My Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy can be summed up by the words of George Evans,

Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or in the same way. My goal as
a teacher is to figure out how to creatively meet the needs of each and every student,
creating opportunities to approach the same material in multiple ways. I achieve this goal
through the use of tools like needs analyses. I strive to make learning fun and exciting in
order to help students stay motivated, as facing the task of learning a new language can
be daunting. Additionally, I believe teaching is not just about disseminating information;
it is about facilitating knowledge, while inspiring a thirst to learn more. As a language
teacher, I believe my role is to provide comprehensible input, authentic meaningful
activities, and examples of native competence. However, I think being a facilitator of
knowledge rather than a dispenser of knowledge is particularly important when teaching
language. In order for students to learn English, they need ample opportunities to practice
using of the language, in addition to reading and listening in the target language. For
example, when I was studying Spanish, I understood quite a lot of what I heard and read.
But when it came to speaking and writing, I was forced to negotiate meaning, form, as
well as taking into account the connections between meaning and form while noticing
gaps I had in my interlanguage. I welcomed corrective feedback to help me through this
process. The more language learners are able to practice this difficult task, the less of a
cognitive load the task will require, and the more automatic the process becomes. While
in the classroom, I want to provide my students with as many activities as possible that
incorporate opportunities for both input (listening and reading) and output (speaking and
writing) of English, while giving them corrective feedback and embedded formative
assessments to help them determine what can and cannot be done in the language. I
believe the flipped classroom best facilitates this process. The flipped classroom uses the
benefits of technology to provide students with input outside of the classroom so that they
can spend the majority of their time in the classroom practicing the language in an
environment where they can receive corrective feedback.

In regards to classroom environment, I try to establish a safe space to foster a

feeling of community in the classroom as early in a course as possible. Adults learn
through doing, and part of practicing is making mistakes. Making mistakes helps to
facilitate improvement of language ability as adult learners need negative evidence to
determine what can and cannot be done in a new language. Additionally, mistakes often
bring about noticing of the learner to a given form they have not yet fully acquired.
Additionally, I agree with aspects of both the input hypothesis (Krashen, 1985, 1992),
and the output hypothesis (Swain, 1985, 1995). Learners need to be exposed to authentic
input in context in order to fully acquire a language. However, I do not think input is
sufficient. I believe that in order to recognize gaps in their understanding and test their
inter-language hypotheses, students need to be pushed to create their own free
constructed output. I also realize that each of the learners in my classroom is unique in
what they are ready to learn as well as in the development of their inter-language. When
possible, rather than expecting students to adhere to a synthetic exterior syllabus, I would
rather create lessons that reflect each students internal personal language needs.
Therefore, in addition to the flipped classroom, I believe using task based language
teaching techniques to efficiently meet the needs of every learner in the classroom
regardless of language level or materials. Through the use of technology in the form of
the flipped classroom, as well as using TBLT techniques, I strive to create a classroom
where language learners can try, fail, and flourish in their endeavors of learning a
new language.