My STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I am a teacher. It is in the area of teaching of French Language that I have been making my greatest impact. The Russian educational psychologist, Lev Vygotsky said that learning is socially constructed. Hence my students will have the opportunities to collaborate with me and with one another to learn and gain expertise and become life-long learners.
My philosophy of teaching is influenced by my passion from early childhood for learning informally the languages and dialects of my immediate neighborhood. Often to my pleasant surprise, I came to realize that making inferences based on Yoruba, my mother tongue, many a time led me to faulty assumptions about the rules of the new language. Afterwards, I became fascinated by the structure of French which I offered at the secondary school level and even more so by the structures of Russian and German which I studied as extra-curricular activities.
My goal in the classroom is to impart on my students a new way of seeing the world, in a way a francophone speaker would see it. This can be achieved by introducing them to the fundamental structures and vocabulary of the language through the four basic language skills, namely, writing, listening comprehension, reading and speaking, consequently laying emphasis on communication.
In all these, the knowledge of the linguistic background of the learner in the area of pronunciation, grammar, lexis e t c, is an indispensable tool in predicting the areas of learning difficulties and help resolve them as much as possible.
The application of technology in the teaching of French as well as in other foreign languages cannot be overemphasized. At the introductory level, among others, short video films of 20-30 minutes in length on simple topics are shown to students twice. The third time, the sound is switched off and they are invited to narrate the films in French. At a more advanced level, CD recordings of the speeches of francophone speakers of different categories, namely, writers, politicians, scientists, social scientists, sportsmen and women e t c, are made available for students to listen to within and outside the classroom hours.
Using the contrastive stylistics of French and English as a key to teaching translation is an important means for the acquisition of French and the appreciation of the structures of the learner’s mother tongue. Texts will be drawn from a variety of literary and non-literary sources ( business, scientific, current affairs e t c. ).
There is no doubt that my teaching philosophy will keep on evolving. I do believe that at the end of the day, students who have been preordained to live in one linguistic and cultural possibility, will have been well initiated into seeing the world through an added lens.
Dr. Olufemi Ogunyipe.
My philosophy of teaching is influenced by my passion from early childhood for learning informally the languages and dialects of my immediate neighborhood. Often to my pleasant surprise, I came to realize that making inferences based on Yoruba, my mother tongue, many a time led me to faulty assumptions about the rules of the new language. Afterwards, I became fascinated by the structure of French which I offered at the secondary school level and even more so by the structures of Russian and German which I studied as extra-curricular activities.
My goal in the classroom is to impart on my students a new way of seeing the world, in a way a francophone speaker would see it. This can be achieved by introducing them to the fundamental structures and vocabulary of the language through the four basic language skills, namely, writing, listening comprehension, reading and speaking, consequently laying emphasis on communication.
In all these, the knowledge of the linguistic background of the learner in the area of pronunciation, grammar, lexis e t c, is an indispensable tool in predicting the areas of learning difficulties and help resolve them as much as possible.
The application of technology in the teaching of French as well as in other foreign languages cannot be overemphasized. At the introductory level, among others, short video films of 20-30 minutes in length on simple topics are shown to students twice. The third time, the sound is switched off and they are invited to narrate the films in French. At a more advanced level, CD recordings of the speeches of francophone speakers of different categories, namely, writers, politicians, scientists, social scientists, sportsmen and women e t c, are made available for students to listen to within and outside the classroom hours.
Using the contrastive stylistics of French and English as a key to teaching translation is an important means for the acquisition of French and the appreciation of the structures of the learner’s mother tongue. Texts will be drawn from a variety of literary and non-literary sources ( business, scientific, current affairs e t c. ).
There is no doubt that my teaching philosophy will keep on evolving. I do believe that at the end of the day, students who have been preordained to live in one linguistic and cultural possibility, will have been well initiated into seeing the world through an added lens.
Dr. Olufemi Ogunyipe.