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Running head: MY PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING STATEMENT

My Philosophy of Teaching Statement

Huimin Li

University of California Riverside Extension: TESOL Portfolio

15 March 2017
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My Philosophy of Teaching Statement

My philosophy of teaching statement is based on my 15-year learning experience in

China. I used to have English classes which focused on textbooks and exercises. The purpose of

having English classes in middle school and high school is to get a good grade on the final exam.

Six years have witnessed that thousands of students sit in the classroom, struggling with various

kinds of vocabulary and grammar exercises. It seems like English class we had before in China

mainly developed our testing skills. In order to improve students general English abilities

including speaking, writing, reading and listening efficiently in the classroom, I started to think

of contributing every effort to manage my English class and create an effective classroom

learning environment for students where they can feel comfortable and safe.

According to Richards and Farrell (2011), creating an effective classroom environment

consists of five parts, which is creating the right classroom climate, arranging the class to

promoting effective learning, managing the use of class time, maintaining appropriate classroom

behavior and creating a culturally sensitive classroom. There is no doubt that these elements are

useful to build an efficient English class. First of all, creating the right classroom climate is

important, which requires the teacher knows some information about students such as learners

learning style preferences, motivations, needs. The classroom climate refers to students feelings

to the teacher and the class and the learning atmosphere of the classroom (Richards and Farrell,

2011). Therefore, the teaching methods that the teacher uses in the English classes should meet

students needs. The teacher probably can collect students information by questionnaires,

surveys or mini-talks. Thus, based on these data, here comes another problem that how to attract

students attention in the class. To put the Chinese education situation into my perspective, even

though the warming up occupies a little time, it is significant for an English class due to the fact
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that in most middle or high school in China, students have so many subjects that they are not able

to only focus on the English learning, especially at the beginning of every class. This natural fact

that students have low motivation and less participation to the class gives rise to the importance

of warming up, which is an ice-breaker of the English class. A warming up can be presented

in several ways such as greeting with students, giving some reminders for students or talking

about some relaxing topics. The main purpose of this activity, the short communication between

students and the teacher, is to stimulate students participation, to build an English language

environment in the classroom and to create a sense of community among the teacher and students.

Furthermore, during the whole class, I will keep watching students reactions and find some

approaches to help students to develop the positive views of my class. Moreover, considering the

traditional teaching method that some English teachers in China often use, grammar-translation

method mainly focuses on reading and writing, which cannot keep the general abilities balanced.

So in order to develop the speaking and listening skills as well, I will pay more attention to

Communicative Language Teaching, which requires student-teacher interaction and student-

student interaction in the class (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011). Differing from other classes,

the English class provides students with an opportunity to express their personal feelings and

share life experiences. Since every student comes up with different ideas or opinions and students

have an information gap, it is a typically useful method for the English class to activate their

participation in the class and influence other students to think and discuss. In this way, I will be

able to create a positive and infectious learning climate.

Definitely, a teacher is not supposed to take up the whole class to his or her own whole-

class teaching regardless of the feelings of students. Besides the whole-class teaching, I will

consider using individual work, pair work and group work in my class. Since teaching is
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subordinated to learning, my teaching purpose is to develop a learner-centered class, which

requires the teacher to develop the ability of drawing learners attentions and understanding

learners needs and goals, analyzing their classroom participation styles and cognitive styles

(Richards and Farrell, 2011). Considering the preference of large class size of around 40 students

in Chinese middle school and high school and the difference of talkative students and shy

students, I prefer to choose activities which the whole class can be involved in. The size of

groups directly affects the amount of possible talking time (Jones, 2007). To illustrate, in pair

work, each student has half the time to talk, and when they have group of four, everyone has

quarter of time to express themselves. Hence, I will encourage students to work in pairs first and

then to share their ideas with groups in my class. As for the content for the pair work and group

work, I prefer to use Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) in my class which aims to facilitate

students language learning by engaging them in a variety of tasks which have a clear outcome

(Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011). I have observed many teachers using TBLT in their

language teaching. For instance, a teacher taught transition phrases to express opinions in his

class. He designed an opinion-gap task which aimed to let students discuss and to make a

decision about living in big cities, small towns or countryside. Students were supposed to share

opinions and reasons with their group members and report their decisions to the whole class.

Since the TBLT requires a great amount of output in class, learners are encouraged to

communicate, discuss and cooperate with each other, developing their cohesion and coherence.

When students are learning by TBLT, they play various roles in class such as communicators,

cooperators, opinion sharers and problem solvers rather than only learners.

In addition, for the sake of the efficiency of the class, it is vital for a teacher to make the

decision about the management of limited time. When I prepare my lesson, I always write down
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the expected time of each part. However, in my opinion, the management of the time of class is

not the most important because I should guarantee that my students really follow my teaching

pace. As a teacher, I am not supposed to catch up with my plan regardless of my students feeling.

Thus, I want to manage and adjust my class flexibly based on students needs.

In order to develop a positive learning environment, I will pay more attention to build

respect and cohesion among students and the teacher. When I deliver my first class, I will

negotiate with my students and establish class rules together. We may build a reward and

punishment system and everyone should follow the rules. Furthermore, as the monitor of the

class, the teacher should stop the inappropriate talk or behavior in the class in a polite way. For

example, a student is saying bad words in class. I will say: Pay more attention to your language

please. According our class rules, everyone should talk in an appropriate way. Obviously,

whereas it is a common phenomenon in every country that the teacher corrects learners

behaviors, every teacher should pay more attention to their own behaviors. For example, I have

seen several teachers occupy students break time in order to finish his class. Truly some

inappropriate behaviors will probably drive students annoyed and to whine about the teacher. It is

crucial for me to develop a teachers ability to monitor my own behavior, control myself and

respect my students in the class; thus, I can be the model of the classroom behaviors.

If I deliver my class in a multilingual and multicultural classroom, I should particularly be

aware of different cultures. For instance, there are various cultural taboos that the teacher needs

to avoid in the class. Conversely, I will encourage students to share their culture, especially

something relevant to their life. I have observed a grammar class that talks about loanwords in

the UCR Extension where students come from different countries. The teacher asks every student

to come up with loanwords in their first language, which make the class much more interesting.
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It seems like that there is needless to create a culturally sensitive classroom where students speak

the same first language. However, when students learn a language, they are learning new culture

simultaneously because language cannot be separated from culture. When I teach my class, I will

introduce western culture to my students and compare it with Chinese culture in my class,

boarding their horizons.

Through my philosophy of teaching EFL in China, I aim to create a positive and effective

learning environment in my class, encourage my students participation in my class, help my

students develop their general English fluency and have a view of cultural communication.
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References

Jones L. (2007). The Student-Centered Classroom. New York, NY, Cambridge University Press

Larsen-Freeman D. & Anderson M. (2011). Techniques & Principles in Language Teaching.

Oxford: Oxford University Press

Richards J. & Farrell T. (2011). Practice Teaching: A Reflective Approach. New York, NY,

Cambridge University Press