March 2022: Can we go Back to Class With
The Same Teaching Techniques?

Without a doubt, for all subjects, including English, going back to school will not be easy after two years of the pandemic. In order to make this return to classes more bearable and achieve effective teaching, we need to consider some important points that will contribute to making the return to the English course motivating and achieve effective learning.

Before planning the activities you will do in a class, keep in mind the following:

1. Unfortunately, for many reasons unrelated to the students, the virtual modality was an emergency resource and not an option planned and studied as an alternate modality of education. Thus, outside of school, the vast majority of students have achieved little learning and have even regressed in what they had advanced in previous years. It is very necessary that teachers make continuous revisions of content from previous levels, especially during the first months of the academic year. This consolidation of previous learning is no longer an optional activity, it is a great necessity. Don’t naively plan to finish an entire textbook this year. It just won’t work, and if it does, it won’t be solid learning.
2. Consider how your students will feel. Many of them have suffered not only the months of confinement but also the demise of their loved ones, friends, the loss of a parent’s job, their frustration for lacking basic technological resources, as well as their damaged socialization process.
3. During the pandemic your students’ learning experience has been impacted by a host of visual stimuli from the internet and television like never before. We should not expect them to find the textbook and the blackboard attractive. We must find ways to bring the real world to class: short audios or movie clips, popular songs, etc. The use of realia is now more than essential. Let’s face it: any textbook, as excellent as it may be, will not have the same impact in your students’ motivation as something “real.”
4. Forget boring grammar! You will only motivate your students if they learn to communicate in English, but again! in real situations. Do not promote interactions or dialogues whose contents are alien to their reality. Classroom interactions should be about their daily issues, expectations, or problems. Consider that our teaching of grammar should be highly communicative. Leave as homework any type of written exercises. Class time is for speaking English!
5. Promote group and partner work activities in their classes to compensate for their lack of socialization with their classmates in these two years.
6. Start by developing listening comprehension skills in your students through popular songs or short segments from movies or TV shows. You can use real-life materials without handling or sorting them. What is simplified is the task to be carried out with a given text. For example, beginning students may listen to a small segment of any “real” material just to obtain very specific information such as colour, month, price, etc. The higher the level of language proficiency, the greater the complexity of the task. Remember that for your students realizing that they are able to understand at least simple words or phrases from any real life material is a powerful motivating factor.
7. Monitor carefully the time you allot to class activities. Consider that in these two years your students have been deciding when to stand or sit at will. Don’t expect them to sit straight for an hour. Promote activities where they get up to interact with their peers.
8. Do not delay giving feedback. Your students have become accustomed to having instant reaction from the different materials used on the internet.
9. With flaws or not, your students have learned to learn on their own. Do not interrupt the development of their ability to become skilled independently. Therefore, implement the execution of asynchronous activities through technological resources such as free applications, YouTube or Google.
10. Finally, do not fall behind in the use of technological resources. Surprise your students with the use of an app in class, dazzle them with presentations in interactive PPT format, and with surveys producing results at the moment, just to mention a few. With technology, the sky is the limit. Don’t be left behind!