In response to Michael ('Take heart, the schools are out there' Ajarn Postbox 26th December 2012) MIchael, I have learned one thing in getting the respect of my students. I've been teaching them for nearly three years and I was surprised that I got their respect only the day after I reviewed them in O-Net. How? I taught subject verb agreement the easiest way. You might be surprised that one student made no mistake and many scored 80-95%.

To cut the story short, teach something that will give them the idea on how to get the correct answer. Provide rules, clues, word signals, or anything that will give the idea that such word or any word is the answer. Give 10 examples. One to five examples follow the same rule. Six to 10 examples follow the same rule. Give them exercises. Most of them will pass. So, I kept on doing this everytime we met (once a week). The students were behaved, interested, and liked to learn from me because they could understand the lesson, they could score high in the evaluation, and they were starting to have liking for the subject.

Go down to their real level. Many level four or five and six students of my school are at home with lessons I teach for levels 3 and 4. Set an attainable goal for your class. Not what we want because no matter how we lower our standard, it is still high for our students. We are not teaching ESL, therefore, teach easy lessons and students will respect you as a good teacher because they learn from you and you are the better teacher of English because you can make them understand. Give it a try.

Benito Vacio