't need. So relevant and time based. So set a deadline for completion. Usually the deadline you'll already know if you teach an English course. It usually ends at some point. And there's a final test, perhaps, or the school year or the semester. That's your clear deadline already. So that's how that works. So this is something you've probably seen before. If you haven't, feel free to either Google smart approach or take a screenshot. So yeah, Julianna says, yes, I learned it from my school. So yeah, good. Then we have number nine, assuming you are the only teacher in the room. Yeah. Maybe we're all guilty of this one as well. So like here in my life session, I don't like just being here. I'm the teacher and I know best because it's just not true. We all learn from each other. So exchange ideas, even with your students, even with your young learner students, you can learn so much. So discussions about various topics are a great way to exchange ideas and learn something new about your adopted country and its culture. Be open-minded, for sure. Allow your students to share information with you and you will create an interesting and meaningful EFL classroom. So don't keep it just all about where you're from, like America. You're the American teacher. You just talk about America. Also ask them how it is in your country. So they learn how to express different cultural aspects of their own culture and country and you can learn something new from that as well. And you can get a new viewpoint of things as well because that's what you want from your students. You want your students to be open-minded and learn about the American way or wherever you're from. So also, they want you to learn about their culture as well. And this is also then what builds rapport with your students and creates the safe space that we talked about in the beginning, what we're all about. So this is very important. I think we all agree on that. And then we can take a look at the last point here, taking the fun out of it. Many mistakes we make. And this is something that I kind of touched on with the textbook here. You kind of only stick to your textbook. You go through every page, after page, after page, it's not very fun. So you're taking the fun out of learning English. Many times, especially if you're teaching young learners, they have to be there. They're not there by choice. So you're trying to make it as fun as possible so that they learn as much as possible. It's more fun. It's easier to learn something if you have fun doing it. So make it fun. Incorporate fun activities into your lesson plans, create a fun learning environment. So this will not only help your students pick up English quickly, but it will also make it fun for you as a teacher because there's nothing more boring than standing in front of the class and like reading from a textbook. It's also boring for you as a teacher. You don't want to be bored at your own job either, right? So make it as fun as possible. And there's nothing wrong with adding in some games and activities to make it fun. Also for adult students, adult students love games as well. Keep it related to English. As long as you keep it related to English, there's no harm in doing games. So it's okay to share a joke here and there and to play games in the classroom. As long as they are related to English, there is learning involved, of course. So a happy teacher is a good teacher, a happy classroom that is a good teacher, the result of a good teacher, a happy and fun classroom plus effective learning. That is the ultimate goal. So this is the last point I wanted to mention here. And I have a couple of things that you can do with all kinds of levels. So you can even do something fun, like tongue twisters here. Those are always fun to do. Any kinds of card games, usually people also adult students love having actual something in their hands like cards and stuff, or what's really great for younger learners for phonics, the actual ABC letters, or anything with drawing and cutting and gluing for younger kids. They really, really love that. And again, there's also tons of activities that you can do with older students that they will also enjoy. So keep it fun, not only textbook. That is the last point here. So here we have a review of all of the things we talked about, teaching mistakes to avoid. We talked about being the nice fun teacher. We talked about avoiding planning your lessons too quickly. Don't use the same lesson plan for all levels. Don't talk too quickly. Don't talk to slowly. Don't think too short term. Don't obsess over correct grammar. Don't see each student as the same. Don't ignore your students goals. And don't assume you are the only teacher in the room. And don't take the fun out of it. This is it for today. These are all of our 10 points. We are now one hour into our session already. So took a little bit longer than I thought, but it was great. It was worth it. And this is just quickly how you can find ITTT online. You all know this. And yeah, now Q&A is open. We can, I can accept some of you guys' questions. We have here one from Mark. Is there a link for games we can use? I'm not good at adapting a game. Yeah. So there's actually many, many different websites. You can actually just Google ESL games. And you'll find a ton of different resources. Some of them you can easily adapt to your own curriculum. Some of them you can play online. Some of them are printouts or whatever. Yeah. So just Google ESL activities. And then maybe what kind of activity you're looking for. So you could do like ESL activity, present continuous or something if it's for a grammar thing. So yeah, we also