Trajectories and Reifications: An Attempt at Signifying my Philisophy as an ESL Teacher

Abstract

In this paper, the author contemplates her professional life not just to reflect and comment on her philosophy as a teacher of English as a second language (ESL), but to critically examine her enactment of this philosophy in her every day encounters in the classroom and how this has influenced the quality of her teaching. In this mood of self-reflexive engagement, the author retrospects on three occasions that inspired her to evolve this philosophy of teaching. Using the Bakhtinian perspectives for this metanarrative critique, she concludes that a) the written word could not concretely reify her beliefs mediated as they are by language, b) the formulation of her beliefs was filtered through personal and political motives, and c) the reader co-constructs meaning bringing into the text variable interpretations of the written word. With these caveats in place, she traces her professional growth through the shifts in language teaching principles and beliefs that shape her actions.