teaching reflection(教学反思)

Teaching reflection

Recently, I presented a few lectures to the students of ** College. What I have learnt from the practice of teaching is of great variety. At this moment, after a lecture of English teaching, I cannot help but to reflect on my experience. First of all, my beloved students range from the first year students to junior ones, from the specialty of statistics to English teaching. That is to say, it is necessary for me to employ different teaching methods in that the background information of them is of great difference. It is rather challenging for me to appeal to the interests of all the students. But, from my point of view, I have already tried my best to mobilize them to be involved into the progress of learning. Just as what the Silent Way holds, tell me and I forget; teach me and I remember; involve me and I learn. As for the students of statistics, I mainly use the traditional grammar-translation approach to teach the college English, partly because they are the freshmen and it is not a wise choice to impel them to reason some

thought-provoking statements. Why is it not a wise choice? One day, one guy asked me for the answers of the exercises at the end of the unit. He reminded me that almost all of

them are still slaved by the exam-oriented education. The English class in their mind is that the teacher should go through the text and the exercises words by words, sentences by sentences, translate the text, and show the answers to the followed questions. In order to make them feel at home, I would better explain the text in detail, but this is not what the higher education aims at. The national new English curriculum stipulate that there are five objectives which are expected to achieved at the end of the lesson, and language knowledge and language skills are merely two of them, the rest of which are affection, learning strategies, and cultural awareness. The rest three components, however, is more vital than the first two, for the students I am teaching are college students, rather than middle school student, whose major job is to lay a solid foundation for the future development. Therefore, I used some open-questions, hoping to change their attitude towards the college English class, which no longer focuses on the language contents and skills alone, but on some other more significant stuff, for instance, reasoning, arguing, debating, etc. I clearly remember the text named “why do we believe that the earth is round?”, written by George

Orwell, a well-known novelist and critic. In that article, the author advanced that we are living in a gullible, credulous, and superstitious age. The ideas we hold does not rest on reasoning or experiment, but on authority. People take it for granted that what have been proved to be true is true, they never question the truth. What a thought-provoking words. As for the English majors, I naively supposed that since they are English advanced learner it would be easy for them to accept the task-based language teaching model, in which I encouraged them to perform tasks, show the fruit of their discussions, and, most importantly, explain why they think in that way and argue with the rest of the classmates if they share different ideas. Unfortunately, it turned out that I was wrong. They don’t give it a shit! But, what are the reasons behind this distressing matter? Here comes the second problem.

Who is responsible for the status quo that the students have little interests in the college English class, the teachers, the students or the schools? As a teacher, whose major task is to cultivate the students, cannot escape from this responsibility. Of course, the low motivation of the students and the contents of the teaching materials may also result in

this phenomenon, but this is not the key point of this reflection. Something might well go wrong in the teachers. Since the beginning of education, how to stimulate the students’ interests and motive them to study has been a heated topic, especially in modern education, in which a revolution has taken place to cultivate the student’s communicative competences, reasoning awareness, and cooperative spirit. Although I have read a lot of literatures and books about how to get the students motivated, it is still a tough nut to crack. And here comes the 3rd problem, which is how to mobilize the students.

Socrates and Confucius are experts in utilizing heuristics to induce their students to reason. When the students do not know what to speak, how to start a task, it is always helpful to offer a hint, but just a hint. Do not dominate the talk!

A sound lesson plan plays a crucial role in presenting a successful lesson. It is pretty easy for the students to tell whether his teacher has prepared the lesson or not, to what extent and on what level. Therefore, how dare you long for an ideal lesson if you do not take it seriously? What’s more, the lesson plan gives the teacher a sound command of the

lesson so that the lesson can run smoothly from one stage to another, otherwise, chaos and the loss of control might arise in the class, which hurt students’ zeal and embarrass the teacher. As far as lesson plan is considered, we should bear in mind that the teacher ought to be careful not to be the slave of the lesson plan, for the real classroom is full of unexpected events, it is dynamic rather than static.

It is safe to say that when the students hold various opinions they are more eager to communicate with each other. That is to say, in order to arouse their urge to engage in the task or activity, the teacher should lure the students to think in other ways, or even from the opposite position. It is during the fierce arguing and debating that the students digest the knowledge best. Because an implicit premise of arguing is that they have to firstly figure out the argument, which usually involves the main content of the lesson, otherwise, they will be easy to be refuted, to which most of the students do not look forward while they are performing the task.

I hold the view that teaching is a matter of creative process, and the reward, both material and spiritual, eventually you get will justify your time and endeavor.