My teaching philosophy is guided by two basic principles. First, I strongly believe in the philosophy of Confucius that “I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.” Second, I understand that teaching and learning a language are two different things. In other words, just because I have taught something, it does not mean that my students have learned it. With these two guiding principles in my heart, I define my teaching philosophy as a learner centered communicative and activity-based teaching. In order to create such an environment, and to constantly motivate my students to participate fearlessly, I bring my own enthusiasm, open personality, sense of humor, patience, and ability to listen to my students into our shared language classroom. When teaching, I tailor my Hindi language to suit the proficiency level of the learners. I present the target items through written and oral mediums and then help students to notice them and to construct their own rules. I further encourage them to use the target items in creative activities, such as role-plays and games. I frequently use multimedia technologies, such as YouTube videos, VoiceThread, wikis, and other software and web-based materials to make learning fun and relevant for our digital native students. In assessment, I keep a balance between form-focused and meaning-focused evaluation of students’ work.
My teaching philosophy can be best understood by an example. Suppose I have to teach interrogative sentences in Hindi-Urdu. I understand that unlike English, Wh-words in Hindi-Urdu do not move. I would present a set of Hindi question sentences to the learners and ask them to talk (in English, for the beginners) in a group of two or three to figure out the differences in English and Hindi-Urdu question formation. My job is to encourage my students to form and improve their rules. I then present authentic material (materials prepared for native speaker by native speakers) from YouTube, to show how those questions are asked in a real environment. The video also serves as another form of input and cultural aspect related to the strategies of asking questions. Then I give them a situation such as “Imagine that a Bollywood actor/actress is coming to your university, but s/he does not speak English at all. As you are learning Hindi-Urdu, the university wants to hire you to interview that actor/actress in Hindi-Urdu. Please prepare your questionnaire for the interview.” I ask them to write their questions first. I give them feedback on their questions, then ask them to group with other learners and ask those questions to the partner. Please note that this activity is encouraging them to produce language. They are also asked to create a video of their interview by video-taping, or using VoiceThread (http://voicethread.com/) or Vocaroo (http://vocaroo.com/) as a homework assignment. I again give them feedback on their speaking skill when they submit their final work. These activities do not just provide input in written and oral form, but also encourage them to use their self-formed questions in an almost natural environment. They also use online materials to learn and further produce and document their own learning.
With such a teaching philosophy, my friendly attitude and care for my students’ language learning, I have earned countless words of appreciation from my students, supervisors and peers. Even more rewarding has been to see my students’ interest in continuing to learn Hindi–Urdu. Many have gone on to receive scholarships for study abroad in India, and also have added Hindi as a minor for their undergraduate degree at Michigan State University. However, I still strive for constant improvement in my teaching skill and philosophy.
