My Experience Dealing With Teaching Methodologies
A short overview of teaching methods and techniques
Nawar Alani
Have you ever encountered a student who behaved strangely? Are you having trouble dealing with “Naughty” learners? DO you think that your students don’t like you!?. Surprisingly, this is a normal phenomenon and a major part of the educational process.
There is no doubt that teaching methodologies have been much debated recently, and choosing the best among them is a difficult task. I started my career as a teacher in few years back when I was a senior student as I was voluntarily teaching English on weekly-basis for Iraqi people of various ages. I used to hold a session with the help of some of my colleagues per week; specifically on Fridays, in which I used to involve learners in diverse activities aiming to reinforce their English capabilities.
These sessions were announced on the public on social media sites, thus everyone can join despite their age, sex, race, language level, etc. What is more, I taught primary, intermediate and secondary students at private schools. Currently, I am teaching online due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Short story long, I have interacted with an enormous number of learners of distinct mentalities and behaviors.
Teaching methodologies are significant, they are just like the steering of a car that guides learners to the right path. I studied and utilized lots of distinguished teaching techniques during the past two years, but only a few of them work for me and produce superb results.
The first and most productive and creative way of schooling I utilize is the student-centered approach, I believe the shift from teacher-centered to student-centered is fundamentally essential in the current teaching process, in which the teacher stands as a facilitator.
As the saying goes “tell me and I forget, teach and I might remember, involve me and I learn”, it has been proved that engaging learners more within the lesson will increase the chances of producing a glorious lesson.
The practice of involving can be in several forms: cooperative learning(e.g., group discussion, work in pairs, brainstorming); students are given certain tasks during the lesson, then an open discussion will be allowed between the groups monitored by the teacher, which is similar to the conversational method of teaching. Besides, role-playing and stimulus games might also function admirably.
On the other hand, assorted technological teaching aids are decisive too, a teacher can deliver a lesson in the form of a PowerPoint, multimedia, a short clip, and audio lessons that can be a song or poetry, for instance. As a teacher, I focus also on the information processing approach, the lesson has to be structured on the students’ needs rather than on the teacher’s need to just deliver the information.
As well as, the use of parallel distribution will have considerable consequences. To clarify the ideas of a topic thoroughly, I usually link it to the student’s daily life and his interests. Thus, students will like the lesson more, besides achieving the lesson objectives for the teacher by making learners comprehend the idea in one way or another which suits the learners in the first place.
Having taken the points above into consideration, throughout my experience in teaching, I have discovered that “Relationship” is another crucial factor that needs to be advised when talking about teaching methodologies and techniques.
In other words, teachers have to work on enhancing the relationship with their students, they feel more comfortable and attached to the teacher who listens to them and cares about them and their problems. I always ask them to choose the way they like to learn a foreign language because they love having choices.
Upvote
Nawar Alani
English Second Language Trainer, English-Arabic Translator/Interpreter, Writing lover, Avid reader, Public speaker.

Related Articles