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9PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES
THE PHiLOSOPHY OF BEiNG A TEACHER HUMANiSTiC, LiNGUiSTiC, PSYCHOLOGiCAL AND METHODOLOGiCAL ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE TEACHiNG
Hasanova A.
head teacher Azerbaijan State Agrarian University The Department of Languages Gruzina A. ass.teacher
Azerbaijan State Agrarian University The Department of Languages DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7014326
ABSTRACT
In this day and age techniques and tips for how to get the learners to master and grow love towards the language teaching is the burning point in methodology. Various ways are elaborated to achieve the aim. Providing that the central figure in all issues of the universe is a human, the matter gets quite a different color. Considering that the learning-teaching is a mutual process, we'll have to say hello to psychology, as we are going to deal with its branches that help us to solve the problem easily and to shoot the target. In my current article I will correlate my opinions about the pedagogy of language teaching with that of my favorite writer Brian Tracy's strategy of life psychology.
Keywords: language teaching, principles to language teaching, methodology, psychology.
"It's important that what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts and you have negative ones too. Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life"-says Roy T. Bennett, in his "The Light in the Heart".
Each person develops a bundle of beliefs regarding oneself, starting at birth. We call it "Self-concept". It determines what you think, feel, say and do. This also means that changes in your outer life must begin with a change in your self-concept. So we are going to handle our first and foremost task: how to start?! Here, I think parents take a great deal of responsibility. Providing that the "cells" of self-confidence are formed by them we are supposed to build strong personalities being able to throw light on fruitful education system. It means to see the world with the eyes of our children. In the early steps of their physical and mental development we happen to apply as much prohibition as we can. For a minute, let's suppose that we are in a weird planet, it's our first trial, we are surrounded by a large quantity of people.. .every time, in an every case, wherever, whenever we want to take some step on us own a "hand" grasps us back, with constant grumbling, shouting, frowning about something that we are quite in the dark. What is going to happen to us? Complete perplexity... gloomy fear. NO UNDERSTANDING .ZERO INITIATIVE!!!
A child is born with no fears. All fears are taught to the child in the process of growing up including the two major fears adults develop: the fear of failure or loss and fear of criticism or rejection. The former is reinforced if you are continually criticized and punished when you try something new and different. The latter is learned in early childhood when parents express disapproval when you do something they don't like or don't
do something that they expect. As a result of them being displeased, they become angry and withdraw the love and approval that you need as a child.
The same very thing is true about our students. It comes to existence every time when we denounce them among their peers, resent the way they behave and ignore their massive love to learn. Consequently, the learner gets to lose his (her) affection for study and starts to consider himself to be a person of less value. Right here sacred mutual understanding and learning-teaching process fade without blooming. But in fact, it is the teacher himself who fails to teach and conduct his lesson, and on the other hand he loses a "brain" that has not discovered by him yet. Whereas by doing his best and utmost, showing affection, trying to understand and see the best things about him he could estimate his learner on the quite positive side and win his heart.
P.S. Meanwhile we win someone's heart and make one happy the energy of joy that one releases transforms into the cloud of energy and forms invisible shield around us. It enables us to be protected from everything perilous. Moreover it (the wave of joy) doesn't remain still. As a chain of success it correlates all the lights and luck around you.
Question naturally arises: "What does it have to do with teaching process? The matter is that being able to transfer the energy of joy to that of education, having paved the way for your student to express himself, to utter the thing he wants to say you happen to create a favorable teaching environment where both learners and teacher are happy and delightful. When we love someone we tend to do the entire thing possible and impossible to make him (her) happy. So do our students when they love us. Love is the beginning of all the light in the universe. By loving their teachers students get to have good and gradually best academic results for the sake of their teachers at first, then of course for their own sake.
Unfortunately we create the same situation wherever human is -in the family, at work, with neighbors, with our life mates, etc. "A person looks at the world out of the window of her own soul"- I would say. We see what we want to see. Once Mevlana (13th century Muslim saint and Anatolian mystic known throughout the world for his exquisite poems and words of wisdom), was asked: "What is the value of a person?"-"The thing that he looks for"-he answered.
Thus if we really want to teach and get the learners to acquire something we will have them to. If we want them to shine like the Sun they will do. If we assist them in the hard ways of education life, if we hold their fragile hands and show the direction to bright future they will find it. So let's unite our power. Let's not forget about the existence of sacred love within each of us. Let's be able to be worth the light nurtured by our soul [1, p. 9-12].
Here I suggest different ways and approaches to language teaching.
