MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Jeyaseelan Gnanaseelan

MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

(written in the year of 2000 when I was 30 years old and a college lecturer in English) 

  The term “philosophy” carries a lot in all the academic fields. “ To Search for Truth” has many significant interpretations in each field. I would like to specify this wide-ranging idea to what my teaching philosophy in ESL, English Literature, and Linguistics by commencing from general ideas to particular ones.

Whatever we teach, we have two things to do, so says philosophy: 1. To tell the students what the results of inquiry are. 2. To tell the students how to get more of them.

If we take the first one in detail, it need not be a procedure applicable from the very beginning of the teaching to the end, especially in TESL. Giving some examples and explanation are sufficient enough to jump on to the next: the process,” how to”. In my opinion, I can say that a foreign or second language can’t be taught as a whole. Giving clues to get more knowledge, contextualizing what we teach, and helping the students find out things gradually throughout their own experience are the methods specific to my field.

In addition to language teaching, I have taught English Literature and Linguistics as well. In those circumstances, the above-mentioned procedures are even more challenging to be tackled with, especially the English Literature components such as the American, British, and Australian literary pieces. In fact, there is a good reason as well: Cultural Distance or Alienation. Otherwise, My teaching of English Vocabulary, syntactic varieties, and tools for achieving fluency in speech does not demand, comparatively speaking, much concentration as that of English Literature.

The basic idea behind my teaching philosophy is to mould the personalities of the students in such a way to initiate things on their own. I can put it in a nutshell: teaching the students to learn, learn to learn, teach and demonstrate things taught. Therefore I support the modern trend in general teaching philosophy emphasizing the student-centred teaching and learning over teacher- centred ones.

The constant use of the knowledge taught is another important thing to be considered in my teaching philosophy. I motivate my students to demonstrate and use the knowledge taught during the formal learning period, even after that in their life. So motivating them to use the knowledge in real life situations is more important than teaching them formally during a course period.

It is not surprising that, if I relate my teaching philosophy to my part of the world-Sri Lanka or Asia regarding ELT, a lot has to be done: planning, designing, and implementing the teaching programs must be more subtly organized than doing it in Europe and America. Again the reason is cultural distance or alienation. We need teaching materials, aids, and equipments, quantitatively and qualitatively, more than the teachers and the students  living in Europe and America do.

I agree that there is a teaching philosophy universally applicable to all the places and all the academic fields but at the same time, I hope you all agree with me if I say, that there are some specific ideas of teaching philosophy applicable to certain places and academic fields. The power of language barrier will be stronger if we don’t have proper linguistic background. The results will be linguistic inadequacy.

The classical teaching philosophy in general has been: finding truth and passing on. How far is it applicable to my teaching philosophy in particular? Not completely! In my case I would like to teach the students to find truth on their own. Guidance and facilitation are more important than feeding mere facts! The students must be able to distinguish and differentiate truth from the rest. Really it is a challenging experience to both the students and myself.

On the other hand, I am aware that as a teacher, I should be competent enough or possess the authority in the academic field for guiding and facilitating them. I should be able to share my firm and well- thought out views on the issues concerned, with my students. I definitely hope that my students must acquire the ability to form justified beliefs for themselves, not the mere justified beliefs I provide them with.

Another important thing in my teaching philosophy is that I usually don’t mind students’ rejecting my beliefs. I agree and am fully aware of this extremely sensitive side on the part of teachers. I have seen many teachers being victims of this attitude. But, honestly speaking, I positively welcome their rejection, not blindly, but, if that disagreement is well-supported.

The pedagogical process chosen, sometimes, makes some students very nervous, on the other hand, sometimes, makes some teachers very nervous. Here comes my choice of a balanced or moderate approach appropriate to both my students and me. I have too, occasionally experienced the tension between what is taught and the way it is taught. Nevertheless, in one thing we must all compromise that, if anyone asks me to choose between a subjective approach and objective approach, of course, mine is for the latter. One of the powerful points of my teaching philosophy is that giving priority to practising rational persuasion, discourse, and examination of the issues or matters I teach.

When I teach, I don’t want to be a teacher of rigid or flat personality. Humour, irony, analogy, intonation, sentence patterns, allusion and arguments are the powerful tools to drive the nail into the wall! My students are mainly young people of the 21^st century! Definitely they don’t want me to be like a traditional Indian teacher called ‘guru’ and themselves to be like ‘sishyas’ (students). All those words flowing from the mouth of the guru were the golden or divine words or truths to be digested without any rejection or defiance! On the other hand, they expect me to be sociable, innovative and patient.

I am a teacher who believes the words of some philosophers defending the dual nature of the mind and body relationships. I used to pay attention to the conducive intellectually extraneous factors such as the room’s light, the presence of moving air and so on, The support of these factors enhance the ability of the students.

In some controversial issues such as following non-rational methods to emphasizing the importance of reason and so on, I also used to agree, sometimes. Here comes the critical situation of paying individual attention and giving individual consultation to the students. There have been, during my teaching experience, the students who are both psychologically and intellectually not prepared enough. When I say non-rational, it is not irrational but prescriptive. Take for example, the studies related to letter symbolism or spelling and the sources of irregularities in language teaching. There is no one to one relationship between a letter and a sound in the English language. It is illogically- formed to a certain level. Further the dissimilarities between L1 and L2 at phonological, morphological, syntactical,and discourse levels sometimes need these methods. In addition, when I teach the regional, social,and personal variation of the use of English, these methods help sometimes.

The next point in my teaching philosophy is that whatever the outcome of my teaching is, all the learners, teachers and peers should expose it to the detailed constructive scrutiny.

I have almost covered the ideas of my teaching philosophy. However, when I start to implement them, I couldn’t stand against the force of realities of teaching! This force has many a time pushed me into question myself whether my ideas of teaching are wildly utopian! For example, often I have been assigned to teach students clustered in groups having more numbers than I could manage. No need to mention about the eccentricities of some students’ learning behaviours. The other disappointing factor has been lack of educational funding to achieve my target. Further the consequent deterioration in the educational process due to the malfunction of the previous system has often bankrupted my efforts to make some substantial improvements and changes in teaching and learning processes. The difficulty in establishing a rigorous educational background for my students also has been a major negative factor. In addition, as a teacher, I have felt that there should be general course for students of specialized subjects, which should develop their general knowledge, aptitude, and affective and psychomotor domains. Then only they could thrive in their specialized fields.

Finally, though there are some negative aspects of the realities of my teaching philosophy, still I am confident and constant in my efforts to achieve both my teaching and learning goals in my career.