Building Rapport and Developing Confidence
Lead In
Motivation is an important factor in language learning. It will determine how the students will gain success in their learning. Self-motivation, which comes from the students themselves, cannot work alone without teachers’ guidance. In doing so, language teachers need to consider “rapport”. In this activity, participants will discuss the importance of building rapport and how to do it in order to develop learners’/students’ confidence in language classroom. An influential psychologist, Earl Stevick wrote about language teaching that” success depend less on material, techniques and linguistic analyst, and more on what goes on inside and between people in the classroom” (Senior, 2008)In addition to establishing good rapport, teacher should take into account their strategies in developing students confidence. It will also include the strategies which teacher uses to correct learners mistakes or errors and the fact sometimes teachers need to use L1 in EFL teaching.
Building Rapport
The word rapport means a harmonious, sympathelic relationship or connection between people. When we talk about ”establishing rapport” or ”developing rapport” with an individual or a group of people. When we talk about ’establishin rapport’ or developing rapport’ with an individual or group of people, we imply that something positive is happening: a beneficial process of some kind is occuring.
In classroom interaction, rapport means, in essence, the relationship that the students have with the teacher, and vice versa. Rapport is established in part when students become aware of teacher professionalism, but it also occur as a result of the way we listen to and treat the students in the classrooms. Senior (2008) mentions that some of the advantages of establishing rapport within classes of language learners are as follows:
§ The overall class amosphere becomes more vibrant, with students colecctively more alert and responsive.
§ Individuals interact with the teacher more readily.
§ The learning needs and interests of the class become more evident.
§ Students behaviour that, in other circumstances, might impede learning, serves to ”lift” the atmosphere of the class.
§ Students more readily put themselves forward and are helpful to the teacher.
§ Confident that their efforts will be apprecited, teachers find themselves teaching i more dynamic and creative ways.
§ Individuals are more willing to ask questionsand indicate when they do not understand.
§ Increasing numbers of students are drawn in by the positive energy exuded by the class group.
§ Fewer potentially distruptive students make their presence felt.
In addition, Harmer (2007, p. 26) suggests four strategies for building good rapport in the classroom:
a. Recognizing students
Knowing students’ names is also about knowing ”about” students. At any age, students will be pleased when they get realize that their teacher has remembered things about them, and has some understanding of who they are. It is understandable that it is extremely difficult in larger classes, especially when teachers have a number of different groups, but part of a teacher’s skill is to persuade students that we recognize them, and who and what they are.
b. Listening to students
Students respond very well to teachers who listen to them. Teachers needs to show that they are interested in what their students have to say. It is also part of a teacher’s professional personality that teacher should be able to convince students that she/he is listening to what they say with every sign of attention.
c. Respecting student
Respect is vital when we deal with any kind of problem behavior. Teachers who respect students do their best to see them in a positive light. They are not negative about their learners or in the way they deal with them in class. They do not react with anger or ridicule when students do unplanned things, but instead use a respectful professionalism to solve problem Being even handed
Students will generally respect teachers who show impartially and who do best to reach all the students in a group rather than just concentrating on ones who ”always put their hands up”. The reasons that some students are not forthcoming may be many and varied, ranging from shyness to their cultural or family backgrounds. Sometimes students are reluctant to take part overtly because of other stronger characters in the group.
