Module 3 Reading Material资料文件与下载

Module 3 Teachers in English Language Teaching

Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice

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

By collecting information about what goes on in our classroom, and by analyzing and evaluating this information, we identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching.

Reflective teaching is therefore a means of professional development which begins in our classroom.

• Why it is important

• Beginning the process of reflection

• Teacher diary

• Peer observation

• Recording lessons

• Student feedback

• What to do next

• Think

• Talk

• Read

• Ask

• Conclusion

Why it is important

Many teachers already think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it too. You might think or tell someone that "My lesson went well" or "My students didn't seem to understand" or "My students were so badly behaved today."

However, without more time spent focusing on or discussing what has happened, we may tend to jump to conclusions about why things are happening. We may only notice reactions of the louder students. Reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording, and analyzing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes.

• If a lesson went well, we could describe it and think about why it was successful.

• If the students didn't understand a language point, we introduced we need to think about what we      did and why it may have been unclear.

• If students are misbehaving - what were they doing, when and why?

Beginning the process of reflection

You may begin a process of reflection in response to a particular problem that has arisen with one or your classes, or simply as a way of finding out more about your teaching. You may decide to focus on a particular class of students, or to look at a feature of your teaching - for example how you deal with incidents of misbehavior or how you can encourage your students to speak more English in class.

The first step is to gather information about what happens in the class. Here are some different ways of doing this.

Teacher diary 

This is the easiest way to begin a process of reflection since it is purely personal. After each lesson you write in a notebook about what happened. You may also describe your own reactions and feelings and those you observed on the part of the students. You are likely to begin to pose questions about what you have observed. Diary writing does require a certain discipline in taking the time to do it on a regular basis. 

Here are some suggestions for areas to focus on to help you start your diary. 

Peer observation

Invite a colleague to come into your class to collect information about your lesson. This may be with a simple observation task or through note taking. This will relate back to the area you have identified to reflect upon. For example, you might ask your colleague to focus on which students contribute most to the lesson, what different patterns of interaction occur or how you deal with errors.

Recording lessons

Video or audio recordings of lessons can provide very useful information for reflection. You may do things in class you are not aware of or there may be things happening in the class that as the teacher you do not normally see.

• Audio recordings can be useful for considering aspects of teacher talk.

• How much do you  talk?

• What about?

• Are instructions  and explanations clear?

• How much time do  you allocate to student talk?

• How do you respond  to student talk?

• Video recordings can be useful in showing you aspects of your own behaviour.

• Where do you  stand?

• Who do you speak  to?

• How do you come  across to the students?

Student feedback

You can also ask your students what they think about what goes on in the classroom. Their opinions and perceptions can add a different and valuable perspective. This can be done with simple questionnaires or learning diaries for example.

What to do next

Once you have some information recorded about what goes on in your classroom, what do you do?

• Think

You may have noticed patterns occurring in your teaching through your observation. You may also have noticed things that you were previously unaware of. You may have been surprised by some of your students' feedback. You may already have ideas for changes to implement.

• Talk

Just by talking about what you have discovered - to a supportive colleague or even a friend - you may be able to come up with some ideas for how to do things differently.

• If you have  colleagues who also wish to develop their teaching using reflection as a  tool, you can meet to discuss issues. Discussion can be based around  scenarios from your own classes.

• Using a list of  statements about teaching beliefs (for example, pairwork is a valuable       activity in the language class or lexis is more important than grammar)  you can discuss which ones you agree or disagree with, and which ones are  reflected in your own teaching giving evidence from your  self-observation.

• Read

You may decide that you need to find out more about a certain area. There are plenty of websites for teachers of English now where you can find useful teaching ideas, or more academic articles. There are also magazines for teachers where you can find articles on a wide range of topics. Or if you have access to a library or bookshop, there are plenty of books for English language teachers.

• Ask

Pose questions to websites or magazines to get ideas from other teachers. Or if you have a local teachers' association or other opportunities for in-service training, ask for a session on an area that interests you.

Conclusion

Reflective teaching is a cyclical process, because once you start to implement changes, then the reflective and evaluative cycle begins again.

• What are you doing?

• Why are you doing it?

• How effective is it?

• How are the students responding?

• How can you do it better?

As a result of your reflection, you may decide to do something in a different way, or you may just decide that what you are doing is the best way. And that is what professional development is all about.

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/reflective-teaching-exploring-our-own-classroom-practice

Key Issues in Language Teaching -the teacher’s knowledge base (Jack Richards,2015)

Published 7 October 2015

The fifth and final post in this short series of extracts from Jack Richards’  Key Issues in Language Teaching addresses the teacher’s knowledge base, highlighting that there is much more to being an English language teacher than simply ‘knowing’ the language.

English language teaching requires a specialized knowledge base, obtained through both academic study and practical experience. The professional knowledge base of teachers is known as content knowledge. Content knowledge refers to what teachers need to know about what they teach (including what they know about language teaching itself) and constitutes knowledge that would not be shared with teachers of other subject areas.

Content knowledge can be thought of as constituting the ‘theoretical foundations’ of ESL/ ELT, in comparison with the practical, teaching-skills aspects of teaching, which were discussed above. Content knowledge, however, is of many different kinds. One important distinction is between disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.

Disciplinary content knowledge refers to a circumscribed body of knowledge that is considered by the language-teaching profession to be essential to gaining membership in the profession.

For example, it could include the history of language teaching methods, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, phonology and syntax, discourse analysis, theories of language, critical applied linguistics and so on. It is important to stress here that disciplinary knowledge is part of professional education and does not translate directly into practical teaching skills. As a result, teachers in training may not immediately grasp its relevance.

Pedagogical content knowledge, on the other hand, refers to knowledge that provides a basis for language teaching. It is knowledge which is drawn from the study of language teaching and language learning itself, and which can be applied in different ways to the resolution of practical issues in language teaching. It could include coursework in areas such as curriculum planning, assessment, reflective teaching, classroom management, teaching children, teaching the four skills and so on.

Professional courses for ESL/ELT typically include a mix of disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. Introductory courses generally spend more time on pedagogical content knowledge. A sound grounding in both disciplinary and pedagogical content knowledge prepares teachers to be able to do things such as the following:

• Understand learners’ needs.

• Diagnose learners’ learning problems.

• Plan suitable instructional goals for lessons.

• Select and design learning tasks.

• Evaluate students’ learning.

• Design and adapt tests.

• Evaluate and choose published materials.

• Read the professional literature.

• Adapt commercial materials.

• Make use of authentic materials.

• Make appropriate use of technology.

• Evaluate their own lessons.

So, there is much more to being an English teacher than knowing English.  Like the teaching of any subject in the curriculum, English language teachers need a firm grounding in the subject matter of English language teaching as well as the practical skills needed for classroom instruction. The field of second language teacher education deals both with the nature of the knowledge and experiential basis that supports teaching, as well as how this is developed.

https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2015/10/07/key-issues-language-teaching-5-teachers-knowledge-base/