My Esl Teaching Philosophy

1 Mr. Tiger PSE 6699: Capstone in Post Secondary Education Dr. McNellis April 28, 2009 My ESL Teaching Philosophy As both a teacher and a student, my most satisfying teaching experience in classroom comes from a disciplined relationship between the teacher and the students. The learning environment that the teacher fosters in the classroom with plenty of materials, demonstrations, and discussions to tie the lessons into the needs of students in their daily life, I believe, develops the essential relationship. When the teacher knows how to motivate learners; how to address their curiosities; and how to lead them towards subject matters in language teaching that enhances effective learning. A successful teaching eventually makes the teacher satisfied in his or her profession as well. I, therefore, believe teaching means to expand learners’ “local knowledge”— the ideas and background knowledge— to their mutual advantages in their social world. As an English as second language (ESL) teacher for undergraduate English classes at the University of Nepal for a couple of years, I have earned an experience in teaching. I also believe that effective teaching is not only to communicate the content (what) but also to help the learners understand the process (how) and rationale (why) of their learning. For me, language teaching is an interesting job. It helps the learners connect their views and or thoughts with the family, the community and the whole world. Language has power when one uses it in social domains. In this regard, language teaching can connect and separate, liberate and oppress our social world. I believe the purpose for language teaching should be to educate, not to school learners. I taught courses like English Communication, Introduction to Linguistics, Computer Assisted Language Teaching and Literature for Language Learning. In my short experience of working with English as second or third language learners in Nepal, I always found them excited to learn English language. These courses provided my students an opportunity to exercise language learning items using technology in which students individually carried out a small project work on various assigned and independent topics, for example, how to work with multimedia, especially sound files with English native speaker accent. They not only learnt the various linguistics and grammatical concepts but also developed skills on how to use language eventually as a tool of communication in the school and the outside practically. Upon arriving to Troy University as an international student a year ago, I got a wide exposure to English learning environment among native speakers of English in the classroom and the outside, and that gave me an insight to understand language repertoire in formal and informal settings. Besides, my English language classes at Troy have further widen my understanding of language acquisition and pedagogy that the teacher uses in non-native setting. Working with international classmates and colleagues as a team work and or a group work, I

2 earned a noble experience about how a teacher successfully links up his or her experience, subject matter and learning pedagogy in the limited time of the class. In addition to English courses, I also learnt how a mentor blends students’ experience, backgrounds and cultures skillfully in terms of learning styles, materials, goals, needs and contexts of the learner from those education classes I took at Troy. Now, I have further developed a roadmap from the classes (both taken and observed) at Troy about how to integrate my experience, skill and effort to bring out the most practical usage of language teaching and learning in the context of Nepal. In my reading, I found that exams and home works in language communication classes should not come directly from the text books. Rather these works solely depend on how and where the learners produce the most appropriate language usages in the class, the community and the work. I understand the teacher should bridge the gap between the goals of class and needs of students in any language class. The most unacceptable teaching experience of mine in the University of Nepal was the traditional national level examination system in the undergraduate and graduate programs. I never found any appropriate coordination between the teachers and the Board to evaluate students’ actually proficiency of subject matters. Instead, the students always were given tremendous pressure to prepare these exams, especially by rote learning and memorization. By contrast, I was thrilled to find professors at Troy as autonomous persons in the overall evaluations of students’ achievement throughout the semester. Also the students were expected to present their scholarly and practical understanding of the subject matter rather than writing directly from the text books. In this context, I believe the job of language teacher is to provide opportunities for students to use language and to understand how language is used by others. And I believe that uses of language and the consequences of its uses should be enjoyed, explored, and critiqued thoroughly in the classroom and beyond. For these goals, our teaching pedagogy has the potential to build the bridge between what the learners have and what they need for next level of understanding. I also think that language teaching lessons should be meaningful using technology that fits into language production and usage so that learners motivate to learn. In this regard, my goal of ESL teaching for my students in Nepal is that they be inspired to employ language creatively to—i) use language for social purposes—home, community, business; ii) understand how language and individuals undergo through cultural and social processes; iii) examine and evaluate all forms of language (written, spoken, heard and viewed; and iv) understand the influences of technologies on languages, individuals and cultures. Thank you.