If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees.

If
your vision is for a lifetime, plant people- An old Chinese proverb.
I strongly believe, planting a strong introductory base to the learners of English is a
must ingredient to upkeep their future wisdom. English itself is a brand language which
exposes us to the updated world; therefore teaching and learning process of English as a
language is considered a heavy-duty. To me a teacher is someone who enlightens the whole
world at a time. Teaching is always the only profession which brings mastery on other
sectors. As far as my assertiveness goes, great teachers teach from the heart, not from books.
To teach there must be learners who internalize and retain information through a conscious
process under cognitive, emotional, and environment friendly conditions which I label as
learning processes. Since I never have taught English as a second language (ESL) formally,
my teaching values are built on few experiences of in-class teaching under TESOL courses
and the knowledge I gained as a student of ESL through my lifespan.
As an instructor my view point is to assist the students prospective to produce
advanced level learners. The concentration of a mentor is to create self-dependent students. I
am certain that pupils come to classroom with some pre-existing knowledge whether in a
linguistic form or subconscious real life experiences. So, I would encourage my students to
capitalize on their strengths to sharpen their understanding of English language. [For
example, if I teach any topic and a student is aware of the issue from surrounding then I
will explain the topic from known to unknown; that is I will elicit what he already
knows and then expand the topic further. But the key motto would be confirming the
students level of understanding is strong and concise. When I took the topic of
parallelism to teach students of intermediate level, first I tried to relate the concept of
parallelism in English language where in sentences balance must be present. In other
way I wrote a sentence of faulty parallelism and from that I went further. But in any
way students response regarding their knowledge level must be cleared by me as a
lecturer. Now most of the students are weather linguistically competent or bear real life
experiences that I can assess through some free hand writing in the few beginning
classes to know their level of English language. This will help me further to help them
capitalize their own strengths.]
Real life context shows us that East-Asian students are more proficient on bookish
knowledge than conversational fluency. [Even now this notion has not changed yet. Still
people of Japan, Korea, Hong Kong or Mongolia prefer to talk in mother tongue and
acknowledge English as second option. Even in personal life, mixing with a few Chinese
I have found their terrible English accent within other multinational country. Therefore
I will tend to be more sincere to build their communicative competence if I ever come
across any. When I was a student of primary or secondary levels of English, Being an
Asian, I used to memorize grammatical rules and translations to learn correct English
language but I was never exposed to actual application of such knowledge in existent
world with proper fluency.] It has been a long time to change the teaching procedures and
make students use the knowledge practically in convenient way.

I would like to design my lesson plans in a way to build competent learners gradually
having all the four skills- speaking, listening, reading, and writing because to me any
language learning is incomplete without the proper adaptation to all of these. So providing
learners native-fluency in target language would be my aim definitely. [In this regard all the
conversations of class including lectures and other activities must be done in English
except any serious necessity of using learners native language. The more English is
perceived the more fluency gets adapted. Students would be highly encouraged to talk
in English even when they cannot say anything except few chunks in the beginning.
Same goes in writing tasks as well where English usage would be the primary medium.]
As for teaching strategies that I followed while teaching as a TESOL student or observed
from the respective language instructors, I would love to make students teacher directed
instead of teacher-dependent. [For example while a teacher gives a task to the class to
complete that is when students become teacher directed and the strategies would be
keeping tasks which include planning, drafting, brainstorming, reading the text aloud
for revision, etc. which make the learners self-dependent to complete the tasks instead of
teacher dependent.] A student using individual strategies to improve in lesson is more likely
to meet success. In this regard peer-feedback must be introduced along with pair or group
works and after task discussions as well.
Activities should be designed in a way to bring the creativity in limelight. To me
creativity is one of the most under-utilized human characteristics in the context of language
learning. It can be used in writing while developing ideas or paraphrasing topics avoiding
plagiarism. Creativity nourishes each mind in oral production even with limited vocabularies.
[In this regard it should be said that creative tasks must be given on an equal level of
students knowledge. Those who are at lower level with few vocabularies would be
provided simple creative tasks like making new words by adding letters or rephrasing a
given word, and with higher level of knowledge, creative tasks would be more critical to
elicit maximum brilliance of students. So the point is creativity tasks would be given
depending on the level of the students. In this way there would not be any question of
creating demotivation among them.] In my early ESL learning periods, I had specific
grammar book where there were several essays on some mainstream issues like Journey by
Boat, Punctuality, Newspaper, Village Fair etc. No one motivated us to think out of the
box and write a few words on our own. I am not against memorization since it is often a
necessity but where there is a scope of reflecting own thoughts and views, teachers should do
a justice to the originality of human brains.
Next, student-student interactions erase the psycho-academic hesitations of the
learners in an ESL classroom; I experienced this via myself. From this respect students
feelings must get nurtured providing motivations and friendly environment. For example,
sometimes when I go to my brothers school who is in kg II of an English medium, I find his
classroom wall filled with color splashes and drawings of English alphabets and animals. The
table-chairs are different colored as well as each section has different color names. Such
surrounding indeed motivates young learners to learn English subconsciously. Simple words
like, I know you can grasp this concept have motivated me as a student to work harder. This
is why often learners native language and interactive teaching materials along with

inspirational phrases must be provided to offer a vibe of acquaintance. Several teachers of

different courses in university level have used Bangla language so often in between English
lectures just to make us feel cozy in the class.
Afterward when context is hard to clarify, an instructor should adopt techniques like
playing question-answer games, and gymnastic exercises to lower the affective filter of the
students- at least my experiences of being a learner say so. Apart from regular lectures, often
my instructors invite guest speakers of respective courses to give the learners a glimpse of
practical application of the learning.
Correcting errors and evaluating students knowledge are two significant points while
teaching as a mentor. I have seen that my course instructors always remain concerned about
the weaker students because of their low marks in tests or group activities. Low profiled
students always need to be boosted up to remain motivated for future good grades. Next,
correcting the errors of learners is a matter of great mastery. In beginning classes, the teacher
should respond to the errors more gently leaving the minor errors but with time, the teacher
should fine-tune students knowledge by correcting more specific errors. Often it can be done
while giving feedback or instantly by repeating the correct sentence. Sometimes it also can be
done through self-correction by the students. But no matter what the way is, the main aim is
that the learners should not feel offended or discouraged at any period. I have learnt such
strategies while doing introductory English courses like Introduction to the Paragraph or
even in TESOL course of Teaching Practicum.
While wrapping up the last words I want to state a quotation of Robert Frost- There
are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you cant move,
and the kind that gives you a prod behind and you jump to the skies. Therefore becoming the
second type should be an ideal dream of an ESL instructor who would be more like an
awakener of the potentials of the students. Since knowledge is versatile, updated teaching
researches should be done to fulfill inquiries of the learners. Apart from this, broadening of
cultural awareness for a teacher is necessary to teach English excellently. Because it helps a
facilitator to bring real life examples from student life styles to make the connotation of topic
easily. [No activity is necessary for students since this is solely for a teacher to become
more proficient.] Finally while spreading up own beliefs of teaching in the paper I realized
providing effective learning is the hardest job and teaching it right is a greater responsibility
indeed.