What makes a great teacher?

I recently had cause to reminisce about my experience in #teaching undergraduate classes at university, and especially about what makes a great teacher. My background in this is that I taught tutorials starting in 2015 and undergraduate seminars starting in 2018, I attended plenty of ‘train the trainer’ courses, and worked closely with a wonderful team of academic teachers for years. Aside from my teaching experience, I have obviously also experienced a vast variety of academic teachers as a student. Here’s my humble opinion on what makes a great teacher: Show enthusiasm for the topic. If you’re truly passionate about […]

When your Teaching is Successful

What a day in teaching! Today was the penultimate session of my Introduction to English Linguistics. Early during the session, I got a bit angry at one person who was talking on the phone, and asked them to please go outside if they must talk on the phone during my lecture. Shortly after, once I distributed the exercise handouts, that person plus five other people left the session. I’m not quite sure if it was because of my little rant or because the exercises were too hard… anyway, I thought it was rather funny, and I was pretty glad they […]