In my MA TESOL program, I have been fascinated with the different philosophical and psychological theories which have revolutionized second language teaching and research. Inspired by former and current IUP faculty, I have learned how to continuously modify my way of teaching to match the immediate variable needs of the students and relate it to the context taking into consideration L1 culture. Having Fanselow’s model of self-observation and reflection at hand, language teaching is always under the scope and this has increased my awareness of my own beliefs and practices about teaching. I have practiced and learned the basics of researching. Moreover, the post-method pedagogy has affected the way I view the different teaching methodologies and set me free from the traditional ways of teaching. Friere’s ideas which were later developed to the critical pedagogy have helped me discover how to invest the student’s L1 culture to account for the problematic L2 cultural concepts and issues. Taking Krashen’s i+1 explanation of how students acquire a second language; I will always remember that learning occurs when the input is adjusted to match the students’ current linguistic competence. Additionally, I have found that the Social Constructivism initiated by Vygotsky has answered many of my questions about teaching and learning. Now, I feel that learning and learning teaching are continuous bilateral participation processes in which the environment and its members are affecting the construction of new knowledge and the reconstruction of old knowledge. Also, the group work encouraged by the TESOL instructors at IUP has made the “social constructivism” a living experience for learning and has vitalized my own second language communicative competence developed by Hymes. Thus, as a prospective teacher, I will try to design my future classes in a way that allows my students to experience and learn through such an approach.
As for the aim of education, I believe that it shall always be signaling the good of not only the people of a certain country, but also the whole world. The TESOL positions have been an attraction for many people, especially in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, and as far as TESOL is concerned, the goal of our education should be the appropriate academic and professional preparation for our students to find themselves places in the so-called busy and competitive job markets. Not only the countrymen of Saudi Arabia need such a profession, but also the country and the culture of Saudi Arabia need such prospective ESL/EFL Saudis in order to facilitate a mutual understanding between the people of the world and to eradicate any controversial cultural confrontations between our culture and the others’ which could have resulted from misconceived perceptions caused by the lack of communication “tool”, English. The aim of education, especially teaching languages, shall always invite both students and teachers not to stigmatize others from different cultures, races, religions or any other spiritual orientations. I, personally speaking, find stereotyping students, who come from backgrounds different from the teachers’, a hidden evil-like hand that indirectly leads teachers to underestimate or misevaluate the linguistic competence and performance of those students. It always leads to misjudgment and misinterpretations of those young people who have trusted us to guide them in this busy world. Teachers should always be aware that other people usually blamed them for the quality of their teaching and not the students for their learning. This can actually recall the concept of Kierkegaard which frankly says that people shall always be sincere about the quality of their life and are totally responsible for the quality of their life and work, and I, hence, say ESL teaching is no exception from this concept. How would that be true if a teacher has no passion in what he/she believes in? A teacher shall not work only for money or an abstract meaningless social status. He must realize that he has been thrown in this world to be an effective individual in the society and the whole world.
Also, the teacher needs to match the students with the actual needs of English in the international scale. ESL students do not only need to, say, “figure out” how many subjects and verbs an English sentence has, but also an efficient linguistic competence that can allow the Saudi students effectively communicate with others who use English as their first/second tongues. This can be promoted by the teacher’s adoption of the communicative language teaching method which parallels with Vygotsky’s concept of Social Constructivism. To put that differently, a teacher shall not allow students to experience what Nietzsche calls the “tragedy of missing”. The teacher shall provide chances for the students to learn not only from him but also from the classmates. I still feel sorry about missing the wonderful chances of collaboration with my classmates when I was studying in Saudi Arabia. The whole classes there were merely teacher centered and we were hindered from group discussions and to work with each other till we all felt that we cannot improve our communicative performance in speaking in this educational establishment and we had to travel to English-speaking countries so that we can perform what we had become competent in.
Finally, I believe that there must be a mutual, efficient and endless communication between the school and the society, and their relationship with each other should be complementary. That is to say that the society shall never envision the school that teaches a second or a foreign language a threat to the local L1 culture. That’s, unfortunately, the case in some Saudi communities! There are still some community members who still see learning a second/foreign language a great threat to the Saudi culture. This community view has led many ESL/EFL teachers to feel that they are working against the main stream of their community, i.e. ‘traitors’. Although the view is shrinking by the global communication and the horizons broaden by the mass media and the internet, a critical problem would really arise in the classroom if a student, who is academically required to take the ESL course, still has the same ‘blind’ view. So, the teacher’s task here is to analyze the students’ attitudes towards learning the L2 and its culture and then communicate it with those students through productive channels. Otherwise, a teacher will then fail into the misconception of the students’ performance which would eventually lead to the undesired misevaluation. The society should see the language schools as establishments that are totally devoted for the prosperity of the country and success of their sons and daughters. So, teachers, students and society are all pivotal members of the learning/teaching processes and they all have to work together to succeed in achieving the utmost of whatever goals set by themselves for themselves.