Teaching

The first artifact is my teaching philosophy, which provides insight to readers about my beliefs regarding teaching and learning, not only as a language teacher but also as an early childhood educator. I highlight the importance of play, as it is a fundamental aspect of being human, and can also be attributed to being a precursor to culture as it allows for the participants to express their interpretation of the universe (Reinhardt, 2019). In my teaching philosophy, I also outline how language is the most powerful cultural tool in stimulating children’s socialization and self-actualization as they interact with their peers and adults in their lives (Vygotsky, 1967; Broadhead, 2006). Furthermore, I draw attention to how I aim to construct engaging and interactive learning environments for my students, and by allowing them to participate in rigorous activities through the utilization of scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978), their autonomy and motivation in the process of learning would enhance throughout their lives (Ali et al., 2018). As a teacher, I emphasize my role in the classroom as the facilitator of knowledge rather than the sole director. Attributes of facilitation are often evident upon in my teaching as I place importance on the principle of interaction within the classroom, where students acquire new skills, knowledge, and cultural understanding through communicating with their peers (Walsh, 2011). The principle of interaction is further reinforced by discussing the communicative language teaching approach (Canale & Swain, 1980) where I explain that the attainment of language competence transcends beyond grammatical aspects alone and that it is important for learners to be provided with the opportunity to “play” and experiment with language communicatively in a manner that mirrors real-world contexts. Through doing so, my learners can realize the important role of language in their lives and its intersectionality with culture. 

The LTS program has provided us with various opportunities to operationalize our theoretical knowledge and put it into practice. During LT 539 (Design for Teaching Pronunciation), I had the opportunity to tutor Chea, an international student based in China on Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation. As mentioned in the tutoring report, conducting a needs assessment (Graves, 2014) was a crucial precedent in designing the goals and learning outcomes for the tutoring sessions. Throughout the first tutoring session not only was I able to examine the subjective goals of the student and the specific language skills he aimed to focus on, but the needs analysis allowed me to acquire concrete linguistic data and I was able to determine suitable objective needs (Brown & Lee, 2014). Although this student had no prior experience with Arabic, his multilingual background allowed me to effectively utilize the principle of interlingual transfer (Banathy et al., 1966) by first examining the phonological system of the languages he spoke: English, Teochew, Mandarin, Khmer, and Vietnamese. By asking the learner to utilize each language in a meaningful and conversational manner, I was able to not only ensure high levels of engagement throughout the needs assessment but I also was able to capture a range of phonological interferences that could potentially occur due to my learners’ language background. The needs assessment also demonstrated that Chea had difficulty differentiating between the consonant sounds /ḥ/ and /h/, and thus the second tutoring session focused on targeted exercises to improve his pronunciation and listening discrimination of these two pharyngeal consonants. The third tutoring session served as a challenge for myself and the learner, where I taught an Arabic suprasegmental feature pattern that occurs in /al/ definitive article. Throughout these tutoring sessions, I utilized the five-step communicative framework (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010), and ensured that Chea was an active agent throughout the learning process by having him apply the newly acquired language to express his interests and participate in the target language communicatively.  

In LT 539 I also had the opportunity to teach Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation to my classmates, and through a teaching demo reflection, I examined my facilitation of the brief lesson. This teaching demo was oriented toward young learners, and thus throughout this lesson, I demonstrated effective classroom management techniques by maintaining an enthusiastic and optimizing demeanor through my “teacher voice” and body language (Brown & Lee, 2014). I also utilized a variety of multisensory reinforcement methods (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010) by having learners feel their throats to differentiate the place of articulation, internalize sounds through memory pegs (Firth, 1987), and refer to visual diagrams. Throughout my facilitation of controlled practice, I ensured that the principle of automaticity (Brown & Lee, 2014; DeKeyser & Criado, 2013) was met allowing minimal time for the learners to overanalyze the phonological features of /h/ and /ḥ/ as they produced them. Through this inductive process, my classmates were able to experience a naturalistic language learning context which effectively allowed them to focus on the function of linguistic input, and later engage in meaningful output through guided and communicative practice. Through this teaching demo, I was able to reflect on the importance of providing learners with the opportunity to interact with one another, and exchange information in the target language.