92th WD T 이화(cindy)   essay 1

The first language learning experience is When I was in the College of Education, I selected Russian to my third foreign language. I had learned for over three years, but I could not speak out  full sentences and nearly not communicate with Russians fluently. Until now I almost forgot how to pronounce the words in Russian.

Let me recall how my teacher taught us : he spent a lot of class time using the board to explain things, such as phonology grammar rules. Our role was just listening, concentrating, taking notes with a view to taking in the information. After these explanation we did some practice, exercises what the schoolbook is supplied to test whether we had understood what we had been told. And the teacher also took as if by right  gave orders and were often serious. I don’t think it was a success as a language learning experience, for I didn’t get what I want .

The second experience is : In 2009 I faced to migrate to Korea , for my husband wanted to develop his business to here. Before I came to Korea , I just knew little about the language. So I had to enroll in the Korean course in a Korean language institute in China. The teacher I also have a deep impression who asked us why we learn Korean. So everyone had their goals, the teacher considered it important. In the next teaching procedures she reflected it by making the real situations practise speaking, writing, listening and reading. And also she focused on pairs or group works. Encourage us to talk Korean in front of several persons, until we were brave to have the presentation before the whole class. She gave us enough time to think about the rules we had learned, to prepare for practising. The most important point was that she emphasized that you needed not think over too much your pronunciation, for most people might not listen to you word by word . They would understand what you said by the whole sentences. It may be not good way of learning language , but it was an effective way to talk to natives not being shy or nervous for me. Thanks to her I had little trouble in communicating with people when I came to Korea.

Compared the two cases and what I have learned these days. I think education of adults has been perceived as different from education of children in both theory and practice. Adults desired more than just knowledge, and resisted pedagogical teaching strategies such as drills, rote memorization and examinations. They would like to consider the educator as a facilitator who makes resources and procedures available to the adult learner. Mutual planning based on needs assessment, formulating instructional objectives that respect the needs identified, creating learning experiences with techniques and materials. These are the characteristic of the adults.

So how do we teach the adult learner effectively :

First, we should understand the students well, (like my Korean teacher) we will meet with the one who is good at learning language by looking, recording, writing that we call them visual learners. Other learners do well in talking, listening, learning from verbal instructions from others or self called auditory learners. And the others are physically involved in learning by doing something called kinesthetic learners. My Korean teacher used a mix of media or multimedia, I remember , so it satisfies the many types of learning preferences that one person may embody or that a class embodies . Everybody are willing to be involved in  the class .

Second, we should obey the rule that how people learn : these are doing something, recalling what happened, reflecting on that, drawing conclusions from the reflection, using those conclusions to inform and prepare for future practical experience. We call it experiential learning cycle. So the traditional education (I had been taught by the Russian teacher) the jug and mug explanation-based approach is not appropriate in second language teacher. We should allow students practical experience in doing things and to explore what procedures, materials, techniques or approaches would help them learn more effectively.

So what is teacher ? I think teacher is what we can do is help create the conditions in which the learners might be able to learn, perhaps by involving them by enabling them to work at their  speed, not by giving long explanations, by encouraging them to participate, talk, interact, do things. The teacher may become a ‘guide’ or a ‘counsellor’.

And the important things are: teacher should respect their students, and be a positive and non-judgement regard for another person. Showing empathy and being able to see things from the other person. Teacher is also authenticity and being himself or herself without hiding behind job titles, roles or masks. It is our attitude and intentions rather than our methodology that we may need to work on .

Those are my ESL teaching belief.