Judging From Students’ Perspective

It is not enough to just teach our students without knowing their feelings and expectations. What should we do in order to know some of the difficulties our students encountering in learning ? What I mean by this is that we might find some of our students asking : “ How we wish our teacher knows  difficulties that we are going through ?” so how can we put ourselves in the shoes of our students so to speak , for us to be able to penetrate their feelings and know what they expect of us . This means judging from the students’ perspective.

Emerging from this, as teachers  we should find ways of knowing students feelings and expectations as these will definitely enforce the teaching process .I would like to focus on teaching English as a foreign language . We should deal with this situation from two perspectives:

Firstly , What a teacher who is a native English speaker should know ?

Secondly , What a teacher who is a non-native English speaker should know ?

Having said this , if I am an Arab ,I should be able to know what difficulties my Arab students are encountering when learning English from the point of view of structural and grammatical differences between the two languages. This is where tolerance in teaching  plays a great role. Instead of getting mad at your students when they make mistakes as result of language differences you can easily find a polite way of correcting their mistakes and difficulties.

Likewise, a native speaker who is teaching English to Arabs for instance, should learn some differences of the two languages and some aspect of the culture may also help. If possible, attempting to learn the native language of your students will help you reach them more easily.

Furthermore, setting up discussion forums with your students may help you know their feelings, difficulties and expectations. You can also make a survey by giving them questionnaires , this way you can acquire valuable information that may enhance your teaching.