Source

Introduction

For week now, I have been through series of trainings that will help me in my carrer and among the many things I learned was skills that will help teachers in effective lesson delivery is skillful as well as skilfull use of Language for effective delivery. As it was stated during the training we learned that education is generally regarded as an activity undertaken to bring about learning or desirable changes in the behaviour of a learner. Learning cannot be said to have taken place if at the end of a lesson the learner's behaviour has not changed in line with the objectives set down at the beginning by the teacher

In a formal setting, especially in the classroom, education is operationalized by teaching and is the teacher who has the most direct, close and determining influence on the learner.

Skillful Use of Language For Effective Lesson Delivery

In the classroom, the teacher is expected to use language creatively to communicate with the learners. While delivering his lesson, he should use language skillfully to achieve three things, namely, to gain attention of the learners, achieve understanding, and gain the desired action or re-action

• Gaining Attention of Learners Through Language

An effective teacher must be an interesting speaker. Since he has something worth saying, he has to gain the attention of the learners through the way he delivers his lesson. To gain his learners' attention, he must be audible enough to be heard by them irrespective of their position in the class. He must know when to speak loudly without having to shout and disturb those in a nearby class or outside the room. On the other hand, he must know when to lower his voice or when to be fast or slow down.

To gain the attention of learners using his language the teacher must know how to vary the tone of his voice because a teacher who keeps the same tone, speed and volume of sound when talking will create monotony that kills learning more quickly than any other thing.

Source

The teacher's voice should be clear and distinct to his learners to arouse the learners' interest and gain their attention.

• Making Learners Achieve Understanding Through Language.

Apart from using the voice correctly, while delivering his lesson, the teacher should use suitable vocabulary in line with the age of the learners. I was made to understand that Post-primary school learners in my country 🇳🇬 have not acquired up to fifty percent of the vocabulary of English words. They are still not very comfortable with very complex sentence construction. Consequently, the teacher should limit himself to simple and short sentences appropriate to the level of the learners because the essence of the lesson is to communicate a message to the learners. It becomes the responsibility of the teacher to ensure that the vocabulary used is within the comprehension level of his students, New words must be carefully explained. The idea of using simple language seems to carry a different notion especially among some educated Nigerians who teel that to be simple means to be uneducated. They prefer to use "big words" to show their mastery of English Language and create an impression of a serious intellectual to the learners caring less about the understanding of the lesson by the leamers.

Also, the teacher can assist the learner to achieve understanding if he is mindful of his pronunciation and tries to control the extent of mother tongue interference while delivering his lesson especially when the teacher is outside his linguistic community. Imagine a teacher who has problems with/L/and/r/and wants to tell the pupils to go out to the field to play but ends up saying: "Crass, go out to the field and pray" instead of "class go out to the field and play"

• Using Language To Gain The Learner's Action or Re-Action.

Using language to gain the learner's action or re-action is much more difficult than the first two steps because many extraneous factors come into play. Learners' actions or reactions are affected by the teacher's authority and the degree to which they find the teacher's desired objective important. The teacher should pause at certain strategic steps in the lesson to ask questions on the lesson to test the learners understanding of the topic taught.

Source

The learners' responses will indicate to the teacher the success or otherwise of the lesson. There is no doubt that a well prepared lesson may fail to produce the desired objective as a result of poor delivery. One could liken such a case to a good cook who has spent hours preparing a nice dish but at the point of dishing the food out to the consumers, he uses a dirty spoon and plates. No matter how hungry the consumers are, their appetites would have been killed. This analogy is applicable to a teacher and his lesson. They language of instruction is the medium through which the content of a lesson is passed to the learners. The teacher now has a choice of improving his language skills to make his lesson delivery effective or killing the interest his learners by his poor use of language.

Source

Conclusion

Teacher should make use of smple and understandable language that the learners understand because they are the most important players in Educational process and no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers.

I am inviting @okere-blessing, @bela90 and @dequeen to participate in this contest.