December 1 post

Who knew there is so much that can go into observation? After reading  Kuma’s Chapter 13 I think most would agree that a process-oriented model is preferred over a product-oriented one.  It is important to interpret observations and not simply describe them. I think one good way to do this would be to have one person go into a classroom and describe what goes on, and then have a group of people read that description and interpret it (however, if the person assigned to go into the classroom recorded based on their own biases, this would not work out correctly). The reading touched on the importance of having more than one perspective, and this was something that really stuck out in my mind. I absolutely hate that I write 20 page papers and only one person gets to read them. In high school, I used to get very sad when I would get a teacher who didn’t understand me and would give me a not-so-good grade, while knowing another teacher would give me a much better grade. That was always frustrating, and if my teaching were being evaluated, I know that I would want more than one opinion. One thing that I did not think of, however, was the observation of the teacher by the teacher, or a self-observation. This is something that I feel many teachers, especially as time goes on, feel is unnecessary. However, I think it is extremely vital to creating the best possible classroom environment. After all, getting multiple perspectives is good, but the teacher needs to be aware of what he/she is doing and feel comfortable before listening to these other perspectives.

I also found the M&M stages of observation very detailed and helpful. While I think ten steps is a little bit extreme, they all made sense and I can see how each would help a teacher assess their own teaching. Once again, I think that I would choose maybe five different things to do because ten seems too extreme (after a while I think I would get anxious and begin to repeat myself). Of course, each step in this process is beneficial, and it would be important to touch on each and every one throughout the year, just maybe not all at once.

November 17 post

The chapter on ensuring social relevance was very interesting. I personally liked the activity 11.1 “Tapping Human Resources” because this is something that I think I could potentially struggle with when I become a teacher. I believe that I am familiar enough with electronics, but actually making that bridge between by students L1 and L2 is a bit more intimidating to me (likely because I will not know their L1). I think that the ideas to make out lists using these questions is a good one and will not only create a bridge between L1 and L2, but create a bridge to using the media for classroom activities. I also really enjoyed the section about standardization. This made me think about my students at the ELI who work so incredibly hard on pronunciation and find it to be so important. If they do not say a word like me, they work and work until they do. I try and express to them that accents are okay, and if they went to another state they will pronounce words completely different. This would likely be very problematic for my students if they ever moved out of Illinois. I do not mean problematic as in no one would understand them, but I think they would be confused by others and likely think that they were saying different words. Obviously we need to teach our students pronunciation so they can be understood, but this is something to also consider and at the very least mention to more advanced students, or students who plan to travel. Lastly, and as a side note, I thought the statistics about English were very interesting. 80 percent of home pages on the World Wide Web use English? I had no idea!

Kuma’s Chapter 12 well also more interesting than I had expected based on the title “Raising Cultural Consciousness.” I thought the section on critical cultural consciousness was interesting because it put into perspective what globalization is actually changing in our world. It is shrinking our space, time, and helping borders disappear. I absolutely agree with this, and it got me thinking about how still, even with this always increasing closeness, we still are not really aware of other cultures. Even I, who studies language and culture and travel, am not nearly as conscious as I could be of this closeness between cultures. I think that we lose sight of just how powerful the Internet is. Furthermore, my favorite quote in this chapter was “in understanding other cultures, we understand our own better; in understanding our own, we understand other cultures better. Therein lies real and meaningful cultural growth” (273). Just as the chapter says, there is no one culture that is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. We need to take advantage of this closeness that the Internet gives us and begin to grow in this way. I think that simply by choosing to get our TESOL endorsements we are on the right track, but we need to spread the word and get others thinking in these terms as well.

Update on my final project

Here is what I did with my class last week. I always write a little refelction under "comments" and usually add specific names, but I omitted them for this blog posting. I have been documenting my progress exactly like this each week for each of my three classes (this is just one class), so sending an "update" on my progress would be so long! Please let me know if there is anything I should be doing differently.

Tutorial 1.51

Materials: movie (or any object), wrapping paper, rubber band, towel, shoe with laces

·         We began with the idiom from last week “to steal my/you/his/her thunder”

·         We then went over the homework which was to bring in five examples of requests heard throughout the week. They were to write these down as well as the setting and the relationship of the speakers.