Developing Confidence in Using English in the Classroom
Teachers can encourage in their students’ confidence by using simplified grammar instruction and slowing their pace of speech when giving instructions or in class discussions. The student will comprehend more, feeling more confident in learning the second language. Other methods that can be used to increase the students’ confidence are to provide gentle corrective feedback; to use positive praise and compliments; and to give rewards such as prizes for work well done. Avoiding criticism and negative feedback is necessary for teachers to provide a safe environment where students are comfortable taking risks. By interacting and building rapport with students rather than just teaching them, teacher create a good “relationship” and build confidence in their abilities.In addition to providing a safe environment where students feel comfortable taking risks, teacher need to consider the need of using L1 for a particular situation in English classroom. Edge ( 1993, p. 74) suggests that teacher should not insist the use of English if the level of frustration on a particular occasion becomes negative. If the students really cannot understand the teacher , or if a student really cannot express something that he or she clearly very much wants to say, then the use of L1 is needed. Further to that, for teacher, the L1 can be used to provide a quick and accurate translation of an English word that might take several minutes for the teacher to explain and even then there would be no guarantee that the explanation had been understood correctly. It is also particularly effective with younger learners and adult learners at beginner level to check instructions, to ensure that concepts have been correctly understood and for general classroom management. In the case of concept checking, for example, if the teacher has just been presenting the difference in concept between present perfect and past simple as in “Doni has gone to Bandung” and “Doni went to Bandung”, asking the class to give a quick translation into the L1 will enable the teacher to be absolutely sure that the concepts have been understood. Using the L1 can also be very useful in establishing the general “rules” for the class at the beginning of the course, one of which may of course be “English will be used at all times”! Perhaps the greatest potential advantage of a knowledge of the L1 of the learners, however, is that it enables the teacher to contrast the language with English and to know which structures are difficult and, possibly even more importantly, which structures are easy and need very little attention. The teacher with a knowledge of the L1 is also in a position to know potential problems with vocabulary items.
Correcting Learners in English Classroom
Learning a language is a long process during which a learner will inevitably make many, many mistakes. In other words we take a myriad of tiny steps going from not speaking a language to being fluent in the language. In the opinion of many teachers, students who are continually corrected become inhibited and cease to participate. This results in the exact opposite of what the teacher is trying to produce, that is the use of English to communicate.
Parrot (1993, p.68) defines the different of error and mistake. Errors are considered to be evidence of learners’ developing competence in the foreign language learning. For example, they may indicate that learners are applying rules from their own first language to the use of English, or that they applying rules which they have internalized but which are in some way intermediate between their own first language and the language they are learning. Mistake, on the other hand, are generally non systematic and do not necessarily reflect the learner’s underlying competence. Learners will normally be able to identify and correct their mistake if they are prompted to do so.
Teacher can respond to learners’ error and mistake in a number of ways, as follows:
a. They can stop the student and either :
· Invite him to correct himself.
· Prompt him to correct himself by indicating the nature of error or mistake or where it was in the sentence.
· Encourage other students to supply a correction.
· Supply a “correction” himself.
b. They can make a note of the error or mistake and draw attention to it at a later stage individually or into the whole class.
c. They can choose not to respond.
The following dialogue is an example which shows students being corrected during a practice phase in which they are making sentences using comparative form of adjective (Harmer, 2007, p.97).
Mona : Trains are safer planes.
Teacher : Safer planes? (into surprised questioning intonation)
Mona : Oh … trains are safer than planes.
Teacher : Good Mona. Now “comfortable” Sandy?
Sandy : Trains more comfortable. Planes are.
Teacher : Hmm. Can you help Sandy, Benny?
Benny : Er … trains are more comfortable than planes.
Teacher : Thank you. Sandy?
Sandy : Trains are more comfortable than plans
Teacher : That’s right Sandy. Great. What about “fast”?, Maya?
Maya : Trains are faster?
Teacher : Trains are faster?
Maya : Trains faster planes? I don’t know.
Teacher : OK. Look. Trains go at a hundred miles an hour, planes go at 500 miles an hour, so planes are faster that trains, Yes?
Maya : Planes are faster than trains.
Teacher : Well done, Maya.
With Mona, all the teachers had to do was point out that something was wrong (by echoing what she said with a questioning into nation) and she immediately corrected herself. Sandy was not able to do this, however, so the teacher got Benny to help him. When Maya made a mistake, however (and was not able to correct herself), the teacher judged that she would be unhappy to have correction from her peers, so she helped her out herself.