3 trends that will help you teach English better in 2020

2019 has been a great year and we can’t wait for 2020 to kick off. The end of the year is always a good time to review what has happened in your classroom in the last term. In 2020 what we want to do is help our students in more meaningful ways.

This time of year is a great time to give our teaching style a whirl. Remember that variety in our teaching is the key to make relevant and useful lessons. You can learn a lot more about variety in your lessons in our Teacher Training course.

These are the three things you can change in your classes right now to teach English better in 2020:

 

Trend 1 – Video-based lessons

A video is always a good way to introduce grammar, vocabulary besides practising listening comprehension skills. It’s actually a very powerful source of knowledge and a very amusing one for our students. So, try to make lessons rather than just based on text, based on video. It won’t reduce your preparation time, but it will make your lessons way more impactful. Remember to always keep in mind your vocabulary and grammar aims in first place after you have chosen a video. In this way all your lessons will have something valuable your students can take home.

 

Trend 2 – Student presentations

Although it’s not a new trend it does seem to have gained more acceptance by TEFL teachers. It’s one of those activities that got lost among pair and group work. We think that the best way to carry out student presentation by having students prepare individually. It’s very important that we give students a very clear template of how presentations need to be carried out. Otherwise, they might use English correctly but their structure is a mess.

Here are a few presentation ideas you can carry out in your English class.

 

Trend 3 – (micro) Learning out of the classroom

Learning when not in class has become a real challenge for teachers. Mainly due to the fact that teachers need to inspire students in doing so. And, obviously, that’s not an easy task. However, there are a few ways in which we can get students to stay up-to-date in their English in a fun way and out of class. These courses are really well- prepared and almost scientifically tested in order to maximize students’ exposure to the lessons. A good example of this resources that students can access in their own time are:

The 10-week free listening and vocabulary course for your students

It’s not a traditional course as such. This method is carried out via email, so you need to sign up for free. Two emails are sent weekly to be precise. In the first email students receive a video which they can watch. The video is usually about a really interesting and updated topic. They aren’t very long either. 6 minutes tops. So, this helps students focus for a very shor time on a very specific task.

The second email students receive is two days later. In this email students find the most important vocabulary from the video. Then they are asked to carry out a vocabulary retention activity through Quizlet, which is an amazing tool, based on spaced-repetition. You or your students can join this course here.

Google’s Word Quiz

This amazing tool helps you practise your vocabulary in a very effective way. Try it right now and you’ll see that it’s really hard to just do one round. You can choose between two levels. I suggest trying the hard one first. Once you have tried it suggest students doing a couple of rounds with you in class first, and then at home. We’re sure this one’s going to be a great success.

TED Ed Videos

This incredible website is the dream of any teacher. Although the topics included might be a little too far-fetched sometimes, the illustrations, narrations and overall aims are superb. They do also have a really interesting email newsletter. We strongly suggest signing up because they are very prolific in providing tips to teach English better.

We hope you will be able to adopt at least one of these trends. Your students will surely enjoy them. Good luck in this 2020! It’s going to be a great year. There’s always room for improvement so this year let’s try to teach English better.

If you do need any extra help oraganising your lessons for the next year, let us know in a comment. We’ll try to help you out asap.