CONCEPTUALIZING TEACHING ACTS
1. What do you usually do as
teacher? With what kind of rationale?
My experience as an English teacher has given me a
wide range of elements to support the idea of living my professional art
surrounding a single word: ART. Going through a lot of circumstances has
supported my own idea that learning English as a foreign language has to be
more a delightful experience, rather than an academic process to complete a set
of requirements
As
explained in my teaching metaphor, I always squeeze the brain of my students.
Having sequenced knowledge, most of the students where I am working now, sink
when facing real situations, what we know as Problematic Situations. So, my
students have to push themselves when giving an opinion, at the same time I
offer exercises to enjoy the language learning.
2. What is your mind
engagement like in the professional exercise of teaching?
Constant
reflection is my personal law when facing the teaching epoch (Pre – while –
post). Since entering the current master’s program, I have deeply understood
reading, studying beyond the basic requirements and going deeper into
information, is the key to succeed in this field (As in any other I guess).
This is why, my mind engagement focuses on constantly improve the activities I
have found meaningful in different groups. I like mastering activities and not
changing just by fashion.
3. How would you characterize your
professional, personal and experiential knowledge of teaching?
There is one key factor that I have learned to value
though experience: EXPERIENCE. Regardless the repetition of the word, my
personal development has been really enriching due to those mistakes I have
made since the beginning of my days as an English teacher. Step by step, mistake after mistake, has led me through
an experiential path that has given me a delightful experience when facing any
group of students, whether they like English or not.
4. How do you
see the relationship between theory, research and practice?
There is
something basic when moving forward in your life: You need to know the history,
in order not to commit the same mistakes, but to improve the good results you
have already had. In this way, practice of teaching English needs to go through
an initial stage of understanding what has already happened in a particular
context. In this sense, after consulting the theory, research on-action and
research in-action is really important to understand your students’ interests. Once
you know what kind of fruits your students like, you can create the best fruit
salad to delight your students’ palate.
5. To what extent is there a
cause-effect relationship between teaching and learning?
Learning
is a constant process that can or cannot depend on teaching. Of course, when
relating teaching to learning, there is going to be a highly noticeable
improvement, but only when contextualizing the knowledge in matter. To example
this, teaching seasons in Neiva is kind of low-representative, than taking Latin-American
students a whole year to the US, where they
will feel all 4 seasons, instead of learning them by heart. This is why,
teaching needs to be contextualized to become some kind of acquisition.
REFERENCE
REFERENCE
Kumaramadivelu,
B (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. Yale
University Press
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