Christina Mancini Reflection 2

Recently, I've been relating a lot of classroom content to my everyday life.  Last week we discussed “immersion”/ sheltered instruction classrooms and how to apply that to ESL students. The day after class, I was volunteering in a special education classroom and the teacher mentioned how I will be working in an “inclusion” classroom. An inclusion classroom in special education refers to a student with special needs being in a regular general education classroom as much as possible during the day. It got me thinking how sheltered instruction was the complete opposite. In the future, I plan to be working with children who do not know English, just like an ESL student, but I will be teaching students who have disabilities and are still learning their L1; instead of an L2. Both students are working towards the same goal of learning English, so they may be able to benefit from similar instruction.

I decided to compare how ESL immersion and special education inclusion classes worked. We mentioned in class that English immersion classrooms are taught only in English, the way an American special education classroom is taught. Also, both classrooms use hands on instruction, formal and informal instruction, and change lessons to meet the needs of the students. These two types of class instruction are also complete opposites when it comes to mixing English speaking, typical speaking/understanding students, with ESL or special education students. An English immersion classroom is taught with only ESL students, no typical students, whereas special education classrooms are pushed by law to have their students with typical, or non disabled  students as much time as possible! Which is the best approach?

In class, I was in favor of sheltered instruction classrooms for ESL because it will help a student learn critical language information in a more comfortable, slower paced instruction environment. Students with disabilities may benefit more from having this type of environment too. There would be less pressure from faster learners, the way ESL students would feel pressure from native English speakers if they were mixed into a regular classroom. The law says that students with disabilities benefit from this academic pressure; it engages the student and helps motivate them to learn better. I feel that ESL students would benefit from academic pressure as well. This “pressure” can be intimidating and stressful at first, but after a few weeks of getting used to, students might benefit greatly from this type of instruction. I've also thought about how much academic and social successes students with disabilities make and I realize that social communication is still a vital part to learning, which should never be neglected; ESL students need this social interaction too in order to improve their English speaking and boots confidence.  After comparing both types of instruction, I decided to change my views on sheltered instruction and find it less appealing.

All learners should at least try an environment where they can learn from their peers, feel included among their class, be motivated by their peers, and meet new people who may not be exactly like them! There are pros and cons to both inclusion classrooms and segregated sheltered instruction classrooms, but after this experience I am personally more in favor of inclusion classrooms.

Christina

Teaching Reflection #2

In watching the two videos in class last Thursday, it really had me thinking about how well students learn material when they are learning it in a foreign language, one that is not their first language.

The first video we watched was about high school students who had immigrated to the US and were now learning subjects in English, but at a much slower pace and separated from the English speaking students.  While watching this video I was very torn between whether or not I would like that kind of schooling if I was an immigration student in a school where my first language was not spoken.  There was one particular student in the video that stated that she felt left out from the other American students, because they did not talk to her because they don't have class together and therefore do not socialize with one another.  I wonder how she would feel if she was not placed in a specific learning environment who do not speak English as their first language.  I believe that although her social life would benefit, as she would be able to interact with the American students, I believe that her grades would suffer because her classes would be at an accelerated rate in which would most likely be hard for her to keep up with.  If I was a principal at a school who had to decide if they wanted to use this type of program for immigration students or not I would have a hard time deciding which would be best for the students.  One option I may present is having the immigration students be integrated in the regular classrooms in which they would then attend after school help on areas they are struggling with.  I think it really depends on the student and the learning is really on a case to case basis.

The second video we watched was about students attending a school that was based on immersion learning in which the students were learning school material in Chinese.  I had mixed feelings on this as well.  The video mainly focussed on younger elementary students learning in this way, and I believe that is the best time for individuals to learn language, for I have heard that is the easiest time for them to learn a language based on their brain development.  I think this is a very beneficial way of learning for learners that may be moving to an area in which they speak a different language then their first language.  For example, I believe it would be beneficial to learn this way if an American student was moving to China, otherwise I do not see it to be necessary to learn every subject in this language.  If I were to have children now and had to make this decision, I would choose against this and instead I would have them involved in after school school second language program with the immersion method of teaching.  I do not disagree with the immersion teaching method, for I believe it is very effective, but I do not find it beneficial for students to learn math in Chinese, for example, because they may have a hard time understanding math in real world situations in English.

These were both very informational videos that were very interesting to see different teaching approaches, ones in which I had not necessarily thought of before.

