Some Reflections from an English Language Teacher’s Diary

Introduction

This paper records some of my reflections as a teacher and a teacher-trainer. These are the notes from my diary that I have been maintaining over the last five years of my post-PhD teaching practice at the Institute of English Language and Literature, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan and also working as a teacher educator with several local and international organizations. These reflections are some insightful snippets based on my observations and research as an applied linguist for the last 15 years. My experiences and insights as a teacher and teacher trainer may be a useful guide for pre-service, novice, and in-service teachers of English as they provide a comprehensive description of my teaching philosophy and lessons I learned over the years. The story of my continuous professional growth may be relevant to many teachers in the Nepalese context as both Pakistan and Nepal share many similar teaching-learning practices, policies, and teacher development trajectories.

Reflections

I see teaching as a profession of passion rather than merely an employment. According to Arnold (1869), I also believe, teaching is to learn the best that is thought and known in the world and make an honest and diligent effort to impart the same. As a practitioner of Reflective Teaching, it provides me ample opportunities to learn, unlearn and relearn. Every day of teaching uncovers and refines a new layer of myself professionally and personally. Interacting with keen and enthusiastic learners provides ample opportunities for growth and reflection. At times they help me challenge my preconceived notions about classroom dynamics and teacher-learner relationships.
I started formal teaching soon after my first master’s degree in 2006. I had the good fortune to be chosen, after putting on numerous demanding demonstrations, for pre-service teacher training and workshops when I first started teaching English at O’ and A’ Level classes in a private organization. In 2007, I entered higher education institutions first as a lecturer on contract/teaching assistant, followed by a confirmed lectureship position. At this stage, I was instructing classes in functional and compulsory English, communication skills, and a few English literature majors. During this stage of my teaching, I had to deliver to large classes of multi-lingual and multi-cultural students with different proficiency levels and academic backgrounds. It was a challenging but obvious learning experience as a novice teacher. After a few weeks of unsuccessful attempts at classroom management and the selection of teaching methods and materials, I realized that to deliver what I had planned, I needed as many students as possible to actively participate in class discussions and the use of other student-centered activities such as group presentations, poster contests, and role-plays. Students preferred not to be lectured for 50 minutes. In addition to mini-lectures, once in a while, I arranged multimedia in the classroom to capture the attention of my class, which subsequently flagged the interest of the students engaging successfully in the follow-up activities. To me, this proved that the audio-visual and interactive methods were well received compared to the lecture method and other teacher-centred ways of teaching. Owing to the large class size and conventional approach to assessment (semester written exams and a midterm paper), it was not possible to reach out to each student individually. However, my flexible office hours allowed me enough time to interact with less participating and silent students and provide them with the guidance they needed, and to receive their feedback as well.
During my Ph.D. at Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh (2012-15), I was offered a Teaching Assistantship in 2013-14. As an adjunct tutor, I worked with a senior professor in the Primary and Secondary Education program for three semesters. This experience afforded me opportunities to undergo some training sessions on Assessment and Classroom Interaction. With those thrice-a-week seminars, tutorials, and workshops with native English students of undergrad level, I learned a whole range of new strategies and the latest trends of teaching with the help of ICT and working as a facilitator and a mentor rather than a conventional teacher. I learned the communicative teaching method by placing students at the center of the classroom activities. The most interesting lesson I learned from that period was that teaching is not about finding the faults/errors of the learners, but teaching is a two-way activity to restructure and reconstruct concepts without harming the learner’s self-esteem and confidence. In addition to this, teaching in a world-renowned higher education institution turned out to be one of the greatest milestones of my teaching life, which not only added to my profile but also boosted my morale as a non-native teacher of English.
My past teaching and learning experiences have shaped my teaching philosophy. Higher education is not meant to serve as a one-size-fits-all. It is quite significant to understand and value the cultural, linguistic, and academic diversity we come across as teachers. Therefore, I must keep my teaching methods and materials customized by being responsive to the specific needs, requirements, and individual differences of the learners. I also believe that the purpose of higher education is not just limited to achieving mastery of the content being taught, but also to create a learning environment wherein students can have experiential opportunities of developing their critical thinking and analytical skills and inculcating in them an ability to reflect and challenge. My focus is to prepare individuals with problem-solving aptitude, who can become self-reliant, self-directed, and autonomous learners, who can grow as conscious and contributing citizens of the world. One of the main objectives of teaching during and after the class mainly aims to encourage my students to ask questions and engage in interactive and inquisitive discourses, coupled with inquiry and research. My teaching approach tends to be dynamic, eclectic, and Reconstructionist. I believe teaching methods should always be flexible to suit the requirements of the subject/topic being taught. Finally, I want to assess my students by utilizing formative and summative evaluations with a fair and transparent grading system that is well-communicated to them in advance. Hence, my teaching entails learning-oriented outcomes, rather than speedy exercises to cover the full content. Overall, my teaching philosophy can be summed up in three key elements (Three Es): Engage, Encourage, and Empower. The journey from a novice teacher to a mid-career Ph.D. professional has brought me some qualities of a conscientious, meticulous, critical, and reflective practitioner. I can now actually ensure to implement the teaching philosophy I have set to make a difference in my practice and overall growth as a teacher.
For all the courses I teach, I design course syllabi and develop task-oriented instructional material (worksheets, PPTs, book chapters, journal articles, posters, videos), which mainly aim at generating curiosity to search further. Following the guidelines of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the Board of Study’s guidelines, I tailor both, the syllabus and material, according to the course requirements and learners’ needs. My lesson plans usually include a great deal of reviewing literature and referring to various relevant sources.
I mainly rely on communicative and collaborative teaching strategies. I believe students learn best when they can explain the concept to their peers. The concept of ‘Learning Community’ is something I encourage in all courses I teach at all levels. Based on Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of Scaffolding, I make students create cohesive peer-review groups wherein they support and facilitate each other after formal lectures. For example, in my Testing and Evaluation course, I involve students in the group discussion activity based on the readings shared in conjunction with lecture slides. The groups then explain and present a critical review of the reading and the lecture notes. The discussions continue through the class e-chat option on Learning Management System (LMS) and the official Google Classroom. In addition, I find the method of ‘learning by doing’ quite helpful. During the teaching sessions on Intercultural Communication, I engage my students in recurrent interactions (cyber-meet ups) with ‘culturally other’ individuals to go through the real experience of mingling with people with different communicative competence while implementing principles of intercultural communication. This encourages cross-cultural awareness and appreciation of cultural diversity. Microteaching exercises for courses such as English Language Teaching and conducting empirical research for Research Design prove helpful as they promote a culture of practicum. Students are given tasks of preparing a lesson plan and simulating it for 20-25 minutes. They use different materials for their microteaching sessions. Once or twice a semester, guest lectures (from the same or different universities) are also invited to share their knowledge and practices.
Teaching, invariably, involves testing and evaluation, which assess learners’ performance and a teacher’s efficiency. As proficiency in writing is one of the pivotal components of higher education learning, my courses involve written assessments either in the form of open-book tests or prepared assignments based on literature review, critical analysis, or research-based write-ups. Classroom participation in the form of presentations, group discussions, dialogues, and debate do also carry some weightage towards marking. At the end of each semester, I also request students to provide me with anonymous feedback on my teaching performance, materials, and assessment criteria.

