Teaching Philosophy
Villanueva Eguia Lis, Susana
After personally experiencing (as a student) the benefits of the communicative language classroom methodology as well as the great impact that study abroad has on language acquisition, I decided, more than ten years ago, to turn my language-learning personal passion into a long-term life career as a foreign language instructor.
I think that the purpose of teaching and learning is to facilitate acquisition of real life problem solving skills through collaboration and engagement according to the constructivist learning theories. In the case of Foreign Language Learning, these skills include listening, reading, writing and speaking through structured input and output activities in a communicative environment. Ryder (2008) defines Constructivism as a “philosophical position that views knowledge as the outcome of experience mediated by one’s own prior knowledge” (Cited in Reiser and Dempsey 2012, p.50) At the same time individual and social attitudes are promoted in a professional, personalized, inclusive, interactive and non-threatening class environment.
Based on information from empirical and documented research, I believe that learning a Foreign Language must be an essential element at all educational levels because it develops advanced intellectual skills that are reflected on higher scores on all standardized measures of mathematics, science, social studies, and English language arts (see Thomas, Collier & Abbot, 1993).
I consider that the role of the teacher is to lead by creating a non-threatening environment where students feel free to produce the target language after the teacher has presented the structured input language. The role of the students is to produce the target language in order to develop their own interlanguage, which will eventually develop into full language acquisition. I see the language classroom as an orchestra where the teacher is the conductor and the students are the musicians.
As the orchestra conductor leads, but the ones playing the music are the musicians, just so the teacher leads, but students are producing the target language. Eventually the goal is that each musician is able to leave and play a solo. The students must be able to use the target language to conduct their own research, read for pleasure, travel, or use the language for their specific career needs. As a former choir singer, guitar player, and professional chess player I always felt inspired by charismatic and humorous leadership. I enjoy using this leading style in class and I feel it works well for me.
In my classes, student assessment is performed daily, monthly, and at the end of the semester. Listening, reading, writing and speaking, social attitudes, and individual expression are encouraged and evaluated every day through different forms of class participation such as volunteering to give opinions about class-culture related topics, answering questions, interviewing a partner, writing their ideas or opinions, working in groups and more activities. Additional writing assessment is done weekly through the Fridays writing assignments students submit on our online e-learning system: Blackboard. Oral assessments are conducted twice during the semester, Written Partial Exams (compositions and multiple choice) are done every month and a half. A cumulative Final Exam is done at the end of the semester.
I strongly believe that Study Abroad and Total Immersion Experiences are a very important part of the target language acquisition since they have shown better results when compared to the traditional classroom which has the worst results as confirmed by Freed et al 2004. Therefore these types of experiences must also be encouraged and promoted in the foreign language classroom.
In Conclusion, my teaching philosophy is one that engages students to learn in a multitude of ways which not only improves student language acquisitions, but studies have shown will make these students better overall.
Susana Villanueva Eguía Lis, PhD, M.A.,B.A. [email protected]
Villanueva Eguia Lis, Susana
After personally experiencing (as a student) the benefits of the communicative language classroom methodology as well as the great impact that study abroad has on language acquisition, I decided, more than ten years ago, to turn my language-learning personal passion into a long-term life career as a foreign language instructor.
I think that the purpose of teaching and learning is to facilitate acquisition of real life problem solving skills through collaboration and engagement according to the constructivist learning theories. In the case of Foreign Language Learning, these skills include listening, reading, writing and speaking through structured input and output activities in a communicative environment. Ryder (2008) defines Constructivism as a “philosophical position that views knowledge as the outcome of experience mediated by one’s own prior knowledge” (Cited in Reiser and Dempsey 2012, p.50) At the same time individual and social attitudes are promoted in a professional, personalized, inclusive, interactive and non-threatening class environment.
Based on information from empirical and documented research, I believe that learning a Foreign Language must be an essential element at all educational levels because it develops advanced intellectual skills that are reflected on higher scores on all standardized measures of mathematics, science, social studies, and English language arts (see Thomas, Collier & Abbot, 1993).
I consider that the role of the teacher is to lead by creating a non-threatening environment where students feel free to produce the target language after the teacher has presented the structured input language. The role of the students is to produce the target language in order to develop their own interlanguage, which will eventually develop into full language acquisition. I see the language classroom as an orchestra where the teacher is the conductor and the students are the musicians.
As the orchestra conductor leads, but the ones playing the music are the musicians, just so the teacher leads, but students are producing the target language. Eventually the goal is that each musician is able to leave and play a solo. The students must be able to use the target language to conduct their own research, read for pleasure, travel, or use the language for their specific career needs. As a former choir singer, guitar player, and professional chess player I always felt inspired by charismatic and humorous leadership. I enjoy using this leading style in class and I feel it works well for me.
In my classes, student assessment is performed daily, monthly, and at the end of the semester. Listening, reading, writing and speaking, social attitudes, and individual expression are encouraged and evaluated every day through different forms of class participation such as volunteering to give opinions about class-culture related topics, answering questions, interviewing a partner, writing their ideas or opinions, working in groups and more activities. Additional writing assessment is done weekly through the Fridays writing assignments students submit on our online e-learning system: Blackboard. Oral assessments are conducted twice during the semester, Written Partial Exams (compositions and multiple choice) are done every month and a half. A cumulative Final Exam is done at the end of the semester.
I strongly believe that Study Abroad and Total Immersion Experiences are a very important part of the target language acquisition since they have shown better results when compared to the traditional classroom which has the worst results as confirmed by Freed et al 2004. Therefore these types of experiences must also be encouraged and promoted in the foreign language classroom.
In Conclusion, my teaching philosophy is one that engages students to learn in a multitude of ways which not only improves student language acquisitions, but studies have shown will make these students better overall.
Susana Villanueva Eguía Lis, PhD, M.A.,B.A. [email protected]
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