·         We went around the room and each student read one of their requests. We then discussed if each one was direct or indirect. On a select few I asked the students to change the requests to the opposite (if they were direct, I said change them to indirect).

·         We then began the activity of describing “how to” do things. I had each student pick a number 1-6.

·         Then the student had to describe one of the actions below in great detail and I did the actions by listening only to what they said (despite my prior knowledge)

-          Tying a shoe

-          Wrapping a present

-          Brushing your teeth

-          Putting your hair in a pony tail

-          Folding a towel

-          Flinging a rubber band

·         For homework students are to come back ready to go with a “how to” description

·         Their idiom for next week is “once in a blue moon”

Comments:

This class did a solid job with this activity once again. I felt that (name) had a difficult time, but she did her best. She often struggled with the vocabulary needed to explain how to tie a shoe, but she took notes when I would tell her and write it on the board. (name) did wonderful. Even his prepositions were all correct and I remember telling him that he really had zero grammatical problems. He was clear and I was very impressed. (name) was in between. He had a lot of vocabulary needed but still struggled with how to form his thoughts. I will be interested to see how he does when he has a chance to go home and really think about it.

I feel very prepared for my other two classes for next week, but not this one! I am not entirely sure where this class needs the most work. I spent a while on pronunciation this week with my Friday class, and I think (name) and definitely (name) would benefit from some of that, but (name) would be bored. As of right now, I feel like I may go to another role play in a certain context (perhaps talking with an advisor from ISU) because I think role plays work for this group. However, I am very open to other ideas.

November 10 Post (Week 12 but Week 11 readings)

All of the contexts in Kuma’s Chapter 9 got a bit confusing and overwhelming. However, I thought that the examples in the text were great. I think it is important that we realize that there is an immediate linguistic environment (extralinguistic) that our students will have to deal with. This particular section stuck out to me because it reminded me of a student in a class that I am observing at Bloomington Junior High School. His intonation is terrible and he puts stress in all the wrong places. Yet, this is only one of his many problems, and it seems like the teacher finds this to be the lesser of the many. Regardless, I think this immediate contextual situation should be addressed because it is true—it’s hard for me to understand him when he speaks. He does better in his everyday English, but when he is reading is the real problem. He at times in completely incomprehensible and comprehension is obviously a huge part of teaching a student English. As far as situational contexts are concerned, I have not seen this to be much of a problem in my experience. However, I am hardly experienced! I can see how this would matter because of the example given, and this could be frustrating. All of the factors discussed in the chapter need to come together because it seems that all of these different contexts can happen extremely close to one another. Therefore, it is vital that a teacher is ready to address all of these issues.

I found Kuma’s Chapter 10 extremely interesting. I have never given much of a thought to why language is split up into reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and it never occurred to me that there was once a very strict order. Since I have been studying TESOL, I have only been exposed to the idea that language skills need to be integrated. The first half of the chapter discussed some ideas about reading and writing before speaking and so forth, and to me this sounds crazy! Being a language learner myself, I know that these skills are intertwined and practicing one skill can trigger another. I liked the micro-strategies mentioned, and will be sure to keep these in mind. I particularly liked micro-strategy 10.1 simply because they all use humor. It seems as though they would be effective in bringing in real world examples which helps them to be fun and engaging.

Waiting for Superman Post

Yes, there were some problems with the film, but I loved it! I think that any movie that gets people thinking about education and caring and arguing and informing is a good one. The mere fact that this movie has gotten so much praise (and criticism) in my eyes is a very big accomplishment. There were things in this movie that I had no idea were going on in our own country. For example, the system of the lottery came to me as a complete shock. Worse, I really was unsure as to the many positives and negatives of charter schools versus public schools versus private schools. I am embarrassed to admit this being that I will be in the education field in less than one year. I found many of the statistics in the film eye-opening and it inspired me. This film gave me the sense that education can be changed and that we can end these “drop-out factories” and “lemon” teachers. I was hopeful when leaving the theater, not angry. This could be my inexperience talking, but I still think a film that leaves someone inspired to do good in the world (especially in the field of education) is one worth seeing.