Reflection 2: Tutoring Reflection

With almost a month under our belts, my roommate, Kerri, and I have been working hard to successfully run the after school care in Lansing. Each day we have almost 30 students ranging from kindergarten to sixth grade. The students come to the Bread House facility straight from school (all of the students come from Cole Academy in Lansing, a charter school). We begin each day with a snack and a "Do Now" activity  to get them thinking. They are able to answer the daily prompt either by writing a response or drawing a response, since several of the students are young kindergarteners. After snack, the students are able to break up into different groups. We have homework help with tutors who have volunteered as mentors, computer stations with a "kidzui" program students can play age appropriate computer games , fun crafts/ science experiments  and gym time. I am in charge of taking the children to gym for about 30 minutes each day. It has been a wonderful learning experience seeing what works and what does not work. Similar to out readings about the challenges of lesson planning, I have learned to be flexible and adapt to the needs of the students. Since I am the activities coordinator in addition to tutoring, I have made several changes in the gym noticing that grade levels may need to be separated, and that games need to be announced prior to going up to the gym or the students will be too wild! I learned very quickly that there needed to be more order in the gym, and it was my job to figure out how to make the changes.

Besides the gym time, I have been really enjoying helping students with various homework questions and needs. I have helped model reading and reading comprehension, because that has seemed to be where students are struggling the most, no matter what subject (even math word problems,etc.)

Each day has new challenges, but that is why I love it. This experience will definitely help prepare me to be the teacher I strive to be, especially working within such an urban student population. The kids are tough, but I realize this is the experience I need, since I have only worked in more suburban school environments.

If anyone is interested in starting to volunteer, we would love to have you! Please let me know!

Reflection for 10/2

My first occurrence with ELL learners was in high school. I had a really good relationship with my French teacher so I always helped after school with her in tutoring and such. Well, one day, the foreign language teachers needed students to help after school with some of the struggling students. At the time I didn't quite understand what ESL was or what it meant to be an ELL student. I remember the Spanish and French teacher trying their best to help the students understand their general homework (science, social studies, English, etc) but they had no certification in ESL and it shocked me to see teachers who did not know how to help. They looked very lost and helpless for these low-proficiency English language learners.

What I remember most vividly was a Chinese student needing help on a sophomore English homework. They were just four questions regarding a short reading. Two other students and I tried our best to reword the questions many times so that she would understand the question. But she didn't and couldn't communicate to us in words that she didn't understand it, she just kept shaking her head no. It was scary for me, because I didn't even really know what the question was asking neither did the other two students, so I could only imagine what the Chinese student was thinking. Later, I found out she dropped out of school because she just did not have the English skills to learn in school. I could tell she was very afraid and it was too much for her. It made me sad, but at the time I didn't understand why. I knew ESL was not something available at my school and it made me realize when I came to MSU that ESL was something I would want to be certified in so I wouldn't end up like my Spanish and French teachers and that I would have the knowledge to help students like the Chinese girl I tried to help.

ESL Teacher Reflection (10/2)

When I saw that my TE 401 social studies reading was titled, "Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners," I was interested to see what information the article contained. Although in our class we have not been talking about a specific subject, I wanted to see how similar, or different, the instructional techniques were. Much of the content in the article, which was written by Cruz and Thornton, contained information that we have been talking about in our class. Although it was more geared toward social studies, it covered concepts that need to be taken into consideration in any type of subject matter. 

The article suggests that in order to overcome challenges that the ELLs face in the classroom, content-centered language learning or authentics text should be used. This idea, of course, relates to the Snow article we read on “Content-Based and Immersion Models.” With a content-based model, the standard school curriculum can be paired with the objectives of language instruction (Snow). Compiling language and curriculum into one entity allows the instruction to not only be more authentic, but it also has the ability to improve language skills of non-native speakers.

Cruz and Thorton’s article explains that social studies may be more difficult because of the lack of background knowledge that the ELLs have. In order to improve effective social studies instruction, the article listed several points from a report compiled by the U.S. Department of Education in 1999. I thought these were worth noting because they relate to the various strategies we have talked about in class regarding ELLs. The bulleted points indicate where the emphasis should be placed in social studies instruction.

• Making social studies content accessible to English language learners

• Adopting a flexible, thematic-based curriculum. (Snow defined a theme-based model as selected topics or themes that provide content from which teachers extract language learning activities).

• Giving students adequate amount of time to learn social studies content.

• Linking social studies concepts to prior knowledge

• Accommodating a variety of learning styles

• Using cooperative learning strategies

• Linking instruction to assessment.

Sheltered, as well as individual instruction, was also an effective approach in social studies instruction according to Cruz and Thornton. I thought this was rather interesting as the video we had watched in class on Thursday featured a sheltered social studies course. While a sheltered classroom did have its positives in that specific social studies classroom, it also had many negatives, as the students were not able to interact with any native speakers. The Cruz and Thornton article did not include any criticisms of sheltered instruction, as they only described how this strategy makes the content more accessible for the students.

