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.