Now, in regards to the Ira Shor argument, I have to say I agree on many points. I liked her article because she started by creating an ethos for herself, and I felt like I could trust her points. She is experienced, and once again she brought out points that I had not initially thought about when watching the film. I like that she agreed that the stories of the families in the movie have nothing to do with her views of the film, and I like that she said “organizing such disappointment for kids is a form of child abuse” when discussing the lottery. This, I completely agree with and this was something I felt while watching the film. Shor explains that the movie “represents mostly one model of ‘good teaching’—the talking teacher at the front of the room.” This reminded me of Freire (whom she brings up), and I completely agreed with her. The film did not focus on good teaching whatsoever, and the central focus was more about what is wrong than what is right. I did not see any different kinds of teaching going on in these charter schools, I only saw the statistics. I feel the problem could be bad teachers, yet the movie did not focus on that as much as they did the type of school. I also liked in Shor’s article the fact that she pointed out that the film did not mention the budget cuts that public schools have to deal with. This is a huge issue, and it is interesting that it was not mentioned.

November 3 post (poetry SLAM)

Last weeks poetry SLAM was absolutely worth seeing and it got me thinking about diversity and just how important writing poetry can be for so many students. Poetry can be an outlet, and I know from my personal experiences, a lot of people shy away from poetry. Yet, I know that once you get over the idea that poetry is scary, it can be quite fun, and not when there are rules and structures, but when you can write free-verse, like the people did at the event. This made me realize that poetry is something that I should bring into my future classroom because I am sure that international students would have so many thoughts and emotions going through their heads. I want to hear about these, and what better way than through poetry. I also think it may help for my students to see a poetry SLAM, in person, so they can understand how powerful it can really be.

In terms of the actual poems we saw in class, I would have to say the very first poem read was my favorite. I found it so beautiful and passionate, and I loved it. Now, this poem probably had the least to do with being different or feeling out of place, something I imagine my students may feel in the future, but then again I have never really experienced those feelings. While I loved hearing about them, I can only assume that my favorite piece was the first one because I found it the most relatable. But again, this is great. If I brought my students to a poetry SLAM and they found themselves relating to some of the poems, that woudl be exactly what I would want. Even if my future students do not understand everything that is said, emotion in reading poetry can still evoke emotion.

As for the last piece, I have little to say. I couldn't read the screens, I did not know what was going on, and I was not interested. I tried as much as I could, and it could very well be that I have not had experiences that would allow me to understand, but regardless that just was not a "poem" for me.

October 27 post

I thought the section about Hispanics in the Johns article was quite interesting, because of course there are tons of different cultures that are all lumped in that category. I think it is good that someone has made the distinction. I particularly liked the section about the difficulties that many “Hispanics” may face, particularly “Generation 1.5” because I think this is important to realize as language teachers. If your students are young enough and have a pretty good grasp on the language, chances are they are the ones with the driver’s license and they are the ones going around with their families translating. This can be tiring and could cause students to start to resent the language and learning the language. Knowing this can help teachers to be more patient and create lessons that sound less like translation and more like a student’s own creation.  The same can be said for the distinctions the article made about those who check “Asian” on the census. I have seen from my experience working at the ELI that there are huge linguistic differences and different forms of social interaction amongst students from the different Asian countries. Because of all of these differences, I loved the idea of drawing in these differences so that students can enhance their learning. I think that creating a list of questions, like the one in the article, is a good way to think about the different ways to create lessons based on the individual students. While this may be difficult in a mainstream classroom, I feel like ESL classrooms often have fewer students (at least that is the case at Bloomington Junior High where I am observing). Therefore, this would be completely possible.

The article “Teaching to Transgress” was very negative, and sad in my opinion, but it was interesting the way the author talked about cultural diversity, and how the excitement about cultural diversity has changed over the years and how “to create a culturally diverse academy we must commit ourselves fully” (7). This is interesting because it implies that it is very difficult to change your ways for the comfort of someone else. To me, this seems like it would be easy, but I suppose in many situations it would be problematic. However, what I really enjoyed about this article was the author’s perspective on Freire and his ideas. Hooks says “Freire’s work affirmed my right as a subject in resistance to define my reality” (13). This quote was powerful to me because I found it to be applicable to anyone, including myself, despite the fact that he was talking about himself. I have read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and also found it fascinating, making it easy to enjoy this article. His ideas truly sparked some of mine. How can I teach those of a different culture when I know nothing of it? As discussed in the article above, I do think it’s a great idea to bring in linguistic and social aspects of the students culture in order to enhance learning. It sounds like a great idea on paper, but how?

Finally, I watched the youtube video “Shaping the Way We Teach English: Module 02, Building Language Awareness.” It states that we must pay attention to form, but practicing these through rules and memorization is not the best way to teach grammar rules and structures. Rather, we need to teach form in a given context, or language awareness—the focus on the pragmatic uses of language. The video first talked about using meta-language, having learners do the work, using a balance of inductive and deductive techniques, use of situational and culture language use, and use authentic material sources. I would have to say that all of these ideas will work in my classroom someday. When I look at my experiences at the ELI, I realize that for these students learning English in a context and in a certain situation is so important. While these ideas seemed like good ones, once I got more into the video and saw some of these put into practice, I became more hesitant. I thought creating a connection between students and the pilgrims was a good idea, but I wondered if this would be appropriate for high school students, or adults. I do not plan to teach such young children, so I do not expect my students to enjoy sitting down after pretending like they are rowing down the river in a boat, and then answering questions on a card. However, I did think this was a great exercise for younger children. While this example may not work in my future classroom, I think I could adapt it to make it work. I could still give my students roles to play, and I could be less of a part of the conversation like the teachers are in this clip. I think older students would prefer to walk around and talk to each other, maybe try and solve some sort of mystery, as opposed to sitting and waiting for me to ask a question. I did like the activity where students had to create their own brochure. The video mentioned that it helps students with their organization and vocabulary, and I think that would transfer over just as well with older students.

                                                                                          

Class Activity on sexist ads

We had the sexist ads to work with, and so far this is what we came up with in class:

-put the ads on the board and have students write their initial reactions. Then ask them "what are the gender roles like in your country? Are they anything like this?" and have them write down their responses.

-have a discussion about what the students wrote down

-have a discussion on sexism and have students try and determine, as a class, some of the assumptions the ads are making (women only have one purpose, men deserve to be waited on, etc.)

-general langauge awareness: How would you change the words (and/or pictures) to make the ads less sexist? Have a class discussion.

-have students take all of this information and write once again, this time discussing what the ad is doing, and then how to change it (exactly what was discussed in class)

October 20

I feel that the chapter on learner autonomy was one of the most useful chapters, at least for me. I particularly liked the section about "learner training" because it is true, our students do not only need to know the concpets that we are teaching them but they need to know how to learn (which I take to be the narrow view of learner autonomy). This is not just strategic preparation, but psychological. Studetns likely have all of these expectations about how a class works in their own countries when the way of teaching and the way the class works in America could be completely different. They may have to re-learn how to learn entirely because their previous strategies (assuming we are talking about adults who have strategies) could be very unhelpful in an American classroom. I like how Kuma listed out how teachers should go about helping students with this problem by explaining important points of teaching. For example, it should be informed, self regulated, contextualized, interactive, and diagnostic. Further, Kuma discusses a broad view of learnere autonomy, and this was personally my favorite. I think that the whole point of learning is so that you will soemday be able to know where you fit in this world, thus making you a happier more successful person. I imagine that ESL students have great struggles when deciding what they are capable of and deciding what they are going to do in this new country. They have significantly more worries, in my opinion, that natives, so teaching students in order to liberate them stuck out to me as being extremely important.

