My Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Purpose:

I love teaching as much as I love learning. Learning a language is a fascinating way to engage in another culture, to open your mind, enhance personal skills, learn aspects of your own identity and character and ultimately find out who you really are. By learning, you feed your personality traits with positive aspects, and by having a mentor, a teacher, you can explore a new world. Learners open their world horizons by diving into a new language and exchange ideas, feelings and opinions with their teacher and with other learners. Being a teacher makes me feel like a significant part of someone’s journey into this new world. I think of myself as a guide and a leader, a companion and a friend who holds the learner’s hand to explore together a new adventure.

My short-term teaching purpose is to provide a safety net for my learners, to help them understand that they can and should make mistakes in the process of exploring this world and at the same time make sure they don’t get lost in the way. And, since learning and teaching is a two-way journey, I dive into the learner’s language world and the learner dives into mine. The learner and I become partners, we share opinions, even life skills and personality traits. Therefore, my long-term purpose is that my learners understand that learning a language is a journey and might never stop even after you have reached the destination. I believe that you constantly learn, you learn while you teach and you teach while you learn. Learners are great teachers themselves and after all, language is a two-way sport. My ultimate goal is to promote the learner’s autonomy, so as they continue to learn, read and take risks even if nobody is around.

Teaching Style

The Communicative Approach (1980) aligns more with my teaching style. I currently teach adults and university students and I generally believe that speaking the target language in the classroom and teaching all four skills (Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking) is essential, so that the learners actively participate and acquire language. It is also vital that the learners develop skills which are beneficial to them outside the classroom. For this reason, I prefer incorporating authentic materials whenever possible, such as TED videos, news podcasts, newspaper articles, blogs and try to focus on subjects that are interesting to the learners. That said, I also do incorporate techniques from the Comprehension Approach (1980) to make meanings clear and I apply positive reinforcement from the Affective Humanistic Approach (1970), so that my learners feel comfortable and engaged.

Teaching Techniques

When teaching I use a variety of techniques in order to adapt to my students’ learning style as much as possible. First of all, I teach and facilitate communication in the target language. I also use authentic materials whenever possible and whenever I teach to more than one student, I take the chance to promote pair work and cooperation. When I teach in a classroom, I promote share activities and when I teach online, I have the chance to do this via Virtual Breakout Rooms (feature in many virtual classrooms, such as Zoom). Activities, such as gamification and role-playing are for me great tools to increase students’ motivation and increase the speed of learning. Moreover, lowering the affective filter as much as possible, helps my students participate more. Last, but not least, I am not in favour of formative assessments, therefore I prefer assessment techniques such as peer review, presentations, essays, surveys and open-ended questions. I also use polling and online tools, such as Miro, Quizlet and Kahoot that make the lesson fun and interactive for the learners.

Theodora Feleri