ESSAY 1

Knowing is one thing , teaching is another.

Name : Lim. Hyun Jin. (Diane)

86th WDT

Instructor : Niclas.

Date : March. 13th. 2013.

As I fall back upon my memories, I had much greater enthusiasm for  foreign languages compared to my classmates. It seemed that these concerns for learning languages made me absorb myself in studying English steadily.

However, I get to find myself , to a great extent, having difficulty expressing my own ideas, feelings and / or thoughts to second language learners freely in English at any time.

It seems that I have less problems deciphering the stream of speech by receptive skills e.g reading, listening than expressing all the ideas that I have by productive skills such as writing and speaking.

I willingly discuss my experience as a second language learner.

When I entered middle school, I had the opportunity of teaching classmates English. As a captain of the English class, I used to present over 10 questions on the blackboard and they wrote down all the questions in their notebooks and solved them in a self-study class. After finishing solving questions , I showed the answers to my classmates and explained them on the basis of the materials I had prepared for the class. At that time, my English teacher, Mr. Seon, as many other teachers did, was also accustomed to the lecture-based traditional ways, so we couldn't experience a variety of teaching methods like a discussion in pair or groups, practical activities or games etc. which are done in a modern class.  He spent quite a lot of time using the board to explain things that are apt to lose interests of students.

But some good studying methods were occasionally given to us by him. He forced us to memorize all the stories in every lesson and listen to tapes repeatedly and read them aloud. It helped me understand sentences or phrases wholly in a meaningful unit.

Another experience of second language acquisition was when I was a college student. When I took an English conversation class, I met a prof. Erin Jean Wannders. She always welcomed us with a smile and  was also well-prepared enough to use appropriate teaching and techniques to help us learn about the subject matter. She was trying to involve us actively and presented many interesting activities to capture our interests. She focused on interactive communications rather than on simple memorizations of grammars and vocabuaries in class. That was the first moment that I encountered a desirable teaching method. It may help me to clarify what kind of teacher I might be in the future.

When I think back on my own experience of being taught, the best instructor for second language learners is the one who listens to learners, encourages them to participate in class, respects our own views and thoughts.

We have a tendency to create a classroom atmosphere that is similar to the atmosphere we experienced as students.

To my way of thinking, our experiences can be the crucial key to be a certain kind of teacher we might be in the near future.

Education is of small value if it can not help us in the most important of all tasks. That we can state its purpose in a thousand definitions does not alter the fact that it has a supreme purpose.

I think " knowing is one thing and teaching is another."

We'll have to endeavor to be qualified to be the best teacher to understand each learner's differences and motivate him or her to approach foreign languages in a more effective way.