Eng 345: pedagogy of the oppressed

When reading these chapters, Freire triggered a lot of memories of discussions on power relations throughout our TESOL classes.  Knowing that students need to feel that their home languages are not only valid, but appreciated helps the students connect with learning their L2.  Because we've studied this for so long, Freire's work helped solidify what we already know.

I can remember language teachers throughout high school that simply used the banking method of teaching.  We read units out of the textbook, worked on activities provided by that textbook, memorized idiomatic expressions and took a quiz or test.  After years of being taught like that, I learned very little.  Being in France is when my French language skills skyrocketed.  This type of situation shows what Freire was explaining; teachers need to establish an environment that encourages students to inquire and share opinions and ideas about topics.  Teachers, in this case, will learn just as much as the students do.  This learning community will serve everyone as well as decontextualize knowledge in terms of sitting in a desk in a classroom and transform the classroom into a place to inquire about the world.

ENG 345: ch 33, 34, 35

In our TESOL testing and assessment classes, we are learning about how important it is to have a mix of assessments for our students.  We decided it is best to include regular testing as well as alternative assessment to see where our students are at in terms of their language learning.  These articles helped me to see different ways of assessing writing and other means of language.

The two most important things I found in these articles was that (1) Students need to have practice and skills in self-editing and peer editing and (2) Students need to receive constructive and personal feedback to improve their writing.

Self-editing and peer editing needs to be taught.  This can happen with teacher modeling as well as worksheets that show students what they need to look for.  Even if the students do not pursue academic English, it is a survival skill to be able to proofread, and edit writing for grammatical errors, as well as content  errors.  However, students aren't born with this skill. By explicitly showing them what to look for, they will be able to make these connections and use this knowledge in the future.

Personal and constructive feedback is important for students to improve their writing.  Simple words such as, "elaborate" or "vague" may help an L1 student who is a more advanced writer, but typically ELLs and students that aren't as advanced in writing need more personal feedback from teachers.  Having the students double space their typed papers will allow teachers more room for examples and more personal corrections and feedback.

I thought that dialogue journals was an excellent idea to get the students writing without value judgments from teachers.  It allows the teachers and students to make personal connections with one another while the student practices writing in English.  Practice, as we all know, is a huge part of language learning.  These dialogue journals will help the teacher and student be on equal levels, allow the student to practice and the teacher to make a connection with them in a non-stressful environment.

Eng 345: Critical Culture Awareness

I completely agreed with Kuma when he argued that people have a cultural lens and becoming aware of others' cultural lenses will help us eradicate stereotyping.  I liked that he said it would enhance cultural awareness and not necessarily change the way you view the world.  No matter how culturally aware you are, you will most likely still see through your own cultures lenses, simply because that is what you were raised to see.

Kuma, in his article, portrays stereotyping as an easy way to blame someone's culture for expectations and failures.  This seems to be an almost ridiculous excuse from a teacher's point of view.  I'm sure we all read this thinking well I'm never going to blame someone's culture for their behavior.  But part of me thinks it's slightly unavoidable at certain points.  Think about it.  If we, as TESOL professionals are enhancing our knowledge on not only English pedagogies for ELLs, but also on incorporating and learning as much as possible about our students' backgrounds, it would be easy to mistake being culturally aware with being slightly stereotypical.  For example, past articles we've read in this class have talked about Confucius and the learning and teaching expectations coinciding with his work.  Say a student in your class is Asian (I now know all of the issues that are homogenized into this term...) and is less interactive than other non-Asian students.  Yes, we as TESOLers would be able to point out several other factors that might attribute to this.  But maybe the school (s)he came from was oriented around Confucius's methodology.  Knowing that we would never think "oh, well (s)he's just Asian, that's how they are," it is hard to determine where the line between being culturally-sensitive and respectful and being stereotypical and negative.  Sometimes the dichotomies here are much smaller and more subtle than we think.

ENG 345: Kuma 9 and 10

The Kuma chapters helped remind me about the difficult of language learning and teaching.  I really liked how he illustrated that language is somewhat dependent on the context, resulting in coherent sentences from seemingly incoherent ideas and vice versa (especially in the telephone ringing, bath taking example on page 211).  However, being reminded of these areas of language make the native speaker in me think ahhh yes, that makes sense! I can think of one hundred instances where this happens every day! But the teacher in me is a little more skeptical.  How will I teach my students about intonation? Does this need explicit instruction or will exposure to natural language be enough? 

I don't want to leave my classroom hoping students understand.  I want to practice and come up with tasks that will ensure understanding (or at least awareness) of all types of contexts including situational, intonation (and other extralinguistic contexts), extrasituational, etc.  This all seems very heavy.  I'm wondering if context is something to dissect with medium to higher proficiencies.  Or do we just jump in with the beginners and teach them about 'natural' English language use and hope they aren't overwhelmed.  As a language learner, I felt that listening to natural language definitely helped, but that it wasn't enough for me to fully grasp these issues in France.  How do we teach this then? When do we start teaching it?  Who benefits the most from it?  How can we make it seem less overwhelming?  What tasks can be involved?  These chapters left me with more questions than answers.

Eng 345: ch 24, 25, myth #1

When doing these readings, I found that the article summed up the text of the two chapters in a very coherent and understandable way.  It was interesting to read that paraphrasing takes such a large vocabulary.  I was surprised when I saw that there are resources online to teach students academic vocabulary that they will need if they are going to be in an academic setting in English.

