by Amina Ouchai

Created on: September 20, 2009

1. Know what they want. Whether you're teaching 1-1, working in a private language school or volunteering abroad, you need to know what the employer and/or students want, so that you can deliver it. What is the ethos of the organisation that employs you? How long is the lesson? Do you need to prepare your own materials? Why do the students want to learn English - for work, study, everyday life? What level is their English? Are there cultural issues you should be aware of? These may be questions that can be answered with a quick email or phone call to the director of studies, or through discussion or assessment when you first meet the students. There's nothing worse than preparing a two-hour speaking activity only to find out the students are expecting a three-hour grammar lesson! If you can find out the answers before you start, then you'll be able to prepare yourself, and your first day should be a lot less daunting.

2. Have clear lesson aims. Whether you find yourself provided with ready-prepared material for each lesson, or thrown in at the deep end and left to your own devices, you need a clear idea of your lesson aims. In other words, what am I trying to achieve? Are you introducing the simple past tense, practicing essay-writing skills or developing holiday vocabulary? Once you know what your aim is, you can plan each task so that it works towards that aim (or as a break from it!), constantly asking yourself "why am I doing this?". If the answer is "I don't know", then you may need to rethink the task. Of course, if you're working to a pre-prepared programme, you may not have so much flexibility. However, you should still be able to look through the material and adapt it, add warmers or extra activities and miss out anything which you don't feel will be useful to the learners.

3. Plan, plan, plan. So, you have a 2-hour slot to deliver a lesson on the present perfect tense. You know you want to introduce it, practice it and review the lesson, but what are you actually going to do? For experienced teachers, a few notes scribbled on the back of an envelope, or even just a 5-minute mental run-through may be enough. However, new teachers need something a bit more concrete. Try to go through each part of your lesson and dissect it - how you will introduce the topic, what materials you will need, and how long each part will take. You probably won't need the sort of lengthy notes that students on CELTA and TRINITY courses are asked to make. However, you should

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