Amani Love: Teaching Philosophy

Towards A Student Need Centered & Inter-culturally Oriented Classroom

I structure my classrooms around three main ideas:
1. Language teachers and curricula should be aware of and responsive to the
needs and language goals of students, creating learning environments and
course work, which leads to the fulfillment of these needs and goals. This requires
frequent assessments of students needs and morale.
While teachers and administrators have their own goals and needs, the needs of students
are paramount. No two classrooms or groups of students are exactly the same. Therefore
we must first assess the reason the students have decided to learn the target language as
well as in what settings and for what purposes the language will be used once it is
acquired. The vocabulary, drills, assignments, and topics covered in each course should
be compatible with those settings and purposes. While it is important for students to learn
to use the target language in various settings and registers, it is more important that
students acquire the topical and practical knowledge, which they can use in their real
lives before moving on to topics which serve no practical purpose in the immediate lives
of the students.
2. The goal of all foreign language instruction should be the creation of bilinguals
who are skilled inter-cultural communicators. This necessitates the creation of
classrooms, which have an intercultural orientation.
Successful inter-cultural communication requires more than the memorization of
grammar rules and vocabulary. These aspects of language alone will not be sufficient in
real world situations. Students must also learn about and internalize the broader culture,
communication rules, pragmatic features and discourse patterns, which are imbedded in
and created by the culture(s) associated with the target language (as well as come to
better understand those of their first culture). Successful students of any foreign language
must learn to adopt not just the structures of their new language but also an intercultural
orientation, which transcends the specific micro level relationship shared by the 1 st and
2nd cultures. Chantal Crozet & Anthony J. Liddicoat (1999) wrote:
An intercultural orientation implies a transformational engagement of the
learner here learning involves the student in a practice of confronting multiple possible
interpretations, which seek to decenter the learner and to develop responses to meaning
as the result of engagement with another culture. Here the borders between self and other
are explored, problematized and redrawn the learner needs to engage with language
and culture as elements of a meaning-making system that are mutually influencing and
influenced. This means that language learning becomes a process of exploring the ways
language and culture relate to lived realities the learners as well as that of the target
community.

Amani Love: Teaching Philosophy

My classroom will be designed to facilitate this transformational engagement. This means
that a significant amount of classroom time will be spent on:
a. The explicit and implicit teaching of the specifics of the target language culture
(combined with and separate from language instruction)
b. The comparison of the Target Language Culture and that of the students (with an
emphasis on valuing and respecting different cultural perspective)
c. Broad overview of world cultures and Anthropological concepts, which support
an intercultural perspective and problematize ethnocentrism in the minds of the
students.
d. Helping student develop personal relationships with members of the target
language culture as a means of developing empathy and exposing students to the
lived realities of their counter parts.
This approach will not only help students better understand and assimilate to their
new culture, but also create a new inter-cultural mental framework through which
the student can view all human interactions and communications (regardless of the
language and cultures involved). This approach hopes to create students capable of
considering not just what they know but also that which they do not. Students
educated in this manner will be more likely to resolve conflicts peacefully and with
empathy. De-centering the students own culture and assumptions allows the student
to value the other without devaluing him or herself. Students will learn to have
self-esteem as well as a deeper understanding and respect for that which is unfamiliar
and unsettling. Students must become not just bilinguals but also inter-cultural
communicators and mediators. Liddicoat A. J. And Scarino, A (2013) wrote:
An intercultural speaker is someone who can operate their linguistic
competence and their sociolinguistic awareness of the relationship between
language and the context in which it is used, in order to manage interaction across
cultural boundaries, to anticipate misunderstandings caused by difference in values,
meanings and beliefs, and thirdly, to cope with the affective as well as cognitive
demands of engagement with otherness.
Students who develop an inter-cultural orientation will eventually become bilingual and
competent inter-cultural speakers. This orientation will give students the intellectual and
philosophical framework necessary to critically analyze and interpret their own
interactions with people from other linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Adopting this
framework will allow students to not just respond to breakdowns in communication but
to preemptively anticipate misunderstandings before they happen.
3. Multiple teaching methods are necessary and desirable. In order to create wellrounded students and accommodate varying learning styles a single course should
combine the audio-lingual methods, task based, communicative, and grammar
translation method. Students must develop various language skills. A single method
cannot create well-rounded students. Students need to develop:

Amani Love: Teaching Philosophy

a. The proper pronunciation and intonation.
b. The ability to complete specific practical tasks in the language (placing an
order, paying a bill, asking for directions or instruction).
c. Have productive conversations and correspondences, which serve a purpose
and further the student knowledge.
d. Have knowledge and competency of various grammar patterns and
vocabulary items.
e. Be able to translate between their two languages and have an understanding
of equivalency (between two texts or utterances).
The combination of the methods listed above should be sufficient to create these abilities
in students over time. The combination of these methods will also aid the flow of lessons
by preventing repetitiveness as well as accommodate the different preferences of the
students.
I believe that language learning is the first step to creating bonds between people
who would normally be worlds apart. It is a humanitarian effort that transforms the
individual and those around them. I strive to not only develop linguistic competence in
my students, but also inter-cultural communicative competence which serves the personal
needs and goals of the students while at the same time encouraging individual growth
which allows the students to identify and empathize with the other that is their second
culture as well as see themselves through the lens of their 2nd culture. This process creates
students who are, in the words of Paulo Friere, more fully human.