Activity 4: To self-evaluate
your starting point
About initial representations and beliefs
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Where do I come from? What is my educational
background/setting/context?
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Which meaningful experiences of learning and teaching have I had so far?
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How do I currently conceive language learning and teaching?
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Which competences do language teachers and students need to develop?
I am a master student of secondary education with the subjects of study English, Spanish and History.
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At my university classes about technical methodology of my subjects of study I have been learning a lot about teaching by actual teachers. Those teachers with university teaching position brought their expertise in the courses they offered and evaluated the rehearsed lessons they observed. My experiences in terms of teaching are manifold. It started with a volunteer job at summer camp for a time period of six years, followed by tutoring, internships at local schools and abroad and my current teaching assignment at a vocational school in my home town where I have been working for two years now.
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As a student I am currently conceiving language learning and teaching at the University of Kiel. In addition, my colleagues at my work place give me advice when needed.
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One evident competence language teachers do have to face is reflecting their lessons and their students’ performance and with it they struggle to keep track of a fair and balanced evaluation of plenty of input they get daily.
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About education
and training needs
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Which challenges do emerge from my teaching and learning experiences?
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Which questions or issues arise from my current knowledge about language teaching and learning?
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In case you have had previous teaching experience:
Which positive experiences and strengths can I collect from my teaching practice?
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Which weaknesses of my teaching practice can I describe?
It is pretty difficult to live up to everyone’s needs. This means, as a teacher you cannot ensure all students achieve a high level of competence and thus succeed.
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How can I improve myself as a teacher? In which way can I ensure all students achieve good results despite a lack of motivation and low learning efficiency?
Small group activities always work well and lend livelihood and sense of delight to the lessons. Moreover, including students’ interests revealed to be effective when it comes to motivation on the part of the students.
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To be honest, sometimes it is difficult to attract everyone’s attention and perfectly satisfy all of my students when I am teaching in a classroom. This is due to the fact of a heterogeneous group of people who tend to be in a normal class at school.
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About training and
education expectations
What do I expect from this course?
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Which are my personal goals and aims within this course?
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Which are my professional goals?
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Where am I heading up to?
I expect to get introduced into new and useful tools and ideas.
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At best would be to pick up some strategies and techniques that deal with new technology.
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My aim of this course is to get to know new methods and tools which in ideal circumstances have an impact on my classroom practice as a teacher.
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I would like to find a suitable way to change the everyday classroom into something that enriches my personal lessons as a teacher and at the same time motivates my students to be interested in the subject and its contents.
