Reflective Essay On Past Teaching Practice In Line With Second Language

Acquisition Theories

Solheim (2017) claims that a growing body of research in classrooms has

demonstrated that teachers do make a tangible difference in student achievement. It

means that quality of teacher learning influences student-learning outcome. As a

teacher, one must undergo continuous teacher learning process so that teacher’s

teaching skills will not be an inhibition to students’ learning. From previous teaching

practicum, I reflect on my teaching practice and I discover that there are two critical

challenges that I encounter with which are limited teaching style and poor

employment of classroom language.

In terms of limited teaching style, I did not vary my teaching method according

to pupils’ learning styles. The teaching mode in class was more to teacher centered

where I seldom conduct discussion activity due to their restricted seating

arrangement. Although myriad of teaching aids were applied, the pupils prone to

hands-on activity. Application of traditional teaching style implicitly causes the

motivation of pupils to decrease and pupils cannot engage in the learning process.

This is in light with Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis that low motivation “raises”

the affective filter and form a “mental block” that prevents comprehensible input from

being used for acquisition (Hong, 2008).

In this context, to improve the motivation of pupils in classroom, learner

centered activities should be implemented where pupils play an active role in the

classroom. Challenging but appropriate activities should be designed in line with their

proficiency level. Having achievement in these kind of tasks will inculcate intrinsic

motivation and they will be passionate to learn. Positive reinforcement should also be

given when they are able to complete the task so that pupils will sometime produce

good behaviour changes (Motivating Students, n.d.).

 Moving on, the second problem is poor employment of classroom language.

Classroom language is the routine language that is used on a regular basis in

classroom like giving instructions of praise (Classroom Language, 2009). I

experience difficulties in delivering the classroom language when I realized that the

pupils showed no response when I gave instructions. As an analogy, some of the

pupils did not understand when I said ‘arrange the words in order’. When the pupils

did not understand English, they would not be able to engage in the teaching and

learning lesson and this in turn lead to not having a sense of belonging in the class

and might fear to learn English.

To curb the unclear teaching instructions, teacher talk should be practiced in

the classroom by modifying the way a teacher speaks. In light with this, Interactionist

Theory posits that caretaker talk involves simpler sentence structure, frequent

repetition and paraphrase (Miller, 2003). This helps to make input comprehensible

and in light with input hypothesis which posits that comprehensive language input

enable learners to acquire a language (Input Hypothesis, 2018).

In conclusion, teachers should use pupils’ preferred learning style as their

main mode of teaching to improve their understanding (Learning Styles, n.d.).

Comprehensive teaching and learning strategies will allow pupils to reach successful

levels of understanding.