school. English will be taught as a foreign language with very limited or none exposure or

Transcription

1 Wyatt Taylor Teaching Philosophy My teaching context is teaching English as a Foreign Language in a Japanese public high school. English will be taught as a foreign language with very limited or none exposure or chances to use the language outside the classroom. The frequency of the class depends on the school where I work, but I expect to have at least three classes with the same students a week. I predict that my students will have a very low level of listening and verbal skills, but will have an intermediate level of grammar and reading. Since English has been taught in Japan with a very heavy focus on grammar, I expect that the students will initially have very low levels of motivation. The teacher centered approach to education in Japan, as well as cultural factors like group centeredness will affect what activities and methods of teaching will be effective. Limited exposure to English and American culture through media such as pop music and movies may have created social stereotypes that will need to be addressed in order to increase personal motivation within the students. Equipping the students with the skills necessary to pass college entrance exams will play a major role in deciding what points of the language to focus on. However, I believe that the grammar points that the entrance exams focus on can be taught in ways that students will find applicable in more situations besides tests. The amount of resources depends largely on the school, but I expect that students will have very limited use of computers and internet at home. I will have access to speakers and possibly a television set through which I can use music and video clips to aide in the lessons and stimulate motivation. Principle 1: In order to foster motivation and create a welcoming and productive atmosphere, the teacher should be able to provide structure and organization while

2 capitalizing on the interests of the class. In order to foster long term motivation to learn English in my context, I think that it is imperative for the students to come to view English as not just another academic subject but as a tool of communication. In regards to principle stated, by having the students invest in what parts of the language they learn then they will begin to see English as applicable to areas outside of the classroom. However the teacher focused education structure and the large class size limits the amount of control that the students will be allowed to decide on the material. The traditional teacher centered education structure in Japan has resulted in Japanese high school students to have a very limited view of student interaction in class. The traditional way of teaching English in Japan has resulted in English to be viewed more as an academic subject rather than a communicative tool. To encourage the students to change this view, I will alter the curriculum and resources used to meet the interests of the students. To reinforce lessons I hope to use movies, music, and current popular culture events to foster discussion and participation. Exercises will also be contextualized to show the real world application of the language in order to demonstrate the language as a communicative tool. The need to use contextual activities and language is the key factor that separates all methods from Grammar Translation and Audio Lingual Method. The reason for this separation is that it was evident that students were prone to lose interest and be unable to communicate if they learned dialogues out of context or only practiced reading and writing. Hadley also states that vocabulary and expressions need to be presented and practiced in meaningful, thematically unified lessons and students should be taught the cultural connotations in order for them to understand how meaning is embedded in the life of the people who speak the language they are learning (pg. 93 Hadley 2001)

3 The large class size limits the amount of control that the students have on the lessons, because it is impossible to reach a consensus in such a large class that has no experience with playing an active role in the planning of the curriculum. By giving a loose structure to the curriculum based centered on preparing the students for the entrance exams while teaching communicative skills, I can guide the students to learn skills that I feel are important as well as have enough flexibility to focus on student interests. The use of group work in the class will be important in balancing how much control the students have over the class. Since the students will not be used to language group work, I will begin by using narrowly defined activities in order for the students to get used to the group work activities. Once the students become more familiar with group work, I will start to implement activities that give more freedom to the students to creatively express themselves with the language. Group size will start larger with 4 or 5 students to a group. Once students become more confident in expressing their individual opinions group size will be reduced to 3. This will give the students more opportunity per person to express themselves. Hadley quotes Pica and Doughty s study that found that students had more opportunities to produce the language in groups and that these chances may have positively affected the students development. The reason for this is that these new opportunities allowed the students to experiment with the language (pg. 96 Hadley). Principle 2: In order motivate active production of the language in the classroom while still meeting the class goals correction of errors will take place primarily in the form of positive feedback.