Finally, I found it interesting that the Cruz and Thornton article described teacher wait-time, as we had specifically discussed that in a previous class. For me, it reinforced the fact that English language learners do need more time to answer questions. Because the wait-time can allow them to organize their thoughts, it can improve discussion, which is necessary for improved comprehension for ELLs.

Overall, I feel that I was able to get much more out of this article because of LLT 307. I was able to have an opinion on what type of approaches and strategies Cruz and Thornton described, as well as reinforce the information we have been discussing in class. As a result, I can see my knowledge regarding English language learners developing and improving. 

Reflection 1 - Noelle Reardon

Reflection 1 My passion to educate students stems from being aware of what I have been blessed with and wanting to give back to those who have not been as blessed as I have been. I am a member of the Urban Educators Cohort Program (UECP). UECP main focuses is educating future teachers to teach in urban areas. In urban areas there are a large number of Hispanic students who will either speak English as second language or are English language learners. After learning more about the student population I realized how critical it is that I educate myself about issues that may arise or misconceptions I may have about my students. This is when I became interested in pursuing a minor in TESOL. I believe the classes that are directed toward my TESOL minor will better prepare me to be an effective educator for teaching a wide variety of language learners. Since research is available in regards to language learners I believe that it is my job to take full advantage in learning that information. The information that I learn will hopefully better able me to make learning a little less stressful for my learners. I think that a lack of knowledge about the background of my students plays a major role in what resources I provide my students with. A piece of information that I have learned in a previous class language learning class is how many times English language learners are looked at as having a learning disability because they may not communicate as clear or are slower to respond to questions that they are asked. If I did not learn this information I may disadvantage one of my students because of my lack of knowledge. If I assume that my students have a learning disability, I obviously am not going to provide them with the same resources as I would if I thought they were struggling due to a language barrier. We live in an unfair society and I would hate to disadvantage any of my students more than they already are for something they can’t control. Two summers ago I went to South Africa for a study abroad trip. During my time in South Africa I visited an all deaf school. Being deaf in South Africa is a huge disadvantage. Those who are deaf are viewed as not being intelligent. They are not given the same resources as the kids that are not hearing impaired. The only fighting chance they have in society is if they are born into a wealthy family. It is absolutely unbelievable to me that just because of a language barrier that an individual would be drastically disadvantage. It is hard to imagine living in a world where unfair treatment occurs every day and there is very little that is done about it. That is why I am going into education to hopefully help bridge the gap between language barriers.

Ariana Terebelo Reflection #2

        In all honesty, I was never really interested in teaching English as a second language. I always imagined myself teaching elementary aged students who spoke English as their first language. I had assumed that it would be too hard to teach english to students who were unable to speak it fluently, and just wanted to be able to have the same teaching experience that I have been exposed to in my schooling and volunteer work.

        The reason I want to be a teacher is to help students, inspire them, encourage them and help in facilitating their learning. Last semester in my TE 250 class, we watched a video on the California school system, and how it is failing students who speak a different language. So many children are placed in classrooms where the teacher is not qualified to teach them or just does not want to, therefore, not caring about their growth and success. It is when I watched this video that I realized if I want to make a change in children's lives, this is the way I need to do it. I am now in the process of getting a minor in teaching English as a second language.

        There are so many kids out there whose parents speak Spanish at home, or who recently moved here from China, etc. and they are the ones who need the help of teachers the most. It is important that the teacher whose classroom these students are placed in is committed, understanding, helpful and patient. Many teachers have  these traits, but they may not extend to the extent in which they need to in order to teach ELS students. If they do not get the education that they need, they will not be able to grow to their full potential as students. They are essentially being failed by their teachers and schools.

        While I do not want to teach classes that are exclusively filled with learners of a second language, I would like to have the opportunity of having ESL students placed in my classroom, therefore, being able to give them the attention, learning techniques and support that they need. I definitely do want to do volunteer work around the community (now and in the future) to help L2 learners. It's crazy how watching one 20 minute video on this topic/issue in California, made me change my views on the teacher I want to become. 

Kevin Bartz - Reflection 1

This class has been providing exactly what I was looking for when I enrolled last spring.  I have no experience in formal teaching.  Therefore, it is important to me that this class be challenging yet welcoming.  There has been a perfect mix of both.  As an Environmental Economics and Policy major who is planning on attending law school, it may seem like a bit of a stretch to take Teaching English as a Second Language.  However, I plan on taking a year off to teach English in South Korea if my applications are not well received by my top-choice law schools. 

