Letter of Summation

Before I started studying in the TESOL program at UCR extension, I had no idea what
language teaching would like. However, I was always interested in language learning, so I joined
this program with a light heart of learning about teaching English. My expectation to the 15 unit
TESOL program was relatively low at the beginning since it was only 6 months of studying.
Nevertheless, classes were packed with fruitful information and delivered by highly experienced
instructors and these circumstances led me to change my aspect toward language teaching. In
this letter of summation, I would like to share 1 method and 1 technique that I learned from the
TESOL classrooms.
In my home country, South Korea, the majority of English lessons from public schools
follows the grammar- translation method. Lessons are heavily proceed by teachers and there are
little student to student or student to teacher interaction (Larsen-Freeman&Anderson, 2011, p.
19). In spite of the fact that these classes are still a second language learning courses, the
grammar-translation method works in classrooms of Korean public school since the primary goal
of language instructions are not communication in English. However, times are changing and the
ability to communicate in the targeted languages became significant nowadays as a result.
Therefore, I would like to borrow some skills from the communicative language teaching method
(CLT) into the grammar- translation method classroom. I can not completely change the ordinary
teaching method to the new one at this point, but I want to utilize some CLT techniques to
expand the lesson with communicative drills. On the account of the fact that the main aim of
CLT method is to enable students to communicate in the targeted languages, classes are
intensively students- centered, and principally includes communicative activities (Larsen-

Freeman&Anderson, 2011, p.122-123). In classrooms of South Korean schools, there are usually
30 or more students in one class, and the length of class are between 45 minutes to 1 hour. In
these teaching circumstances, common CLT activities might not work since teachers cannot be a
facilitator in this size of classes. Hence, I would like to put students in a mid-large sized group of
5-6 students, and have them to debate against each opponent groups. The majority of lessons will
be taught in the grammar- translation method, but at the end of the lesson, students will practice
speaking through discussion.