Teaching Philosophy

Instructor of Spanish

As a language instructor, I define second-language acquisition as the process through which students mediate communicative methods in a foreign language by promoting diversity and inclusion. Instead of presenting Hispanic cultures as different from that of American students, I prefer to embrace our similarities instead of our differences. As a result, students learn to see people from distinct cultures as equals instead of as others. Personally, I believe this to be a more effective way of creating an inclusive learning environment because it establishes bonds between different groups. Therefore, I promote inclusion by finding common grounds between individuals, which can only be achieved by successfully engaging students in learning.

As digital natives, today's generation of students could benefit from a multiliteracies approach. Therefore, we must expose students to various authentic texts in the target language (e.g., written, visual, auditory) to trigger different learning abilities. Forbidding the use of technology is detrimental to their instruction because it prevents them from taking learning beyond the classroom in both the real and the virtual world. Furthermore, to enable students' competency in the target language, I follow ACTFL's standards and modes of communication to engage them in interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational communication. These modes of communication should be presented in a welcoming environment and must be meaningful to the learner. In other words, it is crucial for students to feel a sense of belonging in both the classroom and the class content. In this fashion, the bond between students and the target language is strengthened.

This instructional approach requires that the instructor serves as a facilitator who provides students with the needed tools for language learning. More precisely, every lesson must be structured to meet an objective. In addition, objectives must translate into communicative goals and not to grammar aspects because that would give students the notion that they will be memorizing grammatical patterns instead of preparing them for real-life situations. Although grammar is essential, it should be taught as a concept and be used in a context. Learning by Design, PACE, and genre-based instruction are frameworks and approaches that can help achieve this goal. In short, students activate their previous knowledge by experiencing what they know about the objective before being exposed to an authentic text. Second, students experience the new through conceptualizing by naming and theory, analyzing critically and functionally, before applying appropriately and creatively. To further enhance diversity and inclusion, I create activities where students collaborate, thus encouraging cooperative learning. In this way, students work jointly to accomplish a shared learning goal in a student-centered setting.

Moreover, formative and summative assessments help ensure students' performance and language acquisition. Formative assessments reflect on what must be reinforced before the following objectives set. When possible, for summative assessments, I prefer the production of a multimodal text where students apply their knowledge to engage in the three modes of communication. In this way, assessments complement the learning environment.

Lastly, besides promoting diversity and inclusion, my ultimate teaching goal is to produce intellectually-independent students. Developing independent thinkers is crucial for today's society. We need to prepare students for citizenship outside the university. By learning a second language, students take on worldviews from around the Hispanic world, become more open to different cultures, deepen themselves in these cultures, and, thus, independently continue learning outside the classroom. To conclude, there is no greater satisfaction to see former students achieve great things once they are out in the workforce.