Pedagogy and Teaching Goals as an Art - Essay Example

            The first short-term goal is communicative competence, communication is the key these days and it is very important to be good at receiving and sending messages. The following procedure will help in understanding this goal.

            Using language in authentic is the first step towards achieving this goal, banning the use of slang in the classroom will help in facilitating this goal. Once this is done, providing the appropriate context is the next immediate target, students whose grammar is weak must be worked upon if the goal of communicative competence is to be achieved. The peers will play a pivotal role in this exercise, each student will evaluate the performance of their peer, and this will also facilitate teamwork in the classroom which will benefit the students in the long run. The last target which will help in achieving the goal of communicative competence is by making the students aware of the cultural use of language; this is extremely important and should be done by every teacher.

            The following section of the paper will shed light upon the medium-term goals (6 months), and ways will be used to achieve these goals will also be comprehensively presented.

            Encouraging collaboration in the classroom is essential and every successful teacher manages to achieve this goal. This has been chosen as a medium-term goal because it requires a good rapport with the students and establishing a good rapport takes time.

Encouraging collaboration amongst students can be done by making students work in pairs as many times as plausible, this will improve their bonding and will lead to better collaboration amongst them. Giving students a defined task is very important; it is perhaps the first step toward achieving the goal of collaboration. Students will feel that the collaboration has improved when they work in groups and try their best to achieve the goals set for them.

Another important step is to give freedom to students so that they can use language in the way they want, this will help the students learn from each other. Different students will use language in their way; the teacher must ensure that the students use the language in the right way so that no student learns anything undesirable. Three important things must be taken care of when working towards this goal, the teacher must ensure that there is no communication gap, and each activity must have a defined outcome. For instance, drawing a map is an activity that is task-oriented and perhaps the best example of a task-oriented activity. The teacher must also ensure that there is a time limit set for these activities so that the students can learn within a specific time limit.

            The long-term goal (12 months) would be to facilitate mastery of a field; this is extremely difficult and requires a lot of diligence.

            “Your classroom is a training ground not only for future study in your field but also for many aspects of life. Great teachers help students master the fundamentals of their subject matter, which will pay off both for advanced study in their field and for students’ everyday understanding of the world.” (Teaching Goals)

            These goals will be measured by maintaining a diary that will record events daily, at the end of the week results will be analyzed. Students will be engaged in leisure activities should the results be good, else more efforts to accomplish the same goals will be put in.

            At the end of three months if only 50% of the goals are met the following steps will be taken:

• Organizing special classes to ensure that the goals are achieved
• Use of teaching aids that will facilitate learning and create keen interest amongst students.

These two steps will be taken to ensure that the goals are achieved; both steps will help facilitate learning. During special classes, leisure activities like vocabulary building could be organized so that students start enjoying the classes. A healthy rivalry will also be created in the class to ensure that the students pull themselves by their bootstraps.