Conclusion and way ahead

My teaching practices are continually evolving. By practicing reflective teaching, I notice a significant change not only in the ways I teach but also in my professional growth. I strongly believe that this process of learning for teachers should never stop. I will continue to look for opportunities to prepare and teach new courses, update my existing courses by incorporating innovative teaching techniques and authentic materials, and introduce new theories and empirical research. I am keen on gaining more professional expertise as a teacher trainer. In addition, I would like to be assessed as a teacher more frequently and constructively. Along with student feedback, dialogues, and discussions with colleagues, it would be a great idea if I could involve myself in other teaching evaluation methods such as ‘The Value-Added Model’ and Teacher Observations. Teaching, for the most part, should enable teachers to build relationships with learners and also create a conducive environment wherein students can feel confident to express their ideas and become willing to participate and learn without anxiety and discomfort. I wish to create such learning circumstances.

References

Arnold, M. (1869). Culture and anarchy: An essay in political and social criticism. Project Gutenberg.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

About the Author

Dr. Sumera Umrani is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics/TESOL at the Institute of English Language & Literature, University of Sindh, Pakistan. She is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Education, Michigan State University, USA. Dr Umrani’s research and teaching interests include Second Language Education and Identity, Intercultural Communication, Critical Pedagogy, and Language Teacher Education.