Week 12

Brown chapter 26 and Kumar chapter 11 & 12 discuss the importance of being socially, politically, culturally aware of their classroom and the students in their classes. Not only are we responsible to know what is going on with our students, we are held accountable in teaching students about social, political, and cultural awareness as well. As pre-service teachers, we need to engage in critical pedagogy ("teaching that is motivated by our beliefs about education and its place in society" (Brown 513)). Although Kumar and Brown tell us that it is important to teach in this fashion, I think a lot of teachers avoid teaching this way. I think a lot of teachers are afraid to teach with social, political, and cultural awareness. This can be a real problem, because we don't have any discussions about what is going in our lives. Yes, we teach content, but as teachers, we need to generate discussions surrounding the lives we live. If we don't talk about the presidential elections, or global affairs, or things of that nature, how can we expect our students to really grow and become mature, responsible, and aware human beings? We really can't if we shy away from these "hot topics". I believe that our students are more than capable of handling controversial topics. We just need to trust that they can offer something that we have never thought about. I remember in high school, one girl had just recently immigrated from the Middle East with her family to escape the violence and chaos. Because she looked Caucasian, the teacher (and the students) never realized that she came from the Middle East. She was educated in English, so her English was just perfect. Sometimes the teacher made snide comments about people in the Middle East, not realizing the new student was from the Middle East. We all later found out when she finally made a complaint to the administration about the teacher. I think these kinds of situations can be avoided by simply teaching responsibly (meaning, us being socially, politically, and culturally aware, as well as our students). We can have students who have a broadened point of view instead of students who are ignorant. Not only that, being aware means that we aren't making snide comments or sneaky little gestures that students really take in. Surprising as it may seem to teachers, our students are very good at picking up the teacher's attitudes and stance on certain topics based on how the teacher teaches and what they say (and how they say it).

Week 10

In this week's reading (Kumar chap. 7 & 8, Brown chap. 22), I learned about language awareness and heuristics. Chapter 22 of Brown discusses the three parts of language: grammar, semantics, and pragmatics. Though language has been divided into three distinct groups, each of these three group cannot be sufficient alone. For example, we cannot teach our students semantics without having taught them pragmatics and grammar. I don't think it's necessarily difficult to teach these different aspects of language, but I think the hard part actually becomes figuring out how much to teach one area. How do I determine what I need to spend more time on? Is even possible to determine what we think is more important to teach students? I've had teachers who focused solely on grammar without any mention of pragmatics or semantics. I learned to "plug" in parts of a sentence based on the worksheets that my teacher gave me, but I never learned to use the grammar rules effectively because I did not learn to apply it within semantics or pragmatics. I wonder how much more effective it would have been for the teacher to incorporate semantics and pragmatics into her grammar lesson. Would I have had a better grasp on grammar? I'm not sure, because I did not have that experience, but I'm guessing that the answers would be yes. It's important to teach grammar, but isn't it just as important to teach students how language actually works? Do we choose to acknowledge only standard English as the only acceptable English? Or do we let "other Englishes" have space in our classrooms? I think idealistically, I would like to introduce all these different dialects of English, but I wonder how practical this goal would be. Despite all the best intentions I may have, I don't really know how or what I will teach.

Not only is learning grammar, pragmatics, and semantics an important part of language learning, but understanding how the language is formed and its history is just as important. When I took class that focused on the history and growth of English, I had so many lightbulb moments. Everything that I learned in high school would have made more sense. Not only is this language awareness important for ELLs, but it's also just as important to native language speakers.

