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.