The next chapter talked about fostering language awareness. This chapter scared me a little bit because I know that I learned English at a very young age, and I feel as though I'm aware, but some of the examples made me think otherwise. For example the question "why is it three bedroom apartment and not three bedrooms apartment." Truthfully, I was unsure, and I'm scared this will someday happen in my own classroom. Therefore, I realize now that I cannot get by just by being a native speaker. How can I expect my students to be aware of their English and the reasons for their choices in English, when I myself don't take the time to figure these things out? It's much too hypocritical for my taste.

October 13 post

The article about how to choose the right text book was a bit intimidating. I found it interesting that there was a section about a fit between the textbook and the student, and then a fit between a textbook and the teacher, and both sections had the same topic concepts to think about. This paralleled nicely, but it got me wondering how in the world one textbook can cover all of these “fits.” Obviously, this simply will not be possible, but this fact is a bit discouraging. It also scared me when it said that “a teacher needs to read the whole book—from start to finish, including any appendices” (4). I in no way want to be lazy, but textbooks can be so big and you would need to read a few of them before making your decision, and I wonder if this is realistic. I know a few different people who did not get a teaching job until a few weeks before school started. Personally, I think it is possible to thoroughly overview a textbook, and catch important features of the book, by reading reviews, seeking help from other teachers, or following the steps outlined under the section “initial reading of a textbook.”

I thought the distinction between syllabus and curriculum was a good one in “Curriculum design and materials development,” but for me made everything more confusing then when I began. I feel like I have always known the difference, and this article confirmed that my thoughts are correct, but it certainly made me re-read and second guess myself a few times. However, the article talked a lot about how to go about organizing and approaching both a curriculum and a syllabus, and I appreciated that. I have created a syllabus in a few of my methods courses here at ISU, but we rarely think about how it differs from a curriculum. As for the section about customers and stakeholders, this reminded me of Paulo Freire’s idea about the banking concept of education. Obviously, the students are the “customers” of the information given by the teacher and the textbook, but this term was problematic for me because we do not want our students simply “buying” into everything we say. As teachers, we should want out students to discover things on their own, analyze, and essentially be given the tools to find for themselves why something is correct or makes sense before buying into not only the issue, but buying into an idea that they can’t or don’t understand something.

This gets me into my opinions about learner-centered curriculums. As I stated above, I personally feel as though questioning and actively thinking about issues is much more effective than simply assuming a teacher or a textbook is always right. Now, I know that as a future teacher I will need to use a textbook, but I will certainly try and use the concepts, but not necessarily the examples or the language used in the book if I do not think it fits my students need to explore and understand things in their own terms. The article talked about contextualization and the importance of giving examples that students can relate to, and I think this is something very important that a text book likely would not produce. You know your students so you, as the teacher, should create these personalized examples and activities.

October 6 post

Intuitive heuristics was something that I completely agree with. Based on my own experiences learning another language, instruction is not nearly as effective as speaking and actually discovering the language on your own. The things that I remember most about Spanish are those that I learned on my own, whether it be from a native Spanish speaker I heard speaking or a word that I looked up out of curiosity. I agree with the book that inductive teaching is better than deductive teaching (although it does not explicity say this). Looking back, I think that my foreign language classes were set up with a more deductive approach, likely because this is easier for the teacher. However, I also agree with the book when it says that many adults want this deductive structure because it is more explicit, more concrete, and easy to refer back to this type of instruction when mistakes are made. My experiences at the ELI have proven this to be true—adults want something they can refer back to, not something that they have to discover. I will often ask students “what do you think?” and they give me this look like, “Just tell us so we can start studying.” The question then becomes what should you do as a teacher. I personally feel that research has shown that if you look at the big picture, intuitive heuristics should be the goal to learning a language and therefore I think teachers should use this research and put it to practice, instead of listening to the students who think they know what they want.

I enjoyed the Skehan article and I felt like it touched on a lot of subjects, but the section “individual variables” stuck out to me. At first I thought this was going to be a section of common sense and give the over-taught lesson that “everyone is different,” but there were some points that I found extremely interesting. For example, the text said that “high task attitude students seem more affected by task manipulations than do low task attitude students” (7).  First of all, I feel like the word “manipulation” is selling some students short and has a terrible connotation. I also do not like how we are constantly putting students into these groups and on these different tracks and classifying them and as this and that. It says that group-based differences in task performance can disguise differences among students, but I think it is unrealistic to believe that we can walk into a classroom, classify every student as either having a high or low task attitude, and then putting them into groups accordingly. This also eliminates the importance of different types of students working together.

