AIKO NAKAMURA 1 Teaching Philosophy Teaching English has become my passion because I believe language is a powerful tool that

broadens ones perspective, enhances ones potential, and provides wider options in life as one acquires it. As a teacher, it is my ultimate goal to not only assist students with mastering English but also to bring a positive influence to their mind, life and their dreams through teaching. As a language teacher, I am a nurturer, a motivator, and an accepter who creates a learning environment in which students can learn from each other, who motivates students by understanding the individuality of students, and who accepts the work of students with positivity and grows confidence in them towards learning a language. In order to equip students with language skills that are effective and useful in real life, I make my class student-centered and task-based with the incorporation of authentic materials. That is, students are the main actors who lead activities and the teacher is a guide and an organizer who establishes a structure of a lesson for students to achieve certain objectives. Therefore, in my class, activities are largely done in pairs or groups. Students use the target language as a means to share ideas, discuss and negotiate meanings. For example, when I taught a content-based class for Land Sustainability, I first provided them with a broad concept of environment conservation, asking them to brainstorm in groups what is involved in conserving nature. After students developed a schema of the content through discussion, I provided an authentic material, brochures for National Parks, to provide a more concrete context for a main task in the lesson. Subsequently, students tackled a real-life task, which was to learn about a National Park from their websites, including the measures they take to conserve the land, and plan a road trip. As a teacher, I appreciate the individuality of students both in terms of their personality and their English proficiency, because it brings in a great dynamics and learning outcomes to the classroom. Moreover, I believe that acknowledging the characteristics, learning styles, and language learning goals of each student builds a good rapport with all of

them and facilitate their learning in the classroom as a whole. Therefore, I value having interactions with individual students in class as much as I can by always calling by their names and commenting on individuals work as I walk around the class. I also take interactions with students outside the classroom in a more relaxed setting very seriously because students tend to be nervous or shy to express themselves in the classroom. I would plan collaborative events with other classes that involve outside communities including sports day, seasonal festivity, potluck, etc. where students can express their free selves. Finally, I strongly believe that in acquiring a language in all skills, having a certain level of confidence is essential regardless of proficiency level because language learning is promoted by having a vast amount of both input and output. It is often the case, especially with Japanese students, that even if they are greatly exposed to the target language, if they do not have the confidence to produce output by speaking, their fluency does not improve. Therefore, as a teacher I endeavor to grow confidence in them by always informing them of what they are already capable of doing with the language through feedback. I regularly set a one-on-one meeting with individual students to discuss their work or achievement with encouragements and advice as to how they can improve better next time. As a teacher, I enjoy seeing students progress and growth in language ability and as a person. Mastering a new language equips a person with the skill to relate to a wider variety of people, and lets him/her open a gate to a future that he/she never thought of before. I believe it is my duty as a language teacher to convey such inherent value of language to students and contribute to their successful acquisition of the language.