TESOL 01  Second Language Acquisition Assignment

Written by <98th WK> YU JAE JIN(JIN)

When I encountered English, I was mid-13-year-old shy girl. I had no idea about why I had to take a lesson but just received quite expensive private lesson from Korean woman due to provide to middle school. I unconsciously was accepted as a ESL by my parents and my tutor was a very explainer and I was a faithful follower.  After 4 months, I became a middle school student, of course was a beginner, but at that time I thought my level wasn't very bad compared to my classmates. So had a little bit of self-confidence besides my English teacher in school was so nice, pretty and had good pronunciation made me studied harder. But she also was a good explainer. During my first middle school vacation, I sent her several letters in English and she replied to in English. The contents of letters weren't very special such as asked after each other but that time she became an involver to me, actually I was motivated strongly by her letters so I earned high marks in English and wanted to be a good ESL learner. Unfortunately, however, during the high school, I didn't meet such a nice teacher like her moreover had a huge pressure for a university entrance examination that caused me had lost all interest in English. My high school English teachers were super bored explainers who just let me memorized all the things by rote. Naturally my desire for learning English just vanished.

As time goes by, I spent most of my 20's in China and majored in Chinese in Nanjing Normal University but the same things happened again. Guess what?  Chinese professors were all explainers too!!! But that time I had strong desire for learning L2 or L3(Chinese) can tell 100%, it was not only under the necessity for a means of living, but also I found that have a potential linguistic sense. Since then my English teachers were most foreign friends and my learning place wasn't a classroom any more. But mostly I studied by myself in my everyday life with books, Tvs, music, movies and meeting many kinds of people from other countries and the effect was way much better. So can I be proud of myself?

Now, as a teacher, I am thinking about my teaching style even though I was taken grammar-translation methods by my whole teachers at school but I'm pretty sure I'm not the one always an explainer and  is a nice involver, an enabler. How can I be sure ? It is because I'm keep thinking what is the proper way to teaching for modern education comparing with my traditional education experiences at school. Through my over 10 years teaching experiences made conclusion of teaching beliefs. I must always consider each student's study style, a capacity of learning, learning environments etc. and then need to be sometimes become an explainer, sometimes become an involver and sometimes become an enabler. According to learners every conditions, these three things combine together plus using the 5 methods of teaching skills what we learned from the first Tesol class can lead to effective results between learners and teachers.

There is one more thing, what I want to tell is all ages and countries, all times and places, model teacher must be qualified for mature empathy, authenticity, respect and an open mind for posture of learning like learners.