Second Majors and Minors: A Complement for Teacher Development

Lai Rachel, Year 4 Student from Bachelor of Education (Honours) (English Language) – Secondary in 2021/22

Free electives help us develop interests outside our major. While students may take courses that interest them in general, they can also choose to narrow their focus by electing to study a second major or a minor. With prudent planning, the arrangement can complement our development as competent teachers.

I am completing a second major in Educational Psychology and a minor in Teaching and Learning in International Schools. The professional knowledge from the second major and minor have given me a head start on my English major courses.

Discussions in second major and minor courses have given me an advantage when connecting the dots between theory and practice. In the minor programme, we discussed how students’ socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds would affect their view on learning a new language, as well as the unique challenges of bilingual speakers when trying to be fluent in both languages. We also examined the factors that affect how much learners are willing to devote to learning a language. With this knowledge, I was able to create a reflection in the form of a six-minute video for a major elective course with ease. My explanation of how my journey supports different sociological theories about English learning motivation became more convincing.

In the classroom, it is equally important to have a solid grasp of both subject knowledge and skills to cater to individual students’ needs. In the second major programme, the courses explained how the brain receives and understands information and how it instructs the body to react to it from different angles. We also investigated how these processes may be affected by different factors and how these factors are manifested in the classroom. All this knowledge has helped me plan lessons that accommodate students’ special educational needs. For example, in one of my major elective courses, I constructed a dialogue on an interaction between a drama teacher and a group of students in which one of them was autistic. My professor was impressed with how I could demonstrate effective teaching by employing psychological knowledge using very simple words!

Taking a second major or a minor may not immediately come to people’s minds with a wide range of courses at EdUHK. But in my case, at least, I can see the art of language teaching more holistically and systematically with the training from these second major and minor courses.

In one of my projects in the major elective courses, I produced a video to demonstrate concepts on learning languages that can explain how I learned English

Using knowledge from the second major to demonstrate second language teaching