" My Teaching Beliefs of Second Language Acquisition "

by Yoo Jin.

If Korean are asked " are they interested in learning English? ", most of

them may reply "No, I am not. " or " I am afraid of learning English. ".

Have you thought of why they feel that English is boring and scary?  I also

had believed like that until I met a teacher who made me change my mind.

I had new experiences I have never had in her class and they led me to

have interests of English.  At the same time, I suddenly realized the reason

I refused to learn English. It was due to the way of teaching English in

school and private academy. Students are influenced by the teacher with a

different teaching style that is based on informations of learners ; who is

learners, what intelligence learners have and what skills and systems are

suitable for learners.

The student's level of English is no matter about the age. However,

teaching style would be affected by it. For example, compared to middle

and high school students, adults who are learning English have any different

characteristics such as having more knowledge and life experience, being

more independent, self-motivated and goal-oriented, etc. So, when teachers

teach adult English, they need to consider what characteristics they have. It

would help teachers decide how to teach. In my experience, I have met a

teacher who really knows what we need when I was in an academy to

study TOEIC. All of students were there to achieve their goals like a good

job. So, the teacher always taught knacks of getting a high score and at the

same time, a good expression in TOEIC which is useful for a job interview

in English. Actually, it is not really important for children. However, this

teaching style led adult students to be satisfied. It would have been possible

because the teacher knew characteristics of adult learners very well.

Therefore, it is important for teachers to know characteristics of them if a

class includes adult learners.

People have different intelligences : verbal, logical, visual, musical,

Kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence. These different

intelligences need to be used in classroom because they could affect

learning styles. For instance, if a learner enjoys thinking in word or writing

a story and poem, he/she has a verbal intelligence. In this case, it would be

easier to draw him/her interests if a teacher uses saying the same things

differently and reading short quotes and interesting stories in the class.

I have Kinesthetic intelligence, so I always like working with tools and

making things with my hands. However, I have never learned English with

activities like making something and hands-on activities. In an English class,

I used to read some passages and memorize vocabularies without any

activities. It was much traditional class and the learning style was unrelated

to individual intelligence. It was hard for me to feel enjoyment of English.

So, the way of teaching that is not based on individual intelligence is surely

changed.

These days speaking and listening are getting more important than

before in Korea. That is because Korean does not speak English very well

even though they have a good reading skill. It is caused by traditional

teaching style. Korean traditional class have been focused on lexis and

grammar because of exam, while lacking in phonology, discourse and

function. In this situation, it is difficult to develop listening and speaking

skill. In contrast, Singapore would have so different systems and skills.

When I have been to America for traveling, I met a Malaysian who spoke

English fluently. So I asked him how to speak very well. He replied that he

studied English in Singapore and all of students in Singapore's school have

to speak English only and they practice four language skills(reading,

listening, speaking, writing) every day. At that time, I thought that we could

solve the difficulties of English  if speaking, listening and writing as well as

reading are properly combined in a class. So I believe that teachers need to

give students activities to use four skills based on lexis, grammar,

phonology, function and discourse.

Teaching style in Korean English class is still limited. It is absolutely

changed as soon as possible because it stops learners to develop their

ability of English. Therefore, in order to solve these problems, first of all,

the basic language skills and systems should be used enough in a class.

Moreover, teachers should have informations of learners like characteristic

and intelligence so that they show proper teaching skills in a class.