As a student of the Applied Linguistics/TESOL program at Teachers College (TC), I am exposed to different approaches and theoretical frameworks to language teaching. Courses such as Classroom Practices and Practicum I: Integrated Skills have provided me great opportunities to dig deeper into these theories, to gain much richer understandings, and more importantly, to experiment on and reflect upon a lot of teaching methods in the Community English Program (CEP) offered by the college. My education and working experiences at TC enable me to realize the importance of seeing language as a tool to communicate, and thus to address language teaching from a communicative approach. As a second language speaker of English myself, I also strive to create a comfortable learning environment in which students are not intimidated by the fact that they are not yet fluent English speakers.
To me, learning is an ongoing process that takes place not only in the classroom but also in the world outside. As I look back on my own learner history, all that I could remember was hours and hours of drilling on different grammar points illustrated in the textbook. We were required to break down sentences and analyze the components in grammar jargons. Though back then I had no idea that this was called the Grammar Translation Method, I knew something was wrong, because I did not know what I was there for. Thus, as a teacher, I want to make language learning personal. Whatever that happens in the classroom should be able to practically help students when they walk out of it.
Therefore, I believe that a teacher’s role in the classroom should be one of an assistant or facilitator. Teachers should be there to help rather than push. Students are not passive receivers but active participants in learning. As the ESL instructor in the CEP, instead of lecturing my students on grammar rules, I strive my best to engage students in activities that develop in a natural sequence. With each activity students are about to engage in, there is a priming stage where students are introduced to the topic and share their opinions on it. At the end of the activity, students are asked to think about how the language structures or skills involved might help them communicate with native speakers in their daily lives. With adult students, this connection between language class and the reality is made extremely plain, so that learning opportunities outside the classroom are maximized. For example, when it comes to scanning, I ask students to come up with situations where they have to use this reading skill. As students develop this habit, they start to bring interesting discoveries to class based on what they have observed in their lives.
As I have mentioned previously, from my perspective language is a tool to communicate and learning is an ongoing process that should happen all the time. Consequently, classroom practices should reflect real life situations where different language skills are integrated and speakers have to activate all of their senses to engage in communication. Of the four language skills, reading and listening are considered receptive, while speaking and writing productive. In my classroom, I try to integrate at least one of the receptive skills and one of the productive skills in each lesson by engaging students in authentic tasks. For example, I sometimes play news clips from the Internet in class and ask students to listen for specific words. After that they are asked to make inferences or to retell the story based on the words they have. Sometimes students listen to a song and are asked to make an inference about the theme according to the title. I also have them do role-plays once in a while to simulate situations where some specific language structures might be used.
That being said, to think that learning can take place without teaching is perhaps naïve. Knowledge needs to be taught; it is the way that it is taught that makes a difference. In my classroom, I present new grammar points or language skills in an inductive way, so that instead of telling students everything, I try to elicit answers from them. Usually I engage them in an activity that naturally involves the use of certain grammar structure or language skill in the first place. After that, I draw their attention to the focus of the lesson and ask them to discover the rules themselves. For instance, when I teach simple past tense, I will ask students to tell me one thing that they did the day before. I will write down their responses on the board, and then draw their attention to the verbs. Students afterwards need to work their way through the verb tense rules themselves.
More often students want to know whether they are making progress. Therefore, I try to make sure that students’ assessment is consistent with the classroom practices. Since the lessons cover all language skills, the achievement tests should also reflect that general framework. For example, I give students information gap tasks in the test so that they can be assessed in terms of not only listening but also speaking. Nonetheless, most of the assessments on speaking take place in class, when students are engaged in pair or group work.
For me, the biggest challenge is to design communicative activities that have a focus on grammar. I have struggled a lot to come up with good tasks that are not only authentic but also allow students to practice a certain grammar structure. Additionally, sometimes students seldom produce the target forms without being explicitly told to do so. For example, I once asked my students in the CEP to bring in their own schedule for the following week and share it in groups, in the hope that they would use present progressive tense to talk about future actions. Some of them did, but others stuck to simple present tense. Perhaps it would be better to explicitly inform students about the objective of the task before setting them off into practice.
As a second language learner of English myself, I realize the nervousness students experience in a classroom where they have to speak a language that they have not yet achieved accuracy or fluency. However, being able to participate without much inhibition is an important aspect of language learning. Hence, I often speak frankly to my students about my own experience as a non-native speaker of English. I want to make sure that they know I was once just like them, and therefore there is nothing shameful in making mistakes. For example, I once told my students about the difficulty to respond to greetings in English, and a lot of students responded that they had similar experiences.
