Essay On Second Language Teaching

Question 1: Reflect on the principles that guide you in your teaching of English. Do you see a gap between the way your students learn and the way you teach?

Rarely did I have the experience to teach English as a second language, so my reflection relies on my Mandarin teaching practice. In a second language class, no matter what language it is, principles that guide teachers in their teaching are closely interlinked. Instructors’ teaching approaches are related to their expectations, so do students’ learning approaches.

The gap in expectations can influence the way the teachers teach and the way students learn. The following is the gap I encountered when I was teaching in a university.

Over the past two years, I was a volunteer Mandarin teacher for the Asian University for Women(AUW) in Bangladesh providing beginner Mandarin Courses for students across Asia and the Middle East, where I have learners from nine to ten different countries in a single classroom. This work requires me to discover effective methods and common pitfalls in learning a new language based on the specific backgrounds of the students from diverse linguistic, cultural and educational experiences. Unfortunately, throughout the first semester, I insisted on conducting the conservative teaching ways which I was supposed good for beginners in their

Some of my students came to Mandarin course desiring to get a good knowledge of Mandarin. They expected to speak fluent Chinese; However, some of them aimed at getting a decent mark, gaining enough credits in order to graduate from university successfully. I decided to carry out Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) to bridge the gap between learning and teaching. I moved my class from a teacher-centered classroom into a student-centered classroom, and to create a positive learning environment to foster students’