PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING STATEMENT

TESOL Portfolio: Philosophy of Teaching Statement

Hsin-Yu (Teresa) Hsu

28 units Advanced TESOL Certificate Program

University of California, Riverside Extension Center

June 2nd, 2017

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Introduction

I discovered my interest in English language teaching while I was learning English at an institution in

Cambridge, United Kingdom, at the age of fifteen. What attracted me in language teaching were not only the

chance to apply theoretical knowledge such as approaches and methods into practical classroom, but also the

opportunity given to communicate thoughts and ideas with students. When I was studying early childhood

education in vocational high school in Taiwan, I was once asked be an English and math-teaching assistant.

There were significant improvements on my peers scores with my help. At that moment, I realized teaching

helps me to gain autonomy by seeing tangible differences first hand.

In my philosophy of teaching statement, I will integrate theories I learnt from my educational background

and relevant experiences in the profession such as volunteering service, overseas internship as well as working

experience into the discussion in English language learning and teaching.

Background and Professional Goals

I received my bachelor of art degree in the department of foreign language instruction at Wenzao

Ursuline University of Languages. I was lucky to be chosen as the coordinator of a student-teacher team

during an internship at Surabaya Taipei International School in Indonesia. I was also in charge of planning

intensive language courses in the Language Diagnostic and Consulting Center at Wenzao Ursuline University

of Languages for one semester as a job after graduated from university. I am currently working toward
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completion of the 28-unit Advanced TESOL Certificate Program at UCR Extension. Meanwhile, I am

volunteering as an English instructor in Glocally Connected, a program that supports middle-east immigrants

in the US to get connected with their communities. Furthermore, I have found the Master of Education TESOL

emphasis at UC Riverside a key to achieve my goal of using creativity and intelligence to make people feel

excited about English language learning. My academic goal for attending the master program is to extend my

group project that was honored for yearly filed research by The Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan

Characteristics of Successful Language Learners: A Comparison among Learners with Various Cultural

Backgrounds (Tsai, Chung, Chen, & Hsu, 2014) into an in-depth level, putting focus on both qualitative and

quantitative research in the aspects of motivation and application of teaching techniques. My long-tern

career goal is to become an English language instructor, teaching English at international language institutions.

I have a passion for the field in second- and foreign-language teaching specifically to young and adult

learners.

Articulate Teaching Statement

FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

I spent most of my time learning English as a foreign language in Taiwan and I recognized that traditional

methods such as Grammar Translation were commonly used in the classrooms. Evaluations were based on

receptive skills. Productive tasks such as giving an oral invitation or leaving a written message of apology
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seemed very abstract to the students. Such teaching and learning environment affected students willingness to

communicate in the target language. Therefore, I sustain the importance of developing students

communicative competences (CC). Hymes (1972) refers to CC as that aspect of our competence that enables

us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally with specific context. Brown

(2007) also asserts the importance

Communicative goals are best achieved by giving due attention to

language use and not just usage, to fluency and not just accuracy, to
authentic language and contexts, and to students eventual need to
apply classroom learning to previously unrehearsed contexts in the real
world.

Articulating functions is one way providing students the big picture of the unrehearsed context in the real

world. Brown (2014) asserts that functions are the purposes we accomplish with the language. Students learn

the lexical, structures and expressions they need to reach those purposes. I believe that designing a functional

syllabus can lead students to picture predictable learning outcomes.

Adapting a functional approach into language teaching is attributed to the challenges one might face to

communicate in the new language. Fluency cannot be developed in a short time by using a magic wand while

students might get lost when lessons put too much attention on accuracy. Planning functional-based courses or

lessons, such as giving advice, provides an obvious purpose for communication. Lexical, grammatical
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forms and target expressions are embedded to accomplish such purpose. I state that the functional approach

gives students a clear guide for knowing when to use what to whom in which condition.

NEEDS ASSESSMENT

When teachers start to design syllabi and lessons, there might be questions coming up in their mind,

Whom my students will be? Will my course meet their expectations? Such curiosities will give rise to the

awareness of conducting a need assessment. Grave (2000) acknowledges the usefulness of needs assessment

in students perspective as

it helps students to reflect on their learning, to identify their needs, and to

gain a sense of ownership and control their learning.

Figure 1: Basic Purpose of Needs Assessment

Purpose of course:
Learners abilities, Desired abilities/change
to make progress toward
attitudes, preferences outcome
before course

Purpose of needs assessment:

to gather to gather
information about information about

in order to make decisions about what will

be taught, and how it will be evaluated
Adapted from

Grave, K. (2007). Designing language courses: A guide for teachers. Boston: Heinle & Heinle
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Figure 1 outlines the basic purpose of needs assessment. In summary, needs assessment helps language

instructors to fill in the gap between what he or she expects to teach in the course and what students expect to

learn from the course. I saw the values of conducting needs assessment in my experience when I was planning

language courses for students with special needs. There are several benefits that a teacher will gain from

assessing needs. One of them is that assessing needs will give rise to clear objectives for the syllabus as well as

individual lessons. Meanwhile, on the account of conducting needs assessment, the syllabus and lessons will

be more students-centered, reaching the mainstream of ESL and EFL language teaching in recent years.