I first began considering teaching for a year when my Political Science professor at Central Michigan University brought up the idea.  He mentioned that it is great because you can take a year off, relax, work for some money, and explore the world.  All of this is done while building your resume and expanding your world view.  I became further convinced when I became a member of MSU Model United Nations, a group which hosts a model UN conference for high school students.  I took on the role of something like a teacher.  I had to pick topics for debate, prepare a background guide, learn the rules of conduct for our United Nations Environment Program committee, and guide the students for an entire weekend of participation.  The experience was extremely rewarding.  I then started giving more serious consideration to my professor's words.  Ultimately, I hope to be able to take away general lessons and skills from this class beyond teaching in a formal classroom environment.  The skills of leadership, planning, and the new perspectives that I take away will become just as valuable.

Jacqueline Martin Blog 1

I originally become interested in teaching English as a second language when I entered college.  I had no idea the field existed before hand.  I began majoring in English and minoring in French, and TESOL just seemed to be a good fit to go along with it.  I had never had educational interactions with ELL student before though, so I didn’t really understand what I was getting myself into.  Throughout my college experiences thus far I have had awesome opportunities to become more aware of the field and have personal experiences with ELL learners.  My first experience was last year when I had a Chinese language partner.  The goal was for her to make a personal and meaningful connection with an American student, as well as practice her English.  Not only was it cool to get to know her on a personal level, but I was also able to help with her English language learning.  I remember teaching her new vocabulary and was able to watch her try and implement those words into the conversation.  That was really rewarding to see.  My second experience was working with ELL learners in a local high school.  That was challenging for me because I wasn’t able to make personal relationships with the students and they were not as focused on their English ability as they were the subject we were trying to cover for the day.  It made me realize how crucial it is for ELL students to have a base knowledge of English because they will have to use it in all of their subjects, not just English class.

I’m really looking forward to this year and my future as an ELL teacher because I know that there are so many students who have the potential to be fluent language learners if they are given the right guidance.  I am really excited to try and be that guider.  This semester I have a tutoring placement in a 6^th grade classroom at a local middle school.  Along with reading, vocab, spelling and writing with native English speakers, I will be working with a few students who are ELL learners.  I will learn firsthand what it is like for a younger age group to deal with the barriers of learning a new language.  I am really looking forward to seeing what strategies we have learned in class actually work in the classroom, and see which ones don’t.  

Reflection #1

It has always been my goal to positively impact the lives of those around me; eventually positively impacting the world.  It was my freshman year of college, however, that I wanted to make the "others" that surround me be in different countries.  I became very passionate about global education and the importance of being culturally aware (as Savignon states).  That is when I first recognized my role of potentially being an ESL teacher.  I initially looked at the role as being easy for I considered myself a native speaker of English.  When I went to China this past summer, that view changed.  I realized that it takes more than being "fluent" in a language to be able to teach someone that language and even my idea of being "fluent" was not accurate.  We have discussed what it means to be fluent in a language in class, which also helped broaden my view for being an ESL teacher.  I realized that communication can be more than just words in a sentence.  It can be hand motions, facial expressions, words in a song, the media and various other sources.  It was due to the sources mentioned that I was able to communicate effectively while in China for I had no Chinese language background.  I was able to put myself in a potential future student's position and see what it is like to be immersed in a culture and language so different than your own.  It was mentally exhausting trying to keep up with conversations and even something as mundane as ordering food became a challenge.  Seeing this side of the learning perspective really benefited me as a potential future ESL teacher.  I realized the importance of patience, repetition, enunciation, and ENGAGEMENT!! I feel that this class will further prepare me for a position of being an ESL teacher and I can't wait to learn more!

Christina Mancini Reflection 1

When I enrolled in this class, I did not realize that the entire class was built around how to teach ESL or EFL students. As we dive further into the topics of the class, I realize more and more how important/ useful this class will be to me in my future. I am planning to teach in the United States, where most of the children I teach may have English as their first language, but obviously I will also have to teach a major percentage of students who are not native speakers, as well as non-native students who have special needs. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never thought about how specific training and skills should be used to teach ESL students; I am so thankful for the techniques that LLT 307 has already given me. The communicative approach is one skill that I found very interesting to learn about. This approach covers so many different vital skills that a students must learn, in order to understand/ be able to communicate in a new language.  Old traditional techniques were used on my to learn Spanish throughout my education, but they did not cover all aspects of the language that are vital to become fluent.

