1. Problem: The teacher’s instruction to the students is too general and it may leave the students with too much room to choose from. There is no help provided for the students to develop a sense of purpose and a sense of audience. Without a sense of purpose and audience, the students may either feel confused by all possible things that could be included in the writing, or just follow the contents covered in the sample article.
Solution: The teacher could first narrow down the topic by providing a situation for the students, such as writing a tour guide for their hometown. Then, help the students to work out possible contents that could be included in the writing, such as location, population, resources for tourism, places of interests, etc. The teacher could also help the students to decide the writing style based on their writing purpose and targeted audience.
2. Problem: The students taught in this way are mainly receiving passive knowledge from the teacher. They merely learn to understand these vocabularies, rather than how to use them. The new words are not taught from a context, and there is no practice of using them in an authentic or a near authentic situation. These students will not learn these new words in an efficient way.
Solution: The students need to learn passive knowledge and active knowledge at the same time. The teacher could use various means to help the students to understand the vocabulary. For some, they can use illustrations, for some, they can use definitions, and for others, they can guess from the context. The teacher could also use different ways to help the students to use the new words. Exercises like information gap, crosswords, quiz, or recording new words all can help the students to learn vocabulary in a more efficient way.
3. Problem: Though the teacher’s book may provide very good references and guidance for the teacher, it is not enough. The textbooks we are using usually are not written just for our students. For different students, they have different needs. We need to adapt the textbook to meet the need of our students. Other factors like the physical conditions, our syllabus and system of testing may also affect our planning for a lesson. If we failed to consider all the factors that may affect our teaching, we will not achieve a good result in our teaching.
Solution: A lesson plan is very important in the success of teaching. For whatever lesson we are going to teach, we need to have a good lesson plan. First, we need to define the objectives of the lesson plan. That is what we hope to achieve. Then, we need to decide the classroom aids required, such as blackboard, white board, overhead projector, audio-visual facilities, etc. Next, we need to plan the procedure of the lesson, like what will be done, when, by whom, etc. We also need to have a contingency plan in case something unexpected may disrupt the plan. Last, we need to have a checklist to assess our implementation of the plan to see if everything is as planned and what need to be improved
4. Problem: The teacher should not stop the tape time and again to explain a word or information point, because this is not the way people listen in real life Solution: Anticipating some language or information barriers the students are likely to encounter in the process of listening, the teacher can design some pre-listening activities to get the students ready for the contents and language of the text. An alternative is to have the students do some inferring activities while they are listening. In this way they can not only have a purpose for listening, but also develop their ability of making inferences based on the contextual cues.
5. Problem: The teacher only performed the role of a manager but neglected some other significant roles such as those of a prompter, assessor, resource person, etc. Solution: A qualified teacher has many roles to play in the classroom. The communicative language teaching features a student-centered, task-based and Process-oriented class. This does not diminish the teacher’s importance in the class, but puts a higher demand on his/her functions, especially those associated with facilitating and monitoring the learning process. When the students are doing an activity, the teacher needs to move around to offer encouragement and suggestions as a prompter, give help with ideas or language as a resource person and detect problems for immediate or delayed correction as an assessor. In addition, the teacher acts as a controller to maintain discipline and make sure each student is participating in the activity the way he/she is required to do. The teacher may also need to give examples of how to do an activity. In this case, he/she serves as an instructor.
6. Problem: The class hag so many students that it is not easy to control. Solution: A ready solution is to replace the worksheets with a blackboard drawing or poster. The alternative rows of students are asked to turn around, so that half the class is facing the student behind them. In this way, only the front-facing rows can see the information on the blackboard or poster. Alternatively, two different posters can be put up, one on the front blackboard and the other on the back wall. Then the one is visible to the front-facing students while the other can be seen by those facing the back of the room. In either situation exists an information gap. The pairs can then exchange the information until they have completed the assigned task.