| Pedagogy Institute 2009 | |||
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Huijin Yan |
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| Teaching
Statement My teaching I become a language teacher because I enjoy discovering a new world through language learning and I want to bring more people to enjoy this fantasy world. For me, learning a language is like sailing against the current towards the destination of a new world—you must forge ahead to see its attractiveness or you will be driven back. A teacher is like a coach for all the sailors: she sets up the destination for the trip and designs possible routes; she trains the sailors to be equipped and skilled to navigate; she assists them to fix problems and warns them if there are rocks; she also takes care of the sailors who are sick and helps the ones who want to give up during the trip. Likewise, a good teacher should be able to set up clear long and short-term objectives for her students, design effective activities to assist them to reach those goals, provide feedback, correct students’ errors, and give extra help if needed. Since I believe that the meaningfulness for any language learning is to have a tool to explore a different culture, instead of teaching a language for the sake of language, I make my classroom a place for students to discover a different discourse system by using the target language. In order to reach my final destination —the discourse of the target language, I set up short-term objectives and equip my students with skills to reach them. Of course, students have to be responsible for their own study and for their own success because no matter how good a coach is, she cannot take the oars and row for the sailors. I treat myself as a model and facilitator for them to develop skills to master a language. |
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