Mnica Tarazona Ru Learning and Teaching of a Second Language Master in Teaching of Secondary Education (English Language) University of Valencia,

, 21 April 2012

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

1. INTRODUCTION

As part of my masters degree I have undertaken a teaching traineeship at the Official School of Languages of Valencia which lasted eight weeks. My tutorship was

conducted by a teacher who taught four groups at an advanced level: being three of them the last year of the existing six years of tuition at the school, at a B2 level of the European Common Framework, and the fourth one consisting of an English for Specific Purposes course (a business English course). 2. THE CLASS SETTING

Classes were organised in a conventional way, but students sat in chairs with their own writing foldable units, so they could move around the class with it to group themselves according to tasks and activities part of the course and/or as instructed by the teacher. Numbers of students were relatively low, rarely exceeding fifteen students per class. The class enjoyed a traditional writing pen blackboard as well as an interactive digital one (Promethean), with the teacher having access at her desk to a computer and the internet, which she frequently used to expand the course text materials to other interactive resources and materials. 3. TEACHER/STUDENT ROLES AND INTERACTION

Although the teaching method was mainly that of a conventional grammar-based method, following the text materials approved by the English department at the school, the technological means allowed the teacher to bring to the class many other resources, especially media and technological ones: youtube videos were frequently shown, English learning webpage resources were also used to expand on the course materials on vocabulary, idioms or even realia (English newspapers online, TV, adverts, etc.).
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Mnica Tarazona Ru Learning and Teaching of a Second Language Master in Teaching of Secondary Education (English Language) University of Valencia, 21 April 2012

For example, the teacher accessed the following webpages to expand on the topic of money idioms: www.englishclub.com/ref/Idioms/Quizzes/Money_1/index.htm;

www.learn-english-today.com/idioms/idioms-categories/money-idioms.com, www.mister-wrong.es, etc. These internet site resources were available at the teachers class blog at www.advancedenglish2.wordpress.com, which offered lots of studying tips and further materials (as her Our learning English links). On the other hand, the course text was profusely used and, being these advanced courses, they offered a rich and balanced mix of materials and exercises in all competencies: reading and listening, grammar and vocabulary, speaking and pronunciation, all of them also with further material online at www.oup.com/elt/englishfile/advanced. Thus, although the organisation of the class was mainly teacher-centred and she directed the learning and the development of the classes, she tried and managed to create a confident and relaxed atmosphere where students could improve their skills generally in quite a balanced manner, that is, she tried to pay attention to all the aspects of language learning and language use, giving students many resources and links for further selfstudy. Thus, she placed emphasis at her classes not only on the grammar and

vocabulary, but also especially on reading, writing and speaking, by giving students compulsory assignments such as the reading of two books at an appropriate difficulty level, or the writing of a couple or more essays, articles of opinion or letters, or the preparation of a couple of oral presentations that had to be put forward to the class. She tried not to over-correct students to afford them confidence and encouraged throughout oral production of English with speaking activities amongst students in groups or pairs. In summary, we may say that variety of input was a very important factor in these advanced courses, although on the whole, the teaching was teacher-centred and students

Mnica Tarazona Ru Learning and Teaching of a Second Language Master in Teaching of Secondary Education (English Language) University of Valencia, 21 April 2012

followed in general the input provided by the teacher and had little or no initiative to introduce materials in class. Although, the teacher tried as much as possible to conduct a speaking warming-up at the beginning of the class and encouraged students to actively exchange opinions and communicate in a wide variety of topics, she did not prompted all the students equally and allowed communication to happen naturally at their own pace, which favoured the more upfront and outgoing students to the detriment of those shier or less confident ones, who rarely participated in these class debates. I consider that perhaps she should have followed up a bit more the weaker students involvement on the speaking, even if taking into account personality traits and own styles to allow shier students to be less exposed to their peers review. The class was roughly structured following the text materials, usually starting the lesson by a comprehension reading, a listening and perhaps some pronunciation exercise, then some grammar exercises, thereafter some writing and finally some speaking activities. The difficulty and in-depth level made that not all the skills were addressed in any single class, but a whole class was rather devoted to one of these skills. As for the goals of the class, the teacher did not clearly stated those, though if we consider the level of these courses such goals are wide-ranging and consist mainly on improvement of existing skills and general knowledge of the language, plus gaining more accuracy at all levels of language learning. We should also have in mind that these courses are focused on the final result of the course, which is the obtaining of an official exam certificate equivalent to a B2 level of the European Common Framework. This aspect was also very relevant at the time of evaluation, since the teacher conducted two series of tests evaluating the main skills of listening, reading, grammar, writing and

Mnica Tarazona Ru Learning and Teaching of a Second Language Master in Teaching of Secondary Education (English Language) University of Valencia, 21 April 2012

speaking, following the same format used at the official examination tests, in preparation for the same. 4. CONCLUSION: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

This traineeship has been on the whole a very gratifying and useful experience. It has allowed me to have a first-hand contact with the real world of teaching a second language and it provided me with lots of insights, tipsd and points for further reflection. For example, one of the issues which stroke me more was the fact that students of such an advanced level, who otherwise had quite a high level of language skills, fell short however on the speaking front, which did not correspond to the other areas of language. This has traditionally been a shortage for Spaniards studying English as a second language and will, in fact, be the topic for my end-of-masters essay. I would like to be perhaps a more flexible teacher, allowing students to have a bigger participation and input in the curricula of the course (bureaucracy allowing, of course!), and stressing the communicative approach of the language, as well as the cultural, social and real language aspects of it. I would also like to encourage further speaking exchanges with native or near-native English speakers, especially for an advanced course, as well as to promote the regular use of English-speaking media (news, films, sitcoms, etc.) as part of further self-study. Such tools offer an invaluable overview of all the aforementioned and, definitely, of the English language which they will confront in a real world setting. I believe aspects such as cultural, historic, political and social considerations cannot be separated from the main language skills that students are acquiring (and which are the only ones evaluated when talking in academic terms). In short, those further aspects will be the ones facilitating students communicative exchanges in the real life, which is, or should be, at the end of the day, the main goal of studying any foreign language.
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