Maxims of English Teaching

Maxims of Teaching

Maxims of teaching are of great importance and useful to get the positive out-comes of teaching-learning process. Maxims of teachings are the formulas and general rules of Teaching drawn from experiences of teachers and educationists and psychologists. The main maxims of Teaching English are given below:

1. From Indefinite to Definite

An English teacher should provide the opportunity for a new experiences. Because, in the beginning, there exists an ambiguity, uncertainty and doubtfulness in the concepts of a child he gets the clarity in his conceptions and thoughts when he gets experiences from the society. He verifies his unmatured concepts on the testimony of experience.

2. From Whole to Part

The knowledge of a thing should not be given in part first but it should be given as a whole. The full concept of a thing should understood by the learners and then the knowledge of its parts should be given.

3. From Known to Unknown

The English teacher should proceed his teaching of English language from unknown. He should impart new knowledge of language based on the previous knowledge of the students which is known to them.

4. From Psychological to Logical

The formation of curriculum syllabus, text-books and selection and gradation of language materials teaching techniques and audio-visual-aids should be based on child psychology. The logical base of teaching language comes later on.

5. From Particular to General 

A teacher should proceed his teaching with particular examples and illustrations in the beginning and then he should give general illustration and examples in his teaching.

6. From Real to Unreal 

In teaching-learning process a teacher should use the real object in his teaching in the beginning. After that he may use the unreal of representative objects in later stage.

7. From Empirical to Rational 

First of all our beginners should be introduced with the empirical principles and direct truth. After that the rational thinking should be developed. The rational thinking is a logical thinking or reasoning based on empirical truths and principles testified by experiments.

8. From Simple to Complex 

The teacher of English language should impart the knowledge of simple matter and content first and then difficult matter should be dealt with later on.

9. From Concrete to Abstract 

The abstract thoughts are imaginative, doubtful and difficult to understand for the beginners. Therefore, the learners should be given the knowledge of concrete object because they are familiar with these concrete objects.

10. From Analysis to Synthesis 

In analysis, we divided the topic into so many parts and do the part-wise analysis of the topic of the content. In synthesis, we join the parts into the whole. In analysis, the learner understands part-wise concept in a better way. Analysis is a difficult process to understand.

11. From Inductive to Deductive

There are two teaching techniques to make the English lesson a success

(i) Inductive Technique

(ii) Deductive Technique

Both the techniques are used in the direct method of Teaching English language.

In the Inductive technique of teaching, the learners get themselves associated with the concept revealed and clarified by the English teacher giving practical examples and illustration. We proceed from examples to generalization. When a concept is developed about the knowledge through these examples. We reach to the generalization of the rule of the content.

Therefore, we proceed from examples and illustration to generalization in Inductive technique of teaching. Inductive technique of teaching very useful for the technique of beginners. They do not understand the rules. technique They understand these rules through simple and practical examples and illustrations related to their lives. So this method or approach or is the best one for our beginners to make them understand the language items in an easier way.

Deductive technique of teaching is useful for the senior classes. In Inductive technique, we try to discover new knowledge on our teaching through illustrations, examples and experiments, Whereas, in deductive method, we prove the rules and principles of a particular part of knowledge of the subject by doing experiments and giving examples and illustrations.

We proceed from generalization to examples. It means the teacher tells the generalization of the rule of the content matter first and then he proves the generalized rule by giving examples and illustrations during his teaching language.