Reflecting back on my own education, I like to compare my high school Spanish class against the new skills I’ve been learning in class. I took Spanish for 3 years, but cannot communicate at all to someone who speaks Spanish fluently. I was very discouraged after taking Spanish; after that, I always figured that I am just a poor learner when it comes to speaking another language. Then I also thought how my school had a very low rate of children who would continue past Spanish 4; so I wasn’t the only one having difficulties! The lessons in class have helped me realize that I only learned Spanish from a grammatical standpoint. I would learn and memorize the vocabulary in order to pass the tests, but never applied the vocabulary to real life, so I easily forgot them after the class. Over the course of the semester, I will be exposed to many different teaching ideas that will help me prevent a poor L2 education, like my own.

In the future I want to teach in a special education classroom and help children who struggle in school, not only with content, but with the English language.  I am so happy that LLT has opened my eyes to consider why and how I will teach ESL students English. What I look forward to most about LLT, is learning effective ways to teach English, as well as, learn to think from a different perspective/ be more sensitive to students who are non-native English speakers.  

Christina Mancini

Teacher Reflection 1 - Communicative Curriculum

This class has made me reflect on my experiences taking Spanish courses in both high school and college.  Looking back has made me realize what strategies worked and what ones did not work for learning the language and why.  Having the experience of learning a second language will be beneficial for me in my future as an ESL teacher because I will be able to connect with my students and any troubles they might have during their experience learning English.  I know how frustrating it can be to learn another language so I will be there to encourage them along the way.

Keeping my Spanish learning experiences in mind, for this week’s reflection I wanted to expand on the reading guide question about communicative curriculum and which components will be important in my future teaching context.  I thought all five components of the communicative curriculum were imperative to foreign language learning, but the one that stood out the most to me was My Language is Me: Personal English Language Use.  A key focus of this component is the language learner’s attitude about learning and using the language and as a teacher I will have a great influence on my future students’ mindsets. 

One way to make sure the students all stay positive about their language learning experiences is to incorporate an array of activities so all the students can display their strengths and feel confident in different situations.  From my experience, I think Communicative Language Teaching is an effective style for teaching a language because it encourages interaction between students, but at the same time it can hurt students if there is not enough variety in the communicative activities.  In high school a lot of our communicative activities were skits or role-plays in large groups, which can be intimidating for shy students or students who are afraid of messing up in front of their peers.  To avoid these feelings in my classroom, I will make sure to include both large group and small group or pair activities.

To go along with influencing my students’ attitudes, another essential part of My Language is Me, is respecting the students as they learn to use English to express themselves and begin to understand the sociocultural aspect of the language.  My students need to feel comfortable in their classroom environment and know they are not being judged if they make mistakes as they learn.  My expectation for my future students is not that they will have perfect “native” English as some teachers expect.  My goal is that they are able to learn English well enough to effectively communicate in the different situations they face in the real world and have a basic understanding of social contexts for English.  They do not need to make English their “native” language, just feel comfortable interacting with it.  In the Savignon article when they discussed English users, I found it interesting that “so called “non-native” users of its many varieties overwhelmingly outnumber so-called “native speakers””.  In today’s world there are so many different dialects of English spoken all over the world so not one specific way of speaking English can be viewed as correct. 

ESL Teacher Reflection #1

Language Arts has always been my favorite subject throughout my educational career.  I am highly interested in English, and now thanks to our LLT 307 class, I am learning how interesting it can be to teach it.  Our class discussion has made me think back to my TE 250 class, where I was able to volunteer at East High School in Lansing, MI. 

            Since I am an Elementary Education major, I remember being nervous about helping out at a high school, where students are only a few years younger than I am.  This was my first opportunity working with students at this age and I was worried that they were not going to take me seriously.  I thought students would look at me more as a classmate or friend, rather than someone that could help them with the schoolwork that they struggled with.

I spent my time in an after school help program, where students from seventh to twelve grade could come and seek help from a teacher and other MSU volunteers.  These students ranged not only in age, but most (if not all) of the students were learning English as their second language.  My first visit turned out to be like most, with the students being more interested in playing games on the computers, online shopping, and showing each other the latest YouTube hits.  I was thinking that my fear of not being looked at seriously was coming true.  It became extremely difficult for me, as well as the other volunteers, to break through to these students and help them with their homework or other projects that they were assigned. 

However, during the end of the year I made a break through with a ninth grader from Nigeria.  Instead of saying, “I don’t need help” like the other students, we began reading short stories from the Internet.  She was very soft-spoken at first and I often found myself leaning in to hear her as she read out loud.  She took each word very carefully and would occasionally stumble on words that we may see as simple such as “it”, “in”, and “is”.  These words became especially difficult if they were placed together in a sentence.  However, she was able to read longer words rather quickly, hinting that she was second-guessing herself on the shorter words.  As we continued to read, I could tell she was becoming more and more comfortable with me when her voice began to rise and when she smiled when I commented on how well she was reading.  We read about twenty different short stories together before I had to leave, and she told me that she was excited to keep reading with me next week.

