A Japanese woman and a near-native speaker of English, I am now thirty-five and a volunteer teacher of English in Tanzania, I am pleased by the fact that my mastery of our global language, English, has opened doors for me to professional opportunity. I have been teaching English in one location or another since I finished college; thus, I have a great deal of experience that I will be able to share with other graduate students in TESOL from around the world as we earn our Master’s Degree in TESOL together, learning from each other.
I count myself fortunate to be living in a time characterized by rapid global transport and communication, fostering a global sense of identity. Born in a small town called Asaba in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, I was raised mostly in Orange County, California. My last three years of high school were spent in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Returning to my country of origin for my undergraduate studies helped to cement my roots and identity. I have also spent significant periods of time in the US, Canada, much of Western Europe and the rest of Southeast Asia.
English Language Education has been a dominant factor in the development of my identity, personal as well as professional. I see English as a gift, an accomplishment, an enriching factor that makes my life much more fulfilling than it would have been otherwise. English is a springboard for me. I would never be where I am now, teaching English in Tanzania, if it were not for English, which brought me here and brings me together with the Tanzanian people. My employer, Shizuoka Prefectural Board of Education, wants me to earn the Master’s Degree in TESOL and has made me the very generous offer to provide me with the same salary as a student that I earn as a teacher, an offer that I find it difficult to refuse as this will enable me to meet the financial obligations of advanced study. ____ Graduate School of Linguistics is my first choice among graduate schools primarily because of the sheer excellence of your program. I appreciate the way that your TESOL Program is designed for experienced teachers as I have been an English teacher throughout my career even though my academic preparation has been in Law as well as Second Language Acquisition and multilingual Education
At ____ University Graduate School of Linguistics, I am especially looking forward to working with most honorable and distinguished professors and studying alongside some of the finest students in the world in the area of second language acquisition - with a focus on the principles and the practices of Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL). I strive to remain the humble person that I have always been, growing up in a rural area of Japan, my horizons have broadened greatly because of earning my first degree from a liberal school in Southern California followed by further professional, international experience in Amsterdam.
A high school teacher in Japan, in English, with Shizuoka Prefectural high schools, and an accomplished TESOL volunteer who is looking forward to many more TESOL adventures in the Developing World, in addition to Tanzania, I am ready and eager to expand my knowledge and experience at a higher academic level, first earning the Master’s Degree in TESOL and perhaps going on to become a teacher of teachers and to focus my attention on the completion of a doctoral degree. I began learning English at 7 years old in California, in an ESL class at an elementary school. I was only there for a brief time before my natural abilities allowed me to catch up and be educated alongside the little native speakers of English, my childlike free spirit facilitating an effortless transition. Yet, my English came at an extremely high price, as I put the Japanese language on a back burner to such an extent that to refer to it as a “mother tongue” was to be stretching the truth. By the time that I arrived in Amsterdam to start my second year of high school, however, studying towards an International Baccalaureate Diploma, my language issues had long worked themselves out. I felt more comfortable by this time in both Japanese and English, and began to simply relish learning, with a the-more-the-merrier attitude.
This is not my first trip to Tanzania as I came here before and I am now in the process of building upon the strides made on my previous visits. My first teaching experience was during my junior year at the International School of Amsterdam, when I had the opportunity to volunteer at a Maasai Girls’ Lutheran Secondary School in Monduli, Tanzania. The school chose me to travel to Tanzania to teach the Maasai girls. With a keen sense of purpose to empower girls to make informed choices for themselves, our group focused on empowerment through English language teaching.
After my graduation in Amsterdam, I entered ____ University where I signed up for a teacher training course. During my three weeks as a student-teacher at a local high school near my hometown, my objectives in teaching and its significance felt clear and right to me. My language ability, along with the real-life experiences as a learner, appeared new and thus worthy. The way English was taught in general classrooms was quite different than what I had anticipated, however. Students were not trained to consider issues critically with their own voices; they simply followed teachers’ directions and had little-to-no discussions with each other and at this time I vowed that I would make a point to cultivate critical thinking as opposed to rote learning as a TESOL instructor.
I am now a homeroom teacher in Africa for students in their third year of high school, head photography coach, and in charge of international exchange programs. My very intention in teaching is not only to inspire the students to acquire a second language, but also to urge them to build a way to perceive the world from multiple, changing perspectives. Through the language learning process, my long-term goals were always set on helping students to reason, to express their thoughts with words.
It is understood that English has become increasingly important for Japanese students to learn, for some time now. Nevertheless, it is shocking that the quality of English-language instruction is inferior to that of certain other countries, especially in the public-school system and particularly in rural areas. Many of my students in Japan find learning English to be stressful and sometimes tedious. Many of my students studying English find it stressful and sometimes tedious. All-too-often, my students tend to consider English simply to obtain acceptable scores on entrance exams, rather than as a good in and of itself that one masters joyfully.
Old-fashioned English education paid little attention to practicality, and this is why so many Japanese learners of English, especially historically, never learned to be good communicators, only to pass examinations. I have always put faith in the notion that students’ interests can stimulate the act of language acquisition. If educators assist by pointing the way, the pathways and means to language learning will be there, with improvement resulting from motivation. Considering today’s challenges in Japan, I tend to stress the importance of student engagement in my pedagogy. In Japan, all too often, students report boredom in the classroom This has me convinced that Japanese students need to stop thinking about the process and get involved emotionally and intellectually with the content. Instead of focusing on how to teach English, I want to teach through the English language. Since language is merely a tool for communication, its proficiency does not satisfy most students’ desire for intellectual curiosity. More than communication, the context conveyed through the language learning process does matter for many learners since it is what draws their interests.
I keenly look forward to studying these issues at ____ University, where I hope to attain the fullest immersion in advanced language learning and teaching techniques with respect to the English language. I will very much enjoy re-visiting my teaching experiences thus far considering what I am learning. I look forward to being an active student who is not shy to communicate and share in workshops, seminars, lectures, and conferences on and off campus – everything related to TESOL. At ____, I will cultivate my strengths and correct my weaknesses, laying a solid foundation in language acquisition pedagogy.
CLIL has long commanded my attention, for its principles epitomize my teaching philosophy, my values, and priorities. Cultivating students’ cognition throughout the language learning process and integrating those schools of thought is critical for the way that language learning is perceived. I see ____ University as a pioneer in this field of innovative learning in Japan and therefore wish to take advantage of every opportunity to further investigate principles of higher education in actual classrooms. As a thesis project, I would like to pick a topic with your help that bridges processes of cognitive and second language development. I am especially interested in how students’ cognitions are related to acquisitions, achievements, and motivation, and how all of this has an influence on levels of English proficiency attained.
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