7 Effective Ways Teachers Can Improve Their Language Skills

Becoming a teacher is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. It might not be the highest-paid job but it stands tall among the important professions in the world. Why? Because teachers have the ability to shape the future of nations.

However, teacher skills evolve with time. That’s right, guys. Professional teachers constantly look for ways to better their personal skills so that they can help their students become better learners. One of the critical things for teachers is language. They need to be extremely fluent to be able to communicate properly with their students.

Alright. Here are some of the most effective tips that will help you improve your language skills,  so you can become a better teacher for your students. This article takes the English language as an example.

Watch English movie

Many people make the mistake of trying to learn a language from reading literature books, which can prove to be quite tedious and not as rewarding. If you want to really learn a language to an extent where you become an effective communicator in that language, you need something more than literature books.

Watching a movie or a series on Netflix will help you get familiar with the colloquial language and conversational form of English. You should enable the subtitles option on Netflix as it will help you understand the more complex dialogue and conversations.

Watching movies is one of the best ways to learn English or any other language for that matter. The reason being, movies expose you to a whole different side of a language that you won’t find in books.

Listen to English news

Listening to the news is a great way to learn formal speech. You won’t see many newscasters using slang or colloquial language; they stick to formal speech because they are trying to address a much wider audience than just one city or country.

Whereas, movies will give you an understanding of the day-to-day conversational language. Listening to news will give you a chance to sharpen up your formal speaking skills. Apart from keeping you up to date, news will give you a chance to explore a different side of the English language.

Use language apps

There are many apps on the internet that will help you learn a language. For example; Memrise, LinguaLift, Rosetta Stone, Duolingo, and HelloTalk. These apps will remind you to spend a certain amount of time every day learning English and will give you a new word every day to improve your vocabulary.

Duo lingo also allows you to take a test after a certain time that tells you where you are at with your learning and how much more work you need to put in before you become comfortable with the language. Moreover, some of these apps also have some fun games that you can play and learn English as a by-product.

Practice everyday

Practice makes a man perfect. You need to ensure that you practice your language skills every day, so you have an accurate idea of where you are in your learning journey and how long you have left to go. Review what you have learned regularly by going to the recent words log in your Duolingo or any other language app.

One of the most effective practice methods is the word of the day method. In this method, you choose a word of your choice from what you have learned recently and then try to use the word in the conversation throughout the day as seamlessly as possible.

Don't pick a word that you won’t be able to work into your conversation casually, focus on conversational English more. It will help boost your language skills quite fast.

Listen to podcasts in English

If you are not a big fan of podcasts, this is not for you. But if you have time to spend 2 to 3 hours every day listening to people talk, this is the perfect thing for you. Podcasts do a similar job to watching movies.

The only difference is that they aren’t scripted, so you’re going to learn how people engage in conversations. Sometimes, it’s about extremely complex things, while others are usually irrelevant topics.

There are tons of podcasts out there. Some of the best podcasts include JRE, 2 bears 1 cave, and the Jordan b Peterson podcast. Some of these podcasts will give you a good laugh, while others will talk about everything from politics, religion, philosophy, mental health, and more.

Have a conversation in English with fellow teachers

You don't need to be a master of the English language before you can start talking to others in English. Just let your fellow teachers know that you are trying to improve your language skills and start talking to them in English.

One of the best ways to become fluent in English is to practice every day and there is no better practice than having regular conversations with your peers in the language that you want to learn.

Don't worry about embarrassing yourself because everyone makes mistakes when they are learning something. Please know that no one will judge you for not having the perfect pronunciations or incorrect sentence structure. As long as you are getting the message across, you have nothing to worry about.

Build your vocabulary

Building your vocabulary is a gradual process. You can’t just pick up a dictionary and start learning new words. Building vocabulary is the hardest part of learning a new language.

One way to remember a word is to remember what context it was used in, that way you will know exactly how and where to use all the new words that you learn. Similar to how rolling carts for teachers are important to organize tools, context is an important tool to organize and make sense of all your vocabulary.

If you hear a word that you don't know the meaning of while watching a movie, listening to the news, or a podcast, go to google and search for the meaning. This is a much better approach than just writing down the words that you don't know and finding the meanings of those words later. That way, you might remember the meaning of the word but you won’t remember how to use it in a sentence.

Conclusion:

Here you have some of the most effective tips that will help you improve your language skills, so you can be a better communicator and help your students become better learners. Follow the above-mentioned steps and you will start seeing results immediately. Good luck, my pals!