MARK AMENGUAL WATSON
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Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Spanish Basic Language Program
Philosophy of Teaching
An important aspect of my teaching philosophy is embracing an effective teaching approach or methodology. Unfortunately, when learning a foreign language, too many of us have been exposed in the past to mechanical drills, memorization of paradigms and dialogues which lack a communicative value, leaving behind the primary skill that every language learner must develop: the ability to communicate. Using the communicative language teaching method, a foreign language class must have communication as its goal. Thus, in my approach I will assume that language meaning is of primary importance and that contextualization is a basic principle.
In the classroom I encourage the learner’s attempts to communicate from the beginning of instruction, and I believe that the new foreign language system will be developed best by struggling to communicate one’s own meaning and by negotiation of meaning through interactions with other language learners and the instructor. In the classroom, the sequencing of materials is determined by the content, function, and meaning which maintains the students’ interest and involvement. In terms of the role in the classroom, I am a resource or a facilitator, empowering my students to become responsible for their own independent learning and success.
There is no doubt that we live in a technological world in which our students have grown up with computers and the internet. This technology is increasingly incorporated into the classroom and used in educational institutions worldwide. By moving towards a modern medium to teach foreign language courses, we are separating ourselves from traditional instruction which is restricted to the classroom setting and has limited availability of pedagogical materials. Therefore, I believe that teachers and students must be part of the constantly changing technological landscape.
It is the responsibility of the educator, not only to stay current in the field of study but also to engage in the possibilities that are available in terms of technology in the classroom. Technology is important in the classroom since it is a rapidly developing instructional vehicle and can be an invaluable tool for addressing different learning styles. The primary benefits of technology include improvements in efficiency and access to information, the capability to tap into cognitive processes that facilitate learning, the integration of technology into the world of today’s students, and the demand by businesses for skills developed by using the Internet (Achacoso, 2003).
As computers and technology are becoming an important component in the classroom and an aid in teaching languages, it is our job as instructors of foreign languages to help provide the tools for language learners to become effective communicators in the language. Furthermore, as technological advances are made, we must reach out to benefit from these innovative means to provide these language tools through technology in the classroom. Our students must have the chance to benefit from the interactive possibilities that we can offer.
As an instructor of beginning and intermediate levels of Spanish at the Pennsylvania State University, I have been able to move a step ahead and fully take advantage of technology in the computer-enhanced Spanish courses I teach. I first experienced teaching with technology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester (MA) and had to adapt to a new concept of teaching and an initial fear of the unknown. This initial skepticism towards a paperless classroom has very quickly turned into a dependency on these very valuable pedagogical materials. I now integrate technology-enhanced curricula with the use of multi-media classroom presentations, using the World Wide Web to provide the “here and now” and the “realia” necessary for the students to contextualize the materials acquired in class.
By employing technology when teaching a computer-enhanced course we are providing our students with on-line learning. This on-line instruction concentrates on the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary, the development of writing, reading and listening skills while exposed to the cultures of Spanish-speaking countries. Using computer-based instruction models, utilizing ANGEL as our delivery system, we can achieve more one-on-one interaction with our students, with the instructor providing exposure to language that the student can understand while carrying meaning and showing how this language conveys this meaning. This will inevitably push learners toward more optimal processing of language data. The advantages of this type of computer-enhanced learning for our students are numerous: they are able to keep their own pace and dedicate as much time as necessary to complete the online portion of the course, they receive immediate feedback with automatically generated results, and they have easy access to the materials and the online activities from any computer via the internet. Finally, these materials encompass a great variety of activity types that accommodate different learning styles.
I strongly believe that the philosophy of language teaching is developed through experience, not only as an instructor but also as a student. As a student of languages, we are first exposed to an approach or method and we evaluate its effectiveness. We note the key role that a teacher has, not only in our understanding of the language and its culture, but also as an ambassador which affects our overall vision of the foreign language and the people that speak that language.
This process continues as an instructor where we further develop ideas on how a foreign language classroom should be, based on the effectiveness and the response of our class to the input we provide our students. We effectively learn through experience, observations, and discussions with other teachers and through the study of a methodology that proves to be effective and in line with our goals as instructors. Teaching is an evolving activity, in the sense that I am not the same teacher I was five years ago and I remain open to continuous learning.
Metro Station in Madrid (Spain) by Mark Amengual
The Pennsylvania State University. Copyright 2008.
Last updated on:
April 11, 2008 15:51
Email: Mark Amengual Watson