Brown Chapter 20 & 21

Chapters 20 and 21 in Brown talked about the teaching of reading and writing. The chapters discuss the importance of teaching reading and writing in addition to speaking. Brown talks about ways in which we can improve the way we teach each of these areas. There are many bottom-up and top-down strategies that are mentioned throughout the chapters. Brown gives great strategies for teachers to encourage reading comprehension and the principles for teaching reading skills. It's important for students to be able to choose a text that will help students achieve strategic reading skills. Choosing text that is readable and authentic (in target language). Choosing reading that is interesting and relatable to students is necessary because students will be more motivated to read something that they have some interest in. Not only should students have an interest, but the reading material should be appropriate to the level and difficulty of the learner. A common theme that has been occurring within our class has been about meaningful and authentic learning. In the context of reading, using a text that is meaningful and authentic is more beneficial to an ELL's learning than a text that is not.
I found chapter 20 and 21 to go hand in hand, and were very appropriate to read together. While reading is important, I don't think you can have reading without writing. To be successful at reading, there must be writing involved. However, it is interesting because each student's culture has a different way of writing. For example, American writing tends to be more direct and to the point about the argument, whereas another culture may sort of "beat around the bush" before actually getting to the point. When our students write in a style that we do not recognize, it is important for us to remember that it doesn't necessarily mean that our students are inadequate in writing. I think that one of the important points that I can take away from the readings is that using meaningful and authentic materials is extremely important to effective learning, as well as having the understanding that our students come from different places where our style of writing may be something completely foreign to them.

Week 8

The article, "How Do I Support A Student's First Language When I Don't Speak the Language?", discusses the issues that arise when language teachers are not able to speak the language of their ELL students. How do we teach these students when we are unable to communicate through their native language? The activities and strategies that Dolores used in her classroom were great examples of how to still involve all students even if the teacher and other students do not speak the same language. When Nyuget was the student language teacher, the teacher, Nyuget, and her peers were mutually involved in the lesson. In this situation, "Nyuget saw her home language sanctioned and thus honored" (138). Dolores created an activity that made her students feel like their language still matters in the classroom. Their native language isn't being banned from the classroom, but its use is encouraged. This activity empowers our students and gives them the motivation to succeed in learning the target language. Rather than prohibiting the students' native languages, promoting and encouraging native language use may give students more motivation to master the target language.
Chapter 5 in Kumar discusses three interactional activities: interpersonal, textual, and ideational. Students' involvement and success in the classroom may also be dependent on the amount of meaningful interaction and the opportunities that they are given to succeed in the classroom. Meaningful interaction in the class  is crucial for motivating students to learn. As seen in Dolores' classroom with Nyuget teaching her peers Vietnamese, Nyuget is engaging in an activity that she sees is valuable. She comes to school early to be prepared and she is excited to use her native language in school. She has more motivation and interest in learning by having an interaction with her peers and teacher that is more meaningful to her.
Not only does there need to be a meaningful interaction among students and teachers, teachers should also make the attempt to learn the language that their students speak. It may not be practical or even possible to learn every language, but I think making the effort and having a personal connection to students will help students to better learn the target language through using their native language.

Week 6

As a pre-service teacher, one of my biggest and main concerns is how the theories that I've learned in my methods classes will affect my teaching practices. The readings this week emphasize the importance of maximizing learning opportunities for the learners in our classrooms. As teachers, we need to create the best environment/conditions that are absolutely vital for learning to happen. 
Brown discusses twelve principles of language learning: automaticity, meaningful learning, willingness to communicate, language-culture anticipation of reward, language ego, intrinsic motivation, strategic investment, autonomy, interlanguage, communicative competence. All these principles are important factors in getting students to learn.  All these principles concentrate on the individualistic aspect of the learner. All these factors can mean the difference between great learning or not at all. That being said, I'm sure many of us (myself included), have been in classrooms where the structure is extremely rigid and solely based on the agenda of the teacher. In the past classrooms that I have been in a classroom where a teacher teaches based on their preferences and learning was very limited for me. There really was no room to learn the way I was comfortable with. Instead of adapting and being flexible, the teacher applied the same view of a student to all students. So of course, learning may occur for those who are on the same page as that teacher, but not all students will necessarily will benefit from the teacher's attitudes toward his/her students. 
With these principles and my own personal experience, I ask myself: "How can I tailor my lessons to each student individually?" "Is there a way to accommodate every single student?" As much as I would like to reach every student, I wonder at the practicality and efficiency of actually being able to do this. 
In regards to language learning, one of the principles that struck me was language ego. Many language learners are so focused on not making mistakes that they are often hindered in participating and going out on a limb to learn. As teachers, not only do we need to make students comfortable, but communicate to our students that it is perfectly okay to make mistakes; that mistakes help us learn. It also helps the teacher to understand where students are at and where the teacher need to put more focus on in the lesson. 
Both the students and teacher has to work together to create the right conditions in which learning will be most effective and that students will be able to take what they learn in the classroom beyond to the world outside of academics. 

