Looking back on more than ten years of my teaching
experience in the setting of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), I think I
have been trying to adopt someone else’s innovative ideas, theories, and
methods on teaching English directly to my classes. Whenever I failed in making successful
classes with those experiments I borrowed, what came to my mind was that there
must have been serious drawbacks to
the methods themselves as if they were some kind of stumbling blocks to a prospering EFL class. However, what I understood about using those
approaches and methods was definitely wrong and just a flimsy excuse for my own mistakes.
As noted by Prator (1979, as cited in Celce-Murcia, 2001), professional
ESL teacher’s responsibility is to adapt;
not to adopt. In this respect, sometimes
I probably was not able to alter the theoretical knowledge and techniques to
fit my own students’ needs and differences. Therefore, I have learned that
teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) or Foreign language (EFL), just
as most other types of educators, are supposed to take into account the learners’
personal factors such as motivation, age, cultural difference, proficiency
level in English, multiple intelligences,
etc.
Throughout the years of my teaching experiences, I have
mainly focused on one of the most critical responsibilities of a language
teacher: to establish a comfortable situation where students’ affective filter gets lowered, but most
likely to facilitate communication among students. With this personal ground rule in mind, I tried to provide as much input as possible
without forcing the students to speak up when they were not ready. As claimed by McLaughlin (1990, as cited in
Ellis, 1994) in his information
processing model, I believe times of practice will help students to develop
their internal language, and get
ready to bring out those acquired knowledge.
Back in those EFL classes I taught in Korea, the sequencing of classes
with communicative goals used to have a flexible picture. In case of teaching students at intermediate
or higher levels, I tried fluency-based activities before the students work on
linguistic or grammatical details. For the ones who are less proficient in English,
my lessons were usually sequenced from controlled to guided to free output
stages.
When it comes to misjudgment about the immigrants due
to the cultural difference, I believe the ESL teachers should raise their
consciousness about various cultures in their classrooms to mitigate the adult immigrants’ struggle
with culture clash as well as their
language learning. For instance, learners can be asked to tell a story about
given visuals or pictures or to give a piece of advice to the person
demonstrating a specific situation or facial expressions in the picture. Also, the
culture-based activities could include dialogue journals through which learners
and the instructor exchange their thoughts and ideas in life, and timeline
activities which allow learners to reflect on their good or bad times in their
own past. In this way, the ESL instructors as well as the adult immigrants can
be better informed about cross-cultural misconception with one another while
learning English.
Lastly, I would like to encourage my future ESL
students to connect and extend what they learn in class to their real world
outside. They can make the best use of
their time outside the classroom learning the language by associating with
people around as well as volunteering to work for their own community in many
different ways. Additionally, it does
not come as surprise that EFL settings are no more recognized as a handicapped English learning situation
where classroom is the only place to meet and practice the language. Many EFL learners have already been connected
to one another on the Internet websites and social network communities. Where there is a will, there is a way to
enhance our second/foreign language!
References
Celce-Murcia, M. (2001). Language teaching approaches:
An overview. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign
language (pp.10). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language
acquisition. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.
Expressions
drawback:
(noun) a disadvantage
or problem;
the negative
part
of a situation
or something
a stumbling block: (noun)
a difficulty
that prevents
progress,
understanding,
or agreement
a flimsy excuse:
(noun) weak/ not persuasive excuse
adapt: (verb) to adjust
to different conditions or uses, or to change
to meet
different situations
multiple intelligences:
(noun) This model was proposed by Howard Gardner who chose eight different
abilities of individual learners:
musical–rhythmic, visual–spatial, verbal–linguistic,
logical–mathematical, bodily–kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal
affective filter:
(noun) This is an imaginary wall that is placed between a learner and language input. If the filter
is on, the learner is blocking out input.
The filter turns on when anxiety is high, self-esteem is low, or
motivation is low. Hence, low anxiety classes are better for language
acquisition.
ground rules:
(noun) basic principles about what to do
information processing model:
(noun) Information Processing Theory/Model uses a computer model to describe human
learning. Information comes in è
it gets processed è it gets stored and
retrieved.
internal language:
(noun) According to Noam Chomsky, every individual has the innate principles
that can be thought of as a “'language acquisition device' which takes experience
as 'input' and gives the language as an 'output'... that is internally
represented in the mind/brain.
mitigate:
(verb) to make something less painful or less severe
culture clash:
(noun) When one or more cultures are integrated into one environment, causing
disruption and challenging contemporary traditions. Often occurs in
multicultural societies such as America.
handicapped:
(adjective) less than perfect/ not very favorable or suitable
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