I love English. There is no specific reason; it is like how you love someone without any reason. Learning English has changed my life; thanks to English, I have a lot of friends from all over the world whose first languages are different from mine. As an English teacher, I would love to show my students that English is not just a set of grammar rules but also a great communication tool. I am extremely passionate about teaching English; however, my own English learning was not always pleasant. Let me share my experience and challenges that have shaped my teaching philosophy.
I declare that I am a victim of an outdated English education in Japan, which was exclusively based on translation and memorization. Teachers would ask us to translate all the English sentences in the textbook into Japanese and checked whether they were correct or not. The class was entirely teacher-centered, and there was no interaction among students. However, I was too young at that time to doubt that there was something wrong with the English class. I just diligently—and miserably—followed the teacher’s instruction, believing that as long as I memorized the sentences, I could eventually master English. I was completely wrong.
The turning point was the English summer camp I participated in Canada when I was in college. I was truly impressed with the language classes, which encouraged students’ interaction and hands-on experiences while the teacher worked as a facilitator. Although I struggled to speak English since I had never properly learned it back in Japan, the teacher encouraged us to speak up and learn from mistakes. I really enjoyed English communication and realized for the first time that I was using “real” English in my life. Although it was only a one-month program, I learned much more than what I had for six years in Japan. I strongly thought that such an interactive class would be the ideal for English language learning and said to myself, “I should be the one who is going to make a change in my country’s English education.” This experience made me decide to be an English teacher.
My own English learning and teaching experience—as an EFL and ESL instructor in Japan and the US, respectively—have shaped my teaching philosophy: English learning should be meaningful, communicative, and fun. In order to guarantee what students can get out of my class, I carefully plan and implement my lessons. Specifically, I cater to students’ needs and interests by flexibly modifying the lesson contents based on Exit Tickets*, instead of blindly following the textbook. Moreover, I maximize students’ opportunities to produce both written and especially oral output through a wide variety of activities (e.g., 4 Corners*, interviews, speech activities) in order to improve their fluency. Further, I provide students with additional help by incorporating a Think-Pair-Share* technique or sentence frames* to maximize their speaking opportunities. At the end of the lesson, I let students evaluate their own performances as well as their classmates’ and give feedback to each other so that they can monitor their own learning progress, thereby becoming autonomous learners. Most importantly, after each lesson, I carefully reflect on what has been successful and unsuccessful in order to constantly improve my own teaching to be a better English teacher.
Thanks to my unconditional love toward English and great studying-abroad experience, I was able to overcome my English learning difficulty even though my initial English education was awful. This clearly shows that the English teacher can make a difference; depending on how the teacher leads the lesson, the learning can be enjoyable or painful. Keeping that in mind, I will further polish my teaching skills to help anyone who would love to learn English to reach their full potential.
Notes:
You can see a glance of my reflection in the sample lesson plans in this portfolio.
I declare that I am a victim of an outdated English education in Japan, which was exclusively based on translation and memorization. Teachers would ask us to translate all the English sentences in the textbook into Japanese and checked whether they were correct or not. The class was entirely teacher-centered, and there was no interaction among students. However, I was too young at that time to doubt that there was something wrong with the English class. I just diligently—and miserably—followed the teacher’s instruction, believing that as long as I memorized the sentences, I could eventually master English. I was completely wrong.
The turning point was the English summer camp I participated in Canada when I was in college. I was truly impressed with the language classes, which encouraged students’ interaction and hands-on experiences while the teacher worked as a facilitator. Although I struggled to speak English since I had never properly learned it back in Japan, the teacher encouraged us to speak up and learn from mistakes. I really enjoyed English communication and realized for the first time that I was using “real” English in my life. Although it was only a one-month program, I learned much more than what I had for six years in Japan. I strongly thought that such an interactive class would be the ideal for English language learning and said to myself, “I should be the one who is going to make a change in my country’s English education.” This experience made me decide to be an English teacher.
My own English learning and teaching experience—as an EFL and ESL instructor in Japan and the US, respectively—have shaped my teaching philosophy: English learning should be meaningful, communicative, and fun. In order to guarantee what students can get out of my class, I carefully plan and implement my lessons. Specifically, I cater to students’ needs and interests by flexibly modifying the lesson contents based on Exit Tickets*, instead of blindly following the textbook. Moreover, I maximize students’ opportunities to produce both written and especially oral output through a wide variety of activities (e.g., 4 Corners*, interviews, speech activities) in order to improve their fluency. Further, I provide students with additional help by incorporating a Think-Pair-Share* technique or sentence frames* to maximize their speaking opportunities. At the end of the lesson, I let students evaluate their own performances as well as their classmates’ and give feedback to each other so that they can monitor their own learning progress, thereby becoming autonomous learners. Most importantly, after each lesson, I carefully reflect on what has been successful and unsuccessful in order to constantly improve my own teaching to be a better English teacher.
Thanks to my unconditional love toward English and great studying-abroad experience, I was able to overcome my English learning difficulty even though my initial English education was awful. This clearly shows that the English teacher can make a difference; depending on how the teacher leads the lesson, the learning can be enjoyable or painful. Keeping that in mind, I will further polish my teaching skills to help anyone who would love to learn English to reach their full potential.
Notes:
- Exit Ticket is a reflection form that students fill out at the end of each lesson. The ticket asks students to answer three questions: 1) what they have learned from the class, 2) what they would like to learn in the next class, and 3) whether they still have any questions or concerns. This helps me to create lesson plans, catering to students’ needs.
- 4 Corners is an activity, which allows students to repetitively produce the language focus by interacting with different classmates. Students are paired up, and each pair engages in conversation, standing at a corner of the classroom. After the first round, one person of each pair moves clockwise to a neighboring corner to have a different conversation partner.
- Think-Pair-Share is a 3-step technique, which gives students a chance to 1) develop their ideas themselves, 2) exchange their ideas in pairs, and 3) share them with the whole class.
- Sentence frames allow students to speak English by filling in blanks shown on PPT, such as “I think ___ because ___.” In some East Asian countries like Japan, due to the cultural constraints, students are often not used to talking in classes since they are expected to be passive learners. The frames will help mitigate such pressure, thereby helping students to speak up during classes.
You can see a glance of my reflection in the sample lesson plans in this portfolio.