E- Portfolio 

 

I believe that teaching is a combination of presenting curriculum contents and strategies that provide scaffolds for students to acquire and use the language. The teacher should not focus only in teaching but to produce workshops for the learners to improve their personal and language skills. The teacher should support the learners to improve their language skills, interact in English and encourage them to the next level of learning process through establish materials and strategies to support their needs. I believe education is about discovering the learning styles of the learners and their interest to engage though providing several materials and strategies to support meaningful comprehension. English is a second language in the UAE and I believe that teachers should design strategies to motivate the learners to communicate in English.  Therefore I believe that the role of the teacher to be like a sister or a mother who encourages students gain the 21st century skills such as creativity, working with teams and developing critical thinking. My beliefs in teaching will be discussed according to the following topics, Second language acquisition, 21st century skills, the professional Teacher, Motivating students, Providing models of assessment, Learning styles, Different interaction patterns and Encouraging Student voice to improve learning.  

 

Second language acquisition

Through my experience  of learning English as a second language and the various teaching practices, I know that learning second language is challenging and most students struggle and lack motivation to learn. Therefore, it is important for teachers in the UAE to explore strategies that will motivate students to want study the language. I think the teacher should create activities using media and materials with colors, pictures and movement to support effective comprehension. In addition, expose to these strategies will support the new information to be connected to their schema and acquire the language and become part of their memory (bellon,1991). The focus in the class should be on practicing these new concepts through the activities such as Total Physical Respond and speaking guided activities. When the learners focus and practice the language they assimilate it and they will be able to use it in different language situations.

 

 

Teaching in 21st century 

I believe that the teachers and textbooks are no longer the only sources of information that the learners need to expand their knowledge. Therefore, the teacher's role is to engage the students to share the information according to their learning styles and support the learners to be creative and produce new things from the language that they acquired in the class (Jackson,2014). There are several 21st century skills  of teaching and learning namely, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity which are useful for English language class. I established collaboration through using different interaction patterns in the classroom. Providing problem solving issues help students' critical thinking skills and supports the teacher to use differentiation strategy to help the learners to obtain solutions.

 

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Professional teacher 

I believe that teaching is more than delivering the information to the learners. Therefore, the teacher should upgrade her knowledge by attending conferences and workshops about latest strategies in teaching English and share with the colleagues. I believe that the teacher should be able to find resources and information to help special need and struggling students. The teacher should collaborate with other teachers and take them as resources for solving problems on dealing with misbehaved students, generating new ideas for the lesson activities, sharing experiences and giving feedback (David,1997).

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Motivating learners

I don’t believe that the learners should be punished for their bad behavior because the teacher must change her strategies to control the learners in the class and motivate the learners for their good behavior. Reinforcement supports the learners to increase their good behavior and achievements in the class (Brogden,2011). There are several kinds of reinforcements that I used such as motivation board and the learners behaved well, deal with the tasks and finish on the time.

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Provide models of assessment

I believe that the teacher should provide some samples for the activities to scaffold the learners' understanding about completing the tasks. (Linsin,2015). In addition, modeling can be a uniquely powerful strategy because it gives the learners the clear picture about doing the task.  Also, it helps the teacher to organize the sequence of activities to flow smoothly.

 

 

Learning styles

Students have different learning styles which are visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning style. In addition, some learners need to change their place to learn and sometimes they should visit the outdoors areas (Roell, 2017). Also, the teacher should give the learners time to read alone, understand and share the information to improve their reading and social skills. The teacher should give the learners materials and provide student center activities to produce creative things and to be enthusiastic about the incoming lessons.

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Different interaction pattern

As Krashen mentioned that input hypothesis should be established through providing various activities in different interaction patterns to support the learners to be interested and engaged in the class (Hall& Walsh,2002).  Through my teaching practices I observed that every stage of the lesson includes different activity with different interaction pattern such as, individual, peers and groups activities. I believe that learners' collaboration in small group activity to answer tasks improves the social skill for the learners and they learn from each other. Students are provided with sufficient time and opportunity to listen and consider the ideas of others from group activities because they share ideas, words, and acquire the grammar forms of the sentences.

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Encourage Student voice to improve learning

 I strongly believe that receiving feedback is an important  way of getting information to improve  teaching. Feedback from the students is very useful. I used online survey to check their understanding. The result showed their learning styles and also that some of them struggled in understanding my use of language. Most importantly the survey also gave them a voice and made feel that their views were important. Also, the teacher can check the students' performance during the class in the course through surveys, projects and checklist to know kinds of strategies and activities are the appropriate to be abled in class to improve the learning and acquisition for the students (Ormrod,2008).

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References

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Brogden, C. (2011). Positive reinforcement for class participation. Retrieved from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/positive-reinforcement-class-participation.

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 Bellon, J.J., Bellon, E.C. & Blank, M.A. (1991). Teaching from a Research Knowledge Base. a Development and Renewal Process. Facsimile edition. Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA.

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David,C. (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. UK

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Hall, J.K. & Walsh, M. (2002). Teacher-student interaction and language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 186-203.

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Hein, K. (2017). Mobile digital devices . Retrieved from https://mastersinesl.com/essential-esl-app-guide/.

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Jackson, A. (2014). 13 Essential 21st century skills for todays students. Retrieved from https://www.envisionexperience.com/blog/13-essential-21st-century-skills-for-todays-students.

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J.E. Ormrod. ( 2008).Educational Psychology Developing Learners. Pearson Education. USA

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Linsin, M. (2015). Why student modeling is important. Retrieved from https://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2015/01/10/why-student-modeling-is-so-important/. 

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Roell, K. (2017). The three different learning styles . Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/three-different-learning-styles-3212040.