During the past two months, I have experienced and learned a lot, mostly in cultural conventions and classroom management. As I mentioned earlier, although I used to be a very experienced English teacher in Taiwan, I was not familiar with Communicative Approach because in Taiwan, English is not a language, but a subject matter only for all kinds of tests. The way people study English in Taiwan is just like the way you Americans study Latin, which is a dead language. Although I have been very experienced in exercising Grammar Translation Method and Audio-lingualism, I still need to practice some more on exercising Communicative Approach in the real classroom, especially in USA. I am thankful that Arlington Reads provides me the opportunity to practice.
Being an ESL teaching exercising Communicative Approach in the classroom, I think it is much more challenging than teaching in Grammar Translation Method because you don't know and you cannot control what will happen in the classroom. It is hard to imagine what the students' responses will be in advance. If the non-native speaker ESL/EFL teacher's English proficiency is not high enough to respond to students' questions, comments or whatever it can be, it is hard to exercise Communicative Approach. I guess that is the reason why most of the English (as a subject) teacher cannot teach that way in Taiwan. Since most of the teachers learn English as a subject for test, it is very difficult even for themselves to treat English as a language for communication. Therefore, it is not only about how you teach it, but also about how you look at English or how you consider a language and language teaching to be. I must say that if I had never come to USA to study TESOL, I would never change my concept about TESOL industry. All in all, I am glad I have learned a lot in USA and I am extremely happy that I am going to graduate FINALLY!!
Congratulations, Ruby! I'm glad that you've completed your volunteer service at Arlington Reads. More importantly, I think the students really appreciate your contributions there for a job well done! I was reminded that there is a saying in the U.S. that we should 'never say never!' Maybe someday you'll be teaching English again, for whatever reasons :-)
ReplyDeleteWei-Fan:
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I just knew you would say that!! Well, if any college in USA doesn't care about my Chinese accent, I will try my best to be open minded to teach ESL again. However, I am convinced that it will be much better for me to teach Mandarin Chinese in the universities in the US for the rest of my life because there will be very very few Americans (English native speakers) who can compete for that position with me. Haha.... (It will be extremely hard to get H1 VISA and even Green Card for that.) You know what I mean? Life, is all about marketing!!!!