First Teacher: His teaching style is mostly based on the Communicative Approach
(1980). This approach most relatable to him and the way he teach mainly because
I teach high school and college students who are required to pass TOEFL or IELTS
to study overseas. In order to live and study in an English-speaking country, his
students need to develop all four skills which are listening, speaking, reading and
writing. Consequently, he frequently utilize some carefully leveled books, such as
How to Master the Skills for the TOEFL iBT because those books usually have
basic, intermediate and advanced level which meet the needs of students with
different language proficiency. Therefore, they would not be under too much
pressure from learning the language. Also, I love the idea of using some authentic
materials in classroom. For instance, in his class he shows his students part of the
Psychology lecture from Harvard University. So, they can practice how to take
notes while listening to a real college-level class. he also play a short video about
how to order at restaurant in my class. So, my students would get familiar with
the common expressions they would use when they are ordering on their own.
Since the authentic materials are close to the real world, by using them, it will be
much easier for students to apply the language they have learned in the real-life
situations in the future, which is the key of the Communicative Approach.Another
reason why he think his teaching style will best meet the needs of his students
and motivate them to learn is that by using the Communicative Approach he can
use some specific techniques, such as language games and role-plays which can
easily attract students’ attention and make them more engaged in learning the
language. For example, in a role-play of job interview, students are given roles of
interviewers and interviewees. Besides memorizing the target language, students
need to use it to communicate with each other and act out their roles. During the
roleplay, although students may make mistakes or even look ridiculous, they can
still have a lot of fun in this given context. Actually, acting out a role is just like
finishing a task for students which would give them a sense of accomplishment
and motivate them to continue learning the language.
The Second Teacher:Speaking about his teaching style, the most relatable
approach to him is the communicative approach which is applied widely by the
teacher of the era.As the world today is considered as a small village because of
the virtual world, so this approach helps connect people. He like this approach
because it focuses simultaneously on the four skills, reading, speaking, listening
and writing and this approach tried to benefit from the advantages of the other
approaches, keeping away from the disadvantages. But to be honest, he is not
applying only communicative approach, my own teaching style is closer to have
some features and techniques from all the approaches. He think there is not one
best approach in teaching a language, the best approach is to mix and to pick a
flower from each approach. What he like to use in my classroom is lowering the
effective filter, reducing the stress and anxiety and increasing the confidence of
the learners. Sometimes if all the learners are from one nationality, he can apply
the use of back translation from the grammar translation approach and reading
approach. he used to teach high school students, but in the coming period he is
looking forward to teach university students. Having a TESOL certificate is going to
help him a lot in teaching English in universities, meeting their needs and
motivating them to learn by applying what I experienced in TESOL.
