I’ve been teaching Time magazine nonstop for 8 years, and is getting wilder ever time I teach because of the richness of the world events the English language leads me and students to.
I constantly think of the way I learned English in school – those moments of rote memorization of words and rules, mechanical sentence patterns. We studied hard for tests but were rarely given the chance to use the language. Probably all language educations are like this – rigid and lifeless. Yet, it was the things outside the textbooks that fascinated me. I would read English newspapers and magazines because I wanted to know the stories behind those images. Yes, they were difficult, but they were interesting.
Little did I know what I was so doing until recently that my curiosity of things simply went go beyond language, and only at a very later stage did I realize that when we set our eyes on world events, language ability will follow.
After 8 year of teaching, I have developed my philosophy in teaching – language should lead us to freedom, not constraint. It gives us freedom when we are wondering the meaning a language delivers. A constraints when we focus too much on the correct spelling, grammatical use of a language.
Sometimes I think there is a conspiracy in education in which educators come up with all kinds of language textbooks and tests to cram students’ language creativity.
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