Final Paper Project

I will be doing a research paper on the impact of Content-Based Instruction in the ESL context and include a small sub-section on the use of the SIOP model and how CBI is used within that model, as well.

9/27 Readings

References: Chapter 3: Lesson Planning and Chapter 7: The ELT Curriculum in "Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice"

Chapter 3 focused on the essential parts of a lesson plan in an English language classroom, and what the typical model of this lesson plan would be by giving examples. A daily lesson plan is described as "written description of how students will move toward attaining specific objectives" and "the teaching behavior that will result in student learning" (pg. 30). I know that as pre-service teachers here at ISU, lesson planning becomes the bane of our existence, so to speak. I know that when a professor assigns a unit plan, there is a collective internal groan from every student. Lesson plans, while they are not the most difficult thing to do, are merely time-consuming and require one's full attention, which at times is hard to give. When I am writing them, I have to keep reminding myself that there is a greater purpose in all this time I am putting into it, and that is to give my students a well thought out and well-conceived lesson that they can learn something from. The book describes lesson planning as having internal and external reasons; internal being that makes us "feel more confident, learn the subject matter better...and to anticipate problems before they happen" (pg. 31). The last one is probably the most important. As a pre-service teacher, I have no idea how to anticipate problems. I have not had much experience yet in front of a class, and I can honestly only hope to learn this while student teaching, which I have been assured will happen. I am not optimistic in the fact that every student is going to be a little angel and behave well every single day. Teachers have to think on their feet at all times; I know that it is something I have to work on because I tend to be cautious and calculating and I take a while to make a decision which helps me when I am writing lesson plans because I am meticulous. I know that most days it will not be a problem, but I do have to prepare myself for it. Reading about the specifics of a lesson plan is second nature to me at this point, but not necessarily in the ESL context so it was interesting to see if there were any glaring differences between the ones I have done and this type of lesson plan. Both start with "appropriate and clearly written objectives" (pg. 32), and in these objectives, we must set our goals for the day, and use action verbs to describe what they will be doing that class period. It is important that these objectives are not vague, because it can hinder the students and the teacher in the lesson process. There needs to be a result in mind, and I learned in my C&I 216 class that each lesson must have a concrete product attached to it, and that is generally homework, but I believe students should be able to go home with something they have done, because it is a confidence booster for them, especially when they are not in a mainstream English class and need all the emotional support they can get from a teacher.

Chapter 7 deals the ever-changing models in ELT (English language teaching) and what the author describes as a "flexible" model. A quote that stuck out is from Carl Rogers, "the goal of education, if we are to survive, is the facilitation of change and learning" (pg. 69). It is a pretty strong statement to make, and one with which I totally agree. Teaching has honestly got to be one of the most flexible careers I can think of; it is seemingly strict because of standards and all that red tape, but when a teacher is in the classroom, we run the show. We make the day-to-day decisions, and there generally is no one around to question it. We are on our own for the most part, even though we do have some support from administration or from a mentor when we are starting it. It is a scary thought, however; soon, I will be in front of my own class with my own lesson plans, not ones I have generated for a professor. Students depend on me to learn Spanish or English! It is a high-pressure situation and people do not give teachers enough credit for what they do every day, but I digress from the topic. Finney (the author of the chapter) goes on to describe the changing models of ELT, starting from classical humanism, which is presumably the oldest model and "content is knowledge which has been identified and agreed to be universal, unchanging, and absolute" (pg. 71). I know when I read this, I cringed. Nothing in education is absolute or unchanging. Education is a continuous process; we are learning new things every day, every hour, every minute and adding to our knowledge. True, some things will not change, like a math equation, but language is always changing. There is always new slang or new words generated by other people, that's what I love about it! Obviously, as Finney states, "these foundations are not longer acceptable" for the reasons of diverse learning styles (pg. 71). The newest or most current model is called progressivism, which is that "the purpose of education is...to enable the individual to progress towards self-fulfillment" (pg. 73) and is based in developmental psychology. While this may be the most modern, it is still subject to skepticism. I think if we are going off of Bloom's Taxonomy, the highest level being this level of fulfillment, this is a good way to look at it. I mean, when I was reading it, I was thinking...well, this kind of seems like a weak statement. I think the U.S. education system nowadays is trying to make students focus on their uniqueness, which is fine, but weren't students unique and diverse before? Yes, it seems intuitive to add that thinking to our teaching, but that does not mean it has to take over our lessons. The fact is we still have our content to teach and we cannot make each lesson perfect for every student. There will be some lessons that visual learners will not like, and there will be some that hands-on learners will not like, but everyone has each multiple intelligence and learning skill, and our job as teachers is to access these and show them that they cannot always lean on what works best for them.

