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?