Pre- and Post-Course Interview Questions
Pre/Post Course questionnaire: How do I feel?”
Discuss the following questions with another course member.
Answer the questions in whatever way feels best for you.
Your opinions and feelings are important, so there are no correct or incorrect answers.
1. How do you feel about your teaching skills?Do you have any experience of teaching?
The good point about my teaching skills is that my voice is clear and I'm active. But I think I'm not that creative because I always followed limited methods from other resources. And I didn't have any chance to teach many students at once. I have just taught small groups of students in a private English institute explaining contents in Korean. I could not choose teaching methods or contents that I want because the purpose of private educational institutes is just to raise the grades of students at school and textbooks or materials were decided already.
2. How do you feel about your learning skills?
(learning strategies, time-management, study skills, etc.)
I'm good at memorizing some information by images, similar concepts and pronunciation. For example, when I learn a word of damp, I bring up an image of humid swamp. I like to integrate some feelings or sensations to other things. But I have a habit of reviewing what I learned from class on time so I’m trying fix it.
3. How do you feel about your confidence and self-esteem, as a future teacher?
I don’t have confidence to become a good teacher. I know it is not easy and needs a lot of efforts. And self-esteem is one of the most important components of teaching and learning. But I think I have little experience of teaching and I feel a lack of confidence in speaking English fluently. So before teaching practices, I have to enhance my teaching skills, English and confidence.
4. How do you feel about your motivation (passion, love of learning, vocation), as a future teacher?
Actually, now I am thinking of doing another job in my future so it’s kind of hard to describe my motivation or passion as a future teacher. But if I want to become a teacher, I will make a great deal of effort to become a good teacher because from my experience, I loved students and cared much about them. I was attentive and tried to help them out when a student had difficulty in learning or solving his own problem.
5. How do you feel about your higher-order thinking skills (problem-solving, critical thinking, logical reasoning, summarizing, creativity, etc.)?
I am good at problem-solving for I like to think about new solutions or alternatives. I also like to summarize and reason logically. However, I think I’m not outstanding when it comes to critical thinking. I tend to accept many things positively and had little experience of critical thinking. But when I took a class called “American culture”, I learned a lot of lessons about it.
6. How do you feel about your materials-design skills (making different types of tasks for students’ learning needs)?
I had little chance to give materials for the students’ needs because the materials and textbooks in the private institutes were fixed. But I tried to give some prints about vocabulary or reading materials according to their English level. I try to coordinate materials and tasks for students’ learning needs and levels.
7. How do you feel about your presentation skills (voice projection, volume, pronunciation, body language, confidence, eye contact, etc)?
My voice is clear and I’m good at eye contact in presentation, but I think my pronunciation and confidence in speaking English in front of many people are not good enough. I want to improve my presentation skills a lot.
8. How do you feel about your learning strategies?Can you teach students HOW to learn?
I like my learning style except for several aspects like being lazy in reviewing. So I should deal with shortcomings of my learning strategies before I teach students. But it is not clear if those skills fit well to my students. So I can just introduce them such as thinking about images of words to students. And when I start a class, I will review the important things from last class and let them look through the titles, topics, new vocabularies of today’s class. Before finishing, I will have a review time and talk a little about next class.
9. How do you feel about self-assessment and peer-assessment?Are they helpful? Are they practical?
I have an experience of peer assessment and I got many comments about my presentation from my peers. It was helpful because they pointed out my good or bad points correctly. But when it comes to grade, I felt it’s not fair because the levels or starting point of it were all different among students. Some students had a tendency to give grades to other students generously and others are not. For example, when someone gave grades generously to other student, the other student could give very low grade to him even if they gave the same presentations. And self-assessment can be also practical given conscience and truthfulness.
10. How can this course help you?
What do you want to learn?
I want to see a lot of examples of good class and know how to plan it. Also I want to speak a lot in English. This class can give much time for it.
11. How do you feel about your future?
(What? Why? When? Where? How?)
I want to work in a government. And also I want to study further about public administration and education. So now I think I’m not prepared or interested in becoming a teacher. But I hope to feel that teaching English is fun and more motivated in this course.
Thank you for completing this reflection.
We will do this again at the end of the semester.