Teaching ≠ Learning




Most of us teachers care very much about our grammatical, phonological and lexical knowledge. When preparing a lesson, we make sure we 'know' all the lexical items the lesson covers and that we review the grammatical points to be taught. Knowledge of subject matter is indeed essential, but alone it can only make you no better than an 'explainer'.

Explanations are so everywhere these days that nobody needs a teacher who is only an ‘explainer’.

Luckily, we teachers can still make a living out of teaching because we not only know how to ‘explain’, but because we also know how to ‘involve’ learners in the process of learning a language.

A very important teaching skill is knowing how to involve students in the lesson with the hope that by the end of the lesson they would be able to do something with the language they have been involved in using throughout the lesson.

An ‘involver’ teacher is one who is learner-centred; one who cares about what students get from the lesson more than showing what s/he (the teacher) knows about the subject matter of the lesson.

Universally speaking, ‘involver’ teachers are the ones who are looked for by respectable organisations.

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