Good teachers:
• have a sense of purpose;
• have expectations of success for all students;
• tolerate ambiguity;
• demonstrate a willingness to adapt and change to meet student needs;
• are comfortable with not knowing;
• reflect on their work;
• learn from a variety of models;
• enjoy their work and their students.

Good teachers have a sense of purpose.
You can't be good in a generic sense; you have to be good for something. As a teacher, this means that you know what your students expect, and you make plans to meet those expectations. You, too, have expectations about what happens in your classroom, based on the goals you're trying to achieve. If you want to prepare your students for employment, you expect punctuality and good attendance. If you teach a GED class, you spend time explaining the format of the test and helping students to improve their test-taking skills. And if you want your students to become better, more involved readers, you allow time for reading and provide access to books.

Good teachers have expectations of success for all students.
This is the great paradox of teaching. If we base our self-evaluation purely on the success of our students, we'll be disappointed. At all levels, but especially in adult education, there are simply too many factors in students'lives for a teacher to be able to guarantee success to all. At the same time, if we give up on our students, adopting a fatalistic, "it's out of my hands" attitude, students will sense our lack of commitment and tune out. The happy medium can be achieved with a simple question: Did I do everything that I could in this class, this time, to meet the needs of all my students, assuming that complete success was possible? As long as you can answer in the affirmative, you're creating a climate for success.

Good teachers know how to live with ambiguity.
One of the greatest challenges of teaching stems from the lack of immediate, accurate feedback. The student who walks out of your classroom tonight shaking his head and muttering under his breath about algebra may burst into class tomorrow proclaiming his triumph over math, and thanking you for the previous lesson. There is no way to predict precisely what the long-term results of our work will be. But if we have a sense of purpose informing our choice of strategies and materials, and we try to cultivate expectations of success for all our students, we will be less likely to dwell on that unpredictability, choosing instead to focus on what we can control, and trusting that thoughtful preparation makes good outcomes more likely than bad ones.

Good teachers adapt and change to meet student needs.
Can we really claim to have taught a class in geography if no one learned any of the concepts in the lesson from our presentation? If none of our students ever pick up a book outside of the classroom, have we really taught them to be better readers? We don't always think about these issues, but they are at the heart of effective teaching. A great lesson plan and a great lesson are two entirely different things; it's nice when one follows the other, but we all know that it doesn't always work out that way. We teach so that students will learn, and when learning doesn't happen, we need to be willing to devise new strategies, think in new ways, and generally do anything possible to revive the learning process. It's wonderful to have a good methodology, but it's better to have students engaged in good learning.

Good teachers are reflective.
This may be the only infallible, absolute characteristic of all good teachers, because without it, none of the other traits we've discussed can fully mature. Good teachers routinely think about and reflect on their classes, their students, their methods, and their materials. They compare and contrast, draw parallels and distinctions, review, remove and restore. Failing to observe what happens in our classes on a daily basis disconnects us from the teaching and learning process, because it's impossible to create connectivity if you've disconnected yourself.

Good teachers are comfortable with not knowing.
If we reflect honestly and thoughtfully on what happens in our classes, we will often find dilemmas we cannot immediately resolve, questions we cannot answer. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that his correspondent, "try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language…. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer" (1986, pp. 34-35). In the same way, our teaching benefits if we can live for a little while with a question, think and observe, and let an answer develop in response to the specific situation we face.

Good teachers had good role models.
Think back again to your three best teachers. How has your own teaching been shaped by their practices, consciously or unconsciously? Think also of the worst teacher you ever had. Are there things you absolutely will not do because you remember how devastating they were to you or your classmates? We learn to teach gradually, and absorb ideas and practices from a variety of sources. How many movies have you seen that include a teacher as a character, and how might those films have contributed to your practice? We are not always aware of the influences on our teaching, good and bad; reflecting on the different models of teaching we've acquired, and looking at how we acquired them, makes us better able to adapt and change to suit new challenges.

Good teachers enjoy their work and their students.
This may seem obvious, but it's easy to lose sight of its importance. Teachers who enjoy their work and their students are motivated, energized, and creative. The opposite of enjoyment is burnout-the state where no one and nothing can spark any interest. Notice, too, that enjoying your work and enjoying your students may be two different things. Focusing too much on content may make students feel extraneous, misunderstood, or left out. Focusing exclusively on students, without an eye to content, may make students feel understood and appreciated, but may not help them to achieve their educational goals as quickly as they'd like. Achieving a balance between the two extremes takes time and attention; it demands that we observe closely, evaluate carefully, and act on our findings.
I would like to conclude with a poem by Lao-Tzu, the Chinese scholar to whom the Tao Te Ching is attributed. I have carried a copy of this poem with me for many years, and I find its message both helpful and challenging. It reminds us that good teaching is not a static state, but a constant process. We have new opportunities to become better teachers every day; good teachers are the ones who seize more opportunities than they miss.

