Aftab Akram

I am Dr.Aftab Akrm from Pakistan. I am an extrovert, optimistic and adventurous person. I like exploring cultures, accepting challenges, dealing with pressures and utilizing minimum resources to get maximum benefits. Teaching has always been my passion and in order to turn my dream of becoming teacher into reality, I formally decided to do Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) and Master of Education (M.Ed) after my graduation. These are two years teacher training research oriented degrees; therefore, during these degrees, I did research on the modern educational philosophy, thoughts and practices. My research work familiarized me with the great ideas of the prominent educationists which ultimately provided me with a plenty of opportunity of reflection. Consequently, I tried to compare the stereotypical and modern teaching and learning philosophies and practices in order to find out their impacts on learners’ learning in letter and spirit. 

Afterwards during my M.Phil English Linguistics, I also explored the graduate level students’ learning styles and their impacts on their grades. The research included the teaching styles as well in order to point out the significant relationship between teaching/learning styles and their impacts on students’ learning. Subsequently, the passion of improving my teaching style inspired me to do Cambridge CELTA from any English speaking country in order to get maximum benefits out of this course. Because of the remarkable performance of the institutions, I selected the USA to do CELTA. During the intensive CELTA course in New York, I literally put my theoretical knowledge of teaching into practice. 

Moreover, I learnt that there are various teaching methods and all of them represent the specific time, age, need and philosophy of their origin. Some of them are traditional and some of them are modern but all of them have their own benefits and drawbacks. The selection of a teaching method depends on the nature of the topic at hand, students’ individual differences, class strength and, of course, the available resources. To me, the eclectic approach is the suitable approach because it provides a great deal of flexibility in the decision making of combining different methods, techniques and maxims according to the need of practical circumstances. If a specific method is not working then we should switch to another one because ensuring students’ learning is the main target. So, to achieve our main target, we should combine different methods according to the situation. 

Therefore, I prefer activity based, interactive teaching/learning environment in the classroom. In order to foster learners’ learning, talent, to improve their cognition and ensure learning, it is essential to present the content in an innovative way by relating the concept with students’ real life experiences. I really work on creating awareness of visual learning style and encourage the students to adopt this game changing learning style. I believe that keeping the students busy with target oriented activities can solve many administrative and classroom management related problems. If a teacher knows how to do formative assessment effectively, he or she is in a better position to intrinsically motivate the students to learn in a better way.

I believe that without research there is no progress because it improves our level of understanding of the different phenomena in a significant way. The recent advancements in knowledge and practice are due to it. It enables us to explore the situation from an innovative and objective way to understand the world. A good research work fills the gap and solves the problem by significantly contributing to the existing body of knowledge. There are two main research designs, i.e., qualitative and quantitative. These designs have their own research methods to investigate the research problem. We select them based upon the nature of topic, research objectives and questions. Whereas, I personally like quantitative research design as it provides the reliability and validity of the research work statistically. It seems more scientific and objective to me than the qualitative research design. 

I have 15 years teaching experience; therefore, I have taught English to the learners of all ages ranging from primary to M.Phil level students. In this way, I have worked at School, college and university. Apart from teaching experience, I have also performed the duty of Vice Principal (at School level) for three years and English program coordinator (at university level) for two years. Therefore, being an extrovert person, I have a better understanding of how a teacher should perform his or her duty by promoting teamwork. We should welcome the changes and celebrate the differences at institution. We should also be flexible enough to adapt ourselves to the environment in order to achieve the aims set by the institution. 

I have 15 years teaching experience; therefore, I have taught English to the learners of all ages ranging from primary to M.Phil level students. In this way, I have worked at School, college and university. Apart from teaching experience, I have also performed the duty of Vice Principal (at School level) for three years and English program coordinator (at university level) for two years. Therefore, being an extrovert person, I have a better understanding of how a teacher should perform his or her duty by promoting teamwork. We should welcome the changes and celebrate the differences at institution. We should also be flexible enough to adapt ourselves to the environment in order to achieve the aims set by the institution. 

After my graduation, I selected teaching as my profession; therefore, I did Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) and Master of Education (M.Ed). These are teacher training professional degrees and are required to adopt the profession of teaching. Then I selected English as my major; therefore, I did M.A English (TEFL and Linguistics), M.Phil (English Linguistics) and Ph.D (English Linguistics) as well. I have also done MS Office Certificate from University of the Punjab Lahore, Pakistan. Apart from these, I have also done Cambridge CELTA from Teaching House New York, USA. During my M.Phil and Ph.D degrees, I secured two international graduate research scholarships at University of North Texas (USA) and University of California (USA) respectively.