Evey-Week5 Critical Language Teaching

There is a sad truth that not many teachers would critically think about their teaching methods; exam systems; teaching materials; and some very influential teaching pedagogies in a certain time, such as PPP; CFL; even TBLT. As for me, I never doubt the importance of integrating English language class with real-life tasks and never had I thought there should be anything wrong to organize classroom activities until I had my first lesson in the third year of university.

In the third year of university, I got a chance to have an internship in a middle school, which is located at an outer suburb of a small city in China. I felt extremely nervous before the first class. In order to impress the students, I made teaching aids (pictures of animals) by myself. I prepared many classroom activities for students, and even wrote down every single word that I would say in the first lesson and recited very fluently(which is ridiculous ). I thought I had prepared my lesson very well, however, the result was not very satisfying. Many students stared at me with a confused look during the lesson, and failed to answer most of the questions I asked. They were reluctant to take part in those activities I designed.

I felt frustrated and asked the head teacher for help. After talking to the head teacher, I realized English was not a compulsory subject in the public primary schools in this area, and most of the students came from peasant family so they could not have a chance and extra money to learn English after school, so it was not surprised that they had little reaction towards those activities.

Looking back this failure now, I realize this failure could be prevented if I analyzed the context first. At that time, I forgot a very important thing that teachers should not always focus on applying ‘the best theory’ and follow the trends blindly. The theories of many famous scholars are indeed advanced, but might not be proper in our own teaching context. The theories are usually based on a visionary situation, in which students are always obedient, and can understand every command of a teacher. However, the real teaching situation can be like a jungle, teachers had better pray for not getting lost because with little theoretical support they are on their own. Thus, having awareness to think and teach language critically is of great importance. Critical language teaching should involve critique. During the process of critical thinking, the teaching ideas should be reasoned and well thought.

In conclusion, there is no answer of what the best teaching pedagogy is. The angles of viewing the world and education have always been changing along with the development of the world. The creation of new things never stops, therefore, being a teacher, we should think critically about the pedagogies we apply ; try our best to analyze students’ needs and teaching context. That is to say, we should: stay open-minded; have experimental spirit; never stop absorbing new knowledge; and reflect after teaching all the time.

References:

Lin, A.M.Y. (1999). Doing-English-lessons in the reproduction or transformation of social worlds? TESOL Quarterly, 33(3), 393-412.

Pennycook, A. (1999). Introduction: Critical approaches to TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 33(3), 329-348.