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

When discussing about the characteristics of successful language learners, researchers often discuss

intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Brown (2000) described extrinsically motivated behaviors rely on the

external rewards. In most of the English as foreign language (EFL) countries, extrinsic motivations play a

heavy role. As an illustration, some high school students in Taiwan learn English in order to get good scores on

proficiency tests or to make them more competitive when applying for university or seeking for jobs. Brown

(2007) weakened the notion of extrinsic motives with its addictive nature, meaning that learning is limited

by the external rewards and once they no longer exist, learning stops or cannot improve into advanced levels.

On the other hand, I believe it is also the teachers responsibility to apply techniques to assist students in

finding out their intrinsic motives that drive long-term retention. Brown (2000) describes intrinsic motivations
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as they reflect on the desire of doing something because it is enjoyable. Edward Deci (1975) also illustrated

intrinsically motivated behaviors are aimed at bringing about certain internally rewarding consequences,

namely feelings of competence and self-determination. In the perspective of second and foreign language

learning, motivation such as learning a language in order to get along with its culture or learning because of

the beauty of its literature can intrinsically drive student to retain long-term and advanced learning. I found

some Taiwanese learners started to feel panic when they were learning English to a certain level because they

wanted to reach native-like fluency while lacking of awareness of differences between the target and their

native culture. In contrast, learners who achieved a higher English proficiency carried certain intrinsic motives

like they enjoy watching American TV series or talk shows. Therefore, language instructors should not only

facilitate students skills to be familiar with the use or to use the language, but to also adapt cultural features

such as music, posters and videos to reinforce students intrinsic motivations.

Exemplifying Philosophy

Example 1

The ESL course and lessons I am currently volunteering in demonstrate my beliefs on adapting the

functional approach and needs assessment. Glocally Connected is a volunteering program that supports the

community settlement in the United States for refugees from middle-east countries such as Afghanistan and
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Syria. The ESL program, which I am volunteering in, helps those families to learn the language. We meet two

hours a day and two days per week.

In order to offer the language students need for living in an effective way, language for life skills is

adapted for planning the course and lessons. Before each quarter begins, all the teachers work together and

come up with the aims and objectives for the course. Below is an example

Course aim: Students will be able to apply the language for consuming products in
the real-life context such as buying grocery or furniture.

Course objective: Students will be able to present the language for checkout
in a supermarket role-play.

By setting up functional goals for the course and the lessons, teachers can make quick and suitable decisions

on the vocabulary and expressions students need to know. Furthermore, to make the course and lessons more

student-centered, we give students an opportunity to make their own vision board in the middle of the

quarter. The vision board is made with the images and words cut from magazines and newspapers, students

use the images and the words they know from those paper media to convey their needs for the language and

their lives. After we collect all the vision boards from the students, we observe and decide if we have to make

possible changes on our aims, objectives, and lesson contexts.

The aim and objective of the ESL program illustrate the importance of functional approach. Articulating

the goals based on language function supports the instructor to provide authentic and realistic contexts for
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students. Meanwhile, although the vision board is kind of an informal need assessment, it still gives the

students opportunity to visualize their individual needs. Since the students have very limited language

fluency, such techniques are very useful for gathering their expectations on the course.

Example 2

The English as second language (ESL) student-teaching course I am currently participating in gives me

opportunity to observe how to reinforce learners intrinsic motivations. My instructor is Bill Baker, who has a

great experience in this ESL teaching since he started to volunteer in teaching overseas. We have fourteen

students who come from Mexico, countries in South America and Asia. Most of them participate the class to

improve their speaking for career needs. Therefore, the lessons in this course are mainly focusing on language

fluency. The course aim for this quarter is based on understanding cultural differences.

There is one woman who often asks questions about the correct use of the target language, especially for

grammatical accuracy. I once asked Bill about the reason why that student was very curious about grammar.

He told me that she is a refugee from Iraq and mastered in English grammar very well back in her home

country. Her motivation and is similar to the students I teach in the volunteer program in that they are all very

extrinsic. However, as she has been in the United States for three years, she is also interested in American

culture and literature now. Mr. Baker tried to raise students awareness of the American culture and he found
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out students had positive feedback for such learning environments. Therefore, he talks about American history

that students are interested in during the class and tried to do cultural comparisons.

The TESOL practice teaching course clearly demonstrated the importance of reinforcing intrinsic

motivation. In my opinion, most of the ESL and EFL learners carry extrinsic motivation, but only intrinsic

motivation can reinforce their interests to learn the language in an advanced way. Some learners might be able

to use the language academically while not communicatively due to the cultural gaps like slangs and styles of

humor. I believe it is also the instructors duty to facilitate students conscious of the target culture, art, and

literacy in order to boost their intrinsic motivations for learning a language.

Conclusion

To conclude my philosophy of teaching, I strongly believe in the value of functional approach and needs

assessment as well as they benefit both instructor and learners. Additionally, language learning and teaching

should facilitate intrinsic motivations. With the experience of adapting and observing the three philosophies in

volunteering and student teaching, I am confident that these terms can advantage me on my English language

teaching profession as I complete my TESOL Certificate and achieve advanced education.

References

Brown, H.D. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching: A course in second language

acquisition. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education

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Brown, H.D. (2007). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains

NY: Pearson Education