Simulated Teaching and Real Life Teaching - Same or Different?

After performing simulated teaching, I find that it is a good experience to future teachers. Why would I say so? Undeniably, simulated teaching creates a training ground to future teachers to practice whatever they had learnt (especially teaching methodologies), before they are sent to teach in real life situation. However, is simulated teaching similar to real life teaching?

To begin with, let us look at the similarities between simulated teaching and real life teaching. The first similarity will be the emphasis on dress code as a teacher. The next similarity is teacher always ask questions, such as “Do you understand?” or “Any questions?” to check on students’ understanding. Moreover, in set induction, teachers will relate students’ experience to the story. The purpose of doing this is to initiate students’ interest in the lesson, to give a better understanding to the students, and to activate the appropriate network of schemata in reading the story. As for post-reading or closure, teachers will sum up the lesson and also discuss about the message or moral value that can be found in the story.

Next, we shall look at the differences between simulated teaching and real life teaching. First of all, simulated teaching is more complicated than teaching in real life, especially in preparation stage. In simulated teaching, teachers have to create their own worksheets and decide what to teach. On the contrary, in real life teaching, teachers do not have much time to do all this, for they have many paper works to do in the school. Moreover, there are many workbooks that provide good worksheets to their students. They also do not need to crack their heads thinking what to teach, for their teachings are bounded by the syllabus and modules, which are created by the Ministry of Education.

Nonetheless, teachers in simulated teaching can have a better class control as compared to teachers in real life teaching. This is because the students of simulated teaching are their course mates, who are usually more cooperative. In other words, teacher in simulated teaching face students that have no discipline problems.

Moreover, both teachers and students in the school are spoon-fed in their teaching and learning. Just as I had pointed out earlier, school teachers do less work in preparation because teaching materials are mostly provided by the Ministry of Education, or they can also find good workbooks in the book stores. As for students, there are more rote-learning or passive learning in their teaching process, but less self-discovery involves. The main reason is our education system, which is academic-based. Teachers have to rush the lesson to complete the syllabus that is given to them. Consequently, students are not given enough time to analyse and understand the text thoroughly. More often than not, drill-and-practice method is much favoured. In other words, teachers focus on how to make students answer questions accurately, instead of teaching them how to derive the answer. The result (how many A’s) is emphasis, not the process (development of thinking skills). Thus, activities such as analysing the linguistic feature or literary elements in the text are rarely found in schools.

Although both simulated teaching and real life teaching have similarities and differences between them, simulated teaching is undeniably a good initiative for future teachers to practice their teaching.