Ji Yun Kim - Teaching With Technology
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Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
Spanish Basic Language Program
My teaching philosophy
From my own experience of acquiring three different languages, I know that the best way of assimilating a language (and a culture) is actually living in the environment in which these are practiced on a daily basis. The Spanish Basic Language Program at Penn State University tries to simulate that environment in both classroom and virtual settings. This is perfectly reasonable since language, whether native or foreign, is alive and meant to be used as a communicative tool. Although the rules of grammar serve as guidelines to the accurate expressions of ideas, the real purpose of using language is the exchange of ideas. This approach is not only very practical and reasonable, but also invites the learner of the foreign language to feel at ease in the process of second language acquisition.
The language to which we tend to revert is the one with which we feel most at ease, naturally because language is a habit. It is not surprising to me that the native language is also called “mother tongue”, which, according to the dictionary, denotes “the language learned by children and passed from one generation to the next”. The term “mother” also connotes nurturing and comfort. It is the language that one has acquired in the time of early infancy tracing back to the womb. Learning to communicate in the native language as children, we have been corrected where mistakes were made, but the focus was on getting the meaning across. With time and experience, we learn the relevance of using our native language in a way that is grammatically correct, both at home and at school. The four major aspects of language acquisition, in the order they usually tend to happen—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—are developed in a natural and progressive way. We also learn over time that language is subject to context. We prioritize the contextual language that we use, depending on our lifestyle in its many different aspects: culture, social life, academic and/or professional goals and interests, creed, leisure activities, and more.
The continuous progress in computer technology is changing the way we acquire language. It is an undeniable fact that we are living in the Age of Information, which is dominated by computer technology. Although this technology is not altogether replacing the traditional approaches to working in different professions, it has, from its beginning, complemented and facilitated human labor tremendously. Within the context of computer technology, I belong to what could be called the “in-between-generation” group of individuals who grew up experiencing the transition that the world has made— from typewriters (mechanical or electric) to Microsoft Word and other computer software— over the past two decades. The concepts of web browsers, search engines, the World Wide Web, and many software programs (e.g. Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point), have revolutionized our perception of communication. Like all human inventions to date, computer technology is as good as the ways in which we make use of it.
Coming to study and to teach at Penn State University with a B.A. in Communications, and a B.A. in Spanish, I am aware that although I have the basic tools to realize my academic and professional goals, there are many aspects of language learning and teaching that I want to nurture in order to become a competent contemporary teacher. Both the Spanish Basic Language Program and the course of Foreign Language Teaching: Theory and Methodology, have opened my eyes to the privilege and opportunity to become the kind of teacher that I ideally want to be: one that is able to combine the best of the traditional and the technology approaches to language teaching and learning. Progressively I understand the objectives and the intentions that underlie the perspectives of the Spanish Basic Language Program.
From the very beginning of the Methodology course, I was encouraged to see that teaching is one of the many forms of communication. As such, communication is the exchange of meaning, and therefore the instructor must be liberated from having all the responsibility of transferring knowledge to the learners. The novelty of this idea made it challenging for me to understand it at first, but the more I consider it, the more sense it makes. The presence of the instructor in the classroom serves the purpose of guiding and facilitating the exchange of meaning with and among the learners.
The Spanish Basic Language Program at Penn State University is structured taking into account the process of acquiring the native language, and applying these philosophies to second language acquisition. Along with the methodology, the program also takes advantage of the power of technology to maximize target language acquisition and application. In the classroom setting, the use of programs such as Power Point and Word, as well as the Internet, help learners to assimilate the various aspects of the second language through audio-visual media. By implementing such tools, learners can acquire the foreign language via oral and written communication; they are also encouraged to express their ideas in that target language.
I came to Penn State University knowing that teaching is a vocation and a passion for me. In this sense, I know that I have a strong foundation on which to build my professional career. In the process of apprenticeship, however, I am realizing how fortunate I am to be learning in an academic environment that inculcates in their present and future instructors, a reasonable and practical philosophy of learning and teaching a foreign language, such as that offered by the Spanish Basic Language Program.
The Pennsylvania State University. Copyright 2008.
Last updated on:
April 28, 2008 10:44 AM
Email: Ji Yun Kim