After having such a rough start with this volunteer experience, I learned a very valuable lesson.  She taught me that when being pulled away from her friends, Facebook, and other distractions, there was someone willing to learn, if given the chance, and the patience she can surprise you.

Amanda

ESL Teacher Reflection #1

Even though it has only been 3 weeks, I already feel like I’m developing into a better ESL teacher than I was when I first started this course.  Our discussions and readings have gotten me thinking a lot about what kind of language learner I am and how that translates to my ability as a language teacher.  My perspective of language and understanding language has changed and I am beginning to look at it in a different light than I did before.  One of my goals has always been to become fluent in Spanish and to be perfect at it in every way.  I am now realizing that it is not necessary for me to be perfect as long as I have communicative competence. After my study abroad experience in Spain last summer, I felt extremely confident in my communicative abilities.  Now I’m nervous to start speaking again because I’ve been out of practice for over a year.  

On a positive note, I think my study abroad experience helped me develop my strategic and sociolinguistic competence which will help influence my competence as a language teacher.  With that experience, I was able to immerse in the Spanish culture and language and learn how to use strategies to negotiate meaning and express my thoughts, while also adjusting to the role I played in the society there.  I think this experience will help me empathize better with English language learners who might be going through a similar culture shock to the one I went through.  Overall, I think it will have a positive effect on my teaching. 

I’m looking forward to the rest of this class and where it will take me as a language learner and a language teacher, and I’m also excited to start my TE 401 placement so that maybe (hopefully) I can use some of the ideas in this class with my students there.  Even though I think this class will help me be better prepared for my own teaching career and encountering ESL students, I’m nervous about being able to adapt to every student I have in the classroom, ESL or not, and teach them in the best way possible for them.  There are just so many methods and approaches that it seems impossible to get every student to the level you want them to be at.  Overall, I am excited for what the rest of the semester will bring and am excited to see how I can develop as an ESL teacher.

Reflection Journal 1

I was observing CHS 201 for the whole semester last year. Since I am a native speaker of Chinese, I was more like a helper in the classroom. So, I guess that can be count as the experience of tutoring as well. The teacher is not using a quite advanced way to teach Chinese. She was only using the “Audio-lingual method” to teach. I was “act” like the voice tape. She brought a PPT, and almost every slide I read out loud and repeat 2 times. Well, I am not saying this teacher is bad, but her teaching method is truly old-fashioned.  Chinese teachers always used this method to teach literature in the ancient time, for example, Confucius did this too. And ancient teachers believe that “repetition” makes perfect.  If you repeat more than one thousand time, then you know the true essence of it.

As we learnt in our classroom, the audio-lingual method is more like a habit formation, and less emphasis on meanings.  Also, the learner errors are really bad. I think teacher who use this method need less time to prepare for the class.

For the whole semester acting as “voice tape”, I found that students who are not pay attention to memorize, fall behind easily. Let’s say student A did not go to class on Monday, then it is really difficult for A to catch up, since he did not even know how to pronounce every character properly. So I feel this is one of the drawbacks of this method.

I am planning to teach Chinese in the future. Chinese should be the second or third language to students in my classroom. I was trying to know the common mistakes that L2 student would make. And I would like to use a more advanced way, for example, communicative approach to teach Chinese. In this way, my students will acquire more skills on how to use Chinese to communicate, but not just memorize the words.  

Reflections of a FL learner

Throughout this class I can't help but think about the classes I have taken while trying to learn Spanish. I have been taking Spanish classes since I was in elementary school and little by little I have gotten to where I am which is by no means fluent, but I'm getting closer. :) This class makes me think about the people who are ESL learners or EFL learners. English is so much more complicated than Spanish is and yet so many countries either require it or students are motivated to take it on their own to study here later in life. I am curious what teaching methods work best for those students. As a college student learning Spanish I enjoy simple conversation and being fully immersed in the language, but I don't like being put on the spot or speaking in front of people who know Spanish better than I do. I get self-conscious. Does this affect ESL/EFL learners in other countries or are they so motivated that it doesn't phase them? Or do their teachers use a method that makes language learning less intimidating? I would be interested in sitting in on a class of ESL/EFL students in another country. I think we as teachers could learn a lot from that.

