Teaching
Motivation for a varied life in teaching
(1385 Words)
What motivates a teacher to start in the profession? For sure many reasons make someone begin a career in teaching. Is it pay or job security or is it a fall back option? This being said, initial motivation does not mean that years later the same can be said. The fact of the matter is the evolution of the new teacher into a mature tutor. This is then the professional person who has recognized the true meaning of teaching. This person recognizes their role in helping to shape young minds and impart moral values through education. Teaching has to be a vocation. In part an autobiographical story highlighting aspects of Asian teaching and also analysis, there are many aspects that any teacher has to realize to fulfill true potential.
Certainly, ongoing professional development highlights certain challenges in teaching that a teacher has to face up to. A focal point has to be the realization that students do not really know how to learn. How can any teacher, great as they may think they are, not realize that the students are naive about how to get the most benefit from a lesson? Any teacher has to look at the students’ own learning traits in light of today’s imperative that they both foster lifelong learners in their classrooms as well as become lifelong learners themselves. It’s the teacher’s inspiration that plays a huge part in a student’s education although every student and the class as a whole have to progress to help the teacher get the most out of them.
Different countries have varying approaches to learning and teaching. How does a foreign teacher survive in another country’s learning environment? Any foreign teacher working abroad has to adapt and work within the culture. It can be hard to change teaching methods to what has been ingrained from school through to university. Motivation to rise above some of another country’s inequalities as you see them is paramount. In some of these cultures, students tend to be passive and may be reluctant to participate in communicative exercises. A change in the style of teaching to suit these learners’ needs is essential because completely following an Asian model would be alien to any foreign teacher; a balance has to be met. A new foreign teacher would think it is strange to see no encouragement given to the students to think independently while just following the examples of the teacher, who is held in high esteem. Progression as a teacher means drawing attention to many facets of teaching. Inspiration has to come from somewhere. Breaking the barriers that slow students’ learning and build foundations that provoke students’ development has got to be a motivator.
Of course, any teacher would not automatically change their style of teaching. The question is: should they focus more on themselves as a teacher or the students? Which one deserves more thought? It must be believed that deeper thinking about the children’s role in learning is paramount. It’s just when you see children who have so much energy, who are not lazy per se, using their energy into ignoring the learning process. This does not mean every one of them is mentally challenged; it is the direction they are taking. For example, a fifteen-year-old student kept saying the word ‘brio’. What it meant in his language or English language was not clear, but he would say things like ‘do you brio?’ and ‘I am brio’. This was actually when ‘present tense’ was being taught. The co-teacher thought this student was being disruptive and after class, she had a word with the teacher about it. She went on to mention that he was a hyperactive kid who had problems at home and she was sorry. Basically, that was the end of the story. Many factors come into one’s learning and potential, but there was a child who had energy. He was contributing in his own way. It was the way the teacher dealt with this child’s attitude that had the major factor in his learning. The teacher was glad to have this student taking part. He felt it was a bit negative just to put him down as having problems and forget about it. It was felt the teacher just had to channel that liveliness and educate him to use it properly. To put in bluntly teachers need to see what role the students actually play in the classroom. Similarly, Beth Buchler, educational consultant and director of New-Learning Educational Services wrote that you need a ‘student who is responsible, who takes charge, and who self-regulates in the context of today’s changing learning environment’. A teacher does not change these children overnight and many will take time. Every student has potential. The issue for the teacher is how to overcome their learned behaviors they have in class that is being detrimental to them.
