PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
BY

Yazmin Diaz & Liliana Ruiz

Our teacher beliefs:

*The maxim of activities and games
Plan a variety of short activities and games to maintain the interest of students. Remember that before to start a new activity the students have finished the last one.

*The maxim of positive energy.
As teacher you have to believe that your students can learn what you teach. Do not think they are a lost cause.

The goal of our philosophy is students’ motivation. In order to that we think games help the teacher to create contexts in which the language is useful and meaningful not only in elementary school, how some people believe, it is possible in high school too. Games provides of a determine number of great activities for students, so that, they make learners want to take part in it. In Foreign Language Classroom, games can be used by using all the skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), in all the stages of teaching and for many situations and types of communication. Our aim is to find games which the learners would enjoy playing, at the same time they learn English or French as Foreign Language, understanding what others are saying and speaking with the object of express their point of view.
The teacher plays an important role because he or she has to analyze the learning process of his / her students, Teacher has to plan interesting and meaningful activities and create in students’ minds the desire to learn English or French and participate actively in the activities. Also in Colombia, the teacher has to approach students to the Foreign Language Culture, language and live style without lost their own.

According to culture subject, we believe that teachers have to bring as much of English culture into the classroom as possible in order to approach students to the real situation in a foreign context which is related to language. We want they often work in groups or with a partner in order to focus on communicative aspect, interchange thoughts, points of view and knowledge.

About evaluation we think it is important to provide multiple assessments such as presentations, review activities, writing activities, group activities, etc. That makes possible the interaction between them. But, we need to consider that evaluation involves teacher too. That means that the teacher has a huge responsibility because he or she evaluates the students, but before he or she has to evaluate him/ herself. Particularly, as teachers we wonder about the best way to become them aware of their own process, how to approach them to the Foreign Language with out force them.

Students have to be conscious that learning is an ending process. In all situations we learn something, sometimes, it can change our lives. Those experiences make the learners able to make decisions. Thus, learners have to be autonomous and independent, because that take them to the self satisfaction, and to the autonomous learning.

We define our approach to teaching foreign language as realistic, because we are conscious of the diversity into the classroom and the difficulties of learning a Foreign Language in a no bilingual context. We learn to be flexible in our methodology and approach, to deal with unusual students and learning strategies, and to communicate better every time we teach.