Kai Carpenter

C&T 491

Dr. Cho and Johnson

July 1, 2019

Teaching Philosophy

Over my six weeks at Kyunghwa Girls’ High School I have begun to develop my own

teaching philosophy. Because I did not have any teaching experience prior to this program, my

teaching philosophy is solely built on my time during this program.

After watching the experiences that the students here go through, I think that as an EFL

teacher it is important to make sure that students, specifically in Korea, get lots of opportunities

to practice communicating in English, rather than just having them memorize words. I think it’s

also important to be very encouraging of the students and how much English they have already

learned considering they live in a country where English is not often spoke outside of the

classroom (Choi 41). The main goal of a teacher is to be a support system for the students and

make sure they get the resources they need in order to succeed.

It’s also important to include lessons about culture because it is hard to connect to a

language when you do not know much about the culture and how people who speak that

language interact. However, it is also very important to keep the idea of English in the context of

student’s first language, and make sure that they can properly express themselves and have their

own ideas in English without sacrificing their personalities and ideas about the world that they

already have.
 I think it’s also very important that in an EFL classroom that the focus is on the students

and less of a teacher lecturing, especially considering the environment of their other classes. It’s

important to give the students lots of time to practice all the while not overwhelming them with a

task that might be a bit out of their comfort zone to complete. It is also important to make sure

that all students in a class get equal opportunities to practice English instead of just a few

students speaking for most of the class.

Overall I feel that it is the job of the teacher to be there for the students, and make sure

they are always doing best for their students in order to watch the succeed.
 Works Cited

Choi, Inn-Chull. “The Impact of EFL Testing on EFL Education in Korea.” Language Testing,

vol. 25, no. 1, 1 Jan. 2008, pp. 39–62., doi:10.1177/0265532207083744.