Teaching Philosophy

A construct an L2 teacher should touch upon on day one, tolerance of ambiguity proves a
fundamental concept in L2 learning and teaching. It is the ability to endure an uneasy situation
long enough to adjust to L2 stimuli and form suitable responses to those (Yavari & Jafari, 2014).
A learning context is by definition a place where hypotheses must be tested: learners need to
think about language in order to use it (Gass, Behney, & Plonsky 2013, p.370), and they cannot
be expected to produce comprehensible output (p. 356) on day one, nor to have all become
competent users later on, since so many other factors can come into play; in fact, every language
learning process is situated in a specific context (Dornyei & Ryan, 2015, p.81), and the affective
filter, which includes learners motivation, attitude, self-confidence, and especially anxiety, may
prevent input from passing through (Gass et al., 2013, p. 133).
Language aptitude may also play a key role: students have different levels of what Cohen
calls the language-related portion of intelligence (as cited in Schmitt, 2013, p. 162) that profits
from exposure to an L2, and their individual rate of progress may vary individually to a high
degree (Dornyei & Ryan, 2015, p. 38). Because of all this, a healthy starting point is to create a
stress-free, judgment-free environment from the get go; my experience proves me that it can
make a huge difference.
Once diagnostics have been conducted to find out what specific learning still needs to
take place or be reinforced (Hughes, 2003, p.15), my lessons employ a Communicative
Language Teaching approach (CLT) toward meeting student learning outcomes: instructed
language-learning processes are similar to those happening in naturalistic language learning
contexts, but with significant differences in quality and quantity of input (Gass et al., 2013, p.
427). Therefore, a CLT approach makes sense when trying to fill in that gap, a gap students must

notice (Gass et al., 2013, p.386) to engage in the functional use of language to negotiate meaning
(Brown & Lee, 2015, p.31). Consequently, I use group or pair work frequently and plan activities
trying to make them, very important, fun. The goal is for learners to achieve what LarsenFreeman defines communicative competence, i.e. the ability to use language in various contexts,
and not just the knowledge of how it functions (as cited in Schmitt, 2013, p.20). Hence, my
Focus-on-Form approach: teaching that relies on meaning-focused activities, where attention to
FormS is embedded (Gass et al., 2013, p.407).
However, even if that would be my prevailing teaching rationale, when it is necessary to
focus on a particularly challenging grammatical form, the use of a students L1 remains an
option, when possible, if some distinct advantage is gained by its use (Brown & Lee, 2015,
p.141). Students should interact to negotiate meaning on a regular basis, but one should shy away
from extremes that rule out explicit teaching of forms as old-fashioned and unnecessary,
dismissing it altogether (El-Dakhs, 2015, p.1125-6). As a matter of fact, students tend to express
frustration when they cannot understand the why and how of a specific grammatical item:
they need an explicit explanation of rules, which in such cases I deliver, because CLTs tolerance
of errors should not allow fluency to outweigh accuracy (Hanifehzadeh & Ebrahimi, 2015,
p.110). So students needs determine whether a deductive or inductive approach works best, from
situation to situation. The consensus toward form-focused instruction ranges in fact from implicit
approaches, to noticing, to explicit treatment of rules (Brown &Lee, 2015, p.466): it all depends
on contexts. The latter also determine what feedback is most productive: recasts, prompts,
metalinguistic or self-correction, as long as it maintains communicative flow and takes learners
affective status and linguistic stage into account (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.470).

My overarching approach nevertheless considers that L2 learners show greater attention

to meaning rather than form when exposed to input (El-Dakhs, 2015, p.1126). For instance, they
may not notice the -ll auxiliary attached to a verb to signal a future action when hearing a
sentence starting with next year; to prevent the latter, a form-meaning-mapping approach
(FMM) proves effective, operationalized as the ability to understand the link between a
grammatical form and its meaning without shortcuts: to achieve that, students engage in taskessential activities where no cues give information away, so learners develop their own
awareness of L1/L2 differences (MacManus, 2015, p.71).
Language are also tightly intertwined, so learners should become interculturally
competent as well; they should acknowledge cultural differences as their L2 learning process
redefines their identities by letting them into a new system of customs, values, and ways of
thinking (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.81-82). Thus, pragmatics plays a central role in my teaching a
new language, because, as Spencer-Oatey points out, it highlights the multifaceted relationship
between linguistic meaning and its interpretation in context (as cited in Schmitt, 2013, p.82).
Whether students motivation be instrumental or integrative (Gass et al., 2013, p.453),
pragmatics remains key. Last but not least, among other sources of motivation figures the kind an
inspiring teacher provides (p.453), and that is what I strive to become every day, in every class I
teach.

References
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Gass, S.M., Behney, J. & Plonsky, L. (2013). Second language acquisition. An
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