Being an effective second language teacher means first of all to be a teacher. Nowadays I feel that many people dedicate themselves to teaching and they do not have the necessary skills to do the labor in the correct way. You can be a master in the discipline and really have all the knowledge that you recquire in terms of the language, but if you do not have the skills to develop yourself in front of a group of people and do not know how to teach, then there is no teacher. It must be relevant to consider that you are constantly working with people, therefore you have to know how to deal with them. It is mandatory to have a global view of the context where you are and prove yourself as someone who is organized, flexible, sympathetic, pacient, motivating, and comprehensible. But most importante and above all, you have to be aware of recognizing someone's progress and basically know your students.
Moreover, for me a second language is always learnt as time goes by and as you are most part of the time exposed to it, in order to naturally acquire it. Learning a second language does not mean memorizing grammatical rules and vocabulary. It is more than that. It means that you have to be able to put it in practice in a real life context. Therefore, I consider that practice is also fundamental. The fact of having the opportunities to practice the language despite making mistakes since from them you get the best lessons.
Equally important, the learning of a second language always entails a set of factors. One of them is time: as time that you have to invest on teaching and time that every student takes to acquire the second language. Also, you have to be persistent throughout this time and get yourself most of it in order to be profitable. I am talking about a process that involves practice and error. And obviously, to learn a second language there must be motivation from the learner, on the contrary, the process will become complex and tiresome. In addition, during the second language learning process is recommended to have the proper atmosphere according to the learner's own learning style.
For the same reason, it is essential that the information that is being given has to be the most comprehensible as possible. To this end, how the imput is composed is relevant when you are learning a second language. It has to be clear, legible, and student-centered.
Indeed, a second language should always be taught in the most comprehensible way and placing it in a real life context. We communicate with each other everyday through language in everything that we do as a routine. For that reason, I reflect on teaching and learning a second language as if it should have a more "communicative" intention, so people would not focus that much on grammatical structures because in the end even native people modify these rules when speaking and it does not matter when you are trying to understand what they say.
Meanwhile, in my opinion the teacher's role should be as a moderator who provides material, prepares the atmosphere, organize the sessions. S/he has to be there in case if the learner needs it, but s/he should not 'perform' a leading role. The student should be given the autonomy in order to discover by her/himself what is a second language by: speaking it, asking if s/he has any doubts, and making mistakes to get the best out of them.
Finally, the language learning experiences that a second language teacher should provide could be allow team work in order to promote peer feedback because, as it was mentioned before, language should have a communicative focus which involves two or more people discussing. Whereas, language is used and transformed by community, it always comes with a new culture from behind so it is important to develop as well a critical thinking on students through its contextualization.
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario