My-teaching-reflection-of-English-learning-strategy.doc

My Teaching Reflection of English Learning Strategy
As a student from normal university, mastering some learning strategies is quit necessary. For me, these years, I have learned many strategies in the course of teaching students in my part time and intern as an English teacher.
During my teaching hours, I tasted both sweet and delightful memory and bitter and hard experience. For my delightful memory, I had a wonderful time with my students, who are energetic and active, more exactly, lively and kicking. For my bitter experiences, actually not so bad that you can not be able to imagine how I can survive my tough teaching job. So what is the problem I have come across? That is what I want to share with you in this essay.
Maybe all the English teachers, including me, have the same, at least similar, experience that it is hard to make adult students or high teenagers do their independent-thinking and have a strong desire to express themselves both in oral and written English. On the other hand, teenagers do not find a good learning strategy in the process of learning and form a good habit of self-management and self-evaluation, self-reflection. It is a little difficult for children to do so, but necessary for the middle school students and high school students, for self-management can help to have self-control when they learn English in order that they design an appropriate time table for their learning and carry out the learning plan more effectively. Self-evaluation is going to lead students to setting a goal and trying to achieve it. It is a simple but meaningful task. Without a clear goal, students can not be highly-motivated and work hard on it. The last and the most important one is that the importance of culture in English language teaching and learning. From my limited experience with English language education, it would appear that teaching of the culture of English-speaking countries often determine the final result in learning English. However, it seems as if it is always something of a bonus, if the teacher manages to find time to introduce a bit of the culture of the foreign language into the classroom - some music perhaps, or a traditional dance, in the final lesson of the course. If learners are particularly lucky, they get a chance to spend a month in the foreign country to “immerse” them in the “culture” of the country. But is that one class session enough? Is one month enough? Is it necessary? Language is not only a symbol but also a culture. How can you illustrate that? We can say that ideas and thoughts (they are produced by culture) can only be expressed through language. But, culture will be the first, and language put it down in words. Without knowing the culture, you can not have keen insight into the way the native-speakers think and behave or act. Then, it is impossible to have a good command of English for you do not know how they think and how they use their mind to guide their language and action. When a person decides to learn French, for example, he or she is not merely absorbing the linguistics of the language, but everything to do with French and France. The result will be much better than the one that is acquired only through learning language symbols. By speaking the language, therefore, one automatically (to a greater or lesser extent) identifies oneself with the culture of the language. To speak a language well, one has to be able to think in that language. A person’s mind is in a sense the key to his identity, so if a person thinks in English in order to speak English, one might say that he sounds or looks like a native-speaker. Too much ink has been used to demonstrate the theory, and we have to turn back to the main point—how to solve the problem. As I mentioned above, middle school students nowadays are facing difficulties in learning English in three aspects: ①they do not have a strong desire to use English; ② they do not have a good learning strategy (learning method); ③ they are unaware of the importance of learning the culture of English. That is where the shoe pinches. How can we change this situation? It is a big challenge in advance of us. As English teachers, we must be responsible for not only their achievement in English learning at present stage, but also their development in leaning a foreign language in the future. That is what we call a lifelong education. I don’t believe that lifelong learning only means studying all the time in one’s life because study has a long-term effect on your life. We all have the saying： “Give a man a fish and he eats a day. Teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Real study means that you can teach students something that affects their whole life.
How to make a preparation? During my preparation, I prepared a lot of pictures to realize the revision and teaching of the new words. I found that they were quite attractive when students saw them during the teaching. To some extent, the use of the pictures of some famous stars could cultivate students’ interest to use the adjectives to describe their appearance, personality and etc. When I had to teach the related words about the face, for example, round and square, I presented some cartoons for comparison. As far as the adjectives of eyes and nose were concerned, I also used some flashcards for presentation and comparison. The students inclined to look and say something about the pictures, using the related adjectives. When I taught the words of one’s figure and personality, I first called some students to tell me what kind of friends they would like to choose as their best friends. I gave them some hints when they met some difficulties. Then, I presented some pictures for a small talk, getting students to talk about the personalities of different people and what kind of person they would like to be. After this, I gave students some time to describe the famous stars, for instance, Yao Ming, Harry Porter, S.H.E and etc., which could help them to understand the meanings of the adjectives. During the reading part, I presented some questions and tasks for students to answer and fulfill. Owing to the use of multimedia, students could answer the questions quickly and effectively. In order to avoid the one-sidedness of comprehension, I gave students more time to read and practice. The total goal was to develop students’ability to write an article about his/her best friend. To serve this goal, I designed some questions for them to answer in advance and got students to talk and make a conclusion. In this part, I used a game to help, say, a guessing game, asking students to write down something about his/her friend and read it aloud for others to guess who he/she was. This method, I thought, conquered the monotony of writing. I outlined the importance of being an honest, kind-hearted and helpful person. At last, I played a poem for students to enjoy and imitate, which, as I saw it, would possibly raise the theme to a higher level.