share a lot of different activities and stuff on our Facebook page. So you can go ahead and check out our Facebook page as well. And yeah, let me share the discount link one more time, which will appear now in your comment box. So 30% off any Teflor TESOL course from ITTT. And yeah, thank you so much for staying until the end. You guys are awesome. I really appreciate you. I hope you learned something interesting today. Something just to keep in mind, like I said, we all make these mistakes and we will continue making mistakes. But it's all about recognizing that we made a mistake and then learn from it and improve it and don't make it as much in the future. That's what we're all about here. So Q&A. I give you guys a couple of minutes more. You can ask some questions if there's something that you want to add, maybe a mistake that was not on the list here that I forgot. I'm sure there's many, many more mistakes, obviously, but these are just the top 10. But if you want to mention like one more mistake that I maybe didn't talk about, but you think it's important, feel free to let me know in the comments. And yeah, other than that, we are in Q&A. So feel free to ask any other questions that you have before I sign up for today. Any other feedback you have, any other topic suggestions for next week's live session, I would also appreciate that. Anything, anything you want to say, now is your time. If not, then I'm happy too. That means I answered all of your questions for today and everything I said made sense. So that's also a good thing. Awesome. Just looking if I missed any comments here. I don't think I have. If I missed one of your comments, feel free to let me know. I don't think I have somebody. Oh, somebody here asked details for TESOL course. Say yeah, you can go to teflcore.net and you'll see all the different course options here. So it depends. We have a lot of different course options ranging from literally 60 hours or 50 hour specializations all the way to 550 hours. So it really depends on kind of what your goal is, what you want to do with your TESOL course. So then it would be different, but you can check that out. Okay. Brett says, I'm just about ready to apply for jobs. My CV is almost done. I only hope it's not too late for next year. It just always depends on where you want to go. I mean, there's schools hiring year round, some programs, they have certain hiring times. So it just depends. I don't think you're too late for next year. It is just April. So I think you're good to go. I think that's actually the perfect timing right now, April. If you're looking to teach abroad next year, I think you're pretty good. You should be good. No problem. Okay, Mark says good to go. Thanks. Awesome. Oh, Juliana. Yes. Happy Easter. Happy Easter, everybody. I forgot about that. Easter is not a public holiday in Korea. So I'm like, I forgot about it, but yeah, it is in Germany and my mom is off today. So because of Easter and Monday and kids in Germany have Easter break. I think in America too, right? Merry Easter, Linda. Thank you, Brett. Happy Easter to everybody. Are you going on some Easter egg hunt this weekend, guys? Oh, I think there's not even chocolate bunnies here. Maybe in Seoul you could get some, but not here, I don't think. Have to order online and then it's super expensive, but it's okay. Yeah, I'm too old. Yeah. Aren't we all? Oh man. All right. Well, if there are no more questions, I would love to hang out with you guys more, but I don't want to drag this on and then people rewatch and they're like, what are they talking about? Today was Black Day in South Korea yesterday. Yeah. On the 14th. Yes, it was. Black Day. So in South Korea, it's funny. Every month on the 14th is like a special day. So February is obviously Valentine's Day. And then March 14th is White Day. So on Valentine's Day in Korea, it's actually the girls giving the guys like chocolate or a gift. And then March 14th, the guys give the girls a gift. And then April 14th, yeah, it's Black Day. I think this is singles, singles, singles, right? If you don't. Yeah. So this is for the singles who didn't celebrate Valentine's Day or who didn't celebrate March 14th. White Day, Black Day is for all the singles today or yesterday it was. So funny. How'd I do it? Okay. Yes. Thank you guys. Also so much. Thank you, happy Easter, happy weekend. Yeah. For those that didn't get gifts the other two days. Yes, that's true. All right. Then thank you guys so much for staying on and coming back week after week. I really appreciate you guys. I hope you know that. I'm only doing this for you and I'm super excited to hang out with you all every Friday morning for me in South Korea. So very, very nice. Yes, Mark said it. All right. Good night. Good night to you guys. It is evening time. I am just about to eat lunch soon. I'm getting a little bit hungry. So I'm going to do that soon and then think about what I'm going to talk about next week. And again, don't forget to like and subscribe. You can always watch the replay. If you add any other comments after this life is done, we'll still get back to you. And also, if you have any questions about anything related to ITTT, you can email us courses at tsole-teffel.com. Don't forget we do have 30% off with this link that you'll see in the comment box. If it doesn't work for you, reach out to me. I'll help you out. And it will also be in the podcast description box. Again, if you're listening to this as a podcast. And then I thank you guys so much again. And I'll see you all next week, hopefully. All right. Then I'm going to say bye-bye now and see you next week. Happy Easter. Happy weekend. Bye.