Most of the vocabulary teaching, however does not depend on teachers alone.  When I studied French in school, we had vocabulary lessons every week.  Each week, I would learn the material, understand it, and do well on the quizzes.  However, if I didn't regularly use it, it was gone.  Sometimes I still can't remember words that I need to say, and my language capabilities are much higher than they were in high school.  Half of learning vocabulary is dependent on the autonomy of the learner.  If the learner does not consistently work at learning and memorizing the vocabulary, they will lose it quickly as well as their ability to paraphrase, summarize and synthesize the information.  Students aren't able to use the material to learn if they are constantly misunderstanding the language used in it.  Learning English, and more specifically vocabulary, is very much dependent on the learner's autonomy.

The article also mentioned the importance of explicit teaching of vocabulary.  However, I want the students to be engaged in their lessons and it is difficult for me to think of a way to teach vocabulary without it seeming to be out of a textbook.  Any ideas on task-based lessons for vocabulary?  I was thinking something along the lines of charades, or writing stories that include words from a list, or learning songs that include new vocabulary.  Besides this though, I want my students to gain autonomy by feeling engaged when learning new material.

ENG 345: ch 11 and 12, Cary article

These articles taught me a lot about self-reflection.  I felt that the most important thing to take away was that learning strategies explicitly will help the students become better learners, which is ultimately our goal as teachers.  Not only this, but if the students are given a chance to think about their strategies, errors, and goals, they are better able to articulate how they plan on improving.

However, it is important to remember that there is a such thing as inundating the students with too much information.  The explicit strategy teaching should be built seamlessly into the lesson, which is possible but difficult.  We will have to build those into our lesson plans, knowing exactly what strategies would work best with which exercises.

I was trying to figure out how to have the students reflect without forcing a study on them, or several surveys.  I know that journaling is often done, however, there are many more options.  Exit-slips, or asking the students to recall what they've learned that day, would help solidify this explicit instruction.  In these exit-slips, I could ask the students to set a few goals for their language learning and how they think that strategy will or will not help them achieve that goal.  By providing the students with many strategies, my classroom would be sensitive to all students needs, abilities, and learning styles.  The hardest part, I think, will be fitting them into the lesson without interrupting the flow of what I'm teaching.

Eng 345: ch 21, 22, 23

I found these chapters to be extremely helpful.  As an pre-service TESOL educator in my last classes before practicum, I feel that I haven't learned much about the skills required for listening until I read these chapters.  (Nor had I realized how important it is to incorporate into the classroom...)

One of the most important points I read was about nonreciprocal listening.  So much of listening in today's world doesn't allow the listener to ask clarification questions or comprehension checks.  Just thinking of media in general, the listener does not get to ask questions when listening to radio broadcasts, anything on television, answering machines and voicemails, even most religious ceremonies and meetings, as well as the majority of speech presentations, whether formal or informal.  This is a skill.  Students can't expect to know the skills they can use to comprehend what they are hearing unless we give them ample practice with real language.  As the chapters pointed out, the listening portions of many textbooks, as well as other sources of listening practice in the teaching world do not give any example of real language.  Authentic language has uses of pauses, ungrammatical fragmented language, as well as facilitation devices that students need to be exposed to and aware of.  Therefore, using authentic language as much as possible in the classroom will benefit the students and allow practice in developing this skill.

Part of chapter 22 reminded me of living in France.  "It is vital that students of a language be given practice in dealing with texts where they understand only part of what is said" (244).  When I first went to France, I was extremely discouraged when I couldn't understand everything.  They spoke quickly and the slang was over my head.  No one told me that I wouldn't understand every word that was said, probably because it never occurred to my teachers or family to tell me.  However, this feeling passed and I became better and better at using context clues.  Because of this, I found that this part of the text was extremely important to include in the classroom.  Students need to be reassured that not knowing every word isn't failure; instead, it provides an excellent opportunity for students to practice finding context clues and manipulating the language to fit their needs.

Eng 345: chapter 26-28, kuma ch 8

Before reading these chapters, I didn't know the importance of reading in a second language.  It was explained in all of the chapters that reading definitely makes a huge difference in the comprehension aspect of learning another language.

Grabe in chapter 26 states that, "a large vocabulary is critical, not only for reading, but for all L2 language skills, for academic abilities, and for background knowledge" (279).  Building a large vocabulary is a hard feat for students as well as a challenge to incorporate it into the classroom.  When reading through the dilemmas and the struggle to incorporate reading for fun, I couldn't help but think that I could pretty easily add 10-15 minutes of reading in class every other day or so.  Students could also have an assignment or project attached to this extra reading.  Each month, a new book could be read and the students could create their own project about it, such as performing skits, making mixed CD soundtracks, creating dioramas or posters about characters or plot, etc.  I felt that as long as I was able to have access to decent reading material for the students, whether it be my own books or a book from the school or public library, I would love to add more reading into the curriculum.

I also agreed with Jacobs and Renandya that students need to read material that is not too difficult for their abilities.  Therefore, Vygotsky's i+1 wouldn't be the best way to incorporate reading.  It is important that we foster a fondness in our students when it comes to reading, simply because it is proven that grades and study skills are directly affected by it.  i+1, or incorporating difficult text in a class with ELLs would create a lot of frustration and stress toward reading, which is exactly what shouldn't happen.  ELLs would greatly benefit from more reading, and I think it's extremely important that TESOL educators work diligently to add it into their curriculum.  

