What our latest Monday Motivations can teach you

Each week, we provide a Monday Motivation post to give the start of your week a positive, inspirational boost. But what do these quotes from esteemed thinkers tell …

By Steffanie Zazulak November 2, 2015

 4  800

•   English

Each week, we provide a Monday Motivation post to give the start of your week a positive, inspirational boost. But what do these quotes from esteemed thinkers tell us? Here, we explain what our five most recent posts say about learning and teaching alike.

Which of the motivational quote(s) from the ones below appeal to you, and why? Perhaps it’s a different quote altogether? Let us know viaFacebook and Twitter.

1. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awake joy in the creative expression and knowledge” – Albert Einstein

The lesson: It’s important for teachers to make students feel excited about what they’re learning. Often a learner’s enthusiasm will stem from the feeling that they’re accomplishing something. As our recent interviewee, Zoe Solomon, reveals, the key to this is to tailor teaching to the age of your audience.
“With very young learners you’ve got to incorporate songs, songs and more songs, while for older children word association and repetition are key to their learning. Games, puzzles and tasks work extremely well when teaching teenagers and younger adults. Adults, on the other hand, respond best to guided discovery: nine times out of 10 they already know the answer or can discover it for themselves with a little guidance.”

Read more about Zoe’s experiences teaching English in South Korea.

2. “The best way to predict your future is to create it” – Abraham Lincoln

The lesson: Planning out what you want to achieve allows you to pave your path to success. The Global Scale of English (GSE), the global English language standard, allows you to do this in a personalised way, allowing learners to answer the questions:

• How good is my English?
• Am I progressing?
• What do I need to do next?

…and plan their learning accordingly. As Ian Wood explains, it’s like a GPS for language learning.

Read more about more about the GSE.

3. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires” – William Arthur Ward

The lesson: A teacher’s job is so much more than reciting information in the hope that their students will retain it. It’s about understanding their need to learn, as Professor John H.A.L. de Jong explains [LINK: http://www.english.com/blog/learning-english-differs-from-learning-maths-science-gse], as well as bringing concepts to life through things like music and culture, food and games.

Read what teachers who have taught English in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Spain and Francehave to say of about their experiences.

4. “The surest way to fail is to determine to succeed” – Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The lesson: Both learning and teaching English will, at times, feel difficult. For some learners, it’s the perceived lack of progress they’re making as they reach more advanced levels. As Ian Wood discusses, this ‘intermediate plateau’ is cause for many learners to abandon their studies. The GSE can help with this, pinpointing exactly where they are in their learning, and how much time/effort it’s going to take to get to the next level.

5. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream” – C.S. Lewis

The lesson: Stephanie Sigman is a good example. The Mexican actress has recently wowed cinemagoers with her appearance in the latest Bond spectacular, Spectre – although the 28-year-old only learned English two years ago. And while 26 is far from old, it illustrates that learning an additional language in any walk of life can open doors to opportunities you never thought possible.

source here