Additional language skills are sometimes hard and it is important to maintain a positive attitude teaching them. Being a teacher of a new language can be exhausting, and it’s not always easy to remain enthusiastic and friendly, especially when it’s the fifth time you are giving the same lesson.
When you are teaching the leaders of the future a language that is not their own, however, it is important to keep a positive attitude teaching. Most people of the language teaching profession have agreed that their learners’ learning potential increases when the teacher has a positive and motivating attitude. Children just learn better if the circumstances around them are uplifting.
Using positive attitude teaching works with additional languages.
There has been researching was done that supports the correlation between a teacher’s positive attitude and successfully learning an additional language in school. This is because when you have a positive attitude towards learning a new language, the students pick up your body language and motivation, which makes them feel motivated as well.
For example, if you walk around your classroom with a slouch and a frown, you can bet the students will notice, and you will cause a negative connotation to your classroom to linger for far longer than you may have intended.
Making an Additional language less boring to learn.
If you approach learning a language as if it’s difficult and a horribly boring task, then the learners will develop a negative attitude towards language learning. They will feel like it’s an impossible task, and they will have no motivation to even try. You will make them feel like they can’t do it, so what’s the point? you need to promote a positive attitude teaching the new language.
If learners have a positive connotation towards learning and speaking the language, this will encourage them to speak the language more often outside of the classroom. They may, for example, engage in a conversation with a shop owner in their first additional language because of their teacher’s positive attitude.
Promote practicing outside the classroom
If they are encouraged to speak the language outside of the classroom, their learning experience will be much broader, and the actual acquiring of the language will happen much faster. You will reap the benefits in class as well when they suddenly become more enthusiastic learners and do better in their assessments.
Having a positive attitude towards reading in the additional language is also important because reading is an essential component in learning the language. If you talk about how much you love reading and recommend good books in the additional language, then the learners are much more likely to also get excited about reading.
Teaching new language positive attitude to students that the language is a lifelong gift.
If learners acquire a new language while they are feeling positive and motivated, they will retain the language longer. You will influence their entire lives because now they can communicate with a whole new range of people. They can adjust to a diverse society and be confident when they talk to people. You might have even motivated them to learn a second additional language, which will broaden their communicative skills even further.
At the end of the school year, they will still remember the specific language skills they have learned and how to use them, because their teacher taught them with a positive attitude. If you encouraged them to read in that language as well, they will still read in this additional language long after they have left school.
Even though teaching is an exhausting and, very often, thankless profession, it is important for you to keep a good attitude to be good at your job. Never doubt that what you’re doing will have very powerful effects on every student’s life that goes through your classroom.