My Experience with The Communicative Approach- Tori Howe

I truly think the communicative approach is a great teaching style to adopt for any teacher.  I think it is the most interesting, engages the students’ interests, and is the most effective in terms of retaining classroom material.  There are so many different possible activities to create for lessons involving ESL students and they do not have to be very complicated.  Just conversing with others broadens the horizon because it gives students others opinions, which they may not have thought of on their own.  I think the communicative approach is very effective for language learning, but is also a great tool for teaching typical subjects to students in their first language.  I have always been a very hands-on learner and enjoyed class when we were able to get up and move around, or work in groups.

In my high school Spanish class, we had to do a project where we were broken up into groups of five people and we had to act out a restaurant scene using the vocabulary words we were learning during that week of class.  We had to make a script using characters in a restaurant, for example: I was the hostess, and then someone else was a waitress, a bus boy, and two people were pretending to be the customers.  We had to incorporate the vocabulary words into our script, and create a realistic dining scene.  We put together an entire set with a hostess stand, a table and chairs, silverware, napkins, dishes, menus, a bus tub, and appropriate costumes for our parts in the script.  Setting up the scene for the skit was one of the most important parts in my eyes, because when you are learning another language, it is most helpful to learn vocabulary and sentences when you can actually see the props as an audience, and when you use the props as the presenter.   Preparing for the skit was a good way for us to familiarize ourselves with the language, and put together different sentences and match them up so they will be able to reenact a realistic scene from a restaurant.

The skit was really fun for us to do, and it was also helpful when we watched other groups’ performances because we were able to see a bunch of different scenarios from a restaurant.  Not every restaurant experience will be the same so seeing different situations was really helpful in that sense.  Since it was a fun project to do, it did not feel like I was actually doing school work, and felt more like a challenge of who can have the best skit and understanding of the project rather than an assignment we had to turn in for grading. 

The communicative approach can be very effective when done correctly, and if the lesson is possible to use with this approach.  I understand that some lessons need to be lecture based or memorization based, such as spelling and conjugation of words, but when possible, I think it is in the teacher and students best interest to use the communicative approach.

Teaching in China

Last summer I spent two weeks in China on a study tour through the Global Educators Cohort at Michigan State. We spent two weeks traveling between three different cities going into classrooms and observing. Throughout the week we were given the opportunity to teach two lessons. One of my lessons was an English lesson and an art lesson combined. Myself along with another MSU students created a lesson on the artist Vincent van Gogh. The students were in elementary school so they were in their first couple years of being introduced to the English language. We had a translator but for the most part the lesson had to be taught in all English.

            Knowing that the students were not yet fluent in the English language we had to incorporate a lot of visuals into our lesson, which was not too difficult because it was an art lesson. We created a PowerPoint with some history of van Gogh and all of his accomplishments. The bullet points in the PowerPoint were all very short and used words that we knew the students would be able to understand. However, the majority of the PowerPoint included pictures of van Gogh’s paintings. We finished the PowerPoint by showing them his famous picture of a sunflower. We then instructed the students that we were all going to draw our own interpretation of van Gogh’s painting. Using the chalkboard we gave the students instructions then demonstrated how to do what we were instructing. To close up our lesson we picked a couple students to show their artwork to the class, and we asked them to explain their drawing to the class. We allowed the students to present their drawings using their first language because we wanted them to feel confident and comfortable in front of the classroom.

            For the most part our lesson went really well, I think the visuals really added a lot to the lesson and made it easier for the students to comprehend what we were talking about. Also, I really thought demonstrating what the students needed to be drawing made it easier for the students to be aware of what they should be doing while learning vocabulary for colors. One area that we could have improved on was teaching more than just the vocabulary for colors. Our lesson didn’t focus on much vocabulary aside from the colors that we introduced to the class. I think it was harder to teach a lot of vocabulary because it was a classroom that we were new to and we were unaware of their level of English proficiency.

            My favorite part of my teaching experience in China came after we taught out lesson. The teacher gave us a change to walk around the classroom so the students could practice their English with us. We would approach each student and let him or her strike up a conversation with us. It was very important for us to use very simple vocabulary and make the sentences short enough where they would be able to translate them. Their proficiency in English varied depending on how much they worked on their English at home. Overall my experience in the classroom was really enriching and is an additional experience that will help me to be a better ESL teacher in the future.

Teacher Reflection #1

Before beginning this class, I have to say I honestly did not think much about teaching English to students that are not EFL students.  This has to do with a few different things, for starters, I am not getting a TESOL endorsement, but rather I am just an elementary education major without any endorsements.  With that being said, I have never really had to think about teaching English to students who do not speak the language as their first language.  Another major factor of my lack of thoughts on teaching students who do not speak English as their first language I believe stems from my personal upbringing in my school.