September 29 journal

I was not sure if it was appropriate to put a students name in my post, even though I will be giving them a skills analysis and likely assess not only the class in general but the individual student. Also, below what I have done is wrote out the lesson that I did, how I felt about it, and some ideas for my next weeks lesson. I also spoke with Dr. Stadnik about using the students for what she thinks might be "research" and how this may need to be approved by someone. Please let me know if this is okay! Thank you!

·         We first went over last week’s idiom “cross your fingers.”

·         We then went over the hotel activity that we did last week to see what they remembered. I thought they did a good job and it seemed to go faster than last week. We did this twice.

·         We then wrote some common prepositional phrases on the board. They knew more than I expected, but I had to help them out with a few. For example, when they would say a preposition I would ask them the opposite, and Sari would confuse his opposites and would say the opposite of above was down, up was under, etc. This concerned me a bit and I may need to somehow incorporate this in next week’s lesson.

·         I then explained the activity and made sure the students knew their shapes. I would draw a shape on the board and Hye Kyoung knew many of them, but Sari struggled.

·         I then handout out the handout to one of the students while the other student stood at the board.

·         One student described the picture so that the student at the board could draw based on what they said. They did a good job and I think they had a lot of fun

·         They continued to switch off and we got through about four pictures

·         Throughout the lesson I emphasized some prepositions that they commonly missed,and we also went through the difference between vertical and horizontal

·         Their idiom for next week is “it’s a toss-up” and for homework they are to come prepared ready to summarize their favorite movie for a movie lesson.

Comments:

I have done this lesson before and it worked well, and it worked well again. The students had fun and it was great to see them laughing. Furthermore I think it was a good learning experience and pushed them, however it was so much harder for this class than my other. Sari had to bring up a sheet with the names of the shapes on it, even though they were on the board, which concerns me. I told him to study the shapes and hopefully by next week he will know them well enough to be quizzed, in a way. Next week I am planning on doing the movie lesson where I will keep it on mute and have them mimic the characters. I also think I’ll stick with review for this class, so we might do one or two more drawings on the board.

September 29 post

As I began reading the Sleeter article I found myself getting a little mad about the assumptions that the author was making about pre-service white teachers. Being a white person myself I did not appreciate the forcefulness that I felt in her words. Granted, I could have been reading the article too harshly, and she could very well be a white, 5’5”, brown haired, 21 year-old herself, but I doubt it. In no way do I assume that students from an urban area or students of color will come in with an attitude and will not bring anything to the classroom. However, I can respect the statistics that she gives. For example, she says that “historically black institutions only represent 5% of the institutions of higher education” (2), and I believe this to be true based on observations and based on statistical facts. Yet, I think that it is wrong to write off all white institutions as a bunch of judgmental educators with closed minds that “have subordinated any interest in multicultural education” (2). Regardless, I do agree with the argument as a whole, it is important that we recruit more teachers of color because they may have different experiences or different teaching styles to add to a curriculum. I have always found diversity important, just not at the expense of bashing those who make up the majority. I did like, however, that the essay lobbied for teaching students ethnographic research skills. This is something that I was not taught in high school, and even in college it is something I just sort of figured out and was never formally taught any skills. I think if we did this with our students they would be forced to explore areas outside of their comfort level while still learning.

As for the SIOP model, I immediately had a preconceived notion about what it was because of this word “shelter.” To me, being sheltered is a bad thing and if I were going to another country, being sheltered is the last thing I want. However, I now realize that the SIOP model is much more than that, and in fact there are so many factors that go into a culture and before students can be exposed to all of them, they should focus on getting the best instruction possible so they can learn the language (even if this means they need to be sheltered in a few areas). I liked that the model stressed engagement and motivation because this is something that I feel is extremely important in any classroom. The model seems to focus on all areas of language development, and not only context, and therefore I am a supporter.

