1. Clear Course Goals and Simple Learning Objectives

Teachers can use goals to fully organize course materials and convey expectations to students to help them evaluate themselves. It is very necessary to synchronize specific, concise and measurable objectives with students before each class, so that students can clearly know the learning plan of one lesson, and students can connect with the learning objectives through the course content and classroom activities, so as to achieve the outcomes more easily. I mainly refer to the Bloom Taxonomy when setting goals and learning objectives.

2. Challenging Curriculum with High Expectations

The premise of making such teaching content must be that the teacher knows the students well enough. Students can easily complete too simple content, they will lose interest in the class, easy to wander or interfere with the class order behavior; If it is too difficult for students to do on their own, they will lose confidence in learning, may develop self-doubt and gradually lose the desire to explore learning. Teachers can express their expectations to students through verbal encouragement. I will also explain and demonstrate the challenging content to students first, and then guide them to practice, so that they can gain a small sense of accomplishment, and finally practice independently. In this way, students are more likely to accept and complete the challenging tasks.

3. Teach Vocabulary Within Multiple Contexts

Vocabulary must be the basis of all language learning. The four dimensions of language learning, listening, speaking, reading and writing, are inseparable from vocabulary. Therefore, words should be embedded in multiple contexts and used frequently in class, which is where high-frequency words come from. Students can only really master it if they use it a lot. Teachers can also use association in the teaching process. Every time they encounter a new word, they will guide students to establish a connection with a word they are familiar with before so that students can understand it more easily and review and master new words. I tend to let students make sentences, so I will give students a list of words every week so that students can identify the parts of speech and practice using them by making sentences.

4. Offer Explicit and Culturally Relevant Instruction

Creating a good classroom environment for students requires students to be interested in the course, and students are more motivated to learn when they can relate what they learn to real-life and cultural contexts. My students are all Chinese, and sometimes the methods of reading in Chinese are very similar to the strategies in English. When I teach reading strategies, I will use Chinese articles as examples, which the students find very interesting. When discussing certain topics, such as science and technology, economy, etc., students often give examples of payment methods in China, and take the initiative to compare the payment methods in other countries they have seen when travelling abroad, they will feel proud and be willing to share the discussion.

5. Allow students to use their first language

Students' cognition is developing, and if the difficulty of cognition is reduced for the sake of full English, the development of students is not worth the loss. Therefore, it is necessary to support the use of the first language, which can help students meet the cognitive level of understanding and focus on the language itself. However, for some senior students, teachers are also worried that the first language will become a pure translation, which will affect students' mastery of the sentence structure of the target language, and then affect students' ability to analyze the language. So what the teacher should do is to control and guide the students to use the first language at the right time and under the right conditions

6. Integrate Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening Skills

Comprehensive language development must integrate listening, speaking, reading and writing together. Language is a comprehensive expression, while reading and listening are inputs, and the amount of input affects the output to a certain extent. Many years ago, the traditional English teaching in China may have focused on reading more, resulting in many people mastering dumb English, understanding but not speaking, writing words but not understanding. Only these four skills can be built together to help students fully master the language. I usually ask students to have group discussions and retelling in class. After class, I will have reading and writing exercises and ask students to share them in the next class to synthesize these four skills.

7. Accordance with students' aptitude

There are differences among individual students, whether it is classroom activities or after-school tasks, teachers should take into account the differences of students, to help students improve in a more targeted way. My students differ mainly in vocabulary and reading speed, so I will provide them with two kinds of reading materials of different lengths under the same topic, and there will be a range of words required for writing so that students can choose their own writing words. The speaking section can provide scaffolding for students who may have difficulties

8. Student-centered classroom

Making students co-creators of their own education and involving them in deciding what, when, and how they learn not only inspires enthusiasm and motivation but also develops organizational and leadership skills, which is also what 21st Century Skills focuses on. In my opinion, textbooks only serve as one carrier, so I will use textbooks instead of reading from the book. I encourage students to participate in discussions and organize topic speeches and art exhibitions to learn a certain topic, and students will have a collision of ideas and even debate with students sometimes. I am surprised that students have so many novel ideas that are very interesting

9. Learning through play

People learn best from happy experiences, which can stimulate students' imagination and creativity, and stimulate students' learning potential to a certain extent. Especially for boring words and grammar, students are most likely to feel tired. I will focus on gamified teaching methods in this part of the teaching content, which can be matched games in the classroom or some online tools.

10. Embrace technology

Technological innovation brings challenges to all walks of life, but also opportunities. Education is about training people for the future, so we teachers must also embrace technology and be good at using technology tools in our teaching. Technical tools can help students reduce repetitive mechanical work and improve innovation.

_References

_{Aithal, V. (2023, February 19). When is it OK to use students’ L1 in the English classroom? World of Better Learning | Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2023/02/19/when-to-use-students-l1-english-classroom/}

_{Bristow Evans, M. (2018). The integration of reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in the middle school social studies classroom. In ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway, P.O. Box 1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Tel: 800-521-0600; Web site: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.}

_{Classroom culture: high expectations and challenge. (2017, November 24). Class Teaching. https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2017/11/24/classroom-culture-high-expectations-and-challenge/}

_{Course goals and learning objectives. (n.d.). Montclair.edu. Retrieved January 21, 2024, from https://www.montclair.edu/itds/essentials/course-goals-and-learning-objectives/}

_{Heick, T. (2023, May 30). How to learn through play: A spectrum for teachers. TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/learning-through-play/}

_{Joe. (2020, November 3). 5 reasons to embrace more technologies in learning and Development. Openmind eDesign Private Limited. https://openmindedesign.com/5-reasons-to-embrace-more-technologies-in-learning-and-development/}