What makes a good teacher / What makes a good learner?
 

Two questions for you -

What are the essential qualities that make a good teacher? And how can we develop these in ourselves.

What are the essential qualities that make a good learner? How can we encourage these in our students?

Re: What makes a good teacher / What makes a good learner?
 

I think a good teacher is a mentor, friend, confident, good listener, patient, strict, relaxed, smart, knowledgeable, honest, not a know it all, and of course a learner themsleves.

I know that some of the points above are opposite of each other but we are only human afterall. I like the learner part myself. We are constantly changing and tweaking our lesson plans and we will be forever. Also writing and reading boards like this gives us more ideas and that's a good step towards becoming a great teacher. A person who can't see that their lessons are failing or thinks that they are great (I have met loads of these) fails completely as a teacher. There is no one complete system or perfect lesson plan!

Re: What makes a good teacher / What makes a good learner?
 

I think some of the characteristics of a good learner are :

• They are willing to put some time and effort into it - they don't expect it just to happen.
• If they miss a lesson they actively attempt to catch up before the next one by contacting the teacher or other group members, or simply by working on the coursebook on their own.
• They study regularly and frequently.
• They don't just do the homework set, but review what was done in the class before. When they come to class, they know what was taught in the last lesson and are ready to move on.
• They are willing to try out different learning strategies suggested to them by the teacher, the coursebook etc.
• They recognise that language is a system and actively search for patterns, noting also differences between L1 and L2
• They are not so inihibited about making mistakes that they don't open their mouths, but on the other hand monitor the accuracy of what they say, noticing the teacher's corrections and reformulations and learning from them
• They take every opportunity to practise, including talking to themselves
• When trying to communicate they don't panic, but use inference techniques to work out meaning from contextual clues, and circumlocation strategies to say things they haven't yet learnt.

And perhaps most important of all ... they enjoy it.

Sue

Re: What makes a good teacher / What makes a good learner?
 

I agree, I think many teachers forget this part.