TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

      The pages in this presentation are designed to reflect my belief that in second language learning the needs of the  students should drive the lesson format.  Both the Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrel) and the Communicative Approach (various) stress the  lessons must be designed to teach what is of interest to the student.  The syllabus of any lesson must be focused on the student and the use that will be made of the language by the student.

     Rather than forcing students to sit through countless hours of repetition and review, these lessons are designed to make use of simulated real life situations the student will be involved with.  The lessons are to be based on the needs of the student in the performance of a particular type of employment.  Further, the lessons would be designed with the input of the potential future employer of these students.   By combining Total Physical Response (Asher) with other communicative approaches the goal is to keep affective filters low, promote peer interaction, and stress voluntary output when the student is ready to perform.  It is assumed throughout these lessons that the students are motivated to learn.  This then assumes there will be little or no interference from personal reasons such as disinterest in the L2 culture or norms.....   Everett

Bringing into consideration my own experience as a L2 learner in EFL setting which was based on Traditional Method and compare with TPR or NA Methods which I was exposed and taught in TESL program, I found the last two methods much more efficient in second language acquisition. I believe that learning second language is achievable by highly interaction between the teacher and the learners as well as interaction among the learners themselves.  In my opinion, the main reason for learning another language is either to communicate with the native speakers in SL setting or to access the resources for academic purposes in FL or SL settings.  Thus, TPR and NA methods which are both based on communicative approach and interaction process will help students to learn the most, as well as teachers to get better result from teaching. 

The possibility of using Music, story telling, Jazz chant, Games, Drama, Role Playing and Authentic Video  techniques and activities in NA setting help learners to comprehend the language prior to production through listening and observing the body language. These techniques also reduce learners’ anxiety through indirect error correction, internalize the language structures and vocabulary through interaction, practice and repetition and finally guide them to free production through listening, reading and writing activities Being taught about how to structure a lesson plan gave me the whole idea regarding how to start and sequence a lesson from comprehension to production by using warm-up activities, introduction to the lesson, presentation, practice and evaluation as well as pacing time and coming to the closure......   Fatemeh

            My teaching philosophy is one that incorporates little bits of larger pieces.  I believe in a class that the students can have fun and learn from it.   I would like to promote a class that gives the students a chance to be expressive, yet offers opportunities for the students to listen.  Being able to offer a class which is communicative in some respects and traditional in others would be the ideal class.  How I go about achieving this is quite the task.  The combining of a traditional grammar focused and a communicative class will have its challenges.  The objective however will be to present the students with relevant and useful information.  Hopefully, this will aid in promoting an active curiosity for learning and absorbing information.  Ultimately the goal is to use this new knowledge to participate in activities, meaningfully communicate with others and to contribute to creating a better society...... Donn