My approach so far when teaching English

Studying theories, methods and approaches makes me realize that there are several techniques to achieve success in our English lessons. Having got all this new information, now it is the moment to start thinking about what I have been doing when teaching English. 💭

I remember the first lesson I delivered, my student was in 5^th of Primary and he was learning modal verbs. How could I help him? The first thing I did was looking for grammar activities such as fill the gaps and even I did my own activities, but in the same format. I thought this was innovative. I was not right. Then, I had more students and I began improving my methods: one day, we play games while speaking, another we did role-play, another listening and understand…

Nowadays I realize that I had (and I have now) a kind of eclectic approach, which is defined as “the eclectic approach is the label given to a teacher's use of techniques and activities from a range of language teaching approaches and methodologies. The teacher decides what methodology or approach to use depending on the aims of the lesson and the learners in the group. Almost all modern course books have a mixture of approaches and methodologies.” (British Council)

I consider this approach the most useful in our lessons due to the fact there are some strengths and weaknesses of a single theory based method. You cannot rely only in one method or approach because every skill is different and, what is more important, every student learns in one way, so one method can be effective in one student but not in another one. 

And you? Which approach are you using in your English lessons? Are you lover of any one? Comment below! 👇🙈