Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay

By/ Brwa Rasul Sharif

           Upon my completion during the first semester of being an MA student specifically in my favorite course which is Teaching and Learning in the Language classroom, I have grown as both as a student and a teacher. As I have taught English language for 3 years and now I am a student I found out that many styles, in which I taught, were good and some were bad. One of those strategies that I used before is the distance between me and my students. At first I thought the more you are away with your student, the more you are away from their problems. But I have now learned that the nearer you are with the students, the more your students get information.

              Teaching and learning is not something can be sold and bought. Nowadays everyone needs to learn to survive, although everybody has right to live, but the one who knows more, is the one who has more opportunity to find jobs and to live nicely.

              Through ‘lesson planning’ I have understood that it is very important and it is an element of teaching, and we have to have lesson planning to prepare our materials and even non-materials such as the skills. And it is also to organize ideas and the whole subject for example English teaching.

           The main point for students I think is ‘Motivation’ to create a learning environment in order to build themselves. As motivation is an inner power to do our job, so it is a kind of energy to create in students, to do their duty which is learning. Extrinsic and intrinsic are two types of motivation in which I learned. And extrinsic motivation is the outside factors which affect someone, by contrast to intrinsic motivation which are inner side factors. I learned that I have to remove and reduce students’ anxiety, because in my culture we have been taught that it is good to be silent and calm, and even you should not have your own opinion, therefore I should provide constructive feedback and I have to be aware of giving reward by praising or even saying good words towards the students. The last thing which is very important for me is to create positive social interaction with my students.

            In ‘Teaching speaking’ I have found out many learners’ problems of speaking. One of those is the learners are shy to speak which I am going to try to help my students to overcome of that problem. Another is inhibition in which the learners are inhibited by some cultural traditions or even by their teachers. The students have nothing enough knowledge to speak therefore it could be another problem for them. Fluency and accuracy are two main characteristics of speaking which I got during ‘Teaching speaking’. And I also learned some speaking activities in which they are very effective for learners including pair work and group work, and also interactive activities such as information gap, discussion activities, role plays, games, and informal interaction. Students are very aware of feedback and correction, therefore teachers need to find the best way of correcting their students. Although some teachers prefer correcting as soon as the mistake is made, but I think it depends on the situation and types of mistakes, because local mistakes sometimes could be neglected and global mistakes should be corrected. If you correct students, for example, in speaking the learner may correct themselves but you may interrupt their ideas and fluency and demotivate the learners.

             One thing which attracted me in ‘Teaching grammar’ is the basic approaches of grammar. In fact I did not know what deductive and inductive are, but I have got both approaches and even I could decide on the better one. So now I am sure that inductive approach is very effective but it needs more effort to teach, however the deductive approach is easier to use in the class but it may also easier for students to forget. Another thing which I can say that it is very important is to give feedback to the students because through feedback they will improve their error and mistakes.

            There are three types of learning strategies; cognitive, met cognitive, and social affective strategies, which I have learned through ‘Learning strategies presentation’. And I have to say that learning strategies is very crucial for students even every learners to construct their life, because through those strategies you can plan and improve your thinking.

            During ‘Teaching reading’ I collected some ideas that reading is very effective for learners. As there are two types of reading: extensive and intensive. Extensive reading can be done outside classroom such as reading something for pleasure, whereas intensive reading can be done inside classroom for the purpose of teachers. I have learned another categorization of reading which are skimming and scanning, in which skimming can be done for searching the main aim or goal and general idea, while scanning can be done for a very specific idea, for example reading for details. Speed reading is an interesting topic which I have got a lot of information in which I have learned that there are many techniques that all learners should do such as; pay attention while you are reading; stop talking to yourself including vocalizing and sub-vocalizing; and you have to read as a thought group not only individual words; you should not reread a phrase or a sentence; and you should vary your reading rate.

            Seating arrangements is a topic which attracts me during ‘classroom management’ I think I know how to arrange my students to learn effectively. One kind of seating management is circle shape in which students and their teacher can face each other’s without difficulties and even interact well. Another is horse shoes which I like because it is somehow the same as circle shape. I can say that classroom management is very important for teachers that they should use in order to organize their class and plan before starting their lesson. In fact I have got another crucial topic during the lesson which is preventing misbehavior. And to prevent some kind of back row distracters there are certain things you should do firstly make an eye contact with them as a warn, then stop at mid-sentences, finally if they do not stop you should talk privately after class.

            Throughout ‘Teaching writing’ I understood that there are four major types of writing: narrative such as novels, descriptive which is a kind of writing describing a person or a place or an object, argumentative such as critical view, and expository which gives explanations and reasons such as personal letters. I have also learned two types of correction in writing in which they are direct correction when you correct something you directly tell the learner what is the wrong thing such as ‘I go to school yesterday’ and you write as ‘I went to school yesterday’, while indirect correction is when someone says the same example you should warn him or her that the mistake is at tense or at the verb.

            Teaching listening is a great lecture that I have learned two strategies of listening, one is top-down and the other is bottom-up. The top-down strategy is that the listener depends on background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. While bottom-up strategy is that the listener should depend on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning.

How are words remembered? Is it a great topic in ‘Teaching vocabulary?. I think it is very important to use some techniques in order to remember those words in which you learn. Some of the techniques that I like are repetition, retrieval, use, imaging, pacing and so on. Another technique which is very effective is writing on a piece of paper, and then holding it up to somewhere.

Finally I want to say something about the course and my instructor as a whole. I think the course is very important for everybody to get, because it teaches you how to act in the classroom and even how to act towards your students, because all the students look at their teacher as a model and whatever the teacher does the students do the same, therefore the course is very good to take in order to learn teaching or let’s say that to guide the students.

            I think the outline of the course should be arranged to help the MA students according to the most important one for getting them ready, I do not want to devaluate any session but in my opinion the first session should be ‘teaching reading’ because it has some interests in which it will help MA students to know how to read faster and better. And after that ‘teaching speaking’ because at least this session has some topics which tells you how to speak and it even gives you the problems which prevent learners speak and their solutions. Then ‘teaching pronunciation’ which teaches you how to make your pronunciation better for speaking, because sometimes I myself have had difficulties to understand some of my colleagues because of pronunciation, although I got some feedback from my instructor that he says as long as the message would be comprehensible, pronunciation is not important but to be quite honest I do not agree with him because I do not think listening to a native-like and a non-native-like is the same, and even for our students are very bad because whatever we say the students imitate the same, therefore we have to practice on pronunciation and improve our pronunciation.

            I am very proud of my instructor that he has enough knowledge to be in that position and even higher than that. One of his teaching styles is that he is very interactive with us in which he helps us to be more frank with him and what opinion we have, we express and we discuss. Another style is that whenever a presenter makes a mistake or something like missing a topic he does not let it go without his explanation and he himself will elaborate if it needs. Filling free time is another technique in the classroom which I have learned from him, whenever a presenter finishes ahead on time, he will immediately fill that spare time by questioning and explaining something that we need.