4 In order to meet the stated goals of the class to help students become more prepared for the college entrance exams, error correction based on form will play an important role. While some theories and methods in the past have assumed that form will come with exposure and experience, the setting does not offer that level of exposure and time. In order to meet the goals of the class and help the learners become comprehensible, error correction will play a pivotal role. However, while form is important I also want to encourage the students to participate in class and creatively use the language. I strongly believe that overtly correcting errors of the learners will directly result in lower class motivation and participation. This reasoning is based in the affective filter hypothesis found in Conversation theory as well as personal experience. Conversation theory states that error correction raises the affective filter, and thus results in the learner having lower motivation and not acquiring the language. While I do not agree with the Conversation theory in its entirety, I have seen correlations in my experience where over correction of errors has led to a drastic drop in participation by students. In order to teach accurate form while encouraging creative production and participation I will use primarily positive feedback and focus on correcting errors that on level with the learners rather than demanding perfection. The reason why I will focus primarily use positive feedback to correct errors is that it is culturally appropriate and will encourage participation while teaching correct form. Japanese high school learners are notorious for their low motivation and participation. A major factor for the lack of motivation and participation in class is that the learners are often anxious about being corrected in front of their peers. In my interaction with Japanese English learners here and in Japan this trait characterized the vast majority. By using positive feedback the students can have confidence in that their production is accurate by being able to compare it to the examples. This

5 will result in the students to participate more in class and be motivated to learn the language while still learning the correct forms. I will also use negative error correction if I see multiple students making the same errors repeatedly. However I will be careful not to ostracize any of the learners. In addition to error correction I will make a point to praise the learners when accurate production is achieved to promote more participation. Another important factor of error correction that strongly effects the motivation of the students is the extent of the error correction. If the teacher constantly expects perfect proficiency from their learner, then the learners will become more hesitant to participate. The student may feel as if they are not progressing at all if the teacher focuses on all the mistakes that the learner made. Instead of doing this, I will stress accuracy for the level of the student that the learner is. For example, if the lesson is focused on one particular grammar tense, then I will be sure to stress accuracy around that point, but will not stress pronunciation of the words that the student has not had much experience with. By limiting the range of the learner errors that will be corrected, the learner will be able to focus more of their attention on producing that particular factor correctly. Feelings of inadequacy will raise anxiety and the affective filter. Drawing from Attention Theory, since attention must be paid to the new form or vocabulary in order for it to be learned, negative emotions could interfere with learning by taking up some of the learner s available attention (Horowitz 2007). Principle 3: In order to prepare the students for the test, form will remain important however to encourage self motivation and introduce English as a communicative tool, communication will be the main focus.

6 Ideally I would like to teach the class based on comprehensive communication, and not spend a lot of time on form. However, the goals of the setting are to prepare students to do well on the college entrance exams, and these exams stress form over communicative skills. In order to present English as a pragmatic tool of communication, activities will be centered on listening, speaking, and writing. The communication activities will have new grammar built in them so that the students will be able to discover the new grammar. The communicative activities will stress listening, oral, and written production. Japanese students are known to have a large discrepancy in their reading skills and their production skills. Listening activities will begin with simple and no scripts so that the students will focus on improving their listening without relying on the reading skills. I want to use popular media like movies and songs to help keep the students engaged. Simple discussion questions that can be done in groups initially will help with oral production. Since there are institutions in Japan where people can go to learn English out of school, I will try to introduce English as a medium of expression and communication rather than focus all the class time on oral production. In order to incorporate grammar education without losing the students interests, I will select activities that force the student to comprehend and produce the grammar point that will be covered. Once the students realize the necessity for the new grammar point, then I will hint as well as explicitly teach the grammar form. In Hadley s citation of Swain, Hadley points out that Swain felt that output accuracy and learning benefited when students realized the gap between what they wanted to say and what they actually could (pg. 102 Hadley 2001) Lessons will also build upon each other. Activities that require production will try to challenge the students to use forms learned in the past as well as the new form being introduced. This will help reinforce the grammar points and show how each form can relate to each other to

