Interview Questions
2. What are your target teaching level and main teaching areas?
3. What are the features of the curriculum of your school
4. How do you assess your students’ performance?
5. Are you following textbooks and methods prescribed by the curriculum of the school? Or do you have any freedom to make the decisions relating to content, materials, and assessment?
6. What is your guiding philosophy of education?
7. What suggestions would you provide to your school to improve the current curriculum?
8. In teaching, what kind of challenges or problems do you encounter and how do you deal with them?
9. In related to Question 4, could you explain more about the evaluation system of your school?
10. In developing a curriculum or designing a course, what aspect do you think is the most important?
The Original Interview File
(Disclaimer: The last part of a file was deleted for some reason I was not aware of at all. Thus, the report about Question 9 and 10 was basically based on my memory.)
Summary of Interview
I have interviewed Ms. Hanna Lee who has been teaching English to middle school students for about three years in Korea. She earned a BA in secondary education in the US, and her current main teaching areas include speaking, writing, and listening. She and her colleagues used to work for one of the major English institutes in Korea, but they quit their job to run their own school three months ago. The motive behind such decision was my greatest concern in conducting this interview.
Ms. Lee said that it was her dissatisfaction with the curriculum solely scribed by the institute that made her leave the school. The school used the same American textbooks for American 7th, 8th, and 9th graders to teach EFL middle school students, with which she mostly disagreed seeing that those textbooks were too high and difficult for her students to follow. She said that curriculum of the previous school did not match what she thought a good curriculum should be like. The curriculum failed to reflect the situation of Korea, and the ELD level of Korean students.
Ms. Lee and her colleagues collaborately designed the current curriculum, specifying it into four areas; Listening, Reading, Grammar, and American textbooks. American textbooks are incorporated into the reading class. Although the curriculum offers some basic guidelines to the teachers, there is no fixed syllabus of each class. Rather, each teacher tries to provide more individualized lessons reflecting the ELD level of her students. She is, in particular, interested in using a range of audio-visual aids such as discovery education videos and national geographic channel videos to motivate her students.
In light of her philosophy of education, Ms. Lee emphasized that “Students should put to use what they really learn..they have to fully understand it ..should have to utilize it as a member of a global society”. Thus, she suggested to the school that they make full use of computers so that they can provide richer audio-video materials and find more ways to incorporate offline classes to online classes to increase students’ interests in the subject.
The biggest challenge she encounters as a teacher is to motivate her students, she added. “The only way to get them to really study is not by forcing them or coercing them into studying, but to actually make them have fun in class, make them feel that English is not just a subject you need to learn to go to a college, but make them actually appreciate English, and just get them interested in it”.
Upon my request to elaborate the evaluation system of the school, she said that at the end of every semester, the students are supposed to take a comprehension test. The students are also asked to submit an essay on a weekly basis and revise it reflecting teacher’s feedback. However, their writings are only used as reference indicators of students.
Finally, in developing a curriculum or designing a course, she maintained that selecting textbooks and defining the context are of great importance. She said that the textbooks should correspond to the proficiency level of the students, and to that end, the teachers should be accurately aware of the reality and the context of teaching and learning English in Korea.
My Reflections
The interview with Ms. Lee provided me a valuable opportunity to see interrelatedness between teacher’s philosophy and curriculum development. Ms. Lee highlighted the importance of motivation in learning a second language, the need for defining the context and in turn selecting textbooks appropriate for students’ ELD levels in designing a course, which eventually made her start running her own school to offer a program that mirrors her conviction . She aptly raised concern over the blind obsession with the content-based programs in EFL curriculum context, which actually match the level of mainstream learners. Most EFL teachers are required to follow a required curriculum of the school; thus the dilemma between what a teacher values and what he/she has to teach is prevalent in EFL education.
Faced with such dilemma or challenges in teaching, teachers are encouraged to adapt their teaching resources to accommodate the needs and interests of the students. More fundamentally, as McKay (2007) noted, “Teachers need to analyze the curriculum context, and weigh their own beliefs and theories in relation to the innovation” (p. 4). With regard to changes in teaching programs, it should be noted that any change into a curriculum requires “teacher commitment, and works best as a collegial and collaborative process with others” (White, 1993, as cited in McKay, 2007, p. 11). Through a process of sharing, teachers are more likely to increase their awareness of language education. They will get better understanding of the importance of examining context. In this sense, hearing what other professionals think about teaching, proper methods and what a good curriculum constitute provides an opportunity for professional growth.
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