EDC 382S Veronica G. Sardegna Fall 2009

Joe Moody Teaching Philosophy EDC 382S Veronica G. Sardegna Fall 2009

My teaching context is centered on intermediate speakers who want to learn conversation skills within the English language. The setting is a private language school.

My class is composed of ten students between the ages of eighteen and thirty years of age. The target language is English and is taught as a second language. The textbook to teach from is provided by the school. The class meets once a week for an hour.

Within this context, I have five principles related to my teaching philosophy:

Instruction should consider both the cognitive and affective needs of the students, their styles, and preferences. This can be done through instruction that is based on cooperative and collaborative learning with a learner-centered approach. Within this approach, students learn from each other as they work together as a community. The four skills are emphasized- reading, writing, listening and speaking.

I am a big supporter of the learner-centered approach. I learned from my teacher certification program (Region XIII educator certification program) that this focus is the current trend in education. I feel that education must be focused on the student and the teacher as facilitator rather than always teacher led instruction. I feel this is especially true in a language-learning classroom. Group work and projects give more responsibility to the learner and breaks the monotony of lecture-based instruction. It also allows for teachers to approach different learning styles in different ways. For example, the teacher can pair up different types of learners together and have them perform an activity that is more specific to their learning style. Different types of learning styles can be made clear through questionnaires given at the beginning of the course and by general observances made by the teacher throughout the semester.

Students have more control over the educational experience with this type of approach through group work as well as individual and group projects. Students are given the opportunity, with this approach, to be creative and innovative. Input from the students is included in the design of the class through negotiation of activities and sometimes even the structure of the syllabus and the class. This can enhance a student’s sense of self worth or self-efficacy. Approaches and techniques are used that focus on the learners’ needs, styles, goals, skills and abilities.

This is related to my context of a conversation class in many ways. There are many chances to make the classroom learner centered through getting to know the students and being open to ideas that would better serve them. Also, in conversation classes, I have found it very effective to use a lot of pair work and group work. This class of ten would allow opportunity for small group projects such as compiling information to discuss and present in conversation class. This could be done through the use of articles, books or computer research. An eye would need to be kept on the amount of negotiation, however.

There are always constraints.

The instructor should provide students with opportunities to engage in meaningful task-based activities. Through task based language instruction, it is essential that this instruction be meaningful and authentic. It integrates the four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening) in culturally appropriate ways through group work tasks. This is an integrative approach. With integrative approaches, students generally learn through group work activities. As noted, in relation to learner-centered instruction, I think group work is important for many reasons. Group work can promote collaboration between students. It can also promote responsibility and autonomy.

One of the problems associated with group work is that, often times, the students will use their L1. I have known this to be true as a high school teacher in Japan but in my specific context, I would not expect this to happen. My context is an older and, hopefully, a more mature group of students. But, of course, some would still resort to the L1.

Another point is that the students’ errors may be reinforced from other students while I am attending to another group. My group is small enough (ten) to where this should not be a problem. I should be able to keep an eye on such a small group. I would talk with a group and help to get them on track if they divert from the topic. Also, especially with adults, many students would prefer to work alone. With my context, this could certainly be the case but I would hope that the class would be small enough to get to know each other well enough to make it a more comfortable experience.

It is important for me to remember that, with task based instruction, I should explain and model the activity well and explain and describe the instructions and expectations of the activity well beforehand. The purpose of the task should also be explained and the advantages of group work should be explained to relate to students who are used to working alone. The classroom should be divided into manageable groups. Within my context, I would either create five pairs of students or divide the class into half for each group. It is also important for the instructor to make sure the instruction is clear and can be sure of this by monitoring the class well. This should be easy for me with my sized classroom. I would walk around the classroom and check for understanding. If most of the students understand the activity and there are not many problems, it could be a sign that I taught the lesson well. The students in a group should have individual tasks so that each student can be held accountable in a group rather than one student doing all of the work. With paired group work, I have found, it makes it harder for students to avoid work and therefore it is easier to monitor by walking through the classroom and keeping an eye on what is being done.

With task based language approaches the four skills are integrated in culturally appropriate ways through these group work tasks. The group work needs to be realistic and meaningful where students must use the L2 to achieve goals. The focus should be on tasks that students can engage in outside the classroom, or ‘real-world’ tasks. It is also important for these tasks to be sequenced properly so as to avoid confusion.