7 be used in a communicative manner. In accordance with Attention theories, repetition must take place in order for students to learn and remember the language. Principle 4: To promote student motivation and creative production, activities must be contextual, presented clearly, and with enthusiasm to encourage learning. Having contextual activities that are presented in a clear and interesting manner is extremely important for motivating a class of this size in this age group. The use of contextualize practice as effective tools to learn language is a common value found in theories and methods such as CLT and Proficiency Oriented Instruction. This value is clearly stated in Hypothesis 1 and Hadley clearly states New vocabulary and expressions need to be presented and practiced in meaningful, thematically unified lessons (pg. 93 Hadley 2001). Hadley supports her claims by citing Frommer who states that teaching the language in context is a fundamental value for an effective teacher (pg. 93Hadley 2001). Contextual practice will help the students learn more about American culture and will be able to see the need for English as communication tool. Having the activities explained in a clear and enthusiastic manner is important for promoting participation. This will be extremely important initially, since the students will not be used to having a class that relies so much on their participation. Initially I do predict that I will use Japanese to clarify the instructions, but I will only use Japanese to clarify not as the normal medium of instruction. Enthusiasm will be important throughout the entire class, but will be especially important in motivating the students to actively participate in the activities. This enthusiasm will be shown in explaining the real world applications as well as constantly encouraging those who participate. Within the small groups I will try to be a figure of encouragement and try to decrease the anxiety of the speakers.

8 Principle 5: Students should use the language creatively in the activities and become more motivated to learn the language as their skills grow. In order for students to learn the most from the limited class time, it is imperative that students actively participate in the activities and search for opportunities to express themselves with the language. By actively looking for avenues to creatively use the language in the class, the students will be able to reinforce the lessons learned in class as well as discover the necessity for new skills. The reason I believe this is during my own language learning experiences, the act of looking to express myself in the target language played a major role in how much I learned from a class. I have experienced Foreign Language education for Spanish and Japanese. While Japanese was a language that offered little practical application in my life, I learned much more from my classes because I tried to express my thoughts and opinions more in that language where as in my Spanish class I was content to responding to the criteria. In order to assist students, I must create opportunities in the activities where the student can express themselves. This will especially be important in the group work activities since students from this culture will be more likely to express themselves in small groups rather than in front of the entire class. Hadley note several times in her explanation of Proficiency Orientated Instruction that Students who hope to advance in their skills beyond the Novice range must learn to create with the language (pg. 95 Hadley 2001) The other key factor for students is that they must look to educate themselves as much as possible as their confidence in the language grows. I have come in contact with many Japanese English language learners. They all share the experience of having reading intensive English classes. However, those who have succeeded in learning the language all share the common

9 factor of actively looking to educate themselves. Ways that they have educated themselves range from listening and translating popular music, to going to intensive English schools. When asked what motivated them to learn past the required amount, they all responded that it was the drive to be able to communicate more in English. I believe that in order to create such a drive in students, that the learners must feel confident to an extent in their own skills. In my personal experience, after going to Japan for the first time, and realizing that I could communicate at a limited level I was all the more driven to study the language. I was driven to understand more of the language so that I could communicate with greater ease in Japanese. Teachers must give opportunities to their students to experience this type of feeling. However, it will most be likely beyond my means to sponsor a trip to America so I must rely on other ways for students to gain confidence in their language skills. By using activities and assignments that are challenging, but within the reach of the students I feel that the students will be able to feel a sense of accomplishment. The use of real life situations will also be a useful tool in helping students become more confident in their language use. Another way that I can help motivate students to learn past the class is to equip them with learning strategies. By equipping them with effective language learning strategies, the students will be better equipped with skills to pursue the language outside of the classroom. Their age group and culture makes explicit teaching of these strategies possible, but I will do so only towards the middle to the end of the year unless I see a need for it earlier. By waiting, the students will be able to concentrate on the activities instead of the learning process. However, I want the students to know the reasons behind the activities so that they can use the same strategies individually.