September 22 post

I found Chapter 4 of the textbook very interesting thinking about mismatches between a teacher and a student was not really something I had ever considered, at least not in depth. I liked a lot of the real world examples given, such as the one on page 78 when it says that a researcher found that “learners reported to have learned several items that were different from what the teacher had planned for them” as she conducted her study. This makes complete sense because there is absolutely no way a teacher can assume what a student is thinking, the same way any other person can’t read minds. This immediately had me wondering what we can do to help minimize these mismatches, and Kuma addressed this. Of all of the ten sources that were identified as possible sources, I particularly liked number 4, pedagogic mismatch. While all of the ten made perfect sense, this is something that I feel could cause the most problems simply by my experiences as being a student and learning to be a teacher. Some things, such as the objective of a lesson, seem so obvious to a teacher that it is so easy to forget that your students may have absolutely no idea why they are learning whatever they are learning on that given day. I personally feel like this would be very common, just as it would be common for a native speaker to forget something that seems so obvious to them in language. Just as language is natural to the native speaker, the lesson objectives are natural to the teacher—not the student.

As for the articles, I liked the idea of a “pedagogy of particularity.” I think I have heard this term before but I never quite knew what it meant so I was glad to have seen the definition written out formally. I agree that any postmethod pedagogy needs to be this way, and I find it hard to believe anyone could contest that, and I feel the same way about a pedagogy of possibility. I also liked that the article discussed the post-method learner, because I think often times when we think of pedagogy we think of the teachers job and the teachers issues, but a student can have a pedagogy too.

The article by Pennycook was also interesting and I liked her three themes. However, it was odd to read this article after the article by Kuma because Kuma went into such depth with pedagogy, but in this article it was only one section. Regardless, I liked the section on “a pedagogy of engagement” because I have always thought that engagement was the key to student motivation and therefore success. It is so interesting that in this article there are more types of pedagogical approaches. I feel like there is a pedagogy for everything, and I think it is almost a bit confusing. What confuses me even more is that I like all of the types of pedagogies I am reading about, but I don’t think I could possibly weave them all into my classroom!

September 15 post

The article that I particularly enjoyed this week was “The end of CLT: A context approach to language.” I found this extremely interesting because I completely agreed with it, yet it was a concept I had never thought much about. In many of my TESOL classes here at ISU I have learned that CLT really can be formed to work in any context. I never thought much about the term “context” but after reading this article I am realizing that this term is something to be noticed. I agree that CLT should be a part of the teaching process, but teachers absolutely have to adapt their lessons based on the context of the class. I think that this idea was also a major theme in Chapter 3. The chapter continually mentioned that a set-in-stone lesson plan, materials, and syllabus, was a bad idea because students could very well change this plan. I think that, although the textbook did not say this, they were also touching on this idea that context is extremely important. For example, they showed many examples where a teacher would disregard a student comment because it was getting off task or was irrelevant, therefore cutting off a learning opportunity. I think it is important to remember that as an ESL teacher the context in which you are teaching very often strays away from the lesson plan because to your students, everything in America will be new.

I also liked that the chapter dealt with maximizing learner opportunities. Obviously this is extremely important, but I think that once you actually get in the classroom it would be easy to miss one of these opportunities. For example, I am an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant at the ELI and I found myself often times trying to get back on task. However, as I read this textbook and the more I think about all of my past experiences, I am realizing that sometimes straying away from the lesson will actually teach the students more. I found the examples very interesting and a good way to put the entire lesson into a context.

September 8 post

As a language learner, I feel that I have seen many different learning approaches to language. Based on some of the approaches we talked about in class, I would have to say that the total physical response approach was the most popular in my language classes. I remember specifically my very first year taking a Spanish class my teacher began the first class by asking us questions, in Spanish, but used hand gestures to make sure that we understood. Looking back I made many mistakes as I tried to answer, but she absolutely did not expect perfection and that method definitely worked for me. She was clearly the one in charge at first, and created a very non-stressful environment. Eventually my Spanish improved and I was able to ask the questions. I have also experienced the communicative language teaching approach as I moved further along in my studies. I was constantly having to speak in Spanish once I reached these more advanced levels, most notably my college (lan 116) course. We would be given a question and then we would turn to a partner and discuss in Spanish for the amount of time given to us by the instructor (which seemed like forever, but was probably only about seven minutes). If you were caught speaking English points were taken off. This scared me a bit, and forced me to learn this language quickly if I wanted a good grade. We watched videos and listened to speakers in Spanish so we got good practice hearing the language from natives as well.


In my experiences, the total physical response method was the most comfortable. I am a quiet person in English, so having to be very outgoing, let alone in another language, was a challenge for me simply because of my personality. I get stressed out and nervous easily, so the whole idea of not being called on in class really put me at ease. When I was relaxed in this way I could definitely focus and concentrate more than if I were worried about being called on and answering correctly. However, just because this method works for me does not mean it works for everyone. I absolutely do not think that there is one “best method” that fits all students because all students are different. It is important to take a day or two to learn about your students and not come on too strong with any one method. I work at the ELI and have come to learn that there will always be different types of learning in your classes. I know students who are great English speakers who learned simply by translation and sitting quietly and listening. I also know students who were put in situations like this who floundered. I think the challenge as a future teacher will be balancing these different methods out.

Looking back on my past experiences helped me to understand both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in our textbook. I found Chapter 1 extremely interesting simply because the concepts of the different types of teachers you can be is something that I have never really thought of before. However, Chapter 2 was the chapter that I think I got the most useful information out of. I enjoyed learning about the different methods because I really feel I can implement this knowledge into my own classroom someday. It is important to understand exactly what you are doing, what type of method, so that you can understand why you are teaching the way you are teaching. In other words, after reading this chapter I feel like I will not be going into a lesson blindly, but confident. In particular, I liked the section about the dissatisfaction with method. I think it is great that this textbook brought in a perspective that lets readers know it is okay to not believe everything you hear. I particularly like that “over time, teachers develop and follow a carefully delineated task hierarchy, a weighted sequence of activities not necessarily associated with any established method” (Kumaravadivelu 30). This is of course absolutely true! If teachers tried to stick to one method students would not learn in the best way possible. While, as I said earlier, I agree that it is important to know and implement the methods, I like that Kumaravadivelu allows teachers to challenge these methods to make them better fit their specific classroom. This connects with what I said above—not every student learns best with the same method, and teachers should not teach with this assumption in mind.

Me as a teacher

Currently I am an Undergraduate teaching assistant at the English Language Institute (ELI) on campus where I teach three classes with only about three students in each class. The goal of my class is to get the students speaking. Generally, they tell me what they want to learn and I create a lesson that involves a lot of speaking based on the topics they give me. I also observed a reading and writing class over the summer at the ELI. Other than that, I do not have very much teaching experience.


I would have to say that my dream job would be teaching ESL to high school students in a small urban setting (preferably someone warm, like California). I have considered going abroad, but I think that there are plenty of students here in the U.S. who need certified teachers like me to teach them what they need to know. In addition, I would not have to leave my family and friends. I am not, however, set on teaching in a small urban setting. I think that this would be my ideal place to get a job, but having never taught in a rural or urban setting I cannot say for sure.

I think knowing about TESOL is important because knowing another language and another place can be extremely beneficial for not only the individual, but the entire community! The last thing that I would want is for someone from another country with great potential to come here and flounder simply because they did not know the language. ELL’s are getting thrown into these classrooms with native speakers and are at a huge disadvantage. Someone needs to understand TESOL so that America can learn from other cultures instead of dismiss them as just someone who does not know the language.

I hope that when I leave this course I will have a clear understanding of where to begin when teaching ESL. Currently, I have no idea where to start teaching students with a very low proficiency. Should I start with grammar? Reading and writing? Speaking? I hope to know what order has proven the most effective in the classroom. I also hope to learn about how to grade ELLs. In my past experiences, I would get a piece of writing with tons and tons of mistakes and I have never known how much I should correct. I think once I learn these things I will be able to be a much more effective teacher than I am right now.