María José Hargain
What did I learn in the course? How has the course impacted my future teaching and ideas? How has it contributed to my development as a teacher?
I have learned that I should never be too inflexible about my conceptions of language learning and teaching in general. I need to understand that every once in a while my ideas about these issues will change and develop further due to newer research. In this sense, in this course I have learnt that CLIL is not a nightmare that is getting increasingly realer and more feasible in our profession. It is not only a very valid foreign/second language teaching methodology but also one that will enable students learn the language fully. This course, then, has impacted me in the sense that it has radically changed my ideas about what is to teach a language and how to do it. It has contributed in my development as a teacher because now I intend to design my lessons according to a content rich language learning approach. Had I not undergone this course, I would have never reflected on that.
How have I participated in the course project? What have I learned with the project and how has it made me rethink / reshape my role as a language teacher?
For the project We Are What We Eat I helped the team to come up with ideas regarding the content rich topic that we were going to teach the students. I suggested a variety of themes to cover, the tasks, the content and the language suitable for every topic. Finally I contributed deciding on which topic was the most interesting. I volunteered to host the CRLL class in my house, look for the volunteers to be our students, and arrange the setting and the timetable. Based on this experience I learnt about the importance of making a calmed and relaxed environment to teach in. The significance of making learners feel that they are not being judged or pressured is also something I discovered. However, the most important thing I have learned is that I must prioritize that students use the language, no matter how accurately they do it, they need to dare to produce it. In order to do this, then, it is hugely important that students find the topics covered interesting and rich enough to engage with the class. This is, in short, what I have learnt throughout the development of the project.
