My Teaching Approach
Introduction
As the No.1 most spoken language in the world, having a high English proficiency allows one to communicate with an additional 20% of the world’s population. Becoming bilingual for general or business purposes opens up a wealth of possibilities including new career, social and cultural opportunities. As I have been a trainer for 4 years, I strongly believe that there is no one size fits all approach to learn one thing, no matter the thing is a language or a skill. Therefore, as a professional teacher, what I am caring, passionate and enthusiastic is about providing engaging and motivating learning experiences.
Motivation is one of the key points for a learner to continue learning a language. Without motivation, nothing is desire to be done. Nowadays, teaching students in a behaviorism states are no more a good method. From my point of view, focus on students’ inner mental practice and then understand and use what they learnt is the far more important issue. My aim is to create a situation where students become enthusiastic about understanding the subject matter themselves and consequently deeply integrate new content and frames of meaning into their way of thinking. I believe that all students have the fundamental right to have access to a successful and fulfilling education in order to be productive and valuable members of society. Therefore, I constantly need to know my students’ backgrounds, ethnicity, cultures, religions and capabilities to provide quality and engaging learning experiences to engage and challenge all students.
Teaching Approaches and Methodologies
Teaching language, for me, is a kind of art that mixed with different methodologies. Therefore, according to different age group, different methods will be applied during teaching. One of my objectives of teaching beginners’ classes is The Callen Method. This method is a form of the Audio-Lingual Method and the Direct Method of teaching. The method relies on continual drilling through questions and answers in a 12-step program. Beginner students are asked a series of questions and then give their set answers. Since they don’t have a lot knowledge about the new language, teaching concepts and vocabulary will be transferred to students through real-life objects and other visual materials. During the initial stage, the Silent Way will also be a plus to support the students to learn pronunciation and spelling. Vocabulary and sentences are taught every day. Question-answer patterns will be applied during the class in order to build up oral communication skills. Pronunciation is fundamental to learn English and beginning students need to study with pronunciation, and put emphasis on practicing it each lesson.
For those students with other levels, the Grammar-translation Method, Audio-lingual Method and The Communicative Approach will be mixed and applied during the class. In grammar-translation classes, grammatical rules are essential for students and this method will help them to learn gramma systematic. Sentences must be spoken smoothly and correctly for the advanced classes, I will emphasis on Grammar-translation Method in other to develop
students’ reading ability to a level where they can read literature in the target language and also to develop students’ general mental discipline. And with the help of the Audio-lingual Method (I will use videos, a song or a recite audio, etc.) which will practice the particular construct until the students can use it spontaneously and the Communicative Approach which helps students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context.
Syllabus
A good and complete syllabus is an integral part of a planned course. The syllabus serves to aid teacher in planning and directing the education of students in specific course subject matter. According to the teaching and learning goals, a main syllabus will be established for what objective we state for students to acquire at certain stage in learning process through the distribution of different categories. In general, I establish my class in 4 parts. Firstly, main subject will be carried out from a reading comprehension or a video. In the material, vocabulary and grammar will be showed. During the class, I will emphasis on the four Macro-skills for all levels of students (listening, speaking, writing and reading) because these skills are essential to learn a language. In addition, Micro skills, which consist of pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar, will also be used as a support to complete the language knowledge. Vocabulary, spelling and grammar, for me, are the fundamental of learning a language. If you want to be good at one language or use the language properly, vocabulary and grammar are very important. In the class, the grammar will be taught completely and later on, I will set up students into small groups or pair working in order to practice the grammar through conversation or problem-solving activities. From my side, this is one of the best way to memorize grammar and vocabulary and besides, it also helps students to improve their communicative skills. I will make the classroom feel like a safe environment for students feel free to present their ideas and be creative. They will feel that it’s fine to make mistakes while talking and learning, but in the end, they learn something deeper from their mistakes. Mistakes are the way forward for students. The role of the teacher would be a guide and a resource to provide correct mistakes in moderation and make students understand their mistakes.
A professional teacher should not be a formal form of a “teacher”. The energy and positive emotion are extremely important. Students feed off the energy of the teacher. If the teacher is positive, then students are likely to be more interested in coming to the class and learning a language. In addition, it’s very important to find out what motivates your student and what works for them. Every student is unique and thus their way of learning something new is totally different. I would first discover what interests the student, what makes them want to learn a new language and then how we can work together to achieve the goals. Besides, knowing the personality of student is also necessary. Observing students' classroom performance and understanding their personality and then according to the personality of the student I would adapt my approach to teaching them. Although teaching is the main part of work, but considering the different level and capability of each student is part of the work too. On the other hand, I would discuss with students each stage in order to evaluate the achievement of the students and also adjust my approach accordingly.
The Graded Language is essential to teach a language. In every class, graded language
will be used to express or explain to the students and materials that are adapted to the level of the learner. With the helps of Modelling to demonstrate a structure for students before then promoting them to produce a similar structure, it’s important to model for the learners of low level. I assume learning English solely through text books and a formal teacher guidance, will not be entirely satisfactory and engaging enough for mostly. And I deeply believe that use a wide range of ideas and activities to learn and develop from, as well as being able to provide students with a great variety of content, and colorful enhance the learning process and future of education.