P. Skehan, G. Hu, S. Bax

The argument that Skehan makes in his argument is that interaction is key in task-based instruction. He goes on to point out that input alone is not sufficient. Interaction is crucial, as well as the "opportunities is provides for learners to receive personalized, well-timed feedback for areas of interlanguage that are problematic"(4). The feedback that the learner receives is important because not only is the feedback from the teacher important, but the feedback from peers as well. It is also a great way for other learners to employ their knowledge and be able to find any mistakes and find an appropriate way to address the issue. Task-based is important because it can allow students to work together in various activities. While the teacher is more of an authority figure in the classroom, it's important for peers to work together so that individuals can contribute to the class.
Hu's article discusses the failure of CLT in the Chinese classroom context. Hu describes CLT and traditional Chinese culture to be "incongruent". CLT is drawn "extensively on developments in sociolinguistics, discourse theory, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, and second-language research that have occurred largely in the West" (94). Hu explains that CLT doesn't work in the context of the Chinese classroom because between the two, there is a large cultural clash. The classrooms in China promotes an education in which learning is seen as an accumulation of knowledge. Students aren't taught (it probably isn't encouraged either) to challenge their teachers and ask thought provoking questions. Their simple duty in class is to learn and listen to what the teacher says. Education in China is seen as something that grants social mobility, power, and overall superiority. I can see how the CLT method failed to be successful in the context of the Chinese classroom.
Reading Hu's article gave a great lead-in to Bax's article. Bax discusses that teachers need to teach around context. As we see in Hu's article, CLT may be successful in the West, but doesn't work in countries like China. The context of the classroom in the West and China are vastly different. As teachers, we need to be more aware of the context of our classrooms. Two different sections of the same class may require different needs and methods based on the context of the class.

Blog Post #2

Chapter 1 & 2 in Kumar's Beyond the Methods discussed teacher acts and the concept of method. What I liked about chapter 1 was that it talked about the role of teacher. I think a lot of textbooks dive right into suggested methods and things of that nature, but I haven't read a lot of textbooks that define the different roles teachers take as well as defining what jobs, vocation, work, careers, and profession are. It's important to know what these terms mean before I can delve into what the book is trying to tell me. It's interesting to see how Kumar has divided teachers roles into three distinct groups: passive technicians, reflective practitioners, and transformative intellectuals.
Teachers as passive technicians are primarily focused on content knowledge. These teachers are given the content knowledge to pass onto to a privileged group of students. Teachers are viewed as "apprentices whose success is measured in terms of how closely they adhere to the professional knowledge base , and how effectively they transmit that knowledge base to students" (Kumar 8). Viewing teachers as passive technicians is a more traditional view and is still a view that is held in different parts of the world.
Teachers as reflective practitioners are not seen as "passive transmitters of received knowledge but as problem-solvers possessing 'the ability to look back critically and imaginatively, to do cause-effect thinking, to derive explanatory principles, to do task analysis, also to look forward, and to do anticipatory planning" (Kumar 10). Instead of the passive teaching, this role of the teachers demands that teachers think and be problem-solvers in their profession. Teachers use reflection-on-action that can occur before and after a lesson, so that teachers can plan their lesson and evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching acts afterward. Reflection-in-action is also used and this occurs during the lesson, when teachers monitor their teaching acts. They identify any problems that arise and make adjustments on the spot.
Lastly, we have teachers as transformative intellectuals. By requiring teacher to be sociopolitically conscious and assertive in acting upon their sociopolitical consciousness, their roles as a teacher go beyond the borders of the classroom. These teachers not only strive for educational advancement, but personal transformation as well. For educational advancement, they form a community of educators "dedicated to the creation and implementation of forms of knowledge that are relevant to their specific contexts and to construct curricula and syllabi around their own and their students' needs, wants, and situations" (Kumar 14). These teachers form a group to work together to become better teacher for their students. And to achieve personal transformation, these teachers try to "educate themselves and their students about various forms of inequality and injustice in the wider society to address and redress them in purposeful and peaceful ways" (14). I think that personal growth in students is just as important as educational advancement for students.
Overall, I think that these three categories that Kumar has sort of divided teachers into is very interesting. I feel as though teachers shouldn't be confined to each of these roles, but they should exhibit a little bit from each role and find a way to be a more effective teacher.