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Second Language Acquisition

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Running head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY 1

Reflective Essay

When I decided to work as a teacher, I knew I needed to take seminars and workshops to

improve my skills and teaching style. I remember that I started looking for educational

conferences and workshops where I noticed that there were many ways to teach every student a

way to learn. I love English, and I love teaching it, and I consider that people who decide to be in

the educational field must love to teach and educate, so we can encourage the students to enjoy

the classes and acquire the language through the learning process.

Working with other teachers made me realize that teaching is not only about focusing on lessons

within the book or doing activities based on grammar teaching. I learned that teachers must

create relationships with their students and apply strategies and methods that help during the

student’s learning process. I remember that during my first class, I planned it randomly without

taking into consideration methods and techniques that exist and there must be applied taking into

consideration the students’ background, previous learning, and level. According to Brown (1963)

“A method is a generalized set of classroom specifications for accomplishing linguistic

objectives”.

We live in an age when many teachers face students with learning problems, and we did not get

prepared to deal with them. During my teaching experience, I have faced a lot of cases in which

students have learning disabilities, and for that reason, I had to take many seminars in which I

learned how to deal with them and how to teach according to the students’ necessities. For

example, one of the workshop’s speakers said that students who have disabilities must learn to

be functionals. So, I started to apply his advice and teach them vocabulary that I know would be
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helpful for them. According to Farrell (2018, p.3) “All teachers with SLA experience should use

that knowledge to help their students learn. Furthermore”,

It is often said that people should study at universities what they are going to be in life. I studied

to be an engineer, but as time passed by, I realized that I have a passion for teaching. So, I

decided to find a job in an institution to teach English. When I first arrived at the school, my

collages were nice and made me realize that teaching is a matter of input and output, but the

output is more important during the learning process. According to Farrell (2018, p.17)

“Students use the output to reflect consciously on the target language forms that communicate

their meaning”. CLT is the approach used in the school I work because it let the English teachers

know if the students can transfer what is studying in class.

I think that teachers face many challenges when in the teaching field, but our goal is to make

students successful in life. Also, educators must realize the importance, attending workshops and

self-preparation to learn how to apply methods and techniques according to the students’

necessities.
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References

Brown, D. (2000). Teaching by principles. San Francisco, CA

Farrell, T. (2018b). Second Language Acquisition Applied to English Language Teaching.


TESOL International Association.

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