I am passionately dedicated to finding new and innovative ways of engaging children in learning,\u00a0primarily by treating them as co-creators of knowledge rather than as empty vessels in which facts and\u00a0information are deposited, only to then be spent on examinations and never used again. In this way, I\u00a0draw strongly from the critical pedagogy of the Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire (1921-1997),\u00a0who saw learning as a dialogic process in which discussion, debate and creative collaboration are of vital\u00a0importance. These elements of education are especially crucial to English language teaching, as learners\u00a0will always find it difficult to progress unless they are given the opportunity to put their speaking skills to\u00a0the test on a regular basis. Where many teachers fail is in their tendency to assume a \u2018tick-the- boxes\u2019\u00a0approach to English teaching, according to which students are required to slavishly complete one\u00a0textbook exercise after another without any kind of classroom interaction. Contrary to this approach, I\u00a0strive to involve my students in role plays, drama activities and debates, so that they become active\u00a0rather than passive users of English. In this way, I find that it is considerably easier to build on the\u00a0knowledge that the students already possess, all the while developing their capacity for critical thinking.<\/p>\n
In addition, I am a huge advocate of using ICT tools in order to enhance my students\u2019 creative capacities\u00a0and problem solving abilities when learning English. In 2016, I conducted an electronic tablet-based\u00a0research project in Ethiopia in order to examine the effectiveness of mobile technology in improving the\u00a0quality of English teaching in Ethiopian schools. The results of my project demonstrated that the visual,\u00a0interactive elements of such technology can help to stimulate engagement with the English language in\u00a0ways that traditional methods of instruction cannot, as my students were able to absorb more\u00a0information through the experiential style of learning that the tablets offered them. These findings will\u00a0no doubt influence my style of teaching at i-Learner, as I will attempt to make use of ICT in as many\u00a0classes as I can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am passionately dedicated to finding new and innovative ways of engaging children in learning,\u00a0primarily by treating them as co-creators of knowledge rather than as empty vessels in which facts and\u00a0information are deposited, only to then be spent on examinations and never used again. In this way, I\u00a0draw strongly from the critical pedagogy of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":11403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[713],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12307,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11438\/revisions\/12307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}