My teaching profile

My teaching profile - week 47

Petter F. Bjerkaker 

In today's society, we have English as the lingua franca, therefore being literate in English is a crucial trait to have. Literacy is a quality that guarantees that you with confidence can read and write in a given language. Every person of society is in some form exposed to the English language. Whether it is reading the language online, watching a movie in English, a song playing on the radio, or English terms that are incorporated in informal conversations on a daily basis. Every form of these exposures to the language are called input (Ellis & Shintani, 2014, p. 163). As a result, the importance of being able to read, write and understand the English language is at an all-time high.

But how could one exactly achieve literacy? I believe as a teacher, one has to provide material and activities that are authentic. Authentic material includes the characteristics of the mimic of real life situations or interactions, resulting in a meaningful learning experience. My view of this is, that instead of making the students read a random article or story from a learning book, one can instead provide articles from the local newspaper which engages the students. By having comprehensible authentic material, the lessons will not only result in being compelling, but in addition ensure that the academic materials are fitting to their grammatical and academic level (Ellis & Shintani, 2014, p.164). 

Oral communication skills are also particular parts that are important to consider as an English teacher. I believe that optimal learning is achieved in an acquisition rich classroom. This means a significant amount of exposure toward the target language through comprehensible input both orally and written. By having a classroom that for the most of the time relies on the English language to communicate to your disposal, the students will be exposed to a bigger extent to the language. This results in the students having the chance to learn new linguistic features and words, without the explicit intention of doing so. By listening to their teacher and fellow students, which is called the incidental learning hypothesis (Ellis & Shintani, 2014, p.174). 

"Task-based language teaching (TBLT) aims to develop learners' communicative competence by engaging them in meaning-focused communication through the performance of tasks." (Ellis & Shintani, 2014, p.135)

The approach that I have chosen to teaching is in addition greatly based on student activity and tasks. I believe that as a student you do not get the full potential of learning the language solely by watching and listening. You have to get the chance to try for yourself, and learn by cooperating with other students and that it is not only the teacher that controls the lesson in order to evolve in the subject. I believe that this results in output being just as important as input. Although, solely communicating regarding a subject at random does not suffice. The tasks in question need to be comprehensible and meaningful, and in addition involve appropriate real-life context and the practice of fluency. Accuracy and fluency are two terms that involve what you choose to focus on in oral language practice. Accuracy is the ability to produce correct sentences, using correct vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. However, this is not the main point of the second language classroom. My point of view is that the goal should be that the students are able to apply their knowledge not only in the classroom, but also outside of it in real life situations. Although, they should not strive to sound as natives of the language, but rather being able to focus on being able to participate fluently in conversation. 

"The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives is a scheme for classifying educational goals, objectives and most recently, standards. It provides an organizational structure that gives a commonly understood meaning to objectives classified in one of its categories, thereby enhancing communication". (Kratwhol, D. 2002, page 218)

A main aim of mine is to be a teacher who the students know what to expect from. By having clear and understandable norms and predictability regarding what is to happen in class, focusing on academic development. One of the elements that you should have for a predictable class is clear objectives. In the beginning of my teacher practice, I struggled to create clear objectives and structure to my classes in English, where it would result as confusing to the students at times. However as I have continued with my experiences as a teacher, I have learned to appreciate Bloom's taxonomy. Bloom's taxonomy focuses on Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS). It is a model which classifies objectives and tasks based on keywords. HOTS are keywords associated with more work and more difficult objectives than LOTS, for example with keywords such as evaluate. LOTS are tasks and objectives which demands less from the students, with keywords such as name. 

Bloom's taxonomy is not solely a tool for creating objectives, but in addition in creating tasks. Although, you should be careful in creating the keywords, in order to include both LOTS and HOTS. This is because of each student being on a different level academically, and the tasks should be meaningful for everyone throughout the lesson. 

Summarizing, being a teacher in the subject of English as a secondary language brings great responsibility, because of the importance of the language you are teaching. The direction of teaching I find the most interesting and what I would like to strive towards, is student participation. I would like the students to be curious, ask questions, wanting to learn more about what I am conveying and be eager to the usage of the English language in order to complete tasks and accomplish cooperation. In creating meaningful activities and tasks I hope to plant a seed of excitement and interest in the classroom, moving towards objectives and goals with a clear plan, having the idea of Bloom's taxonomy in the back of my head.


Reference list:

Kratwhol, D. (2002) A Revision of  Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. 

Ellis, R. & Shintani, N. (2014). Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research. London, New York: Routledge.