Eng 345: application project ideas

I'm really excited about this project.  Most of the TESOL classes had research papers due at the end of the semester.  It's exciting that I can finally create a teaching experience that will synthesize all of the TESOL information I have learned.  Elise and I hope to create a 3-session (one hour each) program in iHouse (international house) at ISU.  We want to create an "ISU Survival" type of workshop that could include information on academic writing, communication in class, and communication in social settings.  We are still bouncing ideas around and I just recently contacted the faculty mentor for iHouse.  I look forward to starting!

Eng 345: Ch. 3 and 7 Anthology

These chapters, on changing models and lesson planning explained the importance of having a plan and being able to be flexible enough to change it when necessary.  It also brought up many models of curriculum and methods that can be used together to help students learn the target language.

The most important issue raised, in my eyes, was asked in the beginning of chapter 7.  Finney asks, "...is it possible to teach a language within the four walls of a classroom? I think not- and so we also need to help our learners to learn how to learn and to keep on learning" (69).  I think this is important to keep in mind as we enter the field of TESOL.  With all of the methods and approaches I keep learning about, I am trying to tweak them to find what essentially could be considered a best method...even though it doesn't exist.  It is important to be humble when teaching; we cannot teach the English language in the classroom.  Instead, we need to focus on trying to teach students how to learn a language and how to become life-long learners.  Having this as a goal or objective would not only help us from running to a "best method," but also help the students understand that language learning is a journey, not something that can be marked off of a checklist.

Eng 345: SIOP

After being in the teacher education program at ISU for a few years now, I always thought that we were lacking classes and instruction in how to teach students will special needs.  I knew that in my English classrooms, I may run into many diverse situations and would need to be able to teach every student to the best of my ability.  After reading this week's articles, I was appalled that most teachers have no idea how to teach ELL students, even though they will certainly encounter many.

It would seem obvious that ELL students are in other classes besides our own, but what if they aren't able to keep up?  With many teachers being unaware and untrained, it seems that many schools are unprepared in teaching ELL students and helping them succeed in their academic lives.  One of the most important points of the article, in my opinion, was that "...content-based ESL teachers seek to develop the students' English language proficiency by incorporating information from the subject areas that students are likely to study of from courses they may have missed if they are fairly new to the school system" (Echevarria et al., 6). In other words we, as pre-service TESOLers, are the link that ELL students can depend on.  We can seriously help them succeed in their other classes by including vocabulary, discourse, and rhetoric that pertains to the academia they will learn in science, math, history, etc.  This is important to remember.  Providing this link will not only strengthen their English proficiency, but will also help them succeed in their future academic endeavors.

Eng 345: task-based instruction

The article and chapter really helped clarify what I've been wondering for weeks.  Using the language and teaching through meaningful tasks and language, sure, but how?  However, I was surprised to read in chapter 5 that "...no task-based program has been implemented and subjected to rigorous evaluation.  Until this has been accomplished and any positive results replicated, the use of task-based courses will be open to doubts and criticisms" (Beglar & Hunt, 102).  I was really surprised to read that even though many authors argue what works "the best" in classrooms (whatever that means...), that no one has really critically looked at task-based instruction in a classroom setting.  It seems to me that these methods would be evaluated almost instantly unless they were either too difficult to evaluate or they weren't used as the only model in the classroom.  This brings us back to giving credit to an eclectic approach, or what I think of as using the best approaches for the context of the lesson and of course, the context of the students and the classroom I will be teaching in.

Though task-based learning makes sense to me, it still seems a bit idealistic.  Simulating meaningful language usage in an activity may or may not be meaningful for all of the students.  And let's not even bring up the stress and pressure of passing language testing.  Though I have learned a lot of activities and strategies from task-based learning that I will definitely be able to use in my classroom to promote language learning.

Eng 345: Kuma ch 3 and Communicative Lgg Teaching

The readings for this week really opened my eyes to the possibilities I can include in my classroom.  Specifically, the article taught me a lot about the importance of using the language in many different forms to teach the same function.  Not only did it explicitly say that we should teach many different forms, but it gave the concrete examples that I need to truly understand the theory.  I felt that the role-playing and real-life activities done here truly sparked my creativity.  Sometimes it's easy to get stuck in the powerpoint lecture rut.  One of the points that really spoke to me was the idea that all language should serve some sort of purpose, and not only that, but it should give the students space to include their opinions, thoughts, and many different options of possible outcomes and answers.

Kuma's chapter 3 expanded on the necessity of creating learning environments that fosters many students participating and bouncing ideas off of one another.  This truly creates a classroom community in which the students are able to negotiate meaning.  Plenty of strategies and concrete examples were given in order to show the community of the classroom and how they fit into the context of the L2 environments inside and outside of the classroom.  This chapter really opened my eyes to the possibilities and encouraged me to be creative and up to change when it comes to lesson planning.

Eng 345: Brazilian article response

Before reading "Critical Pedagogy in ELT: images of Brazilian Teachers of English," I thought that the teachers of Brazil, especially in the bigger city contexts, would really embrace critical pedagogy.  This is because the proposing theorist of this theory, Paulo Freire, is a Brazilian educator.  Having his roots in the Brazilian education system made me think that Brazil would be large supporters of utilizing his theory.

However, the researchers discovered that even though critical pedagogy is supposed to be the basis of Brazil's new National Curriculum Parameter, most teachers had never even heard of it.  This made me wonder about the spread of the education reform.  The reform happened in 1997 and the study took place in 1999.  I then wondered if the spread of information was slower, and maybe the results would be completely different if the study was redone today.  So I took this information with a grain of salt.

The results of the 1999 study were as follows: 35 out of 40 teachers had never heard of it.  Of the 5 who had heard of it, "...only two seemed to interpret it..." (441).  Some teachers thought that critical pedagogy is only a reflective process of the teacher reflecting on the past lessons.  Several teachers missed so much!

I was most surprised with one of the teacher's responses.  One student asked why they had to learn English when they didn't plan on visiting the United States.  The teacher's response was, "look, you do not need to learn English only to travel to the United States. Don't you play video games? The manuals are all in English, don't you need to read to find out how to play" (445).  I was honestly pretty offended by this answer.  I felt that as an English teacher, regardless of the theories and pedagogies you implement in the classroom, teachers should be supportive and encouraging.  This teacher could have given 100 different reasons spanning from future travel to job opportunities to how learning a language can be enriching.  I just could not believe it.

Hopefully today, the teachers in Brazil know a little more about critical pedagogy and are able to implement it a little more in their classrooms.

Eng 345: Pennycook article

"...awareness is an initial step in the process of change" (Pennycook, 336).  When reading this, I couldn't agree more.  By reading all of the past theories and methods, I was able to notice that the more TESOL theorists and teachers learn about theory, the more developed the theories become.  We continually learn about the many theories we are able to put into our practices and each little bit makes every teacher more and more aware about the implications in both TESOL as a whole and the classroom in which we'll teach.  Reading this article gave me a solid foundation about Critical Theory, which is a huge step forward from when we started with audiolingualism.

When learning more and more about the Critical Theory, I had to stop and think.  How am I, as a teacher of ELLs, going to be able to fit everything into my classroom?  As much as I wish it were different, our education system relies heavily on test scores.  However, I don't want to teach simply to a test.  We all know that teaching that way probably won't lead to the fluency of a new language, nor will the students like learning it.  As a new teacher, I want to keep everyone happy.  I want to keep the school board happy, the parents happy, the students happy, as well as the community.  Trying to cater to everyone, I think, would make teaching with a critical approach very difficult.  I do think, however, that it IS very important to educate the students about sexual and cultural identities, about the possible effects of our pedagogies, about the topic of classroom discourse, about the implications of being a native or nonnative speaker.  I guess my main question is: how do I fit these into my classroom without looking like I am pushing my beliefs on my students? In an ideal world, this ideal way of teaching would really reach out to students.  But in reality, what part of this theory can I partially implement into my classroom?

Eng 345: Ch. 1 and 2-Kuma

I felt that Kuma did an excellent job explaining methods and giving us a foundation on which he plans on expanding the importance of the awakening of TESOL postmethod.

Only once did I shake my head in complete disagreement.

When regarding the eclectic approach, Kuma is quite harsh.  On page 31, he explains that "The weakness of the eclectic position is that it offers no criteria according to which we can determine which is the best theory, nor does it provide any principles by which to include or exclude features which form part of existing theories or practices."  When reading this, I felt that Kuma did not give adequate credit to teachers that use this approach. (Part of me believes ALL teachers do, to some extent.)  Being an eclectic teacher is using different approaches depending on your students and the context you teach in.  But wait...isn't that what we're being taught to do?  Being in 345 for me means acquiring a sort of toolbelt.  The methods, theories and approaches (tools) I will acquire will be understood and brought out when I believe it will benefit the students in my classroom, as all teachers know that one size fits all doesn't exist.  To me, I felt that Kuma was not only dismissing an eclectic approach, but criticizing it for its lack of rules.  So isn't he, one of the founders of postmethod and rejection of method, criticizing eclecticism for its lack of being a method?

Eng 345: week 3

Celce-Murcia's article, I found, was the very user-friendly.  It was easy to read and understand the brief history of language teaching, and I found the bullet point chart quite useful to organize so many methods.  I was able to recognize many bullet points of the later methods from my own high school language learning.  Some of the more recent theories can still be partially found in classrooms!

After reading both of the articles, I couldn't get one image out of my head.  Reading about how each method replaced another reminded me of fad diets.  Researchers find one method and see that it works.  Then they find out that certain aspects aren't being adequately tended to, and they find another one to replace it.  It seems like a money-making market to the researchers and the theorists to me.  And all this time I'm wanted to yell, "What about what's best for the students!"  I feel that now the theorists are still leaning towards a best method (whatever that is...) to teach students quickly and efficiently, even though many authors of the articles we've been reading swear against it.  Which is why, at the end of the Kumaravadivelu article, when he stated that task-based learning is the newest non-method approach to teaching and a sort of awakening toward language teaching, I wondered what is coming next?  Surely this is another fad, as it follows the same pattern as the previous ones, replacing the seemingly outdated methods of teaching.  The author made it seem as if this approach is the end-all.  But I took a different view: Is task-based teaching really the total potential of language teaching and learning?  TESOL seems too new to have already figured everything out.  Or is this a new method hiding under the fact that it claims NOT to be a method, and just part of the research (or fad) stage?  If that is true, then what will come next?

Eng 345: week 2

The first two chapters of the Anthology were helpful in an introduction to this course.  It was informative and helpful to read that methods of teaching are somewhat outdated and seem to rigid, so the term approach has become more popular.  It was encouraging to read that approaches are typically less prescriptive and not as static as a method of teaching.  Sometimes, as a pre-service teacher, it can be intimidating and daunting to be furthering a group of students' education in terms of speaking English.  It seems as if a lot more responsibility is placed on us than on other teachers, especially in terms of high stakes testing and other forms of standardized tests.  To read that the best teachers assess students frequently and change what isn't working makes it sound less intimidating.  It's always helpful to hear that even the best teachers have to change their curriculum, sometimes even in the middle of it, to meet the needs of the students.

Reading about the theories of teaching a language was also helpful.  It was informative to read about the different types of theories and that mixing and matching them will create the best learning environment for students.  The bullet points at the end of the chapter really summed up the theories and allowed me as a pre-service teacher to think about what I'll try to implement into my own classroom.

eng 345: week 1

The readings this week, though seemingly disconnected at first glance, really set the pace for this class.  Having already completed a research project on intelligibility and Jennifer Jenkins's work, I really felt the importance of one central question: What is considered standard, correct, English?  Having so many different students will allow us to truly see the diverse Englishes we need to embrace.  As teachers, we must strive to teach intelligibility, because being understood and being able to negotiate meaning is of utmost importance.  Accent reduction, then, would not only be a waste of time, but may even damage our students' identities and foster negative feelings toward learning English.  Tolerance, in these two articles, is the main theme.

Tolerance can mean many things, really.  It includes understanding of other cultures, breaking down stereotypes, raising awareness in social change, creating a safe environment for everyone, understanding the home lives of others and truly realizing that everyone you meet has their own problems, successes, thought processes and opinions.  Tall order for us teachers.  But we have to start somewhere.  By creating and encouraging many different Englishes, while encouraging home cultures, we can start to get the ball rolling towards more tolerance in the world.  TESOL educators really have an important role in the start of such a large movement, and continuing to work towards different methods of teaching and understanding one another, we can be a powerful influence in the lives of our students.

Canagarajah and ch. 7 Lightbown and Spada

The readings this week really summed up the information that we have learned throughout the weeks in Eng 344.  Lightbown and Spada went through several ideas and myths present in TESOL, and explained several different outlooks on them.  Because we've learned all of this information before, I found it extremely useful to read summaries of what we've covered and talked about in class.

I really enjoyed reading the Canagarajah article.  I found the pedagogical shifts most interesting because they still pertain to our future classrooms.  I found the argument on World Englishes to be the most interesting because I plan to write my paper on the consequences of accent reduction and the idea of intelligibility in our classrooms, which is very near to my heart.  I can't imagine telling a student that the way they pronounce something is "wrong," probably because of the information I've learned on critical period and how pronounciation will never be native-like (whatever that means now...) after adolescence. 

Another important topic that I would like to discuss in a future TESOL class was brought up in this article.  Digital technologies! I'm interested in talking about how to teach the newer and growing context of the internet.  Digital technologies have led to new genres of communication, new conventions of language use, new vocabulary and definitely new grammar rules for English.  How can I possibly teach that?  As the types of texts have changed over time, so have our practices of reading and writing them.  There are hundreds of thousands of possibilities on the internet and other digital technologies.  We simply cannot ignore them in the classroom.  I'm hoping you all can give me some of your thoughts for teaching such a prominent and growing context of language!

week 13

When reading the Lightbown and Spada chapter, I found that a few of the proposals reminded me of my learning in high school, which was not incredibly successful.  The "Get it right in the end" proposal seemed to be like the most effective way to teach, in my mind.  It's important to remember that some things are more difficult to teach than others and will just take time for the student to acquire.  This was the case for me in French when I was learning the genders of nouns.  It's memorization and practice and new because we don't have an equivalent in English.  I think when students don't have the equivalent in their own language, it takes more time for the learner to acquire it.  Interlanguage can change depending on the student's focus.  It's important to teach in a way that creates memorable experiences so that the students can alter their interlanguage and learn from errors and successes.

When I was in France, I remember that I learned that most not only when errors were pointed out, but when someone would compliment me on my accent.  Teaching in a way that encourages learning in both the students' L1 and L2 will allow them to feel a part of both cultures and languages.  This, in turn, will create an environment that fosters learning and creates memorable, meaningful exchanges that would never show up in a textbook.

week 12

These articles were somewhat confusing for me to understand.  However, I did find the article by Canadarajah, about Lingua Franca English to be extremely interesting.  The idea behind LFE is a multilingual approach, which seems to be a far reach because of its goals.  The article describes LFE as a non-geographically specific, multilingual way of life.  All users would have more than one native competencies and learners are not considered incompetent.  There are no strict rules of language and speakers monitor and shape their language choices by those around them.  Multilingual speakers do not move towards someone else's target, instead, they construct their own norms.  Meaning is produced in practice and acquisition aims for versatility in conversation and agility, not mastery and control.  However, even in an ideal world, it's hard to picture these goals ever occurring.  It would be excellent if our students would aim to reach understanding and not have to match society's view of target, but in our education system, especially with the high stakes testing, it's not feasible to teach in a way that fosters the goals and ideas presented in the article.  However, taking some of the ideas and implementing them in the classroom would be one step closer, while still preparing students for the tests at the end of the year.

week 11

Chapter 5:

The most shocking part of this reading was on page 171.  The color line that still exists today is appalling.  Wong gives the following data: "The color line also persists in U.S. public schools today: Of ever 100 White kindergartners, 88 graduate from high school.  Of every 100 African American kindergartners, 83 graduate from high school.  Of every 100 Latino kindergartners, 60 graduate from high school.  Of those same kindergartners, 25 Whites, only 12 Blacks and 10 Latinos graduate from college."  This data shows the oppression and inequality of the education system in America.  All students should have the same chances and statistics for graduation, and in an ideal world, race would not matter.  However, as stated later in the chapter, high stakes testing, a major factor in both curriculum and graduation, are biased racially and economically.  It's sad that our system has such a major flaw, especially in this day in age where we'd like to think that racism is almost nonexistent.  However, it is exciting at the same time.  Hopefully as teachers, we will be able to make a difference with our ELL classes and maybe even increase the odds of education by creating an environment of inclusion that fosters dialogue and tolerance.  These statistics give us a tough challenge that we will have to face in our futures.

week 10

I thought that this chapter brought up a lot of historical viewpoints that were interesting and useful to read about as a preservice TESOL teacher.  I agree that students, and people in general, learn best by doing.  I thought the idea of not having a "stage-approach" was interesting.  How am I supposed to teach without having an order set in which to teach it?  I know that having rigid curriculum won't work in helping students learn, but I think you need to have some sort of ordering when teaching, allowing it to stray if valuable teaching moments present themselves.  I thought that Wong was dead on when saying that learning through doing involves learning how to speak  in the language through participation in discourse communities.  I think it is important for second language learners to show initiative in learning by participating as much as possible.  However, it is on the teacher to make a diverse community that encourages all backgrounds and opinions.  As stated later, the students won't speak up for themselves if they feel that they are oppressed in any way.  As much as we can't control the environment outside of the classroom, we can surely create a space of inclusion so that students feel valuable, that both languages have significant value to them.  I liked that the chapter said that teachers of ESOL have as much to learn as they have to teach.  We will constantly be learning about other cultures and languages, as well as methods of teaching and what works best.  We will learn to reach our students in time and will learn to develop different questioning techniques, just as our students will grasp the language better in time.

alternative assignment

Article 1: The Linguistic Development of Genie

Summary: This article describes how children who have grown up under severe isolation, also known as ‘wild’ or ‘feral’ children, have the most dramatic stories about language acquisition.  Not only have these children shown signs of majorly decreased language capabilities, but also experience other sensory losses, especially those which must be acquired.  This article briefly mentions the case studies of Victor Itard as well as Caspar Hauser, but because they are dated back more than a century and a half, they lack general information that linguists would research today.  It goes into detail about Genie’s case study, which is the most recent, most conclusive case, as she was born in 1957.  She was malnourished, appeared to be seven years old when she was 13 years and 7 months old, did not speak, cry, or make any vocal sounds, and could not chew food or stand erect.  Her father had an intolerance to noise and physically punished Genie if she made any sounds whatsoever, explaining her silence.  She had extremely limited human contact and was barked at instead of spoken to.  When hospitalized, she grew rapidly, physically, mentally and emotionally.  At the hospital, Genie had poor control over her speech organs as well as the muscular control needed for eating.  Genie slowly acquired language.  Through testing, it is concluded that she had learned about negation, coordinating conjunctions, prepositional relations, pluralization of nouns, modification, possessives, superlative and comparative, and relational adjectives.  Genie learned through visual/written language (such as flashcards) as well as speech.  Genie had enormous difficulty with controlling the speech organs as well as the air flow needed to produce her voice.  Her speech is far from normal, but is much improved.  The order in which Genie learned language and functions is listed and many examples are given.  Language can be acquired after the critical age, but does not seem native-like after this age has passed.

Citation:

Susan Curtiss, Victoria Fromkin, Stephen Krashen, David Rigler and Marilyn Rigler,  (Sep.,         1974). Language. Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 528-554

Article 2: Critical Evidence: A Test of the Critical Age Hypothesis for Second-Language Acquisition

Summary: This article describes a test done on data from a 1990 census.  The census used responses from 2.3 million immigrants with Spanish or Chinese language backgrounds.  The article wanted to test the key prediction of the hypothesis, which was that the age of immigration deeply affected the second-language acquisition.  The results of the test on this was that the age did not make as much as a difference in acquisition as the authors had estimated, but there was a surprisingly linear effect for level of education before emigrating to America.  This aspect shows that a higher level of education before immigration greatly improves the ability to pick up and acquire the language.

Citation:

Ellen Bialystok, Kenji Hakuta, Edward Wiley. (January 2003). Critical Evidence: A Test of the    Critical Age Hypothesis for Second-Language Acquisition. Psychological Science,Vol.              14, No. 1

Article 3: A Test of the Critical Period Hypothesis for Language Learning

Summary: This article is about a study done that examines the relevance of the critical period for language learning.  It specifically deals with critical age hypothesis for proficiency of English-speaking among immigrants in the United States.  This study also uses census data from 2000.  Four patterns emerged from this study.  First, proficiency in English declines monotonically with age at migration for the immigrants. Second, within country of origin, the patterns are very similar for both men and women. Third, the variability in the proportion proficient in English across ages at time of immigration is greater the older the age.  This may have occurred because there are fewer immigrants after middle age.  Fourth, among non-Mexican immigrants, the decline in proficiency with age at migration is initially shallow (up to age 8), then shows a much sharper decline that gradually diminishes, until the marginal effect of age at immigration disappears after the age of 40. On the other hand, among Mexican immigrants there is a sharp decline in proficiency with age at immigration until about age 16, with little change after this. These patterns suggested important differences between immigrants from Mexico and all other countries.  This study suggests that if a ‘critical period’ for language learning is defined as an age at which there is a sharp decline in the ability of immigrants to obtain proficiency in speaking English, no such critical period exists.  Ability to become proficient in the language declines with the age of migration to America.

Citation:

Chiswick, Barry, Miller, Paul. (Feb, 2008).  A Test of the Critical Period Hypothesis for                                             Language Learning. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Vol. 29,         No. 1

Article 4: Age Effects on Second Language Acquisition: Critical Issues under Debate

Summary: This article is a synthesis of the information and studies that have been done regarding critical age hypothesis.  It includes the ideas of four books.  It states that there are five positions in the critical period hypothesis that other authors and researchers have studied.  These include the following ideas: (1) The younger a person is, the better, overall, they will acquire the language.  (2) The older the person is, the better, overall, for acquiring language.  (3) The younger a learner is, the better for some respects.  (4) The younger the learner, the better in the long run.  (5) The qualitative change position, which details that after a certain age, qualitative changes occur in the learning process.  The article then details what researchers have said and found in every idea related to the critical period.  It concludes by stating that there are several viewpoints and supporting evidence for every view. 

Citation:

Miraleix, I. (2011). Age Effects on Second Language Acquisition: Critical Issues under Debate. Language Teaching, Vol. 44, No. 1

                                                                                                    

week 9

I felt that the problem posing approach to learning is a great way for students to be able to come to their own conclusions and own the language.  The students feel is if they need to communicate and therefore they learn and enjoy learning a lot more.  They connect with the material because problem posing questions and strategies allow students time to think and time to create opinions about the material, making them learn much more in the short period of time.  I enjoyed this reading because I felt that I received a lot of insight on how to teach ELL classrooms that are tested in a high stakes testing criteria.  The chapter gave advice on how to teach students that will be tested.  It suggested being aware of what is on the test.  I think this is incredibly important because you can steer conversations to include testing materials without forcing the class to follow an unbending schedule.  Wong states in chapter 3 that these materials will spontaneously arise.  I disagree with this slightly.  I felt that if you need the students to learn the test materials, teachers might have to work these materials in by looking for opportunities, not by hoping they spontaneously arise.  Another strategy was to teach beyond the test.  Although this is a great idea, I feel that this might be quite a lofty goal for an ELL class.  It's a great idea on paper...teach more than the test requires, but I can't see myself cramming materials in the class so that they know way more than the testing materials.  I want my students to have a firm grasp on all of the material, not force more than they can handle.  I guess this depends on the level of the class and how quickly they learn the material.  Some classes may get further than others.  The last strategy was to pose the test as a problem.  I think this is problematic in some cases.  Wong talks about showing the statistics to the students as a motivator.  However, I think that showing ELL students the fail rates of the test might become a stressor or a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I know that if I were a student, trying to learn a new language, I wouldn't want to hear about the probability of me not passing the test.  That would stress me out and, as we know, a high affective filter doesn't allow for much learning.

week 8

I thought it was extremely insightful of Toohey to analyze the practicalities of the education system and how the help or hinder the learning of ESL and ELL students.  Toohey explains how making children sit in an individual seat, with individual work actually goes against the sociocultural aspect of second language learning in that the students are actually discouraged to communicate and help one another.  I thought this was a surprising aspect of that teacher's classroom because it seems awfully independent for such young students.  I would have thought that these students should be encouraged to work together because they have such a similar, important goal: learning and acquiring the English language.  I thought it was surprising to read about Toohey's argument that having individual sets of items, instead of class sets, encouraged the idea that some student had "better" resources than others.  I felt that this was kind of a stretch, unless I read it wrong and it was only meant for a metaphor of the resources to speak English.  It confused me a little.  Toohey ends the article with quite a profound statement.  "My research suggests that the everyday, almost invisible practices of classrooms beginning very early might contribute to...long-term effects" (82).  The long-term effects Toohey is referring to is the student who did not want to work in a group or with a partner because he wasn't native.  He felt that he would be a burden on a native speaker, which is quite sad.  Learners need to feel comfortable in their environments, lowering their affective filter which, as Toohey proved, begins very early in the classroom.

Week 7

Overall, I thought chapter 1 in the Wong textbook was really interesting.  It covered a lot of material and I felt that I learned a lot in reading just the first chapter!

The first thing that really struck me was the idea of inequity in the school systems.  If students aren't in school, they aren't becoming strongly literate and the oppression just worsens.  "In the United States there are more African American young men in prison than in college" (3).  This struck me as unbelievably sad, because prior to that, Wong explains how Caucasians get lesser punishment for the same crimes.  This eventually led into the idea of linguistic racism, which is a new idea for me that was really interesting.  Do we treat those who are of lower power differently?  We certainly do discriminate with the idea of Standard English.  We don't treat African American Vernacular or other dialects of English as correct or even intelligible.  The stereotypes we place on those people after hearing them speak is both astounding and extremely sad.

Later on, Wong discriminates between Krashen's i+I (input hypothesis) and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development.  I thought the table on page 31 was extremely helpful because on the surface, I thought these two theories seemed identical in most aspects.  Wong was able to draw out the differences and I learned to discriminate between the two.

I like the idea of Dialogic Pedagogy.  I think it certainly is important to use the community as a site for motivation.  As we've learned before, motivation is an extremely important aspect in second language acquisition.  We, as teachers of ELL students, want to provide meaningful lessons and messages to the students.  What better way to motivate and keep interest than by using meaningful information including the students' own environments?  Inquiry and exploration keep the interest and motivation levels high as well.  The dialogic approach really pushes students to explore and create meaningful messages, lowering their affective filter and eventually leading to much more solid learning than just memorizing grammar facts would do.

Week 6

In the articles we read this week, I felt very strongly about the way natives treat immigrants.  Eva, one of the women in the article, was quoted in the article, saying, "When I see that I have to do everything and nobody cares about me because-- then how can I talk to them?  I hear they doesn't care about me and I don't feel to go and smile and talk to them" (Pierce, 24).  I thought this was extremely sad that immigrants do not feel at all welcome in their new surroundings.  To learn language, you must practice all the time and if natives don't have the patience to speak with them, let alone make them feel like they belong here, immigrants won't learn as well as they should.  In this article, immigrants felt like the lowest on the social chain, getting the jobs, and interactions that make them feel powerless and unwelcome.  I feel that immigrants would learn so much more if they were treated with respect instead of contempt.

Week 4

I was surprised to read that personality is difficult to test when it comes to second language acquisition.  I would have that, without a doubt, being extroverted would make you more apt to being a better second language learner than someone who is introverted.  I feel that being anxious is also a part of your personality, so when reading the chapter by Lightbown, I wondered what they considered personality traits and what they didn't count as part of the personality.  When reading later on, I saw that motivation and attitude was not a part of personality, so I was confused on what was actually tested.  I feel that the reason they found inconclusive evidence was because they were choosy on what they tested and how those tests were related to second language learning.

I really liked watching the movie on Victor.  I felt it was crucial for our class to understand the critical period hypothesis.  The part that surprised me the most was that Victor learned to comprehend writing and spelling, but had an inability to produce meaningful conversation or any sort of meaningful messages.  I wonder how he felt about communication.  I wish the video would have shown more about this.  I wondered if he was irritated and wanted to produce speech and communicate or if he was indifferent to the idea of communication to a whole.  The documentary lead me to believe that he was a little bit of both, but didn't really go into much detail about it.

Week 3

"'The significance of learners' errors,' which calls on applied linguists to focus on L2 learners' errors not as 'bad habits' to be eradicated, but as sources of insight into the learning process" (Saville-Troike, 38).  This section of the reading really made sense to me because I feel the same way.  When learning French in the classroom, I felt that embarrassed to make a mistake and did not want to speak aloud in class.  I didn't want the other students or the teacher to think I wasn't smart enough to learn the language and there was a lot of pressure on breaking the "bad habits" we, as new French students, were bound to make.  After taking years of French in the classroom, I don't feel like I learned half as much as I did when I went to France.  Going to France for the summer as a 14 year old was an amazing experience.  I was in a small town in the south of France, living with my cousin and her half-brother.  There, I felt that I learned the most about the language.  The natives were patient about my "bad habits," which of course disappeared after being immersed into the culture.  I was not afraid to make mistakes while speaking because I wanted to communicate with everyone.  Due to this need to communicate, my French language skills soared.  I learned more in that summer than I ever could have sitting in a desk in a classroom.


On a different note, I'm really looking forward to watching L'Enfant Sauvage.  I'm really interested in the critical period hypothesis and I haven't really learned much about it so I'm hoping that in the next meeting I'll be able to form an opinion on the topic.  I also hope to solidify the many different theories that we've been studying and reading about.

Week 2

Chapter 1: Introducing SLA

It was interesting to read about the distinctions made in literature about second languages. I had heard of the differences between second language and foreign language, but library language and auxiliary language were new terms for me.  On a different note, after reading the first chapter, I realized that our secondary foreign language classrooms do not necessarily teach in a way that encourage students to linguistically perform without a stressful environment. The environment of testing and units creates a sort of stress on the students that would not exist in a discussion based classroom that focuses on meaningful exchanges between the students.

Chapter 2: Foundations of SLA

It was amazing to read about how linguistic data cannot really be collected in an unbiased way.  Between personal and political sensitivities, lack of identifying truths and the lack of agreement on linguistic terms, I never would have thought that it would be so difficult to collect until I read that section.  

Before learning linguistics, I would have put myself on the nurture aspect of the nature versus nurture debate.  I believed that learning was related to feedback and experience overall.  After taking a few linguistics classes, I realized that there must be an innateness to language.  The argument I found the most compelling was that children say things that adults do not, showing that it is not all modeling and imitation.  For a child to say goed or mans, they must understand, beyond the input they receive, how the language functions and certain grammatical patterns.

Early Theories in SLA

This article helped solidify the idea that there must be a universal grammar or language faculty that is innate in human beings.  Children acquire complex language rules that can't always be learned by imitation and analogy.  One part that confused me was the behaviorist view that imitation is not a conscious effort.  I wanted more information on this because I do not understand how imitation, which was considered mindless, would lead to someone learning a language.  I know that this view is no longer accepted, but I felt that the proof and evidence was not given in this article and I wanted to learn more about it.