I attended a Catholic private school from kindergarten until my senior year.  In these thirteen years of schooling I did not have any fellow classmates who did not speak English as their first language.  The first time that I was exposed to students who did not speak English as their first language was not until my junior year of high school in which we had two foreign exchange students for half of the academic school year.  Although English was not their first language, since they were seventeen years old they had been studying English in their countries of Germany and Korea for almost ten years, so it was not necessary for the teachers at my school to teach them English, nor would there have been time for them to do so.

Being that I went to a Catholic private school, there was not a lot of diversity present, so this is why I was never in a classroom where we would practice English vocabulary words.  I also did not have friends that spoke another language.  I believe this ultimately lead me to be blindsided to the whole ESL element, because I was not exposed to it.

When I am to become an elementary teacher, there will be times when I will be faced with helping students with the English language, students in which do not speak the language as their first language. This class will help me to know how to effectively teach students in a way I have never thought of teaching before.

ESL in Chorkor, Ghana - Jenna Kimak

This most recent summer, I spent a month from June 21st to July 21st studying abroad in Ghana, Africa. The program that I took part in was called Social Work and Development in Education: Perspectives from Ghana. While partaking in this experience, four days a week, my study abroad group worked at a non-governmental organization called B.A.S.I.C.S International (www.basicsinternational.org if you want to check it out!) that served as both a transition program and an after-school program for children in a small fishing community called Chorkor. In Ghana, the national language is English, but many different languages are spoken throughout the different regions of the country. In Chorkor in particular, the language native to the area that all Ghanians living there speak is called Twi, and children are raised speaking in Twi until they start school, when they often times know very little English.

The goal of the transition program at BASICS International was to help children from the area who had never been enrolled in school, or who had attended but had to drop out due to other circumstances, to enroll into public school. Within the transition group at BASICS, there was roughly three different skill levels: level one, where children could not identify numbers or letters and spoke little to no English; level 2, where kids knew the alphabet and most numbers, but lacked skills in reading and mathematics; and level 3, where children were just about ready to take the school-entry exam. While working at BASICS, I was in charge on implementing two hours worth of lesson plans for these students, and I found it the most challenging by far to implement my lesson plan as I had hoped with the level one students because of the language barrier. In order to help these students to understand, I found myself being very theatrical in gestures so that children would relate the gestures to what they were learning. I also found it helpful to demonstrate while I was explaining so that the children could connect the words and actions. I did have a translator there on rare occasion which was helpful, but it was exciting to watch the children grow in that short period of time. By the end of the month. There were children in level 1 that were recognizing and sounding out letters that they could not previously identify. It was a challenging first experience with teaching ESL students, but also extremely rewarding.

LLT 307 Reflections So Far

  So far, I have changed my major three times throughout my college career. I am currently a Sophomore Elementary Education (w/Language Arts focus) major, with (hopefully) a TESOL minor. I have always wanted to major in Elementary Education, but with the job market as it is and the many downfalls in education lately, I thought it might be better to go into the medical field because of the job stability. After realizing that Elementary Education was my calling and following my gut to pursue it, I did some research and found the TESOL program here at Michigan State which incorporates my love of language and passion of teaching. Although I had to give up my pursuit of a minor in French, I think the TESOL minor will be a much more purposeful and fulfilling track to be on.

LLT 307 has already been a great introduction to the realm of ESL and I am eager to learn more about the best techniques and methods to use while teaching students whose native language is not English. Although I cam into this class with the intention of only teaching ESL in the elementary level setting, I am intrigued by the prospect of being able to teach or mentor students my own age, or even older, the ways of the English language, and possibly even some of the mannerisms and cultural aspects of life in America.

My future as an ESL teacher

When I first enrolled in this class I figured it may just be an interesting extra class that could fulfill my Language Arts requirement. But as we continue through the class I am realizing that it is going to be extremely helpful to my future goals. Ultimately I would like to have my own special education classroom in America. However, I really want to spend a couple of years around the Southeast Asia area teaching English. I'm especially interested in teaching in Thailand and have made a few connections to do so but this class is teaching me so much about what I need to learn before I can do that. It is becoming clear to me that I should really learn the Thai language first and while we are learning about teaching it to our students I am learning a little bit about teaching another language to myself.

This class and the content are making me even more excited and motivated to achieve my goal and make more steps towards moving to Thailand and teaching there. Everything we talk about, as well as the activities we do are extremely helpful and applicable to something I feel like I would be doing. It is also making me realize and think about how I would be able to be involved in teaching special education students in Thailand. At first I was just concerned about teaching general ed. students but now that I am learning actual skills and concepts toward teaching a second language I think I would be capable of teaching a second language in a special education classroom.

Overall I am super excited about the direction of this class and curriculum so far and I think it may be one of my most useful sections this semester.