Ageliki is a dear friend of mine. I met her during my Delta course. She is a very motivated person and teacher. I admire her for the hard work and passion she puts into everything. Here is her #youngerteacherself guest post.

What advice would I give my #youngerteacherself?

Well, I have been teaching English for more than fifteen years, now. When I was just a newbie, my tutor recommended that I should go by the course book, and so I did. For many years I don’t ever remember leaving anything out …the years were passing by and experience taught me as well as my everlasting professional development that I should add elements such as ‘fun’ songs, and meaningful and interesting things for the learners. My students passed their exams BUT there always was something missing…. and that was the way I taught ….dry language input!

Two years ago, I started doing the Cambridge Delta, this transformed me as a teacher and it was really a breakthrough in my teaching practices. I can say one thing to my younger self. I should have done it much earlier; I would have felt more resourceful and therefore more confident as a teacher and my students would have benefited immensely from that.  Delta made me think of the importance of providing a rather authentic context whatever I teach, the importance of learner exact needs, student centered lessons, feedback issues on a variety of performances, PRONUCIATION, how to develop as a listener, a reader and as a learner, to mention but a few! Further more, I am a musical type learner so pronunciation with its beats and stress and intonation really mean to me a lot! David Crystal clear attitude towards the evolution of the pronunciation from the Shakespearian times to global English we speak today, makes it an important chapter as well as many other scholars and authors in the field.

How languages are learned? Well, S.D. Krashen says it all, “Compelling, comprehensive input!” If I knew then, what I know today, I would have done away with course books and I would teach language from everyday authentic material starting from newspapers, news broadcast, articles. Exactly, what my students do in order to get informed by the current news in their tongue language, still better, the kind of input that interests them. This is where I start, now. Teaching needs to be fun, fun and fun!

One last thing: I just hope I could become a better and better teacher/model for my students.

Bio: Ageliki works in the private sector for a language school. She is a freelance Elt teacher. She is attending a Cambridge Delta course and is also studying European civilisation at Hellenic Open University.

Flowers in a vase

If you too want to take part in the #youngerteacherself challenge but don’t have a blog, feel free to write a guest post on my blog. If you do have a blog and write something, tweet me (@joannacre) or leave a comment here.

Till next time…..