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.