Labor Day weekend is upon us. What better way to celebrate than to work? 🙂

I do look forward to a bit of rest and family time, but before that I will be providing training for some volunteer tutors in my community. They want to be effective helpers to their friends who are learning English, but many of these tutors have not formally studied education or language teaching theory.

Our training time is limited. And the sea of theory/practice in the ELL world is wide. How will I cross it and keep all of them in the boat with me during our short session today?

In planning and creating materials for the session, I had to ask myself, “What does it all really boil down to?” I had to go back to the basics.

For this session, that will mean focusing on the most fundamental principles of language learning and teaching (such as maintaining a balance between accuracy and fluency in progress) as well as a reminder of the elementary pattern for a solid lesson plan.

It will also mean telling myself multiple times throughout the day that we will not cross such a wide sea in one session. And that is okay.

Just as learning a language is a long, challenging process (especially for adult learners), learning how to teach a language well and help a language learner are things that take much time, practice, and patience.

From all of this, I draw several important recyclable lessons.

Anytime we need to explain something or teach others in life, no matter the topic or subject, we must always start with the most basic blocks and terms and work from there. And it never hurts to revisit the basics.

Every teacher trainer must keep the basics in mind when preparing additional materials or explaining more advanced principles.

Every language teacher or tutor must find hope in each teaching experience – both the ones that go very well to lift up the heart and the ones that ride roughly, where we learn from mistakes.

Every language student must join the ones they are learning with and from on the journey, recalling always that it is a journey. Today and tomorrow, we will learn something new. Or recall something previously learned. Or both. 

And in the end, hopefully, we will all look back and be able to see how far we have come.

In the comments, I invite you to name one of the most basic principles from your life or field/work that you always (want to) keep coming back to.