9/22 Readings

References: Anthology, Sec. 5, Chap. 10
"Making Content Comprehensible for English Language Learners: The SIOP Model" - Echevarria, Vogt, and Short

These two articles focused on the implementation of Content-Based Instruction (CBI) and the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) model for lesson planning in the context of an English as a Second Language classroom environment.
In Chapter 10 of Anthology, CBI is described as "presentation of coherent and meaningful information, characteristic of well-organized content-based curricula, leads to deeper processing and better learning" and it incorporates "explicit language instruction...thereby satisfying students' language and content learning needs in context" (pg. 108). Basically, CBI is incorporating their content from other academic disciplines (math, science, history) into the ESL classroom and therefore making it an easier transition for the ESL students to go into a regular, mainstreamed English class with native speakers. It also emphasizes more project work as opposed to individual work, because "it represents a natural extension of what is already taking place" (pg. 109). It does have an element of task-based instruction to it in the amount of activities being done in the classroom and that project work is the culmination of learning. The book also describes various types of projects, like structured: "organized by the teacher in terms of topic, methodology, and presentation"; unstructured: "defined largely by students" and semi-structured: "in part by the teacher and in part by the students" (pg. 110). These projects should have some link to "real-world concerns" or socially relevant topics to the students, or something similar that is going on in the mainstream English courses at the school (pg. 110). It is up to the ESL instructor to converse and cooperate with other academic disciplines and work out lesson plans in order to keep the kids up to speed with their native speaker counterparts. I think that this method is an excellent idea; it is just appalling that they did not consider it earlier. I do not see as many problems as I do with task-based instruction, because CBI is not entirely comprised of "tasks"; it is a supplement to the actual curriculum and follows the standards that every other teacher is following. I think that it is important for ESL teachers to give the impression to the kids that they are learning the same things as native speakers, and then the kids will not fall prey to the self-fulfilling prophecy of ELL's that drop out because their needs are not being met.

Echevarria & co's article did an excellent job of describing the previous and current situation of ESL education in schools in the United States. According to Echevarria, Vogt, and Short, "while the number of LEP students has grown exponentially across the United States, their level of academic achievement has lagged significantly behind that of their language majority peers" (pg. 2). I suppose as most of us being pre-service teachers, we are well aware of this issue. Schools have been trying a plethora of different methods on ELL's, and it has been a process of trial and error as the years have gone on, but the disturbing thing about this whole education system is that ELL's are being expected to be 'proficient' (I use this term subjectively) in English in too short of an amount of time. These schools are "calling for all student to meet high standards and are adjusting national and state assessments as well as state graduation requirements to reflect these new levels of achievement" (pg. 3). As a result of these new high standards in education (due to our dear friend No Child Left Behind), students are being expected to have an accelerated ESL program to make up for it, even though the article says that normal amount of time expected to be proficient is 4 to 10 years depending on their familial and educational background. Schools are not even giving them that much time, and in my opinion, the United States is trying so hard to catch up with China and Japan who are literally blowing us out of the water in math and science, among other things, and this is being pressed on our students. There are many, many things they could do to combat this advancement, but that is not the issue here. Another large issue in this education gap is the lack of qualified teachers; "to compensate, principals hire less qualified teachers, use substitutes...ask teachers to teach outside their field of preparation" and these teachers "have not had appropriate professional development" (pg. 4) to teach these kids, which is a complete injustice to them. I think that it is definitely our job as TESOL students to keep encouraging this minor and certification process to other undergraduate students here at ISU so that these kids have qualified and prepared teachers. Every child deserves that.

9/20 Readings

References: Anthology, Chapter 9
Skehan, P. - "Task-based instruction" (2003)

The articles for this discussion were focused on task-based instruction, which "emphasises the need for learners to focus on meaning and to convey information to one another" through use of communicative activities in the classroom, although Skehan states that the word "task" is now almost synonymous with the term "communicative activity" (pg. 1). Skehan goes on to describe the different approaches to interaction in terms of the research that is out there today, which are psycholinguistic, social interactive, cognitive, and structure-focused. I definitely see the use of all of these approaches as being useful in different contexts within the classroom; there needs to be an element of eclecticism, because each approach cannot be applied to every situation, in my opinion, and it truly depends on the type of learners you have in your ESL classroom and the dynamic between them. For example, the sociocultural approach to interaction which is described as "how learners co-construct meaning while engaging in interaction" (pg. 5). While this sounds like an excellent idea, it is a rather vague term, it includes "no negotiation of meaning...it is assumed that the interest in a task to allow participants to shape it to their own ends and to build meanings collaboratively that are unpredictable and personal" (pg. 5). To me, this sounds good in theory, but in practice, you cannot have the students rely on each other entirely for negotiation of meaning. One student might have all of it completely wrong and may have a stronger personality than the others in their interactive group, so the other students take their lead on a topic and just go with what they are saying. Following that vein, it could problematic in low-level proficiency classroom where students cannot express their feelings written, let alone orally. The sociocultural approach would likely work best in a classroom with high-level proficiency students who can communicative their ideas effectively enough to get the task done.

