Beliefs & Practices
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to take a group of students on an exchange trip to France, where students stayed with host families and interacted with local teenagers. Taking my students to France on this exchange was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career thus far. As I watched my students work to use their language skills to communicate and broaden their horizons, I firmly grasped my fundamental beliefs about language education:
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Language learning is about relationships and communication.
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Language learning should expand students’ worldviews and promote open-mindedness.
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Through my experiences in the MAFLT program, I have been able to solidify these beliefs and put them into practice. In particular, I have begun to focus specifically on developing student intercultural competence through social justice education; this has become a cornerstone of my teaching philosophy. Read more about these beliefs by exploring my Experiential Module.
HOW I PROMOTE PROFICIENCY
To promote proficiency in my classroom, I implement a variety of methods in a postmethod pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu, 2001). Drawing upon Krashen’s (1982) Input Hypothesis and Swain’s (1985) Output Hypothesis, my classroom contains both high levels of L2 input and the expectation of pushed output. While I occasionally draw from methods such as CLT, TPRS, and CBI, much of my instruction most significantly reflects the theories of TBLT (Task-Based Language Teaching). Because language learning is a living concept, students must learn to use it for genuine purposes: real, authentic tasks.
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In my classroom, students are consistently encouraged to engage with the langauge in communicative, real-life ways. Students frequently read and listen to authentic texts to receive quality input in the target language. Moreover, students are encouraged to produce output as much as possible, both written and spoken. Tasks are scaffolded and authentic, so that students develop the skills to be able to interact with target language speakers in the real world.
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Along the same lines, the assessments that my students take are entirely proficiency-based; the goal is to measure a student's ability to speak the language in authentic situations.
Relationships and high expectations are at the heart of effectively-managed classrooms. In my classroom, learning thrives in an atmosphere where each student feels safe, important, challenged, and respected. I work hard to develop a personal relationship with each and every one of my students. In my classroom, ALL students are capable of success. Moreover, to establish this safe environment, the actual physical environment must promote learning and engagement. Through posters, realia, and student work, my physical classroom is intellectually stimulating and encouraging.
My classroom is a dynamic place; each day, something different is happening. By incorporating a variety of learning activities in my classroom, I am able to draw upon students' multiple intelligences and varied abilities. Additionally, as motivation is a huge factor in student learning, I work to continually make the language come to life for my students by connecting it to the real world.
Through personal relationships, a safe environment, high expectations, and engaging lessons, students in my class develop an intrinsic motivation to reach for success.
HOW I ENGAGE & MOTIVATE LEARNERS
HOW I FOSTER INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
In order to become proficient users of the target language, it is generally understood that not only must students be able to use the language for communicative purposes, but they must also have some level of understanding of the target culture as well. That is, in order to be successful communicators, students must understand how to appropriately interact with native speakers within the target culture. The trouble with this reality is the fact that culture is not static. Culture cannot be reduced to a set of discrete facts and rules. While language teachers can attempt to provide some information about the target culture, culture itself is beyond definition. Rather than try to tackle Culture-as-information in all of its complexity and transience, Bryam (1997) argues that language teachers should instead provide learners with the tools they need to approach new cultures on their own by fostering student Intercultural Competence.
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In my classroom, I foster Intercultural Competence through a social justice framework. Social Justice Education provides the ideal context in which to develop student Intercultural Competence through critical reflection on diverse perspectives. Through engagement with diversity, sociopolitical issues, power structures, and injustice, Social Justice Education can help to develop the open-minded, critical perspectives that are essential to a rich Intercultural Competence. Read more about my work with Social Justice Education and Intercultural Competence development in my Experiential Module.
I would articulate my grammar teaching philosophy as follows: Grammar instruction in the modern L2 classroom should be context-based, communication-oriented, and provide structure as needed. I usually have my students explore new grammar concepts in context. For example, I might provide a reading that includes extensive input flood and input enhancement in order to help students identify the grammatical concept inductively. Through this inductive, explicit approach, students start to notice the patterns of the language, which then helps them to replicate these patterns in production.
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Similarly, vocabulary instruction plays a fairly large role in my classroom. At the beginning of each unit, I give students a list of pictures, which students must label with the correct French term. I have done this in a variety of ways, including: kinesthetic (students walk around the room/hallway to find the labeled picture/item to add it to their notes); contextual (students listen to a story and write down the vocabulary as they hear/see it in context in my PowerPoint); activational (students receive a list of words AND a list of pictures, and must activate their prior knowledge of French alongside their English base knowledge to label the pictures). Then, students work with this vocabulary list in a variety of ways throughout the unit.
