Week 10 - From Comprehensible Input to Interaction

The readings of this course were all inspiring to me. I chose to register in this course at the very moment I was told I would be hired to be an Instructor for Elementary Portuguese at UNH this semester. I couldn't have done anything better! In this course, I learned the theories and was exposed to the discussions on teaching strategies and learning hypothesis.

Each reading was like a new world that was opened to me. I was so happy to know all the ideas these theorists discussed and with our class dynamics that I felt really lucky. I must confess that in my first readings of each of the articles, I agreed entirely with all of them. I was a complete naive in this field. Therefore, my first impressions of each argument was very positive. I was enchanted by Krashen's theory of Comprehensive Input and his weird way of explaining his ideas. Then, I was impacted by the PACE model with whole language approach, which made me reorganize my current Portuguese classes.

However, in the last weeks, when I was exposed to the Long's Interaction Hypothesis and Swain's Output Hypothesis, I freak out. I am a conciliator by nature, so I desperately tried to keep all the theorist tips and advice and mix all the arguments in one and only way of teaching. This way of teaching is what I am currently considering to my second semester as a Portuguese instructor. This time, I will have a decent amount of time to prepare a course. It will reflect all my conciliatory efforts to use a little bit of each of the approaches I was exposed to. I guess this is called the Teaching Philosophy.

I had lots of intuitions about second language learning from my experience of student of four different foreign languages, but now I am aware of which are the most important elements I have to focus when teaching a second language. I would like to thank Professor Lee for allowing me such an important experience.