My Reflection on the TESOL Course

泰孚教育：My Reflection onthe TESOL Course

I taught high school students for around 2years in a bilingual school and I have been teaching university students forthree years. However, I lack experience and teaching approaches of teachingchildren. I’m curious about the second language acquisition (SLA) of childrenand how to teach English to children as a second language. Most importantly,I’m going to open an English academy mainly aimed at children from the age 3 to12. Attending the TESOL course for children program the course is extremelyimportant for me. Through the course, I have learned a lot about how to teachchildren English as a second language in a creative way and it’s really usefulfor me. What’s more, our instructor is knowledgeable, humorous, responsible,smart, helpful and makes our training as interesting as possible. Ourclassmates are hard-working and kind-hearted, which creates an excellentlearning atmosphere.

From the course, I have gained some theoriesand some terms about teaching children, which can help me to plan my lessonwell. I know that there are six age categories: Early Childhood Development,Elementary Age Development, Junior High Age Development, High School Agedevelopment. People of different age categories have different characteristicsand they develop various learning skills. For example, children of age 6-9 candevelop gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills aremovements that involve the body as whole, such as walking and running. Finemotor skills are movements that involve eyes, hands, such as writing, drawingor reading. This will help me to plan my lesson more effectively. I have alsolearned the term ‘telegraphic speech’. Telegraphic speech is the use of short wordsand phrase that omit unnecessary modifiers and articles in order to conveygeneral meanings. Telegraphic speech is a stage which can typically occur in achild’s second year language acquisition. A child at this stage would say twonecessary words instead of the whole sentence. For example, the child would say“yummy food” instead of “The food is yummy”. Understanding telegraphic speechis important because in my academy, there might be some children of 2-3yearsold and it makes me realize what kind of language output they mightproduce.

Apart from that, I have also learned thatthere are five stages during the language acquisition: the silent stage (eightwords, syllable), the early production stage (two words, like yummy food), thespeech emergence stage (simple sentences), intermediate fluency (morecomplicated sentences and more fluency) and the advanced proficiency stage(more like native speakers). There are eight intelligence types and they arevisual/spatial, verbal/linguistic, mathematical/logical, bodily/kinesthetic,social/interpersonal, solitary/intrapersonal, musical/rhythmic, naturalist.There is an intelligence type that was not named and described by HowardGardner called existential intelligence. Understanding intelligence types isextremely important because it can assist teachers in finding a deepappreciation for the creativity of the world. Learning English can also involvescience, math and social studies. Take social studies for example, when welearn words about fruits, I’ll take them to the supermarket and they willknow what apple, banana, lemon, strawberry, watermelon, …look like and it’smuch easier for them to remember the English name for each fruit.

What make a good teacher? Charles Kuraltsaid, “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.” Some peoplethink a good teacher should love his/her job and manages to make the lessonsmore interesting. Some people think a good teacher should love his/her job andmanages to make the lessons more interesting. In my opinion, being creative isthe key for a good teacher because it can make students more engaged in thelesson. Rather than give students traditional tests, grammar quizzes and wiringtasks, the teacher can insert the music, chants, art, drama etc into the classto make lesson more interesting. I would like to integrate the chants into myclass children because it’s rhythmic and interesting. Children love to repeatthem again and again and have lots of fun. Through several days of training, Ihave learned lots of chants and how to integrate them into the class. Take thefollowing two chants as an example. After learning the word ‘duck’, I willteach students to sing a song:

What’s this? What’s this?

Quack, quack, quack

A duck, a duck

A duck, quack, quack

After learning the word ‘apple’ and ‘banana’,I will teach students to sing a song:

Apple, apple, I like apple.

Banana, banana, I like banana.

Yummy, yummy, yummy to my tummy tummy tummy.

Yummy, yummy, yummy to my tummy tummy tummy.

Oh yea, yummy, yummy, yummy to my tummy tummytummy.

For children, they know that we are governedby the rules and they need to understand and obey the rules. Through settingsome rules for rewarding and punishment, children need to understand what theycan do and what they cannot do. For example, if a student in my class can sitwell, behave well, listen carefully to the teacher and raise his/her handsbefore answering the questions, the teacher can give him/her some stickers,toys or candies to encourage him or her. Also, I can select him or her to be amonitor and after class, I’ll call to parents with positive comments. What’smore, they can get awards and certificates for making progress in the test.However, if they behave badly in class, such as shouting, talking a lot, fightingwith others, I will give him/her warning or ask him or her to stay in time outcorner for a while.

Apart from it, we have also learned how toteach vocabulary, word-formation, teaching methods, etc. Our instructorprovides us with lots of learning materials and teaching resources. Teachingchildren is not an easy thing to do and I hope to be a professional andqualified teacher for children in the future.

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