10 Tips for Teaching English to Absolute Beginners
December 5, 2021
Are you looking to start a career as an English teacher? Are you teaching beginners for the first time? We've got you covered.
At Outreach360, we teach young beginners across Latin America every day. Our students start as absolute beginners, so we've trained thousands of teachers to work at this level over the years.
Although teaching students with zero English skills can be a challenge, working with absolute beginners is loads of fun and especially rewarding!
Here are ten strategies Outreach360 teachers use to get students learning fast and stress-free:
1. Teach with your whole body.
Imagine you've moved to a foreign country where you don't know the language. It's your first day of school, and no one speaks your native language.
Your teacher spends the class lecturing and writing on the board, and you don't understand any of it. Then she calls your name and stares. You don't know what she wants from you. How do you feel?
Learning a language can be scary 😱 for some students, especially in the early stages when they don't understand any of what their teachers are saying. Luckily, more than half of human communication is non-verbal.
We can pick up a lot from gestures and expressions. In the case of our English learners, we need to exaggerate body language and facial expressions to make them more noticeable. Doing so helps students understand and relax, so they're available for learning.
Pretend you're playing a game of charades and support your students by acting out what you're saying.
Use your 😁 face, ✋ hands, 💪 arms, 🦶 feet, etc., to convey your message, and you'll see increased understanding and participation in your classes.
Keep your actions as consistent as possible. Use the same hand motions for the same instructions or vocabulary, and you'll find your students learning their meanings in no time! Record yourself or practice in front of a mirror to nail down your moves.
If you feel like a professional mime, you're doing it right!
Involving students in the motions boosts learning and makes English class fun, so get them moving early on! You can incorporate movement into vocabulary, grammar, conversation, reading, and singing activities.
Want to learn more? This method of teaching is called Total Physical Response (TPR).
2. Incorporate lots of props, pictures, GIFs, and short videos.
Sometimes using our body isn't successful for a variety of reasons. Maybe the English we're teaching is hard to act out, or students just aren't following our mess of gestures 😕 (Are only Oscar winners qualified to teach English?).
Other times it simply takes too long to get the point across. ⏳
No worries, you can use props, pictures, and other visuals to support your students. It helps to come to class with relevant items from your home, or puppets for demonstration. Invest in durable puppets available for purchase, or make your own - they don’t have to be fancy and can be made from recyclables.
You can also use YouTube and Tiktok for a splash of fun (Yes, you can teach with TikTok!). They’ll captivate your students while helping them understand what you’re teaching.
Visual dictionaries and picture-based activities are useful, too. Some free online versions include:
If you're prepared but still come across student confusion, there are many resources to help you on the fly. 🌐 The internet has a wealth of clipart, GIFs, photos, and videos. Google Images and GIPHY make searching for a visual representation particularly fast and easy.
Having a whiteboard handy will also do the trick if your internet is lagging or you want to mix it up.
3. Enunciate and use the full range of your voice.
A crucial part of teaching English to beginners is pronouncing words clearly and adjusting speed.
English speech patterns can be complicated to understand. Native speakers smash their words together rather than saying each word individually. For instance, "Do you want to go to the park?" often becomes "Dyou wanna goduhthe park?"
Open your mouth extra wide to make English sounds easier to distinguish and help slow down your speech. Breathing between each word in a sentence will also slow you down so your students can figure out where the words start and end.
We recommend practicing these outside of class by recording yourself. Once you've really listened to your speech, it'll be much easier to know what to adjust.
🔊 Vocal inflection and volume matter, too. It's not just what we say but how we say it that determines our students' success.
Language is musical, so using our whole voice gives students clues. It can help them distinguish between questions and statements and guess mood, connotation, and more.
Take this video, for example. Each person conveys a different message with the same words:
You can 🎤 recite tongue twisters or any reading material to practice your articulation and vocal inflection. Just like with gestures and expressions, exaggerating our inflection and tone can make a big difference in conveying meaning to students.
They'll catch on once you 🤪 let loose and start being silly, and they'll have lots more fun learning. Students who have fun in class learn better, and let's be honest: a monotone teacher is a boring teacher.
4. Slow down your teaching.
It's not just our speech that needs to slow down, but also the pace of our lessons. As teachers, especially inexperienced ones, we tend to go faster than we should. (And the gold medal 🥇 for fastest English teacher goes to…).
It's common to introduce vocabulary and grammar and assume students are ready to move on just because we feel comfortable with the material.
We'll often ask our students, "Do you understand?" and they'll nod their heads without knowing what we've asked or telling us the truth.
When in doubt, spend longer on a concept than you think you should.
5. Repeat, Review, and Recycle.
Repeat yourself constantly throughout the lesson. Students need lots of listening 👂 time before they're ready to use the English we teach them.
People forget a lot of what they're taught, so repetition helps with pronunciation, retention, and confidence 😎. It's beneficial to repeat vocabulary, sentences, and instructions for impactful teaching.