Principle 1. Are you HUMAN enough to be a
teacher? (humanistic approach to language teaching)
I have stressed the word HUMAN with capital letters. Because that is the question: to be able to be a teacher. The vivid answer to the question comes by Hz.Ali: "The work you do is the reflection of you". I love this quote. Because it gives the whole summary of life we live. Yeah, we all are mirrors not just in classroom environment but in life issues as well. Everywhere and everytime. We are the generators of our destinies, we build our future, we are the architects of our fate. But the question naturally arises: how can a mere person be an architect of her life? The answer is hidden under 3 stones: 1.by our deeds, 2.by our thoughts and 3. by our words. You might get surprised why I use the word "stone". Of course, I expressed my opinion metaphorically. Because taking control over these three aspects is like taking something heavy off the ground. For example, can we take control over our thoughts and think of something positive for a while? After a few seconds we find ourselves thinking about the daily problems. When we are able to watch our deeds, words and thoughts we'll be able to be a good human and when we are are a good human we can be a best techer ever. It is like a chain. In my 35 years of life experience I haven't met a person who is a good teacher but an evil man or vice versa, a person who is a poor teacher but has affluent humanistic characteristic features. It is just impossible. I always underline it by saying and saying that in the center of all matters stands the question of human, no matter whether he is a diretor, a principal, a teacher or a simple worker. Our inner world is our identity. As I mentioned above we are the writers of our stories. But the question arises: HOW? So if we want to be a productive teacher first we should change our attitude to life and to people. It is my lifetime motto and I underline it again and again that the education starts with the teacher. Knowledge acquaisition process is realised within the walls of the classroom. Teachers take responsibility of societies. Teachers define the future of generations. Teachers make us love scholl, books, love reading. We learn life with teachers. So before making a decision to be a teacher first have a deep look inside, investigate inner you, put your hand on your conscience. Are you ready
to shake the world around you with your teaching passion, with your teaching enthusiasm? Are you ready to wrap up the life with love? If so, how happy you, how lucky your students are!!! Every time when you go out of your classroom, shut the door, leave your learners behind ask a question to your conscience: Did I teach anything today? Was I able to contribute to anyone? I assure you if everybody had asked such a question to herself the education system would have been in quite another level today [2. p. 151-154].
Principle2. "Big eyes" feedback (methodological aspect to language teaching)
The terminology belongs to me. Here I have written some tips about the methodology of language teaching. So what does "big eyes" mean? What does it stand for? The main figure is a teacher again. Actually, teacher's performance in classroom that causes her students eyes get bigger with interest at her lesson or her method of teaching language. It is clear that grammar rules are not always the favourite part of language for most students, because they find it tedious or difficult sometimes. But...but...it is again within teacher's power to change the situation and add some flavor, some spice to her lesson, to add some salt and pepper to the grammar that seems hard to remember for the learners. How? I suggest being as much selective as possible when you choose examples appropriate to a certain grammar rule that you are going to teach. The main thing is to combine grammar with the students' emotions, moods and age properties. Examples should reflect their sphere of interest. What are they interested in? What do they want to hear? You should touch their hearts. For instance, let's suppose that today you are going to teach the pattern "the more. the more". If you cite an example like "the more I read, the more I get tired" or "the more I write the more mistakes I make" you just can't revive your classroom. Because these sentences are of no emotional colour and there is zero attention to the topic. Instead, teacher writes on the board: "the more I see you, the more I fall in love with you", "the more I think of you the more I miss you". So, what happens? Immediately they raise their heads, look at you all in complete surprise with big eyes: Teacher is speaking about love. We all know that at their level of age all youngsters are eager about such kind of matters. Moreover, it is one of the useful methods to apart them from their mobiles which is the inseparable part of their life. Then I ask them to write the similar examples themselves. You just cant imagine how happy and eager they are. Because they have a chance to utter what they keep in the depth of their heart. Furthermore, I allow them to use their beloved mobiles for looking up the translation of any word in translating software programs. It gives them double pleasure. So both sides are satisfied. Teacher is satisfied because this way she gets her students to learn the rules, the students are satisfied because they show initiative and it is appreciated by their teacher [3, p. 87-90].
Principle 3. How to learn speaking? (linguistic approach to language teaching)
Here I'll cover linguistic aspects of language learning. In fact, the reason I why touch upon this question is the fact that currently I am learning German and my self-study experience was a window of opportunity for me to see the language learning process from the
distance and I realized the ways where students get stuck and how I can manage them to overcome these obstacles and get unstuck.
