My love for cultures, building relationships and languages are the three key factors that led me to become an educator in the TESOL field today. Immigrating to the U.S at a young age, I experienced first hand the difficulty in maintaining and learning my heritage language. I believe the key to learning the Target Language is intrinsic motivation. When students are driven by an enjoyment in the task itself, learning becomes much more meaningful and personal.
Generating Motivation Through Learning:
Generating Motivation through Teaching:
Generating Motivation Through Learning:
- “Learning as Construction,” rooted from the constructivist learning theory, i.e. the building, connecting and reconstructing of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Each person (learners and teachers) already brings along his or her “constructs”, experiences and personal background into the classroom, and further “construction” is shaped by this.
- Learning is an individual as well as a group process, where individual thinking and processing is influenced by (and influencing) group processing, collaborative action or discussion. In this sense, learning is a reciprocal co-creation process between the learner, peers, and teacher.
- Learning does not mean merely ‘collecting knowledge’ (i.e. facts and figures). Learning, foremost, is understanding. I see learning as a holistic process of knowledge, competence, skills and attitude development – for the students and also for myself.
- Sharing my enthusiasm and passion for teaching English in the classroom so that my students will exhibit that same passion in return. My goal is to create a classroom in which my students feel part of a community, where we are engaged, interactive, and cognitively challenged about our learning.
Generating Motivation through Teaching:
- being a facilitator, supporter and guide for learning and understanding, this means that I am managing the classroom based on needs my students and I have shaped together.
- conveying my fascination with the topics and to spark enthusiasm in my students, once students sense the teacher’s love for the subject being taught, they will also be influenced as well.
- providing a strong basis of knowledge and skills for their studies and for lifelong learning, this means that learning does not stop after class. It is a continual process throughout life.
- striving to expand my own skills for teaching and to ‘experiment’ with (innovative) methods and techniques that create new kinds of learning opportunities for my students (i.e. by means of educational technologies). In the world that we live in now, technology is an inescapable part of everyday life, effective technology integration will deepen and enhance the learning process. When effectively used to reach curriculum goals, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy.