Teaching is helping

First off, here are the definitions according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Teach: to guide the studies of

Help: give assistance or support

Now, it makes sense when I say that teaching is helping, right? One cannot “guide” someone without “assisting”  them so that is why helping is probably the most important component in successfully teaching another language. The point here is when students need aid or have questions, the teachers’ obligation is to be there to answer them wholeheartedly. They should be honestly interested in how their students are thinking to figure out how they can correct them. They have the power to contribute to their long-term knowledge rather than talking at them and hoping they get it all. This kind of wishful thinking is lazy and any teacher who has this mindset should rethink their career.

Without help, there is no true learning going on in the classroom. The communication is necessary or else everything seems robotic and uniform when education should be versatile and spontaneous. It also makes it more difficult for people to grow together and learn about each other. There are, indeed, places that are like this where students are so programmed that they take tests based solely on the lecture of the day, but what is the benefit of that? Sure, maybe a good grade here and there, but in the long run, grades do not matter. What you take from the classroom to the real world is what’s important.

It is assumed that most of us have encountered a situation where we have sat in a class in which the instructor has droned on and on or has sped through a lecture and expected everyone to fully understand what he had said. The frustration builds and the lack of discussion drives us crazy since there were questions that popped into our head from the very beginning. This type of method is not very beneficial, is it? Especially when it’s in a foreign country. By providing an environment where questions are encouraged, teachers can be helpful and relieve the stress and worries that learners don’t even need in the first place.

Teachers, especially ESL teachers, must help; it’s so obvious that there’s nothing much more to say about it. All of this may have been nothing new to you, but to some, it doesn’t seem as straight-forward as it is.

(For simple yet effective ideas on how to help ESL click here.)