How can we help our students? Maybe some students are average ones with average intelligence. They seldom get good grades, especially in English study. They are more interested in parties than learning English and in sports than scholarship. The fact is that they don’t study very hard, so it is very important for us English teachers to help them improve their studying habits. We English teachers should have them plan their time carefully, find a good place to study, and tell them how to read and how to make full use of their class time, to study regularly and face the tests correctly. First of all, make a point of having an effective communication with them in class in simple and plain English. We shall read their mind and try to arouse their interest in the process of learning. Secondly, tell them that working hard is not enough and they must set themselves a goal and make a well-designed timetable. Thirdly, try to learn some cultures of the language they learn. That is what a good teacher should do because students do not have much English and their thoughts are not so mature that they can have good insight into the culture. So teachers have to do that work to help students be aware of the gap between two different cultures (English and Chinese) when they use the language. The most important one is that you have to tell your students English can be acquired if you are willing to make efforts in it. I believe that a good teacher would like to make his students self-confident. The using of the teaching methods in the real class should be varied. In the teaching theory class we learned different teaching methods like grammar-translation method, direct method, total physical response, situational language teaching and so on. But in practical use, it is hardly to find using only one method in one teaching period. Even in the 45mins’ class, we have different steps like lead-in, presentation, practice, consolidation and other flexible parts. According to the purposes and the characteristics of different part, we should take in different teaching method. For example, in the beginning of the class we can create a situation by using the method of situation language teaching to attract our students’ attention. When we carry on class activities, we can employ the method of total physical response to deepen the impression of the language on the mind of students. So in the practical teaching, the teacher should consider the flexibility in using these teaching methods. And I think no method is totally good or bad. If we can find the right place for each of them, they are all good for our teaching.
How to arrange students’ learning process? Before my intern, I knew nothing about the school and the students. In order to make better exchanges between the students and me in class, I stepped into the classroom and introduced myself to them before my class. They felt quite strange initially, but later they felt excited. I asked them to try their best in my class. All of them nodded and it seemed that we became closer. However, when it came to my class, they felt quite nervous just in front of the teachers from different places. Before class, I tried to relax them by singing a song and asking them to wave their hands. They were very cooperative. I felt a little more confident. During the class, I proceeded well as I designed. Once I raised a question, most of the students could undertake brainstorm and gave me the correct answers. When the discussion time came, I divided them into groups of four, asking them to do related tasks. What I didn’t expect was that they preferred not to come to the front for acting. I felt a bit embarrassed at first, but I respected their choices and dealt with it properly. For most of the time, all of the students were very hard-working. It seemed that they had grasped all the knowledge effectively in this period. However, I found some problems when they stood up to give me answers. At that time, I felt nervous about my teaching effect. “Was my teaching method unsuitable for them?”, I said to myself, but I had no time to think. I tried to speak more slowly and clearly, giving them more time to think and speak. It really worked. The students and I cooperated well during the following steps. In my teaching process, I felt it a pity that I didn’t give the students time to present their papers and correct their mistakes, which I thought I should keep in mind for future teaching. After the class, our instructor gave me some advice, which was quite acceptable and suitable to me.
How to organize the class? In terms of my organization of the class, there were seven steps in detail. They were warm-up, revision, presentation, practice, conclusion, discussion and writing. From the angle of the time control, all of the steps were carried out successfully during my class. Warm-up and revision occupied about 8 minutes; presentation occupied 5 minutes; practice accounted for half of the class; writing lasted about 7 minutes. I was quite satisfied with the part of oral practice, because every student participated in listening and talking. They could give correct answers when they stood up. The feedback information was ideal at this point. Meanwhile, I was not satisfied with the writing part. Although students had time to write their compositions, they didn’t have the opportunities to know how well they had written. They should get some comments on their composition, for instance, grammar, sentence structure, hand-writing and so on. If I had five more minutes, I would present their papers to the whole class and gave some corrections if necessary. The last part was enjoying a poem, which was related to the theme of the class. Because of the limited time, I didn’t realize the teaching aim of this part. I just called them to read it. If I removed this part, I thought it would be better for the writing exercise. Besides knowledge in the textbooks, the teacher ought to get the students to know some important knowledge about the history, culture, customs, and some other things of foreign countries, especially English-speaking countries. English teachers must have a solid knowledge of English. Only when we have enough knowledge, can we express ourselves freely and properly in class, and make our lessons more lively and interesting. For example, when teaching the unit on holiday, we can introduce something about the holidays in the west countries such as five-day work system, New Year’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving Day, Mother’s Day. Also, tell them the different customs in other countries. This will help make class more interesting.
As we know, the Chinese English- teaching teachers and researchers have been looking for the best method for English teaching in China for many years. Different methods and approaches have been introduced, tried out and found unsatisfactory among them: the direct method in the early decades of the 20th century, Situational Method in the 1960s, Audio-lingual Method in the 1970s, and Communication approach in the 1980s. Through trial and error, people come to realize that there is no single best method that can meet the needs of all learners all the time. The method chosen must be done according to the students’ practical needs, their learning style, their age and interest, their native language, and other factors, because all these factors decide whether our teaching will be successful or not. In Chinese, we should “ 因材施教，因地制宜.” That is to say, our English teaching should be based on the needs of the students, and based on the teaching content. I think it is an efficient and effective way for English teaching.
Communication in class: students should not keep silent in class; instead, there are co-operations between the teacher and the students, which mainly depending on the students. For example, in a writing class, a student and his partner either discuss in pair or take part in conversations from time to time, and they will spe