Teaching Philosophy

My goals as a teacher are supporting, allowing and encouraging leaners to acquire communicative competence in a foreign language, because I believe that communicative competence demonstrates what is necessary to master a foreign language. An example of communicative competence that has been acquired is when a learner can act and communicate appropriately with native speakers without having to be too conscious about what they are saying or doing. My goals for my students are assuring that something has been learned in each lesson because I think that the purpose of each class is creating a knowledge environment, which allows each student to learn what they want and need from each lesson. An example of making sure that something has been learned in each lesson is when the student can demonstrate the learned knowledge in a situation where this it can be applied. The methods I will consider to reach these goals are balancing the lessons with activities from the 4 skills: writing, reading, speaking and listening; as well as vocabulary and grammar. I will choose topics from real life situations that add cultural and pragmatic knowledge to the lessons. The practice I prefer is at the end of the lesson when the students interact with native speakers in a situation in which they can use what they have learned and be evaluated by the native speaker. I will assess student understanding by daily evaluations made by native speakers and homework in which they will reflect on the lesson in the way they prefer to express themselves. There will also be monthly evaluations that simulate the official language tests such as TOEFL, and a group revision and reflection. I will improve my teaching by getting to know my students’ learning strategies and intelligences in order to plan my lessons, I will be in constant research looking for suggestions on how to teach with certain personalities, and I will create material from this. I will know that I have taught effectively when the learners are capable of passing official tests and have a positive attitude towards native speakers and their culture.

Teaching is important to me because I think it is rewarding to pass on knowledge that others find useful, as well as learning from them because teaching is also learning. Teachers and students can both complete their goals by interacting and staying motivated to learn throughout the course. To maintain positive relationships with my students I see their virtues and the aspects that could be improved, and try to make the lessons as nice as possible while pushing their strongest abilities and exercising those that are weaker in order to make them strong.