Teaching Philosophy Statement

As a language teacher, my goal is to show students an appreciation for all languages by creating a linguistically and culturally diverse learning environment. I wish for my students to understand that no one language is better than another and that even one language can be very diverse.

I believe that language is learned best through interactive, communicative instruction. Language is not grammar; language represents people communicating with each other, which is evidenced by the ever-changing nature of languages. It is not enough to memorize hundreds of words or simply work on grammar drills; language learning happens through interaction. Communicating with others is what helps students remember a language and grow in proficiency. This means that as a teacher, I strive to create a communicative classroom, where students are provided opportunities for interaction. Every time a grammar point, content, or task is taught, students also use or analyze the new information through communication in pair, groups, or whole-class work. In one lesson plan I created, students talked about their aches, completed an online exploratory activity in pair work, and another information gap activity also in pair work. To create an interactive classroom, I keep in mind three ideas:  planning, empowerment, and support.

A good teacher has specific goals and objectives when putting together a curriculum, getting ready for a course, or planning a lesson. When I plan a lesson, I incorporate a variety of techniques – from controlled and mechanical to open-ended and communicative. This is one of the ways my students get the chance to practice learning language in the style that fits them best. I use technology in many of my teaching activities. Technology has been proven to be essential in language learning - students can practice reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, and vocabulary. More importantly, technology gives students the opportunity for interaction, cross-cultural learning, and empowerment.

Empowerment is the next point in my teaching philosophy. I provide my students with choices in their learning. For example, they can choose which country they’d like to study, what topic they’d like to present on, or how they’d like to present a project. This encourages them to take charge of their learning and to develop their language identity.

Once classes start, a teacher needs to present clear teacher, student, and classroom expectations. I create these together with my students to once again, empower them to take charge of their learning. At the same time, I want my students to know that I care about them and that I am there to support them. Sometimes learners struggle, and I enjoy helping students overcome obstacles they might be facing. I try to get to know my students and tailor my instruction to their needs and interests. To support them further, I give constructive feedback on their progress.

I am a proponent of following an informed eclectic approach to language instruction (Brown & Lee, 2015. I try to incorporate strong elements from various language teaching methods. In one lesson I created, there were elements of TPR when students were counting while setting the table and cooking. In another lesson, I familiarized students with Russian vocabulary through content-based and task-based instruction. Project-based learning is a strong alternative to extended testing to determine what students have learned.

I believe that incorporating authentic texts is important for acknowledging the cultural and linguistic varieties of a language. Sometimes I challenge my students with language just above their proficiency level and encourage them to use top-down and bottom-up processing to make sense of the text. 

From time to time I create lessons based on the PACE model (Shrum & Glisan, 2016), standing for Presentation, Attention, Co-Construct, and Extension Activities. PACE is a story-based framework for a unit of study that is carried out in multiple lessons over several days and is a collaboration between learners and the teacher. One lesson I designed was for a bilingual English-Spanish 6th-grade context. In this lesson, I use a short comic story to teach Spanish direct object pronouns. First, I situate the story in Venezuela through a Venezuelan song and other activities. I include activities where students work together on discovering the grammatical rule themselves, from the story. Lastly, I include an exit ticket at the end of the lesson to assess student progress, which will help to structure the next lesson.

Another value I have is flipped learning, which I incorporated into a lesson plan by having students learn vocabulary ahead of the class session so that they would be prepared to use it in class in communicative ways. I hope that by using an informed eclectic approach, students are motivated and encouraged.

I desire to meet students where they are and to create lessons based on revolving needs. This belief is supported by concepts of differentiated instruction and translanguaging pedagogy. Both concepts account for learner differences. I differentiate instruction by planning to meet the needs of students at different proficiency levels, as well as by providing students with choices. I give students choices in different ways, from small choices like what box they would like to click on in a game, to larger ones, like the topic for a project. My goal is to use as much L2 in the classroom as possible, but when I use the L1, I strive to use it in a principled way, as taught by translanguaging pedagogy, which proposes using more than one language in instruction, in a principled way. My goal is not to rely on the L1 for translation of what I just said in the L2 but to use it where it will be most helpful, such as metalanguage and intercultural aspects.

Finally, I believe that a great teacher is also a student, and I consider myself a lifelong learner. Even though I have some knowledge and experience, I realize that I will continue to develop as a teacher. I am always open to new evidence and ideas - there is still so much to learn! I hope that my current and future students are also inspired to continue learning beyond the classroom.

RUS 101 Internship Reflection

GIVING AND MODELING DIRECTIONS 

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from this internship was how to give directions to students who are just starting to learn Russian. I know it is important to use as much target language as possible, but it is a balancing act between comprehensible input and overwhelming “input”. I noticed that the instructor often used one-word directions, which I did not think of before. Naturally, she used gestures and facial expressions a lot. For example, instead of saying something like “Ask a partner how they are feeling and give an answer as well”, in either the L1 or the TL, the instructor used the following sequence: 

1. Hold up both hands in “talking” positions, facing each other.

2. Move left hand as if it’s talking and say, in the TL, “How are you?”.

3. Move right hand as if it’s talking and say, in the TL, “Good. How are you?”.

4. Move left hand and answer in TL “OK”.

5. Look at students, then move both hands and say, in the TL, “Let’s talk” (which is one word in Russian). 

On the days I taught, I used this technique as well (except at the end of the term, when I would just show the slide we have been using and say, in the TL, “Let’s talk in pairs. How are you?”. 

There were many challenges I came across in giving directions because I am a native Russian speaker and have no experience teaching a classroom full of adult beginners. For example, sometimes I would use too much English when giving instructions. I am grateful that the instructor would email me afterwards with tips on how to use more TL. The instructor would also let me know when I used too much TL, or in a way that was overwhelming. Sometimes, I would not give enough instructions before a communicative activity and I would end up having to backtrack during the activity. One tip that the instructor gave me to overcome all three of these challenges was to model with her what students needed to do. Finally, to prevent these challenges, I tried to carefully observe the instructor, take notes, and copy when it came time for me to teach. 

ADAPTING TO STUDENT NEEDS

Initially, the instructor and I had planned to incorporate plenty of cultural exposure through daily routines. We had “City of the Day”, “Weather of the Day”, “Number of the Day”, and “Word/Phrase of the Day”. Four days a week, we would start the first five-or-so minutes of class with these. We had planned them to complement each lesson. Students seemed to be accepting of the daily routines. However, by the middle of the term, the instructor realized that this specific class would benefit more from repetitive drills than from the daily routines. About half the class was still struggling with the alphabet well into the middle of the term. At the same time, there were other students who were far ahead of the struggling students. This made a very non-homogenous class in terms of student needs. Her other RUS 101 section was a lot more homogenous, according to the instructor (I did not attend the other section). Overall, that class was right on track, for the most part. 

For this reason, the instructor took away the daily routines. Instead, she provided more scaffolding and repetition. She also asked me to assist the two lowest-achieving students with all in-class work. She utilized pair/group work often, and put me with those two students. She advised that I spend more time decoding words with them (learning to read), and then quickly turn to completing the questions before the allotted time for the assignment ran out. Knowing that we would not get through all of the questions, she would call on the two students to give answers to the second or third question when we would come together as a class to go over the answers. On the days I taught, she did the same.

At the same time, to meet the needs of the more proficient students, every day she wrote on the board extra workbook assignments they could work on if they finished early. Though this might sound repetitive and uninteresting for them, they too needed the extra assignments. Ideally, the extra work would have benefited all the students, but it was not possible to cover all the required material by spending so much time on every topic. As a side note, the instructor found that many students had a difficult time doing homework, missed class a lot, and were not active participants in their language learning journey. This might be the result of the pandemic and the effects of remote learning. In order to help and motivate students, the instructor opened up more office hours in the last few weeks of class and invited students to come for extra support.

TRYING OUT NOVEL TECHNIQUES/ACTIVITIES

This theme relates more to my own teaching. On the days I taught an activity or a whole class session, I wanted to practice the techniques and strategies we had learned in the LTS program. I could have simply taught the activities from the textbook, but I know this is not a good idea for multiple reasons, one of them being student motivation. It is demotivating to only be completing worksheets. The instructor also encouraged me to incorporate more communicative activities where the textbook did not provide any, or modify the ones the textbook provided. Looking back, some things I tried out were successful, while others needed a little bit of modifying. 

One successful technique I learned in one of my classes was to ask students to close their eyes and give a thumbs up, to the side, or down to a specific question. I decided to use this as a way to gauge how much explanation I would need to do of the grammar point students were supposed to learn by completing homework the night before. At the beginning of that class session, I asked, In English, for students to close their eyes and give me a thumbs up if they completed the homework and a thumbs down if they did not. I quickly explained that this was so that I could see what to go over or not. Students quickly responded, many with a thumbs down, which means this was a successful technique in that it was not face-threatening. I thanked them and went into the lesson using as much target language as possible.

I had previously learned about fluency circles/lines. I enjoyed participating in them, and I feel they are a great way to practice fluency, as the name implies. I decided to try it out in Week 10, when students were learning about the first-person form of verbs in present tense. Instead of matching names of characters from the textbook with what they would say to the question of “What are you doing?”, as the workbook suggested, I modified this into a fluency circle by passing out cards with images of the characters and a short description of what they were doing, in third person. Before this, we practiced as a class saying the phrases students would be using in first person. When I was planning the lesson, I decided to use a timer, as was done when I learned about fluency lines. However, when I put this into practice, I quickly realized that the timer was not useful in this case. I first changed it to less seconds, but students still finished early, so I abandoned the timer altogether. Afterwards, the instructor suggested that the timer is useful with open-ended questions, but since students were giving a close-ended response in this case, the timer was not necessary, especially because students in first term cannot say much past 20 seconds. Teacher observations were enough in this case. I found her observation to be very helpful.

I believe this class was a wonderful experience for me to try these techniques and activities. Knowing the theories of language teaching is good, but being able to use them successfully is achieved through trial and error. I am grateful for this experience, and thankful to my program director and the language instructor. I learned a lot from the instructor about how to teach Russian to those just beginning. There is more trial and error ahead for me (frankly, it probably takes a lifetime to become a great teacher), but I feel like I learned a great deal through this experience!