Motivate the hearts of Language learning
express ideas to the world in languages !
Globalization:
In our modern society, we are exposed to different cultures and languages by globalization. Globalization gives us a great opportunity to learn a new language and open our eagerness of learning a new language and become a bilingual. This is also a teaching opportunity to all second language teachers to pass their language knowledge to their students. As a teacher, I capture this opportunity to pass my language knowledge and culture to my students and prompt them to become a bilingual, a 21st century person.
Teaching Belief:
I believe learning is an endless process. People are learning in every single moment. Thus, teaching is also an endless process. Teaching is happening in every single moment in every person’s life. As a second language teacher, I am not only one of the teachers in my students’ whole life learning process, but I believe that not only am I a teacher to my students, I am also a person who guides them to the correct pathway to become a globalized and better person. To become a teacher, there are three elements that are necessary: 1) motivation 2) creativity 3) prompt critical thinking.
1.) Motivation is the most important thing to students and teachers during the process of second language learning. Without motivation, students would not able to learn their second language and apply it to the real-world. Lacking motivation also gives teachers a very difficult time to teach the second language to students. As a teacher, I motivate my students by helping them to connect everything that they are going to learn into their real life. Thus, students can be aware that they can learn a lot of things that are useful in their life. At the beginning of the new semester, I give a survey to my students to see what kind of topics that my students might be interested in, and then I create the topics, but I also put real life elements into my topics so my students can learn how to apply what they have learned in their lives. For example, “direction” is a very hot topic to a lot of students. Many students are interested in how to ask directions and telling direction in the target language. In this topic, I put local street name and place for students to practice asking directions because students are familiar with the street name and place. Using the real street name and place name in the local society, students know that what they are learning in this lesson is very closely related to their real life and they can use it after this lesson. At the same time, I also teach my students the culture and method of asking and telling direction in the target language. My students can have a discussion about the culture differences of asking and telling direction in their group so they can have an awareness of culture differences between their native language and target language. In this case, my students can use what they have just learned and apply it to real life. Beside the connection between real world and their second language knowledge, teachers’ creativity is also an important part in their teaching process.
2.) Creativity is essential for successful teaching. As a teacher, I would not only use one way to teach my students. I like to create different ways of teaching to help my students to achieve their learning goals and develop their second language skill. In my class, students can have a chance to move around and work with each other in different activities. For example, in my class, my students are grouped, and they create posters and pictures about their real life event by using what they have just learned in the new lesson. In my class, Task-Based Language Teaching plays an important role. From my class, I give my students tasks that they need to accomplish together. My students need to provide each other their ideas and make decisions within their group. At the end of task, my students need to present their products to the rest of the class so they can learn from each other. For example, in the topic of “traveling”, I give my students a task that they need to plan a trip to a specific place that they want to go. My students need to search information by themselves, and discuss their opinion of the information that they find in the target language. Through the discussion, my students can learn and practice negotiation in second language and use it in their real lives when they want to negotiate with others in the target language. Finally, they will need to present their trip to rest of the class. My students can apply what they have done for this task in their future trip.
3.) As a second language teacher, it is important to help my students to raise their critical thinking for their society and living world besides only learning basic language skills, such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In my classroom, I prompt my students’ critical thinking through exposing them to current issues in their local society and gradually to world issues by showing them video, news, and pictures about what is happening in their society and give them the task of finding solutions for the social issue. By raising students’ critical thinking, they can be a good person and citizen in this modern world.
My role:
In my classroom, I am the teacher who is a provider, promoter, assessor and resource of the second language, but the most important role I think is that I am a mediating person for students to connect themselves and the real world. As a teacher, I motivate my students through diversified activities. I also guide them how to use their language knowledge in the real-world and actually use their second language outside of the classroom. My final goal for my students is to use their second language to communicate with people in the outside world and make friends with different people.
In our modern society, we are exposed to different cultures and languages by globalization. Globalization gives us a great opportunity to learn a new language and open our eagerness of learning a new language and become a bilingual. This is also a teaching opportunity to all second language teachers to pass their language knowledge to their students. As a teacher, I capture this opportunity to pass my language knowledge and culture to my students and prompt them to become a bilingual, a 21st century person.
Teaching Belief:
I believe learning is an endless process. People are learning in every single moment. Thus, teaching is also an endless process. Teaching is happening in every single moment in every person’s life. As a second language teacher, I am not only one of the teachers in my students’ whole life learning process, but I believe that not only am I a teacher to my students, I am also a person who guides them to the correct pathway to become a globalized and better person. To become a teacher, there are three elements that are necessary: 1) motivation 2) creativity 3) prompt critical thinking.
1.) Motivation is the most important thing to students and teachers during the process of second language learning. Without motivation, students would not able to learn their second language and apply it to the real-world. Lacking motivation also gives teachers a very difficult time to teach the second language to students. As a teacher, I motivate my students by helping them to connect everything that they are going to learn into their real life. Thus, students can be aware that they can learn a lot of things that are useful in their life. At the beginning of the new semester, I give a survey to my students to see what kind of topics that my students might be interested in, and then I create the topics, but I also put real life elements into my topics so my students can learn how to apply what they have learned in their lives. For example, “direction” is a very hot topic to a lot of students. Many students are interested in how to ask directions and telling direction in the target language. In this topic, I put local street name and place for students to practice asking directions because students are familiar with the street name and place. Using the real street name and place name in the local society, students know that what they are learning in this lesson is very closely related to their real life and they can use it after this lesson. At the same time, I also teach my students the culture and method of asking and telling direction in the target language. My students can have a discussion about the culture differences of asking and telling direction in their group so they can have an awareness of culture differences between their native language and target language. In this case, my students can use what they have just learned and apply it to real life. Beside the connection between real world and their second language knowledge, teachers’ creativity is also an important part in their teaching process.
2.) Creativity is essential for successful teaching. As a teacher, I would not only use one way to teach my students. I like to create different ways of teaching to help my students to achieve their learning goals and develop their second language skill. In my class, students can have a chance to move around and work with each other in different activities. For example, in my class, my students are grouped, and they create posters and pictures about their real life event by using what they have just learned in the new lesson. In my class, Task-Based Language Teaching plays an important role. From my class, I give my students tasks that they need to accomplish together. My students need to provide each other their ideas and make decisions within their group. At the end of task, my students need to present their products to the rest of the class so they can learn from each other. For example, in the topic of “traveling”, I give my students a task that they need to plan a trip to a specific place that they want to go. My students need to search information by themselves, and discuss their opinion of the information that they find in the target language. Through the discussion, my students can learn and practice negotiation in second language and use it in their real lives when they want to negotiate with others in the target language. Finally, they will need to present their trip to rest of the class. My students can apply what they have done for this task in their future trip.
3.) As a second language teacher, it is important to help my students to raise their critical thinking for their society and living world besides only learning basic language skills, such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In my classroom, I prompt my students’ critical thinking through exposing them to current issues in their local society and gradually to world issues by showing them video, news, and pictures about what is happening in their society and give them the task of finding solutions for the social issue. By raising students’ critical thinking, they can be a good person and citizen in this modern world.
My role:
In my classroom, I am the teacher who is a provider, promoter, assessor and resource of the second language, but the most important role I think is that I am a mediating person for students to connect themselves and the real world. As a teacher, I motivate my students through diversified activities. I also guide them how to use their language knowledge in the real-world and actually use their second language outside of the classroom. My final goal for my students is to use their second language to communicate with people in the outside world and make friends with different people.
jiamin_ruan_philosophy_of_teaching.pdf |