Language

Enjoy Your Language Learning

Teaching is no easy profession. It requires deep dedication, a willingness to work long hours, a genuine desire to help other people, a commitment sometimes to “walk the second mile” in facilitating students’ best performance, cognizance of a professional core of knowledge, and ability to be “on tap” in front of students many hours in a day, and more. (Brown, 2007, p. 488)

This quote from Douglas H. Brown in the field of English language education well explains my lifelong belief as a teacher. Since nearly two decades ago when I first decided to become a teacher in the future, I have always been thinking in what ways I can contribute my life as a teacher to others—more precisely, my students. This feeling became even stronger when I began to teach language classes in the United States. I have taught English and Japanese language courses at college, and it has always been my motto that I dedicate as much time and effort as possible toward students’ learning. However, I gradually started to feel that such dedication is a minimum expectation as a teacher. Therefore, in addition to the essential qualifications listed in the Brown’s quote, I set two teaching philosophies as a teacher of languages: 楽習 and 共育.

Both of them are coined terms, which have the same pronunciation with the original ones, and yet can show distinctive meanings by using different kanji characters in Japanese. “楽習” is pronounced “gaku-shu” and the original term is “学習.” In Japanese, each character in 学習 means either studying or learning. I replaced the first character with 楽, which means enjoying. In my language classrooms, therefore, learning should always be 楽習 and students are expected to “enjoy their language learning.” In order to help this type of learning happen, I usually set daily learning objectives as small as possible (e.g., one or two grammatical item/s) and then spend more time on drills and conversation practices. Also, more importantly, from the very beginning to the end of the semester, I always embrace students’ mistakes and tell them how normal it is to make mistakes in the process of language acquisition. I even tell my own journey as an English language learner to share feelings with students as well. All these things have helped me construct classroom atmosphere in which students could enjoy learning, feeling less anxious about making mistakes. Indeed, at the end of one semester, a student in my Japanese language class shared her feeling and said:

When I was learning by myself, it took a long time to think it was okay to make mistakes when you learn. You know, because, you never wanna be wrong. Because you don’t wanna look stupid. And my first experience with the class at [college’s name] made me feel like it wasn’t okay to make mistakes anymore. But, in your class, you made me realize that it’s about trying your best rather than being the best. And like… I feel like because people felt comfortable to be themselves and then make mistakes, you created a really good learning environment. And I just wanted to thank you for that.

This is just one example, and yet some other students actually told me that they could feel comfortable with the classroom atmosphere that I created, and as result, they enjoyed language learning. Brown’s quote indicates teaching takes time and energy, but it must be the same for students. Students do require a lot of time and energy to learn a new language. It is hence essential for students to shape their mindset to enjoy their process of learning, and I believe 楽習(enjoying learning) is an important aspect in my language education.

As my second teaching philosophy, I put emphasis on “共育.” This term can be pronounced “kyo-iku” which originally comes from “教育.” Each character in this original term—教育—means teaching and raising (others like children or students) respectively. By replacing the first character with 共 that means together, 共育 can implicate “learning from each other and growing together.” I feel this concept is quite important, for (1) language learning and acquisition hardly happens only by learners themselves, and also (2) learning in general is not only a simple knowledge transmission from a teacher to students, but it is also a co-construction of knowledge contributed by each classroom participant in their situated learning context.

In the first place, I believe that language learning happens when learners work with their peers. Learning only grammatical items or vocabulary words, for example, does not guarantee that one can actually communicate with other speakers. Therefore, in my language classrooms, I always ask students to work in a pair or in a group. Since 共育 is an important aspect of my language classroom, through pair/group activities, I want my students to (1) practice their grammar and vocabulary knowledge in actual interactions with others; and (2) observe how others may apply the newly learned grammatical items or vocabulary words into their conversations. Eventually, such pair or group works can play a role as a valuable learning moment for students. More importantly, in the end, this classroom dynamics can help construct classroom atmosphere in which each student can feel comfortable to learn together and from each other. I often see that students teach each other about the new grammatical items before asking me questions. As such, 共育 can surely happen in classrooms, and it is essential in language learning.

Interestingly, 共育 can happen between in all directions including between a teacher and students, which actually functions as a valuable moment to share knowledge in the classroom. In my experience, this aspect of 共育 happened regardless of the type of language classrooms (e.g., English or Japanese). When I taught English as an additional language courses, students from various international backgrounds enjoyed talking about their languages and cultures. One day, a student from Saudi Arabia told me that he needed to learn how to avoid run-on sentences, for it is his culture to compose relatively longer sentences. In our subsequent class meeting, I talked about sentence/paragraph structures that can vary culture by culture, which should be modified in academic written English. In my Japanese language courses, students and I often talked about languages and cultures in the U.S. and Japan. When I talked about how “coat,” “jacket,” and “hoodie” can be called and categorized in Japan, students taught me differences between a dad cap and other types of caps/hats in English. As these examples indicate, 共育 (learning from each other) can happen not only among students, but also between students and a teacher, which facilitates conversations about languages and cultures. In this sense, 共育 is an important concept to take into consideration in language classrooms.

As a language educator, I will continue to embrace 楽習 and 共育 in my language classrooms. These concepts in language education may be easy to preach, and yet it does take a lot of time—at least one entire semester. However, I believe it is possible by continuously showing our willingness to support students. On top of that, helping students shape such orientation toward learning will help their language learning even after they successfully complete their language courses/programs.