What is Reflective Teaching?

Thank you Erin Lowry for the information you shared with us in Lima.She is an English language specialist from the United States.

Reflective Teaching is looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it and if it works and it is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation

“It is a response to a past experience and involves conscious recall and examination of the experience as a basis for evaluation and decision making and as a source for planning and action “(Farrell 1995).

Reflection Sequence

n  Noticing a concern

n  Clarification or expression of the concern in some form

n  Response to the concern

n  (Explicit relation of the concern to other experiences or input)

n  (Collecting other responses or information)

n  Processing the response as a whole

n  Acting on the insights gained

Reflect on Your Role as a Teacher

n  “You have a set of beliefs about how the people of this world should behave toward one another.  You have convictions about the quality of life, the shape of liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…

We are not merely a language teacher who goes into the classroom and start teaching without thinking about the results of our lessons.                                      

We are  agents for change in a world in desperate need of change: change from competition to cooperation, from conflict to resolution,  from prejudice to understanding.”   

What do I do?   How do I do it?  Two questions that every teacher need to answer in order to reflect on his job.

How to set your goals:

1. Identify personal areas for improvement

2. Brainstorm with colleagues:            

- strategies to be implemented

- a method for evaluating whether or not goals have been achieved

Integrating language skills

Our principal goal is to have students understand somewhat of spoken and written English and that is why  we need to include language in context, to build language awareness and to include skills in our lessons. In order to reach this goal, much practice is necessary; however, our students have limited opportunity to observe English and practice outside the classroom. Therefore when teaching a language, we have to talk about skills. They are normally referred to the four skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing.

In the past, teachers followed a sequence in order to teach a foreign language. They said that students could not speak if they did not hear anything (first listening, and then speaking). In the seventies, it was common to teach and give practice in each of these skills in isolation. And even worse, writing and listening were omitted. This happened because of many factors; English was (  is still ) taught in two hours , students did not have books, teachers had to follow the curriculum, etc.

Nowadays, learning a foreign language is seen as a language of today’s World. Learners today are more likely than ever to use English to communicate with  non-native speakers in travel, business, and work.

Rebecca Oxford from University of Maryland states something important about integrating skills in our lessons.

 We need to keep in mind the following:                                                             

1. Teaching style             
2.   Learner motivation                                                                 
3.   Classroom setting   
4.   Language teaching               

Because students need to use L2 when they finish high school, teachers have to integrate language, context and language skills as well. Five things have to be considered for integrating skills in our lessons:

·         Get  information on how to integrate skills

·         See  and evaluate the language skills

·         Check the materials you have and if they include listening, speaking, reading and writing.

·         Do not teach   one skill in isolation  but integrate two or three of them.

·         Teach language learning strategies

In conclusion, including language skills in our lessons will give learners opportunities to experience   and notice the language.

Contextualizing

It means that we, as teachers have to provide students with enough language; grammar,vocabulary, and pronunciation in order to construct language for real communication in context.The topics and content should be according to our students´level, interest, and needs.The process of contextualizing a target language is to join two factors: cognitive and social aspects.Keeping in mind these two aspects our students will construct meaningful ideas or knowledge through pair or group work.In additon, we need to include culture elements to our lessons. For example, when talking to someone we need to have eye contact with the person,use a good tone of voice,be aware of the distance between the speakers,and develop good manners.