The instructor should offer an integrative approach that gives the learner a ‘hands-on’ real life experience related to the content of the course. I feel that experiential learning is an important part of the learning process. I feel that it is not only important for students to learn in the classroom but also to get some first hand knowledge in real life practical situations. Some examples of experiential learning could be projects centered around a theme, activities on the computer, individual research or group research and hands-on projects. Some of these activities could include field trips, role-plays, singing songs and playing games, just to name a few. I understand how important experiential learning experiences can be. I have lived and taught in Spain and Japan. I knew some Spanish phrases when I moved to Spain but I knew barely any Japanese when moved there. I lived in an area of Japan where English was rarely ever spoken or heard. It forced me to learn the language through real life experiences. I didn’t have the luxury of consulting my dictionary when I was asked in a busy restaurant what I wanted or when I had to buy a cell phone and was handed a contract. I learned that language learning through day-to-day experiences was exponential. Once language was a necessity, it grew at a rapid pace. Students don’t need to move to a different country, however, to have experiential learning experiences. This type of experience could be facilitated and administered by the language teacher or school.

Experiential learning benefits the learner in many ways. It includes real-world activities and purposes. It gives students concrete experiences to discover language by trial and error, by processing feedback, building and checking hypotheses. Students, with this approach, are able to be more of a creative force rather than reading or being told about content.

The school where I taught a couple of summers ago, the House of Tutors, thought that experiential learning was very important for the learners there. Since I chose a class from that experience for my teaching context, I think it is very appropriate to bring up that we were always trying to figure out ways to help our learners to assimilate into the culture of

Austin. One experience that directly relates to this is a ‘field trip’ that we took with our students to the public library and the Blanton Museum as well as to an informal lunch. 4)

The instructor should offer constructive feedback that is integrated with ongoing communication that intervenes when the need arises. More specifically, this falls under the category of form-focused instruction. This type of instruction is a part of what is called the direct approach.

The direct approach presents linguistic information and explains it explicitly. One of the main parts of this approach is that it adapts features of direct grammar instruction to the teaching of conversational skills. It provides focused instruction on linguistic forms, which is known as a focus on form, but it also focuses on discourse rules, pragmatic awareness, and strategic competence (Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, & Thurrel 1997).

Nina & Spada (2008) have split form-focused instruction into two complementary parts, isolated and integrated. A teacher could use both isolated and integrated form- focused instruction in the classroom in many ways. Isolated form-focused instruction can be used to help language learners who share the same first language (L1). This type of instruction could be used to overcome problems related to the influence of their first language on their inter-language. Tasks should be used that have a focus on meaning and form and should have separate activities that prepare the students for a communicative task. These activities can also help learners who do not share their L1. Integrated form- focused instruction is best for helping learners to develop the kind of fluency that is needed for communication outside the classroom. The instructor should provide both planned and incidental communicative activities. There is also a focus on meaning.

Classroom activities should include corrective feedback and explanations throughout instruction. This would relate to my teaching context perfectly in my conversational English class.

Students in my class will be communicating directly with me or other students throughout the class. Since, this is the focus of the class, it would be much more appropriate to correct them overtly by stopping and correcting speakers when they make a mistake and teach them a needed grammatical concept when necessary.

The instructor should offer an approach that is based on proficiency. This is a form- focused instruction that should be responsive to the students’ affective and cognitive needs as well as their different personalities, their different preferences and their different learning styles. Also, with this approach, cultural understanding should be provided to help students become sensitive to other cultures and to help them to become better prepared to adapt into the target-language community. This type of approach offers opportunities for students to practice using language in the types of contexts that are likely to be encountered in the target language. This type of language practice is creative and should use authentic materials with instructional materials. The proficiency based approach, like the experiential learning approach, provides opportunities for students to practice carrying out a variety of tasks that are likely to be necessary in dealing with others in the target culture (Horwitz, pgs. 58-59).

There are many tests that test proficiency in the English language. The proficiency based approach emerged to prepare students for standardized tests of language proficiency and to help them achieve national and state proficiency standards. This approach would definitely be useful to ESL programs in the public school system. My teaching context environment, the House of Tutors, prepares students for standardized

English tests. There are separate classes designed specifically for these proficiency tests but it is generally believed that all of the classes at the school will be working towards goals that will better these test scores.

These five principles represent my teaching philosophy. Although, I believe that a teaching philosophy should develop and change, these are principles that could withstand the test of time. I feel that, especially concerning my teaching context, these principles will help guide me into becoming a better language teacher.