Critical Reflection on Professional Conduct as a Language Teacher

The assignment is a reflective essay that evaluates the writer's current skill set as a language teacher against the requirements for the role. It identifies strengths and weaknesses, and outlines a plan for personal and professional development to become an ESOL teacher from a teaching assistant position.

TEACHING PRACTICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. CRITICAL REFLECTION ON PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT AS A LANGUAGE
TEACHER.......................................................................................................................................1
2. FUTURE CAREER PLAN..........................................................................................................2
A critical evaluative account of career plan................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

1. CRITICAL REFLECTION ON PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT AS A
LANGUAGE TEACHER
Professional conduct of a language teacher is of utmost importance where it is all about
working in an ethical manner. It is with a foremost consideration of working with students to
provide them quality education. Herein, an ethical teacher is never supposed to show any sense
of favouritism against the students. Other than this, there should also be a thorough interaction
among the teachers and students in the classroom (Walker, 2014). Besides this, I am together
concerned about student’s safety and security and thus require to abide by the specified
procedures of protection. For this, I am supposed to do an instant reporting of any incident of
abuse, harassment, mistreatment and victimisation, etc. Apart from this, on relating to some other
concerning aspects of a language teacher, I hereby believe to possess some below mentioned
skills: Effective time management- This is the foremost skill that is needed to be possessed by a
language teacher in terms of managing timely classroom sessions. It is hereby on
referring to my own time management skills, I believe to have moderate skills of time
management where my day being with the prioritization of tasks. This largely assists in
an effective management of workload even if there exists something unexpected.
However, I am intending to increase these skills of mine by becoming more strategic in
terms of planning for potential crisis and avoid overloaded procrastination. Meeting deadlines- This is stated to be yet another vital consideration of a language
teacher where missing the set deadlines directly indicate an unprofessional behaviour
(Roberts, 2017). Meeting set deadline together demonstrates the act of respecting time
that is a teacher’s foremost consideration. Currently possessing moderate skills of time
management, I somewhere fail to meet out the specified deadlines as well. Appropriate planning for tasks- It is followed by above 2 requisite skills where proper
planning of tasks will automatically lead to an effective management of time to meet the
set deadline of work. Commitment and responsibility- Being a language teacher, I believe to possess a
committed outlook towards my profession to actively contribute in teaching related
activities. This is basically to meet individual requirements of students and to responsibly
use the designed curriculum (Bucknall, 2017).
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 Teamwork- It is another foremost characteristic of an effective teacher where teamwork
and a collaborative outlook towards working together is apparent to reduce the
challenging situations for us. Although, I believe that a stressful tendency in us is merely
due to the fact of isolating oneself. I do not prefer constructing meaningful connections
that ultimately leads to isolation and a diminished sense of teamwork.
2. FUTURE CAREER PLAN
A critical evaluative account of career plan
 Research- This is on the basis of an undertaken investigation in which I have intended to
research upon my teaching field of interest where I am aspiring to build a career in
ESOL. The term ESOL stands for “English to speakers of other languages” where ESOL
teachers are those who are responsible to teach English language to those students who
have grown up speaking different language and therefore faces difficulty in quickly
grasping English language (Gregory and Oliver, 2018). As a result, to which, an ESOL
teacher should be enough proficient in terms of educating such students with some other
additional considerations that firstly involves the duty of respecting the student’s first
language.
 Personal development- This is on the basis of above carried reflection as a trainee teacher
who is teaching English as a second language or at L2 level, there exists certain areas of
development to enhance my present personal as well as professional skills. I am aimed to
initiate working as an assistant in the ESOL classrooms to gain experience and later apply
for the post of ESOL teacher. For this, I have firstly attempted to assess my strengths and
weaknesses to further create a personal and professional development plan (PDP) to
overcome my weak points with assistance of my fortes.
Strengths
o High level of commitment.
o An increased sense of collaboration and a willing sense of working in teams.
o A determined eagerness towards learning new things on continual basis.
Weaknesses
o Moderate skills of time management.
o Incompetent in meeting set deadlines.
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o Reasonable skills of planning work.
 Future priorities- It is thereby on the basis of above assessed skills, I have found my time
management to be the most weaken skills of mine. Considering the same, I have decided
to follow a plan consisting of skills that are assistive to acquire enhanced skills of time
management with activities that are must for it and through which, I will improvise it to
the earliest possibility. This is due to my keenness towards continual learning that is
evident to assist me in fulfilling my future priorities of becoming an ESOL teacher from
the post of high level teaching assistant.
CONCLUSION
The above essay has summarised my reflection as a language teacher by together
referring to certain number of skills that are required to be exist in an L2 teacher. I have therefore
evaluated these attributes with my own skill sets to ascertain their existing level and determine
the gap to reach to an intended level. This has been done in the 2nd part of this paper where a
critical evaluation has been done by conducting a research in the chosen field of ESOL to further
develop both personally and professional and meet the future priorities.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Gregory, K. and Oliver, G., 2018. Alternative Approaches to Professional Development. The
TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. pp.1-6.
Roberts, R., 2017. Mindfulness and the ESOL student (and teacher). Language Issues: The ESOL
Journal. 28(1). pp.74-78.
Walker, J., 2014. ESOL as Business: Time for the Market‐Oriented Teacher?. TESOL
Journal. 5(1). pp.159-171.
Online
Bucknall, S., 2017. How to benefit from having a teaching assistant in your ESL classroom.
[Online]. Available through: <https://www.helloteacher.asia/blog/having-a-teaching-
assistant-in-your-esl-classroom>.
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