So, why are they not performing? One other factor could be a boring teacher. How can any teacher help a student change their learning style if the students (or even the teacher) do not have any interest or enthusiasm? Referring to Alexandra Frean’s piece written in the Times newspaper about ‘boring teachers blamed for rowdy classes’. It seems obvious that students will show their bad side when they are bored, but according to Ofsted, at that time, this was a problem in English schools. The report drew an angry response from the National Union of Teachers which was understandable but it happens. An example of a disruptive class comes from watching an Asian teacher conduct a lesson. The students were naughty, but why were they naughty? Was it because they were disobedient or because the lessons were not so interesting? The teacher was shouting at the noisy students at the start of the lesson. They were quiet once the teacher started shouting, but after that, they were back talking again. The teacher asked them to look at the questions in their book and find the answers in the reading. It seemed a very easy lesson plan. Were the children interested? Maybe, they were not interested. All they needed to do is fill in the blanks which were being done by a couple of people, namely by the best students. The others were just waiting for the answers happily relaxed talking to each other. This teacher was not making the class interesting, no wonder the students were back talking. After exiting the classroom for five minutes then entering an ‘okay let’s check the answers’ loud voice, the teacher went through the answers. The teacher started speaking in their native language then asking for one English word answer at a time. The English teacher’s speech was mixed with their native language. The answers were now being given anyway so the ones who did not bother can just fill in their book. What was the teacher’s purpose in this class? Where was the motivation to learn? If you had filled in the answers you would have finished. It must be said that “Yes, you have finished but isn’t the purpose of learning a foreign language for using it in a context that is valuable for the future. The weaker students are just copying the answers while laughing about something not involved in the subject at hand. This new information they should have learned will stay in their minds for a short time”. Basically, it is hard for a native English teacher to see this whole episode and not feel sorry for everyone involved because everyone walks and carries on regardless.
The irony of all this is that the more the students become independent learners; a process “in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others” (M. Knowles), the teacher’s job will hopefully become more manageable. Motivation and interest will take over idle chat and disruption. Teachers can then confidently feel that they are succeeding and be motivated to take their teaching to another level. This will be not only with themselves but also with the other students. Hopefully, the pride the teacher feel from making these students ready for the world outside school and their future will show them the true meaning of teaching and encourage them for many years. Hopefully, this piece of writing has tried to open teachers to this fact.
References
Bernard-Powers, J., Darling-Hammond, L., Der Ramos, A., Kass, M., LaBoskey, V., & Markowitz, M., et al. (2000). Principles of high quality teacher development. San Jose, CA: The Teacher Quality Collaborative. Retrieved January 23, 2002, from http://www.jointventure.org/initiatives/21st/tqc/principles.html
Boring teachers blamed for rowdy classes
By Alexandra Frean, Education Editor
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article624308.ece
Critical Issue: Terms of Engagement—Rethinking Teachers’ Independent Learning Traits – Beth Buchler, M.A., educational consultant and director of New-Learning Educational Services
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/profdevl/pd400.htm
Malcolm knowles, informal adult education, self-direction and andragogy
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-knowl.htm
Supporting and Facilitating Self-Directed Learning
http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/89dig.htm
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Teaching Reflection: A Critical Incident
(554 Words)
A “prudent understanding of variable situations with a view to what is to be done” (McCarthy, 1984, p.2) encapsulates that moment when a teacher is met with new experiences that need resolving. Teachers are met with acts that define their personalities. While working in Asia, I was faced with one such dilemma as two students had complained to my manager that I was rude to them. I had mentioned, after class on the first day of a new term, that they had entered late, ignored me as they walked in across the class and sat down to subsequently talk with friends. Contemplating Asian culture which may ignore this kind of attitude, I still felt the need to deal with it. What is called a ‘technical rationality’ (Schon, 1983), my reaction, I hoped, was a means to an end by telling them, in not so many words, that I would like them to respect the learning students and the teacher teaching. In this given situation and given they were both adults, who was right as we both had views? For this piece of writing, I would like to like to draw on Gibbs (1988) model of reflection with the hope of using the six steps to examine this classroom experience.
This ‘critical incident’ (Flanagon, 1954) emphasizes a direct observation of human behavior to examine the point of myself, the teacher, keeping two students behind after class to talk about their behavior towards the learning process. This is also the ‘concrete example’ (Peters, 1984) where we have to step back and test ourselves. One test is my ‘feelings’ (Gibbs, 1988) towards the students’ attitude of nonchalantly arriving late and traipsing past me. I felt somewhat annoyed as the class had been disturbed, I was disrespected as a teacher and unfortunately unsupported by my manager who told me to apologize to them.
Moreover, to ‘evaluate’ (Gibbs, 1988), the third stage of Gibbs’ model, which highlights the good and bad, is first to say that I chose a quiet moment to explain myself to the students after the class. The bad would be the students’ reaction to a situation they felt was nothing to be worried about which in Asian culture may have made them lose face. So, to make sense of the situation and ‘analyze’ (Gibbs, 1988) it, I was left feeling that I was in the wrong. My manager was now telling me to apologize and forget about it although I felt he was driven by the Asian culture and business ethics of the customer is always right and do not say anything bad.