Imagine yourself in the future

Imagine you can talk to native speakers just like you talk in your first language. Imagine other people wanting to speak English as well as you do. Imagine the possibility of writing e-mail to people from all over the world.

It is helpful to read an article about the advantages of knowing English well. There are two such articles on Antimoon: Why learn English and English makes you feel good.

You should know that it is possible to learn English really well. Just look at other people who have done it.

Remember that you are already good

You already know some English (you're reading an article in English right now). That's a big success! Now it's time for more successes. Time to start using powerful methods of effective learning. Time to gain an impressive knowledge of English.

Remember there is a lot that you don't know

You are good, but your English probably isn't perfect. You probably can't understand English-language TV, read books in English, talk to native speakers easily, write letters without mistakes, etc.

You should never think your English is perfect. Even if you are the best student in your class, always try to find your weak areas and work on them. When you've learned to speak English well, your problems will be quite small: punctuation, rarely used grammar structures, rare words, understanding "street language". Right now, your problems are probably more basic: mistakes in pronunciation, small vocabulary, grammar problems with the present perfect tense and conditional structures.

Use your English whenever you can

This is very, very important. The more you use English, the more you will want to learn it.

Because English is so popular, you can use it everywhere. You can use Google to find English-language websites with interesting information, you can watch American cartoons, you can play adventure games on your computer, you can read interesting books in English, or you can do other things that we write about.

If you do these things, you will not only have fun and learn English. If you see that a new English word lets you understand your favorite TV show (or communicate with people, or beat a computer game), you will want to learn more words. So you will learn English more, use it more, learn it more, use it more... If you also use effective learning methods, your English will grow faster than you can imagine.

Talk to people about English

This is a very simple method, but it is very effective. Here's how it works:

You usually talk about things which interest you. But the opposite is true, too. If you start talking about a boring subject, you will begin to get interested in it.

Imagine you are studying a subject that you hate. You are bored and tired, but you have to pass the test tomorrow. If there are people near you, you have two options: you can tell everybody how much you are suffering or you can tell those people about the things you've learned. If you choose the first option, you will only feel worse.

If you choose the second option, and start a conversation on the "boring" subject, you will begin to look at it in a totally different way. Suddenly it will become a subject worth talking about — therefore, an interesting subject.

How can you begin such a conversation? If you're studying English, you can surprise another person by talking to him/her in English. Say (in English): Hi, I'm studying English and I hate it. Or you can say (in your first language): Hey, I've learned 50 English words today. Do you know what's the English word for ...? If there are no people near you, you can telephone or send an e-mail message to your friend.

What will your friends say? Probably they won't be very interested, but it doesn't matter! The important thing is this: After talking about English, you will study it with much more passion. Try it.

Find a friend who is learning English

If you can find a friend who is learning English and is on a similar level of skill, you will be in an excellent situation:

·         you will have someone to talk about English with. These conversations will increase your interest in English, as explained in the previous section.

·         learning English will be easier, because you will be able to discuss your problems with your friend.

·         you will study English more, because you will want to be better than your friend. :-)

You should meet your friend regularly. Ideally, he/she should live near you, or go to the same school as you. If you absolutely can't find anybody willing to learn English with you, you can try to find somebody by e-mail. This is a worse solution: your conversations will probably be less frequent, and it is difficult to compete with someone who you don't know well.

Spend some money on learning English

If you spend your money on something, you will want to use it. For example, if you buy an expensive tennis racket, you will probably go out and play tennis every day.

This rule is also true for learning English. If you want to increase your desire to learn English, buy a new dictionary, an interesting English-language book, English-language cable TV, etc. The idea is simple: You paid for it, so you will want to use it, and you will improve your English.

There is a problem with this method. It only works for a short time. You usually lose your desire to learn English after a few days. To keep learning, you would have to buy something every week!

However, this method is helpful, because it gives you an impulse to start learning. For example, if you buy a dictionary of phrasal verbs, you will probably learn some words from it. Then you should try to use them. For example, write an e-mail message with these words. This will increase your motivation (as explained before), and you will learn more.

Remember that learning English requires action

We have said this many times. One small action is more powerful than reading hundreds of articles. Yes, we know it is very hard to do things, even if they are good for us. We humans are lazy creatures. That is why not many people speak English well.

You have to change your life a little — do crazy things like talking to yourself in English or spending your evening reading a dictionary. In order to do these things, and do them regularly, you have to enjoy doing them. If you are like most learners and don't feel like doing these things, you will have to work on your motivation.

