I would describe my philosophy of teaching and learning as an “enlightened eclectic” approach.  Enlightened eclectic in this case means that I constantly revisit my “tried and true” approaches and methods as well as actively seek out, try out, and integrate new approaches and methods that I believe would function best with my given student population.  I am someone who is flexible, open-minded and also one who loves variety and diversity both in my students’ body of work and in my own.  I believe in the promotion and full development of each of my students’ various abilities. 

Thus, communicative language teaching and learning (CLTL), which involves having the learner be at the center (Larsen-Freeman, 2000) for the language classroom, is in keeping with my personal philosophy of teaching and learning.  CLTL implies a series of steps that Marianne Celce-Murcia (2000) says facilitates a student’s ability for “interpretation, negotiation, and expression of meaning” (p.15) that allows for real interaction to take place.  In addition, CLTL allows for meaning, use, form and context to commingle, promoting full development of students’ proficiencies and competencies (e.g., grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic) in the second language.   

I started life as a French teacher.  I hope to one day teach English as a Second or Foreign language to adults in a university setting.

This is how I feel on a daily basis in my classroom!  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  The trick is to figure out which one it is, when it occurs, and why it happens. 

However, one always needs to begin with more fundamental steps in order to reach such lofty goals.  That is the strength of such methods as James Asher’s Total Physical Response (TPR) and Krashen and Terrell’s Natural Approach (NA).  TPR, with its emphasis centered on students’ active comprehension through physical demonstration, allows learners the time they need to process chunks of comprehensible input without the fear of having to produce yet in the target language.  NA, with its emphasis on real communication for real purposes, helps beginning learners in particular to develop the skills and strategies they need in order to fully develop all of their language abilities.  The four principles of the NA (from Richard-Amato, 1996, p. 128), that comprehension precedes production, that production emerges in stages, that the course syllabus focus on communicative goals, and that activities should be planned to lower the affective filter, are in fact just good language teaching and learning principles.

Allowing students to develop abilities at their own rate and in their own time while still promoting self-concept and self-confidence is then the challenge for the CLTL teacher.  Therefore, the balance between competing needs/wants of students with teacher goals/objectives should be mutually established and mutually achieved. 

Feel free to email comments/suggestions. 

Celce-Murcia, M.  (Ed.). (2001).  Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3^rd ed.)  Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Larsen-Freeman, D.  (2000).  Communicative language teaching.  In Techniques and principles in language teaching (2^nd ed., pp. 121-136).  New York, NY:  Oxford University Press.

Richard-Amato, P.A. (1996).  Making it happen:  Interaction in the second language classroom. (2^nd ed.).  New York, NY: Longman.