Is Teaching an Art or a Skill?

My Teaching, IFL Year 1, Class E1..9

Is teaching an art or a skill? This is a question commonly asked by those people who are involved in educational field. Some people say that teaching is a skill for the reason that to be a teacher one must be knowledgeable and have a talent in teaching. Yet, some people say that it is not a skill but an art. Teaching is like performing. Once ones know how to perform well in front of their students, meaning they are able to deal with disruption in the class, produce a good learning atmosphere, build a good rapport with students, and the like, they are considered as good teachers. Therefore, which view do you support? To me, based on my experience gained from my practicum at the Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL), teaching is a combination of both a skill and an art of teaching.  

I had always thought that as long as we were knowledgeable in the subject we were going to teach, we would become a good teacher. Not until I got involved in teaching did I realize that what I thought was far from right. On 6^th May 2013, I experienced my first teaching. I was supposed to teach a writing skill to a group of freshmen at IFL, whose ages range from around 18 to 30. Before going to teaching, I had prepared a lesson plan as a guideline helping me to have a clear idea of what to be included in my teaching, dressed properly, and prepared all teaching materials needed. After that I walked into the class confidently. I started my class by following what I had planned in advance. Everything was going to be great, I thought. 

However, everything did not went smoothly as I thought. The real circumstance was not the same as what had been predicted. Even though the techniques adopted were well linked, there still were some problems with dealing with time. For instance, the allocated time was 90 minutes, but because of external factors such as traffic jam, some students arrived at school late, say 15 minutes. Therefore, the learning time was only around 70 or 75 minutes. Due to this reason, we, as teachers, need to be flexible in our teaching, or else our teaching would be dreadful. As I experienced during my last technique, I estimated that students would be able to complete their task on time, and everything would finish as the time set. Yet, some disruptions happened. Some students was ignorant about the time limited; they talked with their friends about something else completely irrelevant to the assigned task. As a result, they could not complete the task. If I had not been flexible enough, my teaching would have been miserable. Thus, having a skill, being knowledgeable and talented, in teaching is not enough to be a good teacher. The art of teaching must be taken into account when teaching.

After my first teaching, I came to believe that though I was knowledgeable and so confident in my ability, without an art of teaching, I could not be a good teacher. I knew that my first teaching was not good enough; I ignored the fact that teaching involved applying the knowledge we had together with how to deliver those sets of knowledge, how to help students assimilate those sets of knowledge, how to encourage students to get involved in the classroom activities,  and the like. As a result, there were a lot of rooms to improve in my further teaching. I had learnt my first lesson from my first teaching practicum, and I adopted that experience in my second teaching.

Time went by, my second teaching practicum arrived. My lesson plan and other related teaching material had not been so readily, well prepared. I went to the class, and taught as in the previous, but what was different was that I change my teaching style. As mentioned earlier, in my first teaching I did not care about using an art in teaching my students; I thought being knowledgeable was enough. I tried to diversify my classroom arrangement, encourage students to be active in the class, and praise them after they answered to the question correctly, and these worked well. In contrast, I had not been well-prepared about what I was teaching due to the fact that I had little time to prepare so that I was ready to teach. Therefore, when teaching, I was not as confident as when I taught the first time. To sum up, a good teaching is not about being confident without being well prepared.

As I had learnt from the two previous teaching sessions, I gained deep insight what teaching really was. Therefore, during my third teaching, also it was the last one, I adopted a combination of a skill and an art of teaching in my classroom. I had prepared everything for my teaching in advance. I planed what I was going to teaching very carefully by estimating what would be happening during my teaching, how my students would respond during classroom activities, and the like. I also noted down my weaknesses and my strengths from my previous teaching so that I could know which areas to improve and which ones to strengthen. As a result of combining between the art and skill of teaching together, my third teaching produced a good result. 

From these three teaching sessions during my teaching practicum, I have learned a lot about a job as a teacher. I seriously believe that these sets of experiences will help me to become one of good teachers in the future. To be a good teacher is not as simple as we think. It requires a teacher to be an expert in the areas s/he is going teach, together with how s/she is going teach. Being knowledgeable in the subject is not enough to be a teacher. Therefore, I hope that if you choose a future career as a teacher, you need to know this concept. Teaching is a combination of a skill and an art of teaching.

Three Factors Explaining Why Some Cambodian Learners of English Are Successful While Other Are Not

           If asked if I think it is easy or difficult to study English, I will say that it is dependent upon many different factors. There is no single clear-cut line that tears the definition of difficulty and easiness of learning a second language, English, apart. In the other words, to be successful in learning English depends on both internal and external factors. In my viewpoint, there are three major factors I believe are the most significant ones which explain why some Cambodian learners are successful, while others are not, in learning English.

One of the most notable factors of English learning is motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Intrinsic motivation, which is broadly defined as a desire of the learners to acquire a second language, plays a vital role in enabling a successful learning. In this sense, to what extent the learners are successful corresponds with to what degree the learners desire to learn it. On account of intrinsic motivation, students are highly likely to be successful in a language learning. However, even they are enthusiastic in learning English, their level of zeal will dwindle if the tasks are tedious and beyond their level of capacity. Therefore, as educators, we need to respond to the students’ needs and beware of the students’ current abilities. John Dewey once said “We begin where our students are, not where we want them to be.” We cannot just force students to learn what they do not want to learn; we need to tailor the tasks to suit them. Hence, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are like flesh and bond. Without them a journey to success in English learning is impossible.

Another factor that injects an influence on the success on English learning is individual learning strategy. Different individuals are in favored of different strategic learning styles. As I have learned in Applied Linguistic course, there are three types of learning strategies, all of which are metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective strategies. To be successful in learning English, students need to know which learning strategy works well for them and which ones do not. Sometimes one learning strategy works for a specific person but not others, so it is better for them to think critically before choosing a learning strategy. Moreover, it is notorious that most Cambodian students, if not all, are dependent. They just follow one learning pattern, which is to follow what the teacher tell them to do and/or the outstanding students’ learning style. However, it does not work for each and every of them. Therefore, to overcome this great challenge, they should be aware of their own preferred learning strategy that suits their learning pattern. 

Though motivation and learning strategy have a big impact on Cambodian learners of English, perhaps the most powerful factor that generates the biggest influence on the success of English learning as a second language is resource. This includes financial resource, human resource, and availability of learning resource. The correlation between degree of success of English learning and unevenly distributed resources is quite noticeable. For those who are more accessible to the aforementioned resources tend to have a greater chance in becoming English successful learners than those who are not. To deal with this challenge is utterly difficult owing to the fact that there is a great variation between the rich and the poor, and between people who live in rural or remote rural areas and those who live in towns and cities. 

To sum up, motivation, learning strategy, and resource are the three indicators of Cambodian learners’ success in English learning. Lacking any one of them will be a hindrance hampering them from getting successful in learning English. Therefore, what the learners need to do to overcome these challenging factors is to define a clear goal and have a sense of direction in learning English, beware of their own preferred learning strategy, and be accessible to necessary learning resource. Fail to plan does mean plan to fail.