Personal Statement
Program: TESOL
At this very moment, the reason why I can write this Personal Statement with considerable proficiency in English language, why I have the foundation and the confidence to apply for an advanced degree program in your greatly respected university, and why I particularly want to concentrate in teaching of English language, all those questions can be found their answers in the simple fact that I have a great mother of whom I feel proud. She is a tender-hearted yet strong-willed, common but outstanding woman, a school teacher who is well-respected by her colleagues and students alike and who has won the highest honor of a Chinese school teacher—Outstanding Teacher of the Nation in 1998. Being a teacher of English, she also has a very good command of the language. She could have used her knowledge of English for other more lucrative purposes, but she has chosen to devote her lifetime to the teaching of English and has pursued it as a worthy cause. With the meticulousness and rigorousness that must be described as rare, she has been savoring the infinite joy that her career of English teaching can bring to her.

Although my mother is always of the opinion that I have pursued the same goal of learning and teaching English the way she has done totally out of my own interest, I have firm reasons to believe that she has wrought an indelible influence on me. As a teacher of English, she taught me to speak English when I was only three years old. The love and the attention she dedicated to teaching me English paid off. I distinguished myself from the rest of my classmates early in my middle school studies in English. During my studies in the senior middle school, I won first and second prizes in all-China English Contests for High School Students and the second prize in all-China Oral English Contest for High School Students. Among a spate of scholastic accolades, the most glorious one was my being qualified as one of the twelve high school students in Hubei Province to go to Japan in 1999 to exchange experiences of English learning with Japanese high school students. Under the unmistakable influence of my mother, I became immensely interested in English. I not only chose to enter a normal university whose professional trainings prepare me for a career in teaching, the most sacred profession under the sun, but also chose a career in English teaching.

It is beyond doubt that my mother has served as my role model and it seems that I have exactly been following her footsteps. However, I have been following closely her style of English teaching and doing serious reflections on it with the sensitivity of a student of English language. My observations and reflections have made it clear to me that I can draw important lesions from the limitations of her teaching style, or indeed the teaching style of her generation as a whole. Admittedly, as a senior teacher with more than 20 years’ experience of English teaching and as the Outstanding Teacher of the Nation, my mother has made noteworthy achievements in her teaching career. However, with the progress of the age and the broadening of my perspectives, I can now see the inherent flaws of my mother’s teaching in a clearer light. While problems abound in the present condition of English teaching in China, the most serious problem is the lack of scientific principles. English teaching has rarely been treated as a scientific discipline, hence even in colleges and universities, English teaching practices have seldom been backed up by deep-going linguistic or educational theories. The ensuing consequence is that we not only lack effective English teaching methodologies but also lack sound models and paradigms, as well as a set of feasible mechanisms including feedback mechanism, testing mechanism and evaluation mechanism. To make matters worse, the conventional ideology of English language teaching, which relies heavily on highly variable and unquantifiable individual experiences and impressions, still runs rampant. Such an highly empirical and impressionistic mode of English teaching has seriously undermined the efficacy of English teaching and has resulted in the serious waste of educational resources. For instance, the English teaching in elementary school, middle school through high school to college is largely disconnected, without form an organic process. For another instance, students are not given comprehensive and simultaneous trainings in oral English, reading and listening comprehension, and writing. As a result, under the existing education system, Chinese students suffer from serious imbalance in their development of English language skills.

On the other hand, language teaching and learning is not solely confined to language. Behind each given language is the culture that it represents. Effective language teaching and learning can happen only within a cultural framework. However, Chinese teachers of English tend to treat English teaching solely as a phenomenon within the language domain without much in-depth understanding of the typical Western culture and modes of thinking. In the rapid process of China’s integrating into the international community, the enterprise of English teaching will be seriously undermined by a refusal to treat English teaching as a cultural activity.

All those factors have contributed to the objective of my proposed degree program—Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Your esteemed university enjoys an undisputable reputation in this field, not only with a strong faculty and impressive research achievements but also with rich educational resources and a uniquely heuristic method of teaching. Your TESOL program is characterized by extensive studies in English teaching methodology. It will allow me to directly experience the native culture as represented by English language. I can also experience the convergence of diverse cultures by meeting with students from different cultural backgrounds. My serious deliberations show me that your university is my best choice.

To be a worthy candidate for your reputed program requires strong qualifications. I believe I have them all, having received a systematic education at the English Department of Central China Normal University, one of the most important normal universities in China. My performance in this university is not only distinguished in terms of coursework but also in extracurricular activities, demonstrating talents and potentials in a great many aspects as a student of all-round development. Throughout my undergraduate program I have maintained a top ranking in my department. Apart from winning first- and second-class scholarships, I have received honors and awards including the second prize in all-university English Speech Contest and the first prize in “Jingdi Cup” Campus Anchorperson Contest. Being a leader of Student Union with strong organizational abilities, I was given the honor of Outstanding Student Leader of Hubei Province in 1999 (only a total of 10 students in the entire province received the honor that year).

The sound curriculum and a strong faculty of my department have made my fast academic progress possible. Basic English Training, English Teaching Methodology, Introduction to Linguistics, American/British Literature and Literary History, English Vocabulary and many similar courses have laid a firm foundation for me to pursue TESOL. As a student of normal university, I have been subjected to rigorous trainings in English teaching. I did an extensive internship at Fujing Foreign Language School in Shenzhen City, GuangDong Province, where I consciously applied teaching psychology and some original strategies in teaching English to high school students. Based on this internship, I am currently preparing my B.A. thesis in which I focus on how to implement special English teaching methodologies to high school students to make them become self-motivated learners capable of advancing to higher education.

My TESOL program will be three-staged. First, I will learn the systematic theories of TESOL by taking a variety of foundational courses and I will focus on a comparative study of different schools of thought in English teaching, always bearing in my mind the characteristics of Chinese learners in their language acquisition process. Next, I will do summer internships of English teaching during which I will apply my knowledge of English teaching. I will consciously test the efficacy of TESOL theories and examine how they can be modified by practical circumstances. I will also examine how psychological and cultural factors contribute to students’ motivation. Finally I will concentrate on cross-cultural barriers in English teaching as my research interest in preparing my dissertation, since Chinese and English represent two diametrically different linguistic and cultural systems. By combining my uniquely Chinese perspectives and the TESOL principles, I expect to submit an innovative dissertation.

The establishment of TESOL as a scientific discipline implies that teachers of English can resort to a set of objective, demonstrable, verifiable and rigorous steps in their teaching practice. Such an awareness is precisely what is most needed in the English language teaching context in China. I believe that by the time I complete my TESOL program, I will have a lot to share with my mother. I will endeavor to popularize the notion that only a person with a good command of English and with systematic knowledge and training of English teaching as a science can become an effective teacher of English. I believe this is all that TESOL is about.