Teaching Philosophy

What I believe about teaching and learning a language...?

In the following essay, I present key ideas and principles that I use to guide my own language teaching skills, but also to understand how students learn these languages. Not only does it introduce my own experiences for learning languages, but it draws from multiple works I've read throughout the MAFLT program that have strengthened my own teaching ability. In my experience, letting students enjoy the language and culture through games, interpersonal communication and hands on interactions is more important than just learning a language for testing and grammatical knowledge.

My Teaching Phil covers:

• My experiences learning languages: French at first, and then Japanese;

• My struggles of language learning in Japan;

• How the MAFLT Program influenced my teaching by:

  • teaching me about communicative competence and

  • assisting in my understanding of language intelligibility;

• My experiences of teaching, first in the United States, and then Hokkaido;

• How the MAFLT Program has shaped my ability and teaching knowledge.