The “conclusion” (Gibbs, 1988) is to highlight and reflect on what more could I have done, seeing as I had to apologize (or jeopardise my job). Culture was an issue, but also I think attitudes to lateness of another teacher to which they had had the previous term. My ‘action plan’ (Gibbs, 1988) is now to see if the situation arose again what I would do. Of course, there are reasons for being late, and also for reactions to negative things said about someone. Culturally, maybe I was too abrupt and too serious. Finally, laughter and a smile work in Asian culture and also getting the students’ personal feelings as to the right behavior instead of pushing my personally held beliefs. Hopefully, this essay creates more reflection.
References
Peter Scales, 2008. Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector. 1 Edition. Open University Press.
Geoff Petty, 2009. Teaching Today: A Practical Guide. 4 Edition. Nelson Thornes.
Yvonne Hillier, 2005. Reflective Teaching in Further and Adult Education. 2 Edition. Continuum.
Andrew Armitage, 2011. Developing Professional Practice, 14-19. Edition. Longman/Pearson.
What makes a good (English) teacher working in Thailand? – Thai class survey
(817 Words)
Any new foreign language teacher in Thailand can feel that they have studied and acquired the knowledge to feel confident in a classroom full of excitable children. This knowledge lies at the feet of the teacher having the foresight to know how the students might react in any learning situation. One of the most important factors of teaching is the students who have to be in the right frame of mind while having the willingness to learn. This said, a confident teacher still has to change course when their best-laid plans do not seem to be working because of uninterested/reluctant students. For this report, I based my research on what a good teacher should have and do in class. I surveyed 50 Thai students who were between 15 and 17 years of age. This was done by way of a survey during the class where I had the chance to circulate and talk to the students.
My initial thought was to use a list of factors I thought the students would empathize with that showed the character of a teacher.
Do we really do that?
Unconscious acts
It’s all well and good teaching language in conversation, but have you ever noticed you open your mouth when you are about to ask a question, or raise your eyebrows when surprised or expecting a question, or even rapidly inhale when you are ready to speak? It all adds to the flavour of practicing conversation and students’ non-verbal actions.
Grammar assignment
Students are always worried about grammar. There is a consensus of opinion that they need to study a lot more on their grammar. Of course, a teacher who does not know grammar would seem a bit strange, and they will be asked about it and will at times have to highlight it in the course of their teaching; once they are over that I feel the teacher should, in essence, focus on providing information about the students’ specific goals so that acquisition activities can focus on the topics and situations most relevant to the students’ needs. It can be shown that “we determine the situations in which they will use the target language and the sorts of topics they will have to communicate about” notwithstanding “we do not organize the activities of the class about a grammatical syllabus” (Krashen and Terrell 1983:71). All the same, on my TEFL course I had to complete a grammar assignment. I have added it here for you guys to get a feel of what is involved which is not just knowing how the grammar point is formed.
Grammar Assignment
Form
Past perfect tense in the if clause and would have + past participle
(had + past participle) the other part of the sentence
Example
If you had asked me I would have told you
Real situation = you didn’t ask me, so I didn’t tell you.
Use
When do we use 3rd conditional?
We use the 3rd conditional to talk about – regret, wishes, hindsight
Meaning
*Unreal past situation (imagining the impossible): to talk about hypothetical past situations. The speaker is dreaming of or imagining a different past. But the past cannot be changed.
*The conditional may be with a negative. In the case of a negative with the past tense, the opposite of what is said is true, that what was said in the negative did, in fact, happen, like ‘If it had not rained…’, meaning it did rain.
*You must watch the tense; maybe it is in the past, even though a conditional sentence. If the verb is in the past perfect tense, it can refer to something that did not happen in the past.
Example
‘If I had known I would have told you’.
Real situation = I didn’t know. I didn’t tell you
* The if sentence that describes the past, describes something different from what happened,
Example
‘ If we hadn’t invented paper we wouldn’t have had newspapers; in fact, we did invent newspapers.
When the time referred to is the same in both clauses, we have:
‘If he had done this (or ‘Had he done this’), he would have sinned’; ‘Had we done this, we should have let you know.’
Real situation = He didn’t do this, so he didn’t sin.