Further, as my students in the CEP came from multiple cultural backgrounds, I have come to realize the role of student identity in language teaching. Although being in an English language classroom shows that students are more or less interested in the English culture, they are almost always willing to share their own cultural practices. In my classroom, I work on bringing some cultural aspects into the lesson, so that students are exposed to perspectives not only limited to those in the textbook. For example, I may ask students about agreeing and disagreeing practices in their culture before they learn agreeing and disagreeing structures in English. Students are often excited about this kind of activity, because they are given a chance to present unique aspects of themselves to others.
To me, learning is an ongoing process that takes place not only in the classroom but also in the world outside. As I look back on my own learner history, all that I could remember was hours and hours of drilling on different grammar points illustrated in the textbook. We were required to break down sentences and analyze the components in grammar jargons. Though back then I had no idea that this was called the Grammar Translation Method, I knew something was wrong, because I did not know what I was there for. Thus, as a teacher, I want to make language learning personal. Whatever that happens in the classroom should be able to practically help students when they walk out of it.
Therefore, I believe that a teacher’s role in the classroom should be one of an assistant or facilitator. Teachers should be there to help rather than push. Students are not passive receivers but active participants in learning. As the ESL instructor in the CEP, instead of lecturing my students on grammar rules, I strive my best to engage students in activities that develop in a natural sequence. With each activity students are about to engage in, there is a priming stage where students are introduced to the topic and share their opinions on it. At the end of the activity, students are asked to think about how the language structures or skills involved might help them communicate with native speakers in their daily lives. With adult students, this connection between language class and the reality is made extremely plain, so that learning opportunities outside the classroom are maximized. For example, when it comes to scanning, I ask students to come up with situations where they have to use this reading skill. As students develop this habit, they start to bring interesting discoveries to class based on what they have observed in their lives.
As I have mentioned previously, from my perspective language is a tool to communicate and learning is an ongoing process that should happen all the time. Consequently, classroom practices should reflect real life situations where different language skills are integrated and speakers have to activate all of their senses to engage in communication. Of the four language skills, reading and listening are considered receptive, while speaking and writing productive. In my classroom, I try to integrate at least one of the receptive skills and one of the productive skills in each lesson by engaging students in authentic tasks. For example, I sometimes play news clips from the Internet in class and ask students to listen for specific words. After that they are asked to make inferences or to retell the story based on the words they have. Sometimes students listen to a song and are asked to make an inference about the theme according to the title. I also have them do role-plays once in a while to simulate situations where some specific language structures might be used.
That being said, to think that learning can take place without teaching is perhaps naïve. Knowledge needs to be taught; it is the way that it is taught that makes a difference. In my classroom, I present new grammar points or language skills in an inductive way, so that instead of telling students everything, I try to elicit answers from them. Usually I engage them in an activity that naturally involves the use of certain grammar structure or language skill in the first place. After that, I draw their attention to the focus of the lesson and ask them to discover the rules themselves. For instance, when I teach simple past tense, I will ask students to tell me one thing that they did the day before. I will write down their responses on the board, and then draw their attention to the verbs. Students afterwards need to work their way through the verb tense rules themselves.
More often students want to know whether they are making progress. Therefore, I try to make sure that students’ assessment is consistent with the classroom practices. Since the lessons cover all language skills, the achievement tests should also reflect that general framework. For example, I give students information gap tasks in the test so that they can be assessed in terms of not only listening but also speaking. Nonetheless, most of the assessments on speaking take place in class, when students are engaged in pair or group work.
For me, the biggest challenge is to design communicative activities that have a focus on grammar. I have struggled a lot to come up with good tasks that are not only authentic but also allow students to practice a certain grammar structure. Additionally, sometimes students seldom produce the target forms without being explicitly told to do so. For example, I once asked my students in the CEP to bring in their own schedule for the following week and share it in groups, in the hope that they would use present progressive tense to talk about future actions. Some of them did, but others stuck to simple present tense. Perhaps it would be better to explicitly inform students about the objective of the task before setting them off into practice.
As a second language learner of English myself, I realize the nervousness students experience in a classroom where they have to speak a language that they have not yet achieved accuracy or fluency. However, being able to participate without much inhibition is an important aspect of language learning. Hence, I often speak frankly to my students about my own experience as a non-native speaker of English. I want to make sure that they know I was once just like them, and therefore there is nothing shameful in making mistakes. For example, I once told my students about the difficulty to respond to greetings in English, and a lot of students responded that they had similar experiences.
Further, as my students in the CEP came from multiple cultural backgrounds, I have come to realize the role of student identity in language teaching. Although being in an English language classroom shows that students are more or less interested in the English culture, they are almost always willing to share their own cultural practices. In my classroom, I work on bringing some cultural aspects into the lesson, so that students are exposed to perspectives not only limited to those in the textbook. For example, I may ask students about agreeing and disagreeing practices in their culture before they learn agreeing and disagreeing structures in English. Students are often excited about this kind of activity, because they are given a chance to present unique aspects of themselves to others.