Ramya Prabhakar, HOD – Languages, French Facilitator – MYP & DP

  • 12 November 2020

“I have been a French facilitator for around 3 years at Oakridge. I believe that incorporating fun ways to learn languages makes it interesting for students. Songs, games, role-plays, art are various ways to bring in motivation and passion into a language learning class. I believe in Inductive teaching methodology, and I am a fan of Bruner’s discovery learning, where students construct their own knowledge by identifying the patterns or relationships from the information provided by the facilitator. When students learn from examples and construct their own learning, they enjoy, feel empowered and they retain the concepts learnt for a long period of time.

Learning a foreign language gives an opportunity to the students to experience a new culture and in turn helps them to develop international mindedness. I enjoy the critical thinking skills the students demonstrate, and it helps me grow as a person listening to their interesting perspectives.

I learnt the language as an adult, and I feel that I am able to comprehend the specific challenges of this language and address those aspects with the students which makes my classes successful most of the time.

I also believe that Empathy is one of the key factors in the teaching and learning process and it acts as a tool to understand students’ behaviour and address the same. When we empathise, we are able to make a connect which in turn enables the student to open-up thereby help us create a safe learning environment for the students, an environment where there is no fear to make mistakes, providing opportunities to learn.