I think early in my career I tried to be a Sage - "I know everything about English and I will TEACH you!" These days, I'm a lot more confident in my abilities as a teacher and therefore much more willing to sit down and shut up. In more professional language, I'm working a lot to build my classes around peer-to-peer learning, which means that I introduce a topic and a skill and then I get out of the way. It's been going very well.
I sometimes have to talk for most of the class, but I'm convinced that more learning takes place when I talk less and students talk more. Ask yourself: What percentage of the class consists of the you talking and what percentage consists of your students talking or working silently?
I think early in my career I tried to be a Sage - "I know everything about English and I will TEACH you!" These days, I'm a lot more confident in my abilities as a teacher and therefore much more willing to sit down and shut up. In more professional language, I'm working a lot to build my classes around peer-to-peer learning, which means that I introduce a topic and a skill and then I get out of the way. It's been going very well.
I sometimes have to talk for most of the class, but I'm convinced that more learning takes place when I talk less and students talk more. Ask yourself: What percentage of the class consists of the you talking and what percentage consists of your students talking or working silently?