In addition to repetition throughout the lesson, reviewing what you've taught is highly advantageous. If you only spend one class on a concept, chances are, your students will forget it.
Instead, regularly review material so students can move it into their long-term memories. You can do this by starting each class with a quick review, or dedicating specific lessons to review.
Better yet, recycle what you’ve taught by using the same vocabulary, grammar, etc. to practice new skills or themes.
6. Keep instructions short and simple.
Don't overwhelm your students with lots of words or explanations. Avoid multi-step directions, and make sure instructions are clear and concise. Using lots of words and sentences students don't understand results in stress 😩 and boredom, leading to undesirable behavior and lack of participation.
7. Model everything.
Before asking students to follow your instructions and participate in a lesson, always demonstrate what you're asking them to do.
If you have a co-teacher, ask them to help you model by playing the role of a student. Students who don't understand your words will gain confidence, increasing meaningful engagement in activities.
If you teach on your own, that's okay, too. Do your best to show students the process using gestures and visuals 🖼️ to make your instructions more straightforward.
8. Wait.
English learners need extra time to process what they've heard and seen and piece together meaning. Be sure to pause 🖐️ before calling on students to participate or interjecting.
Teachers who don't give students ample processing time don't get equal participation from all students.
Even when we teach one-on-one, wait time is key to not frustrating students or giving them answers they could have figured out themselves.
Have a hard time with this? We recommend counting the seconds in your head 💭 before calling on students or giving answers.
9. Make it relevant and exciting.
When the content we teach isn't relevant to our students, they disengage, struggle, and forget. We see this even more among beginners.
📙 Learn about your students’ backgrounds, then pick materials that are culturally responsive and speak to them.
If you don't have the luxury of picking your topics or resources, get creative about working with what you've got. You can always do something to to make it applicable. It just requires a bit of thought.
As students build their English skills, it will become easier to engage them in topics that aren't quite as relevant, though you'll still want to find a way to relate them to their lives.
10. Remember to smile and be animated.
This is perhaps the most important of the ten tips.
The truth is that class climate can make or break your effectiveness as a teacher. Whether you teach in person or online, a whole group or one student at a time, this is for you.
Students who don't feel safe and supported will not take risks in class. Taking those risks is necessary for language learning.
How you show up to class determines your class climate, so get out of your comfort zone and make your classroom a place where all students want to be.
Smiling puts absolute beginner students at ease. If they fail to understand what we're saying or doing, at the very least, it gives them the sense that it's okay to be imperfect. It shows that we're happy to have them in our class, that they can take the risk to participate, and that everything is okay.
Smile constantly 😃 throughout the lesson to motivate students to push themselves and take ownership over their learning.
If you teach online, look at your camera from time to time and ask yourself, "Am I smiling? What vibe am I giving off right now?" and adjust accordingly.
In addition to feeling comfortable, we want our students to pay attention and have fun so they can learn as much as possible.
It all starts with our attitude and how engaged we appear. People naturally mirror each other, so if we're not interested in what we're teaching, our students typically aren't either.
Sometimes the topics or materials we're required to teach aren't the most exciting, especially at the absolute beginner level, where everything is so basic. It's our job as teachers to make it exciting 🤩 through our lesson design and delivery.
Part of successful delivery is being animated, showing enthusiasm, and having energy. ⚡
There can be an element of acting here - maybe a song about shapes doesn’t thrill you - pretend you like it instead of ruining it for the students who do. It'll also encourage students to get on board with something they otherwise wouldn’t be eager to try.
While it's essential to be genuine with students, you can still be yourself without revealing that you're not too keen on something. If you participate and act like you want to, your students are more likely to participate. 🙌
If you're shy and introverted, getting out of your comfort zone and being bold with students may be difficult. You don't have to change your whole personality, but you should work on becoming a little more animated in the classroom each day. Find your inner child so you can stay true to who you are while making lessons fun.
Teaching English to absolute beginners is a unique challenge we recommend tackling.
Having the honor of being a students' first English teacher is incredibly rewarding and can completely change their life trajectory.
As an English teacher for beginners, you'll get to see students make significant progress, and you'll have so much fun finding your creativity and personality in the classroom. We guarantee you'll learn and develop even more than the students if you commit to following these tips:
Teach with your whole body.
Incorporate lots of props, pictures, GIFs, and short videos.
Enunciate and use the full range of your voice.
Slow down your teaching.
Repeat, review, and recycle.
Keep instructions short and simple.
Model everything.
Wait.
Make it relevant and exciting.
Remember to smile and be animated.
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Want training and a chance to practice with real students in a fun and supportive environment?
Serve virtually with Outreach360 as a part of our Virtual English Academy! We'll give you the tools for success with young students, and you'll make a lasting impact on children and youth throughout Latin America.
Have your own favorite tips for teaching absolute beginners? Leave a comment below.
Written by Adie Jalfin, Outreach360 Academic Director
Adie is responsible for training our volunteers and staff to be effective teachers. She also designs and oversees our Virtual English Academy.