Learning English requires action. You may know all the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve nothing. The fact is, if you want to learn to speak English well, you must change your life. Here are some examples of things you will have to do:

·         read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary

·         listen to an audiobook or other recording in English, stopping it frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to imitate the speaker's pronunciation

·         spend your afternoon practicing the pronunciation of the English "r" sound

·         carefully write an e-mail message in English, using a dictionary or a Web search every 20 seconds to make sure every word is correct, and taking 5 minutes to write one sentence

·         think about an English sentence you've read, wondering if it could say "a" instead of "the" in the sentence, and trying to find similar sentences on the Web to find out the answer

·         walk down the street and build simple English sentences in your head (talking to yourself in English about the things you see around you)

What kind of person would do all these crazy things? Only one kind. The kind of person who enjoys doing them. If you want to learn to speak English well, you're going to have to become that person. You cannot hate doing these things. Have you ever heard of a person who became successful by doing something he hated?

The problem with learning and teaching English as a foreign language is that all English learners want to speak English well; however, most learners don't want to spend time on learning English on their own. (Which is probably why they sign up for English classes and hope their teacher will force knowledge into their heads.)

This lack of motivation means that learners basically don't spend their own time on learning English, and if they do, they don't do it regularly. For example, a typical learner might study English phrasal verbs for 12 hours before an English exam. However, he will not read a book in English for 30 minutes every day. He just doesn't feel that learning English is pleasant enough, so he will only do it if he has to. The problem is that a huge one-time effort gives you nothing, while small, everyday activities will give you a lot.

Here are some tips which may help you to master the English Language!

Speak without Fear

The biggest problem most people face in learning a new language is their own fear.  They worry that they won’t say things correctly or that they will look stupid so they don’t talk at all.  Don’t do this.  The fastest way to learn anything is to do it – again and again until you get it right.  Like anything, learning English requires practice.  Don’t let a little fear stop you from getting what you want. 

Use all of your Resources

Even if you study English at a language school it doesn’t mean you can’t learn outside of class.  Using as many different sources, methods and tools as possible, will allow you to learn faster.  There are many different ways you can improve your English, so don’t limit yourself to only one or two.  The internet is a fantastic resource for virtually anything, but for the language learner it's perfect.

Surround Yourself with English

The absolute best way to learn English is to surround yourself with it.  Take notes in English, put English books around your room, listen to English language radio broadcasts, watch English news, movies and television.  Speak English with your friends whenever you can. The more English material that you have around you, the faster you will learn and the more likely it is that you will begin “thinking in English.” .

Listen to Native Speakers as Much as Possible

There are some good English teachers that have had to learn English as a second language before they could teach it.  However, there are several  reasons why many of the best schools prefer to hire native English speakers. One of the reasons is that native speakers have a natural flow to their speech that students of English should try to imitate.  The closer ESL / EFL students can get to this rhythm or flow, the more convincing and comfortable they will become. 

Watch English Films and Television

This is not only a fun way to learn but it is also very effective.  By watching English films (especially those with English subtitles) you can expand your vocabulary and hear the flow of speech from the actors.  If you listen to the news you can also hear different accents.

Listen to English Music

Music can be a very effective method of learning English.  In fact, it is often used as a way of improving comprehension.  The best way to learn though, is to get the lyrics (words) to the songs you are listening to and try to read them as the artist sings.  There are several good internet sites where one can find the words for most songs. This way you can practice your listening and reading at the same time.  And if you like to sing, fine.

Study As Often As Possible!

Only by studying things like grammar and vocabulary and doing exercises, can you really improve your knowledge of any language. 

Do Exercises and Take Tests

Many people think that exercises and tests aren't much fun.  However, by completing exercises and taking tests you can really improve your English. One of the best reasons for doing lots of exercises and tests is that they give you a benchmark to compare your future results with.  Often, it is by comparing your score on a test you took yesterday with one you took a month or six months ago that you realize just how much you have learned.  If you never test yourself, you will never know how much you are progressing. Start now by doing some of the many exercises and tests on this site, and return in a few days to see what you've learned. Keep doing this and you really will make some progress with English.

Record Yourself

Nobody likes to hear their own voice on tape but like tests, it is good to compare your tapes from time to time.  You may be so impressed with the progress you are making that you may not mind the sound of your voice as much.

Listen to English

By this, we mean, speak on the phone or listen to radio broadcasts, audiobooks or CDs in English. This is different than watching the television or films because you can’t see the person that is speaking to you.  Many learners of English say that speaking on the phone is one of the most difficult things that they do and the only way to improve is to practice.

Finally

Have fun!