Unfortunately, many students around the world learn speaking with books, finding out new words or reading aloud. In the first step these principles could seem beneficial. But if the process goes on learners understand that this way they cannot reach any point. As I mentioned above they get stuck in some level of learning process. So what happens? Consequently, they give up studying by saying that it doesn't work for me. This is the usual case that we all face. The English in student's head might be great, but when they start to speak it is just not the same. A student once said to me "when I have got ideas in English, the English in my head is like driving a Ferrari. It is great. But when I speak it is like a car crash" [4, p. 44-46].
So in order not to have a car crash I'll show some way outs:
a. "How to learn speaking?" When this question is addressed I immediately give feedback by saying LEARN SPEAKING BY LISTENING. So once I made such an experiment: I gave a text to two different students and ask them to retell it. To the first student I gave the topic itself, but to the second one just the listening track of the same text. What happened? The student who learnt the text by listening made no pronunciation mistakes because she listened to the native speaker of the English, spoke with natural English like accent because she immitated the rhythm, rhyme and the melody and covered the information in the text more exactly. And alongside with that, she enjoyed her speech by saying "teacher, do you see? I speak like a native English". I saw a gleam of light in her eyes.
As we all know English is not the thing we read in the books. Conversational, spoken language is quite different. When we limit our students to learn the language with books we narrow down their capacity to understand it in native people's speech [5, p. 112-114].
Principle 4. How to increase fluency? (linguistic approach to language learning)
The question that the students frequently ask is How can I increase my fluency? My answer is "focus on chunks!" (chunks are the pieces of language where 2-4 words go together). It could be collocations, like heavy rain. We don't say big rain. These words go together. It could be idiomatic expressions like kick the bucket or it could be a filler like on top of that. We can't make a change here like at top of in top of. So we learn it without thinking about all the words and grammar. Often in my classes I teach students such idiomatic expressions and all of them love it [6, p. 200-207].
Word collocations are also useful. If I teach the word "family" I should also teach some common collocations like immediate family, extended family, nuclear family, family resemblance, family ties, family reunion and so on. Collocations make the language more fluent. Let's imagine a builder, building a house. He puts the bricks one by one on top of each other. That's quite slow and takes time to build a house. But now imagine somebody has a new invention and gives him four or five bricks in a layer glued together. And all he has to do is put the layers on top of each other. It is much
faster, and what's more, the house is going to be better, because it'll be more accurately aligned. It is the same with the language. Using these layers or chunks we become more fluent [7, p. 165-169 ] .
Principle 4. Push your comfort zone (psychological aspect of language learning)
The more we are psychologically relaxed the more sophisticated sentences we make and the more successful we become. Comfort zone is the area of doing things where we are comfortable. Maybe you learn English by watching a film, but when we say try to record your voice the answer immediately comes "Oh..no...I am not very comfortable". Why don't you get a speaking partner on Facebook? Oh..no...I am not comfortable with that". There is a fear of breaking your comfort zone. But when you use English in the world you are going to have to interact with other people. Thus speak to strangers, be nervous, make mistakes, even have other people sometimes laugh at you. To keep your confidence up you should interact with other people. Immerse yourself in natural spoken English. It is all well and good having a course book, having a teacher, practicing with English that is for students. But it is really important not to forget the real world where the language is used by normal people. Why is this important? Because course books normally limit the language. They speak too slowly, they correct us, they are polite, they encourage us. It is kind of an artificial bubble where students build up their confidence. That is great, in fact. But the real world is a bit different. Real people are not so polite, they may not correct you, they speak too quickly, they expect you to understand. So there is pressure [8, p. 94-95].
Nowadays there is so many opportunities; videos, podcasts that you can find on the internet on your TV or through the radio. It might sound a little bit old-fashioned. It is useful to look at news broadcasts, current affair shows, chat shows, interviews with people, TED talks, films, etc.
Of course all these take time, need day to day practice. Therefore, I sum up my article by the sentence: BE PATIENT but BE PERSISTENT!
References
1. Roy T. Bennett "The Light in the Heart", Roy Bennett 2016, p. 9-12
2. David Nunan "Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers" (Prentice Hall International English Language Teaching), 1991
3. John Hughes "A Practical Introduction to Teacher Training in ELT", Pavilion Publishing 2015
4. Lynne Cameron "Teaching Languages to Young Learners, Cambridge University Press 2001
5. Scott Thornbury "How to Teach Grammar", Pearson Education 2000,
6. I.S.P. Nation "Teaching Vocabulary: Strategies and Techniques", Heinle ELT 2008
7. Friederike Klippel "Keep Talking: Communicative Fluency Activities for Language Teaching", Cambridge University Press 1985
8. Mary Ellen Butler-Pascoe "Technology and Teaching English Language Learners ", Pearson 2002
