Who can change the world?

83rd Weekend Tesol    Julie(Kang Ji Hee)

"Men changes the world and education changes the men."

-Anonymous

If you are asked who can change the world, what would you say? The question looks very difficult and grandiose and you might think that there is a special answer.  But It's very simple. The answer is a teacher. Teacher's influence is bigger than we think because teacher can change student's mind, thought, attitude. Therefore, The future of the world depends on what the teacher thinks.

My school life has been seriously affected by teachers. Especially, My English teachers influenced my second language learning on positive or negative side. I want to offer both side.

When I was Kimhae Girls middle school student, my favorite English teacher taught English to me from 1989 to 1990. At that time, she was 28. She was so young comparing to other teacher. She spoke English fluently and her pronunciation was very clear. In terms of teaching style, her type is the integration of explainer, involver and enabler. When teaching grammar, she explained the rules very easily as a explainer. I could understand better because she used Korean when explaining difficult grammatical terms. During the class, I listened to the dialogue and repeated them. She demonstrated the situation of the dialogue and give me five minutes to memorize the dialogue and do role-play with my parter. It was very fun. Even though I couldn't memorize perfectly, she didn't blame me and involved me in role play. Lastly, She was an enabler. She assigned homework about searching the words related to what I learned. She approved I could search them everywhere, for example, T.V commercials, product names, and store signs. This self-activity made me think English everytime, everywhere. Since then, I liked English and I was absorbed in English. I can't forget this experience forever and I can't forget her.

On the other hand, negative side of my second language experience started with high school days. When I was a high school student, my English teacher was an old gentleman. At first, I was looking forward to seeing him because he was famous as a good teacher. Not long after that, I realized  he was a good teacher when it came to getting good grades in the English test. He was only good at grammar, listening and writing skills. In terms of language skills, there are listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. And teachers should integrate and balance these all four skills. However, my English teacher only focused on receptive skills, listening and reading. During the class, I listened the dialogue and reading a long passage and answered the written questions.  He couldn't try to various activities to improve productive skills, speaking and writing. Therefore, the class atmosphere was dull and monotonous. I felt that there was no eye-contact and  any relationship between teacher and students. After that, I studied English by myself without his help but it was not fun. I think language learning is the social interaction with other people. It can be achieved by two-way interaction not one way.

Teacher's teaching mind is crucial for students to learn English because they are easy to be affected by teacher. Teachers can ruin them or make them change-agents for the world. Therefore, teachers have to make students positive and enthusiastic at English. I want to be an influential English teacher.  To do that, first of all, I will establish rapport with students to understand  each other and try to improve students' four skills by applying various activities. Lastly, I also have to be a challenger and change-agent.