Teaching Philosophy

Student #1: I want to succeed in the TOEIC examination.

Student #2: I want to improve my English to get a better job.
Student #3: I want to improve my English speaking and writing because I
want to communicate with people and know more about their culture.
Student #4: I want to learn English because I love it.
Student #5: I want to improve my English because I need to survive in
New York!

The above conversation was collected from my ESL students who

expressed their learning needs in the beginning of the course. It shows a
picture that language is learned for varied reasons when people approach it.
Language can be a tool for communication and survival, it can be a tool for
knowing more people and culture, and it can be pure enjoyment for learning!
As a language teacher, I believe the goal of language teaching is to fulfill
learners learning needs. From there, the responsibility rests with a teacher
to create an enjoyable, fruitful and rewarding learning journey.
Language learning and teaching should be learner-centered rather
than teacher-centered. It is therefore that when designing a course and
planning a lesson, I take the following factors into account: students learning
needs, proficiency levels and learning styles. Sometimes, building a rapport
with students becomes easier for me when I understand a bit more about
students cultural backgrounds, interests, profession and talents. I also let
students know more about me and make myself approachable. Hence,
conducting needs assessment, incorporating intriguing ice-breaking
activities and creating a welcoming and respectful classroom climate
play a pivotal role in the first step to begin a course.
My classroom is an interactive and respectful environment for
learning. This classroom atmosphere is charged with excitement because
active participation is encouraged, in which cooperation and
negotiation are promoted. As negotiation takes place, students schemata

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are either activated or reconstructed, with the latter leading to learning new
knowledge. To facilitate effective learning and teaching, I see students
instrumental and/or integrative motivation as a gem, and if it is low, it is
a teachers job to assist students in finding and boosting learning motivation.
Students motivation is sustained by the dynamics of the classroom. To
create a respectful learning environment, I increase my cultural
awareness and ensure every student has his/her own place in class. For
example, in ice-breaking activities in the first class, students are to share
where they come from and what is unique about their culture.
While a learner-orientated approach facilitates effective learning,
teachers instruction also has a significant bearing on students learning. I
believe teachers teaching style is shaped by his/her learning experience as
a previous learner of English. For me, when I first learned English, I learned it
with native English speakers in an immersion environment, where
communicative language teaching was the primary means of instruction.
Not until I went to high school did I receive formal English language
education, in which the test-driven instruction led to the form accuracy
being the focus in the EFL classroom. Both kinds of learning experience
inspired me and equipped me with professionalism to help learners
succeed in English communication and/or test preparation.
In helping learners succeed, an application of SLA (second language
acquisition) theories to my ESL course makes my educational decisions
more theoretically sounding and justified. It guides me to treat my students
as individual learners and refrain myself from imposing my own English
learning experience on students. It also provides a clearer picture for me as
an English teacher to better understand how learners acquire a second
language. The SLA theories inform my choices of effective pedagogical
methods, such as lowering learners affective filter, facilitating
comprehensive input and output, providing explicit and implicit
corrective feedback, using enhancement and so forth.
In addition, the learning of a language should be contextualized rather

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than being isolated. For example, in teaching grammar and vocabulary, I
place the equal attention and time on form, meaning and usage, followed
by activities that enable students to apply the target linguistic features to
usage. In there, students get to see the meaning and the value of learning.
In teaching four language skills, not only do I give students language to
practice with, but also I select materials and design activities that are
contextualized and relevant to students life. For instance, as students
practice writing with a designated genre, they enjoy the freedom to select
their own materials and articulate the content of their interest. The writing
activity is to be extended to a speaking activity in which students present
their writing work to class.
Assessment informs me about my teaching effectiveness and students
learning outcomes. Formative and summative assessments are adopted in
my ESL course, with a variety of opportunities being purposefully designed
and provided for students to demonstrate their progression and learning in
the course over the semester. From these assessments, the individual
developmental trajectory informs both students and the teacher about what
have been done well and what could have been done better. In formative
assessment, for example, students are to interview people outside the class
with whom they are unfamiliar, based on the assigned topic and guiding
questions. The notion of language in use is then practiced by assessment.
In summative assessment, for instance, students are to carry out a project,
where they present their writing portfolio to class, a collection of their writing
in the course during the semester that demonstrates the progression they
make, exhibits the time and effort they invest and highlights the dialogue
between students and the teacher.
Learning and teaching hold hand in hand. I believe learning and
teaching, just like a language itself, evolves along with time, people and the
world. No one-size-fits-all approach is to ever fit a class, but only selective
methodologies determined by a teachers professional judgment. As a
language teacher, I view myself as a motivator, facilitator and a

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reflective practitioner! My current teacher philosophy is framed by my
teaching and learning experience, leaner-centered approach as well as SLA
theories.