First encounter with English teaching 

My first journey of English teaching started when I helped my juniors in high school complete their homework in a study group session. I felt tremendous reward and satisfaction after they finally understood how to solve the problems. Since then, I have realized my passion for English teaching comes from my nature as a human being to help others reach their utmost potential. I always feel happy and contented being part of my learners’ growth achieving their ultimate attainment in English acquisition.

 

Creating a safe, interactive, and meaningful ecosystem for language learning

There are several crucial factors that language teachers can do to facilitate the learning process. First is establishing a safe, interactive, and meaningful ecosystem. This ‘ecosystem’ is a part of affective and social aspects that can build powerful impacts on the target language acquisition. Having taught English in Indonesia, where English is considered as a Foreign Language (EFL), a classroom is the only place for students to use the target language, receive comprehensible input, produce the output, and notice the gap of their responses with the target-like ones by teacher’s assistance. Further, for ESL learners, having this environment to practice their language before testing it outside the classroom is truly helpful. To create such an environment, I try developing personal connections with my students, as simple as pronouncing their names correctly, engaging in small talk to know their interests and normalizing mistakes in the classroom. Since day one, I tell my students to feel at ease when making mistakes because I will make some too. That is the part of learning. Such conversation serves as a pathway to lower their anxiety and encourage them to use and play with the target language.

 

Automaticity, Interaction, and Agency principles as foundations of teaching approaches

As a teacher, I constantly reflect and make informed decisions about which effective approach to be used in the classroom based on the eight teaching principles. I focus on building learners’ automaticity, creating meaningful interaction, and promoting their agency. Since I am a firm believer in the saying, “Practice makes progress,” regular exercise of the target language can drive automaticity. For instance, I taught ESL at the Community Language (CLP) Program during the pandemic. I found that half of my students did not have an opportunity to practice their L2 despite living in the US. Keeping my learners’ needs in mind, I initiated “Coffee Talk,” where they can meet up virtually and produce output beyond the classroom. It is an optional activity, meaning they could practice their agency and decide whether to participate. Further, it promoted student-to-student interaction, which may serve as a bridge to negotiate forms and meaning. In the long run, this frequent target-language production can lead to automaticity.

 

What we learn with pleasure, we never forget. – Alfred Mercier

In the classroom, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach is my vehicle for nurturing those principles. CLT allows learners to engage communicatively in form, meaning, and use. Having been exposed to the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) in most of my English learning make it even more challenging to implement CLT in my classroom. I remember my professor’s saying, “Teachers do not teach language. They teach communication using language.” To incorporate CLT, I ask myself, “In what context will learners use this vocabulary or grammar or these skills?” Then, I plan my lesson and activities after getting the answer. For example, to teach “the order of modifiers” in English, I chose the context of “I lost something!” One student described a lost item in pairs in the main activity while another one listened and drew the item. Finally, they composed a sentence to explain the items with the correct order of modifiers and shared their answers with the whole class. I realized that when a language is taught in an authentic context, learners can engage in enjoyable and useful interaction, which can lead to longer memory retention. 

 

We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflection on experience. – John Dewey

To sum up, as a teacher, my primary responsibilities are not only to transfer knowledge but also to create a communicative and meaningful ecosystem where students can actively interact and learn from one another to reach the ultimate attainment. The main takeaway from my eight-year English teaching experience is to reflect on my teaching practice consistently. Being a reflective teacher allows me to continuously learn and exchange ideas with other teachers and drive myself to elevate skills by participating in workshops and studying in the TESOL program.