Running head: TEACHING PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT 1

Teaching Philosophy Statement

Yuanyuan Sun

Colorado State University

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT 2

When applying to the TEFL/TESL program at CSU, I claimed my motivation to be an

English teacher in my Statement of Purpose in this way, Through my own experience as a

student continuing to master the English language, I have gained a greater passion and

appreciation for English language and literature. As a result, I am eager to share my passion in

China teaching students. I feel that I have the ambition and devotion to lead students to fall in

love with this amazing language just as I have. The statement shows my potential teaching

philosophy. Passion and appreciation for English is necessary for learning. Students have

to be motivated and learn the language as a Lingua Franca for their purposes. Learning English

should never only be a task to complete in the classroom, but a great tool to enrich students

life experiences. Lead and share are significant parts of the role of teacher. A teacher should

not only play the role of authority and conductor, but also facilitator, assistant and advisor for

students.

For my future EFL classes in China, I take the following focuses as my primary

consideration as an instructor. First, communicative competence should be the primary and

ultimate goal for all students. Secondly, the teacher should build a motivated and supportive

environment for students to be engaged in learning actively. Third, the teacher should conduct

valid and reliable assessment with a variety of procedures to evaluate students achievement

and facilitate learning effectively.

From my experiences as an English learner of almost ten years, and as many studies

have shown, language classrooms adopting the Grammar-Translation Method are pervasive in

China. For years I thought learning English is all about vocabulary, grammar, reading and
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writing to pass the standardized tests and I barely got a chance to speak and interact with people

using the language. As a result, even after taking many advanced English classes, I felt very

unprepared for my study at Colorado State University and my life in an English-speaking

country in the beginning. That is when I realized learning English should not only be

memorizing linguistic features of the language, but also using it to complete communicative

purposes, explore and understand other cultures. To help my students avoid the potential

dilemma I experienced, as well as the inefficient use of time and effort, I prefer to adopt

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) methods with communicative competence as the

goal of language teaching.

Under the umbrella of this approach, first of all, I will use aspects of Task-based

Language Teaching (TBLT). There are principles and practices strengthening TBLT

pedagogically: introducing authentic material into the learning; involving learners in

comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while focusing

on using grammatical forms to convey meaning (Nunan, 2006). For example, I will use The

same or different, a popular activity which has been used widely in research too (Richards &

Renandya, 2002). The activity requires students to work in pairs, describe their pictures to each

other as accurately as possible, and then decide if they are holding the same pictures or not. In

addition, I will include project work promoting learner-centeredness at the expense of teacher

direction in my class. For example, I designed an ecotourism company evaluation project using

the Wallace Principles for international students in the CSU Master of Tourism Management

Program. These students were required to conduct research on authentic company websites and
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gather materials, plan and discuss the content and scope with the teacher and peers, then write

up a report. This kind of project helps to bridge between language learning and use, and it

allows students to use all four language skills in a natural and integrated fashion (Larsen-

Freeman & Anderson, 2000).

It is always challenging to teach English in a non English speaking country. While

knowing a second language has many advantages, it is not the case that a second language is

absolutely necessary for learners in China. Thus, increasing motivation, which is important in

second language acquisition, can play a significant rule in improving learners performance in

my classrooms (Gardner, 2007). Many elements can affect motivation - learners personal

characteristics, the adequacy of material, and class atmosphere (Gardner, 2007). To create

motivated and supportive environment for students learning, I think the use of computer

assisted language learning (CALL) can be beneficial. Based on many studies, computers with

the combination of interactive and visual capabilities have a positive influence on learner

motivation (Gndz, 2005). The computer will not be the mainstay of my class; I will use it as

supplemental tool for both teaching and learning. For example, blogs are rich source of

language texts, authentic material for reading, discussion and study (Larsen-Freeman &

Anderson, 2000). I will encourage students to create and write their own blogs as an ongoing

reflective activity. They can remark on their daily life, interesting topics, or record their work

and progress in the class. Since blogs usually allow visitors and comments, students are not

always writing for the teacher but also other audiences. I love blogs since they motivate

students to conduct self-study and language use outside of the classroom and based on their
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interests. As a teacher, I can be supportive by monitoring students work and offer informal

feedback, which causes less pressure on students and encourages their language output.

In language classrooms in China, teachers are always viewed as an authority. They give

traditional achievement assessments including exams and quizzes. As a learner, I was always

under pressure facing a comprehensive exam which determined my grade for a whole semester,

and I did worse than expected because of that pressure. And I could not reflect this fact to my

teachers because I was not supposed to question this authority. Fear of assessment also

discouraged my learning. So the results of the assessments may not be reliable enough for

teachers reference and use. To maximum the positive washback of assessment on both

teaching and learning, I think a variety of assessment methods, both formative and summative,

and techniques used in traditional and alternative assessment should be used for specific

purposes and objectives. As I consider teachers to be helpers and advisors for students, I believe

quality assessment should not only be assessment of achievement, but also assessment for

learning. For example, I will use alternative assessment methods for formative purposes such

as interviews and conferences, which will give me the opportunity to observe and evaluate

students while giving more niche-targeting feedback and help regarding individual learning

strategies or with specific difficulties of comprehending class instructions or content. These

methods are also aligned with CLT, which encourages interactions between the teacher and

students. Furthermore, in addition to traditional summative assessment, I want to incorporate

alternative assessment, especially the use of portfolios in my classroom. Portfolios provide a

summary of students achievement over time. Students are highly engaged in the assessment
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process since they have to be responsible of creating, revising, selecting and collecting their

own work, which can also motivate their learning. I, as the teacher, will play the role of assistant

and advisor during the process, and help students by offering directions and formative feedback.

Last but not least, although I will be the one evaluating students performance for the most of

the time, I want students to be aware that their feedback to the teacher about the course is very

valuable. I will encourage students to evaluate my courses by conducting anonymous surveys

during the class instruction and at the end of class instruction. I will adapt my lesson plan if I

find remarkable comments in the surveys, such as that students can not follow the pace of class

instruction. In this way, I want the students to realize that they are the protagonists of the class

and I, as the teacher, respect and value their contributions to the class.

References

Gardner, R. C. (2007). Motivation and second language acquisition. Porta Linguarum, 8, 9

20.

Gndz, N. (2005). Computer assisted language learning. Journal of Language and Linguistic

Studies, 1(2), 193-214.

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Anderson, M. (2000). Techniques & principles in language teaching.

New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Nunan, D. (2006). Task-based language teaching in the Asia context: Defining 'task'. Asian

EFL journal, 8(3), 12-18.

Richards, J. C., & Renandya, W. A. (2002). Methodology in language teaching: An anthology

of current practice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.