Academics Ayman Yacoub - Fulbright Arabic Fellow

Ayman has practical training in schools in Egypt and two years of experience as a teaching assistant there, along with individual language tutoring.  He has also studied educational translation.  Ayman has a black belt in karate, and is intersted in reading and delivering poetry.

Teaching Philosophy

Ayman knows that there are many methods for teaching language, and believes that "none is perfect."  There are complex circumstances of teaching and learning language - with different kinds of learners, teachers, aims and objectives, approaches, methods and materials, and classroom techniques and standards of achievement.  As a teacher he makes use of any or all of them according to the needs.  He states that "much will depend on the number of students in class, their background, and the level to which I am teaching."  He especially likes to divide a class into small groups and ask them to work as a group, gradually moving into a more communicative practice involving dialogue creation and role plays.  He sees practice as essential so that "learners will start to become independent users of the language rather than students of the language."  His role is to facilitate a realistic situation or activity where the students instinctively feel the need to actively apply the language they have been practicing.

B.A., Al-Azhar University, 2008; Marlboro College 2010 -