*Strategy: When you hear an ‘if’, you must think that this is a conditional and that if the sentence is positive, then the speaker means the situation never happened or has not yet happened and if it is negative and in the past, then the situation did happen. Don’t forget the inverted form of the conditional, like ‘Had it not rained…’ for ‘If it had not rained…’; in both cases, they are of course the same, it did rain!
Pronunciation (problems with)
Example
If (1) you’d listened you (2) wouldn’t have failed the exam.
If you (3) hadn’t gone I would have spoke with you.
(1) The pronunciation of YOU + HAD when contracted = YOU’D with the /d/ sound.
(2) The pronunciation of WOULD + NOT when contracted = WOULDN”T with the /nt/ sound.
(3) The pronunciation of HAD + NOT when contracted = HADN”T with the /nt/ sound.
Mistakes that can be made
Different structures using conditionals makes for different meanings.
Example (Second conditional)
If I were rich I would spend my time traveling.
This sentence is talking about unreal or improbable situations now or in the future.
CORRECT example using (Third conditional)
I f I had been rich I would have spent time traveling
The speaker is dreaming of or imagining a different past. But the past cannot be changed.
Example
If my father hadn’t met my mother I wouldn’t be here now.
This sentence is talking about the present situation that is no longer possible because of the way things have turned out.
Comprehension checking questions
If I hadn’t gone out last night I wouldn’t have crashed my car
Did I stay in last night?
Did I go out in my car last night?
Did I get home safely last night?
Did I crash my car last night?
Was my car damaged yesterday afternoon?
Is my car damaged now?
Did I go out then crash my car?
Did I crash my car then go out?
Real situation: I went out last night and crashed my car.
(b) If Jeff had gotten up early, he wouldn’t have missed the plane
Did Jeff get up early?
Did Jeff miss the plane?
Real situation: John didn’t get up early, so he missed the plane.
The grammatical form changes from the unreal to the real in the answers to a conditional sentence.
Exercise (Testing Point)
*Strategy: When you hear an ‘if’, you must think that this is a conditional, and that if the sentence is positive, then the speaker means the situation never happened or has not yet happened and if it is negative and in the past, then the situation did happen. Don’t forget the inverted form of the conditional, like ‘Had it not rained…’ for ‘If it had not rained…’; in both cases, they are of course the same, it did rain!
Example: If the children had been better fed, they would not have fallen ill.
(A) The children became sick.
(B) Children were not fed and that made them ill.
(C) It was wrong for them to feed the children.
(D) Even though they were well fed the children fell ill.
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: The result of the situation was that the children fell ill, or became sick, but not as in B, because they were not fed, but because they were not ‘better’ fed. The condition was that they were not fed well, and if they had been they might not have fallen sick.
Complete the dialogues
(1)
A: My shirt is too small.
B: Did you throw away the receipt?
A: No, I’ve still got it. Why?
B: If you ______________ you wouldn’t have been able to take it back to the shop.
(2)
A: I got drunk last night and got into work late.
B: You shouldn’t drink so much.
A: If ________________ so much last night I wouldn’t have been late this morning.
Write a sentence for this situation
You are upset because last night you said ‘you are stupid’ to a friend. Your friend walked out of the restaurant very angry. Use the third conditional to imagine a different past.
If I ____________________________ I _____________________________________
Use of special conditional structure
Example: __________ , we wouldn’t have gone to the beach.
(A) If it rains
(B) Had it rained
(C) It rained
(D) If it has rained
Correct answer: B
Explanation: The sentence is conditional, as can be seen by ‘would’ in the main clause. The subordinate clause could begin with ‘if’ ; ‘If it had rained’ to be parallel with ‘would not have gone’. However, an alternative structure is the inverted form without ‘if’ , ‘Had it rained’.
Activity (Desert Island Game)
The teacher outlines a situation:
The story
A man went out in his boat and there was a storm, he could not get back to the harbour because the engine was broken and the sails ripped in the wind. He was blown hundreds of miles off course. He landed on a desert island with no supplies, food or radio equipment.
Students’ Job
The students must decide which 10 things he should have done or shouldn’t have done that would have helped him; being on a desert island using third conditional.
The students in their groups must justify their answers.
List of resources
A-Z of English grammar & usage by Geoffrey Leech – Longman
Practical English Usage – Michael Swan – Oxford University Press
English grammar in use – Raymond Murphy –Cambridge University Press
Essay Corner Blog 