While teaching, we, all ESL teachers face some problems. Of course problems are not very serious, they have solutions, and motivate us to work hard and be enthusiastic. Especially, in teaching large classes we face serious problems. Such as: uncontrollable students, learners without any will to learn the language, some students with bad behavior, having very little time to make learners speak (‘cause of little time for the class, only 45 minutes for per class, even not one minute for each student), shy students and so on.
A shy student. What is a shy student? Why is the so called student one of the problems ? Here are some tips as solutions to shy student problem for teachers who have been facing this problem and who are going to teach in the future.
.. As a teacher try your best to be as friendly, polite as possible that you should be the person who students are confident to talk with.
.. Try to smile and not be moody while having lessons. Of course your smile encourages some students, especially shy students to open their mouth and get rid of shyness.
.. If a shy student doesn’t seem to answer by the time you ask,, try to be patient, give him a chance, time, encourage him/her with smile or saying magic words such as: you are smart boy, You can!!!, I am sure, you are a very good boy, that’s a good job!!! etc…, and go on asking from the next student and a bit while later come back to shy student.
.. Sometimes some students are too shy to speak, act out before the whole class, lose what they want to say, feel nervous. In cases like this, try to give more chances to shy students to speak, act more in front of the class. And after some attempts s/he will get used to being confident, not being shy at all. But try to keep on warning students who laugh releasing their lungs out while shy student is performing. If those students, who laugh teasingly don’t stop, seta a good punishment that there won’t be any more students like them.
.. While having group work shy student always tries to get rid of the rest of the group and stay alone. So, try to give the responsibility of the group to him or set him as a secretary for his group that he writes what the rest group members say. The group will focus on him.
.. Never use discouraging words towards shy students. Try to encourage them all the time. And your encouragements will give good positive results very soon.
My thoughts about Chinese schools
When you teach Chinese students you will find the most of them are very shy. Sometimes it is a language barrier. They can’t understand what we say, and when we ask some questions, they are afraid of answering as they are used to getting somehow punishments or bad marks by their the Chinese English teachers in case they make mistakes.
.. Mostly Chinese schools have theoretical learning system. They just recite words, learn grammar rules, learn phrases, but never use them in practice, they don’t have an experimental learning. Students might be good at grammar skills, might know many words but can not use them in their oral English. Thus we, foreign teachers have problems in having them open their mouth saying at least a word in English.