Jane’s peripheral beliefs

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The excerpts above provided evidence about what Jane required students to do as active followers. In class, students should follow teachers’ guidance, listen

carefully and make use of the spare time to improve themselves. After class, students were expected to review what they had learned either by doing related exercises or memorizing textbook content.

4.1.2 Jane’s peripheral beliefs

Except for the core beliefs mentioned in the previous section, it was found that some of Jane’s other beliefs coexisted in her belief system but only exerted peripheral impact on her behaviors. When the peripheral beliefs were in conflict with her knowledge transmission point of view, Jane was inclined to postpone them until core beliefs were completed. These peripheral beliefs were found to be more related to English language teaching issues—her perceived significance of English and the role of grammar in junior high school.

4.1.2.1 Jane’s perceived significance of English

During the interviews, Jane often mentioned her interpretation about the significance of English and what attitude she hoped to develop in her class. In this section, Jane’s perceived significance of English will be presented first, and then the teaching techniques that she used to demonstrate such significance will be illustrated.

A frequent statement in Jane’s interviews was “I want them to at least know that English is a tool”. For her, learning English was not just for test-taking purpose.

Instead, English enabled students to explore more possibilities in the world. She was acutely aware that most students in this school had no interest in pursuing academic achievement, so it was especially essential to educate them how English can be beneficial for their future career:

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I told them that I would offer as much [knowledge and learning resources] as I can, and I hope you can try your best following me. No matter what kind of job you do in the future, being poor at English is likely to get you into trouble. (J-6 197-198)

To make her words more convincing for students, she drew on the experience of the graduated students. For example:

One of my students works as an electrician now. He is deeply aware of the importance of English because some of his customers are foreigners. He always thinks how great it would be if he could communicate with them. (J-6-198-200)

Nevertheless, Jane also acknowledged that it was not enough for students to understand the concept of “English as a tool” by merely listening to her lectures.

Some teaching techniques were employed to “let them know there are many ways that you can learn and use English.” She believed the techniques were able to link students with the outside world where English is used practically and naturally.

The most frequently used teaching technique, as Jane described, was to show students interesting short clips at the end of the class. Jane liked this technique because it was the most efficient way to increase learning motivation:

…it only takes one or two minutes…many of them look forward to watching the clips at the end of the class…They especially loved the kind of clips like

“Annoying Orange.” The dialogues in Annoying Orange are so simple that they can easily understand. (J-7-243-245)

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Aside from short clips, Jane sometimes introduced English songs and popular music to increase students’ motivation. She would spend minimum time pointing out important grammar points in the lyrics and spare more time for students to enjoy the songs:

I won’t spend too much time [talking about grammar] because it is more crucial for them to enjoy the song itself. Keep talking about grammar only scares them away. If the rhythm of a song interests them, they may want to learn more about it voluntarily. (J-11-388-390)

Songs and clips provided students the opportunity to verify the knowledge they learned with real life conversation. Jane thought that this was especially useful for the students who had basic English competence but had no confidence applying it. As she stated,

I want to let them know that there are many ways to learn English, so they don’t really need to go into the grammar part to bore themselves. I don’t want them to hate English. I often tell them that with English, you can do many things such as listening to music and watching clips. It is even more exciting if you understand every word in those interesting clips. (J-11-397-399)

From the techniques she described, it can be inferred that Jane tried hard to demonstrate students the link between English and the real world while still maintained their learning motivation at the same time. She was aware that talking too much about grades and tests only made them turn their back to English. As long

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as time permitted, she liked to bring in multiple learning resources to reduce their learning pressure.

4.1.2.2 The role of grammar in junior high school

The second peripheral belief in Jane’s teaching philosophy was about how she perceived the role of grammar in junior high school. As she indicated, “grammar is essential for beginners, but it also shouldn’t be over emphasized.” In her point of view, teaching grammar was “the most efficient way for non-native speakers to pick up a new language,” especially for novice learners. Grammar was therefore an

indispensable component in junior high school setting.

Despite the crucial role that grammar played for beginners, Jane indicated that grammar should not be overly stressed in the whole learning process. She said,

I teach grammar, but I don’t emphasize it too much in reading sections. I told students that when you reach a certain level, you don’t have to keep memorizing grammar. Instead, you improve yourself through extensive reading. For students who have better English competence, I often suggested them to learn new sentence patterns through articles. (J-11-377-380)

Jane pointed out that digging into challenging grammar questions may wear out one’s zeal for English. Interest was the only key to sustained learning. Once students had certain familiarity with basic grammar, “I would recommend them to read prose and novels so that they can take pleasure in the beauty of words and language.”

In the same vein, grammatical terminology, as Jane maintained, should be mentioned but should not become the focus of English class because “it is more important to use grammar than memorize the terminology.” She got this insight from

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her own experience as a teacher and a mother, saying:

If you go see the test paper of Basic Competence Test, you don’t see any

terminology in it. This is why I don’t ask students to memorize them. In addition, my daughter is the kind of person who speaks good English without knowing too much terminology. A lot of her high school classmates knew more grammatical terminology than she does, but it’s fine by me. Knowing how to use the language is far more important. (J-10-356-360)

During the interview, Jane expressed her preference of teaching the terminology that was “the most common and the most basic ones” such as “parts of speech like verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs…” Parts of speech were regarded common and basic because “students also learn them in Chinese class” and “the principles of parts of speech [in both languages] are actually quite similar.” Memorizing too much terminology did not guarantee good English ability. She added,

It is already good enough if our students have clear understanding about parts of speech. You see, first they learn what nouns are, and then they know the words that modify nouns are classified as adjectives. Adjectives are further

categorized into words, phrases and clauses. Second, they learn what verbs are, and then they learn that adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Gradually, my students would get to realize that these basic grammar principles are quite enough for their learning. (J-10-344-347)

As the preceding excerpts demonstrated, Jane recognized the effectiveness of grammar for beginners like junior high school students. On the other hand, she also

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realized the limitation of grammar and tried to minimize its proportion and the depth in her own class.