ashbasilio

[ashbasilio]

What it’s like being an English major?

When people are asking what program I am taking in college as of the moment and when I answered them I am currently an Education student, they be like “oh okay” but when they ask others and their program is related to medical field—suddenly they are amazed. Being an Education student is hard starting from the expectations of the people around you to be a role model because you are a future educator and act as a model to the students what more when you are officially working as a teacher. An educator talks a lot because that is their work which is to talk in a class discussion.

As an Education student we are practiced to talk a lot in front of the class using the English language. We have started studying about the five domains of the language and the first one is about the sounds of the letters in the alphabet which is called phonology, the rules of word structure which is called morphology, the rules of sentence structure which is called syntax, the actual meaning behind each word within a sentence within a message which is called semantics, and lastly the functional use of language in social contexts which is called pragmatics.

We were able to conduct a reading program at a public elementary school in our city. It was very fulfilling moment for us to have one wherein we helped those students who are still struggling in reading English words so we have prepared vocabulary words for them to read. We have started from asking them what are the sound of a specific alphabet to reading pictures with names on it and lastly, having a one-on-one reading session to really see who struggles with reading. I was so happy to be able to experience having a program like that and see the children’s smiles on their faces as they received the token we have prepared for them because they have participated. When we conducted that program we were able to apply what we have learned in our subject called Structures of English and with that we are not the only one who learnt something but we also had the chance to do it in actual.

We also talked about the tree diagram wherein it shows the structure of a sentence and how are they organized which helped us to use our analogy to identify which part of speech is that word is affiliated with.

An English major student are obviously expected to speak in English when we are tasked to do a reporting for us to practice though our grammar and fluency may not be perfect at first since it’s not our native language but as the years passed I can see some improvements not only to our speaking skills but also our confidence to speak the language. We also do a lot of essays, reflection papers, and even writing letters, emails, résumé.

This program is not only about talking and writing but we also studied about material development wherein we need to produce a digital teaching material and we are free to choose whatever topic we want to discuss as long as it is in the K-12 Basic Education Curriculum but it still depends to our instructor if it is about vocabulary, listening, speaking etc. and all of the digital teaching materials we made has a assessment at the end of the presentation. For our final task, our instructor required us to make a physical teaching material and it should be indigenized, localized, and contextualized that why my group mates and I decided to build a mini Kubo house(nipa hut) for it to be called indigenized and localized for it is widely known in the Philippines and it is contextualized because we used it to teach about the signage’s that we encounter in our daily lives may it be in our house or any public places.

ADVANTAGES OF BEING AN ENGLISH MAJOR:

It improves our vocabulary

It improves our writing skills

It improves our speaking skills

It boosts our confidence to speak the language

It enhances our critical thinking skills when we study about a literature

It opens a lot of opportunities

Tutor a student who struggles about the English subject