Wisdom

'You cannot stay on the mountain forever. You have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.'

- Rene Daumel, Mont Analogue

Philosophy Statement


 

My English as a second language (ESL) teaching philosophy is based upon combining the integrated skills approach to language development with the assimilation of a diverse student body into the learning process. It is clearly seen that the way we communicate is not solely based on one language skill independently, but incorporates the blend of the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) and subsidiary language skills such as grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation since they are all interrelated in everyday forms of language communication. Thus, my ESL teaching philosophy leads me to consciously create a learning environment and activities that provide extensive practice of authentic language skills used in real-life social interaction and also promote students to openly share their skills, linguistic backgrounds, cultural beliefs, customs, and traditions. Four fundamental aspects and advantages of my teaching philosophy include:
  • Integrate students’ pre-existing knowledge into the learning process.
  • Instruct language skills that promote the learning of real content and functions of language that leads to interaction among people.
  • Help students gain a true picture of the richness and complexity of the cultural characteristics, ethic aspects, and patterns of life that differ from one another.
  • Provide teachers the opportunity to track students’ progress in multiple skills, while at the same time also being taught about the abundance of cultural diversity that exists and is blended into the world’s frame of contextual relationships.