Input, Interaction and Sla Essay

When reading the book Essentials for Successful English Language Teaching by Farrell, T. S.C., & Jacobs, G., I am really impressed with chapter 4 Integrated Curricular especially the classroom implications part. It reflects the fact that language teaching should have the connection with other subjects in the curricular as well as learner’s needs and experience in order to motivate and engage students into the learning process. This is a good way to encourage the students to learn English efficiently and independently since teachers should devise ways to help their students apply English into everyday life. As an English teacher, I always inspire my students to the new ways of learning such as dictation running, vocabulary guessing, board hitting, field trip writing, and so on which can give as much help as possible to those who really want to enrich their knowledge through English. By using the term â€Å"enrich their knowledge through English†, I mean that English is not just a mandatory subject that students have to learn structures and vocabularies; it also provides a wide range of findings and knowledge related to different fields. And chapter 4 in the said book indicates just what I need since I applied these ways of teaching to my communication skills classrooms. However, I have some concern regarding the possibility of applying this method to all levels in Vietnam or just English majors and students studying communication skills? When I read the article titled Shifting roles:From language teachers to learning advisors by Brian R. Morrison and Diego Navarro, I change my belief about the role of a teacher in a language classroom. Since I started teaching English, I’ve always believed that a good English teacher is the one who always makes good preparations for lessons before classes and delivers them well in the classroom. By â€Å"deliver them well†, I mean the lessons are interesting and understandable to students. However, recently in the last meeting of a Listening course I’m in charge of, some students asked me whether I could help them with some more reference books for study outside classroom. Although I provided one reference book for this course in the syllabus, when asked this question, I suddenly realized that the number of extra materials I provided was so few that they didn’t help students much at all. Moreover, students also shared their worries about learning other skills such as Reading, Writing and Speaking, which makes me feel that as a teacher I fail to offer what students really need such as learning stralegies,etc. Therefore, after reading the article mentioned above, I think that the role of a teacher as a learning advisor is really important. However, I wonder if the role of a teacher as a learning advisor will replace the role of a teacher as a language teacher completely,or there should be a combination of the two roles of a teacher in a language classroom.