Skehan addresses this sort of problem in the section on "individual variables" on page 7 of the article: "Few would argue that all learners respond to tasks in the same way - indeed a central factor with sociocultural theory is to enable the individual to interpret tasks in whatever way they think is appropriate." So, here lies the issue. The fact is, students in a regular mainstream classroom are going to interpret stories or topics very differently, let alone in the context of an ESL classroom where you have conflicting cultural viewpoints and you may have students that do not want to discuss some topics at all because they are completely taboo in their culture, like in Anthology Chapter 9 where the teacher gave them a list of topics including "marriage, marriage and the single mother, suicide, older men dating high school girls", etc (Anthology, pg. 100). These topics are tricky already in a regular classroom, and some students will not want to approach them already because it is uncomfortable. My suggestion would be to do a little more research about each of the cultures represented in the classroom and find topics that would be more neutral yet provocative so that students would not feel uncomfortable talking about them with peers, let alone doing an interview with others about it. Some of the topics they do list like the environment and the information society are much more appropriate topics culturally; everyone has an opinion about computers and can see both sides to that issue, as well as with the environment. Students will want to know how other cultures feel about it; I just have a feeling that any topic relating to sex or religion should be cut out at least at the lower levels, for sure. The advanced students may have a more cultural understanding of what is appropriate in the United States versus their society or may have been here much longer, and after that amount of time, they may have developed a more neutral attitude or at least know that these topics are not taboo in our schools. Overall, I thought the task described in Chapter 9 was well thought-out and well-planned for sure, but I did have to critique the topic choice list when I was reading it. I agree with Belgar and Hunt, the authors of the chapter, when they state that "curriculum and syllabus design involves a never-ending process of making adjustments" (pg. 102). This is completely true; we as teachers need to realize that every lesson plan is not going to go perfectly or have the results that we desire, and our job as a "good teacher" so to speak is to reflect on our lesson and see what we can change to make it more effective and engaging.

9/15 Readings

References: "Potential Cultural Resistance to Pedagogical Imports: The Case of CLT in China" - Hu (2002)
and "The end of CLT: a context approach to language teaching" - Bax (2003)

Both of these articles took a critical and problematizing approach to the nature of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the classroom here in the United States and abroad in China, as in the case of Hu's article. While Hu mainly discussed why the CLT method does not work in China, Bax took a very critical (in fact, pretty sarcastic) approach to describing why CLT method does not work at all and he instead supplemented his own theory of the Context Approach. In my opinion, I do agree with Bax and Hu that CLT should not be considered the end-all-be-all method of language teaching, and Bax makes this quite explicit in his article with the examples of professors all across the world who "say with surprise that somehow many students still manage to learn to speak good English, and wonders how this could be" and "the idea that people could learn English well without CLT seems either to escape her, or to be a heresy too serious to admit" (pg. 279). While I personally feel that he is taking too strong and sarcastic an approach to this article, I see his point. To me, though, doesn't CLT have context included within activities in the language classroom? Yes, in the article we read for Tuesday by Larsen-Freeman I did not see evidence of context being involved in the activities, but I have had foreign language teachers that only ever included context in what we did in class, like role plays with real language and ways to promote strategic competence by circumlocution. If more teachers utilized a combination of CLT and the Context Approach, I think that would be quite effective. It is something that I feel is intuitive to language learning, and I am glad that Bax pointed out the glaring lack there, but I do think there are teachers out there that are doing this. It is not like they are non-existent. Bax suggests that the procedure for the Context Approach would be an "understanding of individual students and their learning needs, wants, styles, and strategies", and later that the "approach will probably be eclectic, in order to meet varied learner needs" (pg. 285). While the eclectic seems like a great idea to me, it intimidates me. As a pre-service teacher, I want to stick to methodologies I know. I do not think that it is realistic to expect first or second year teachers to use this approach, mainly because of external pressures from the school, parents, standards, etc. I think it is an ideal goal to have in mind, however, and I myself strive to achieve it at some point in my career.

I found Hu's article to be fascinating; I thought his approach to academic writing was really approachable and reader friendly to begin with, and I really enjoyed reading all about the Chinese education principles and their roots in Confucianism. The PRC (People's Republic of China) has traditionally, as Hu states, been a combination of "grammar-translation method and audiolingualism...systematic and detailed study of grammar and...painstaking effort to form good verbal habits, an emphasis on written language, and a preference for literary classics" (pg. 93). I think we as Americans have a view of Chinese society as being overall negative and oppressive, mostly because of the USA's disdain of the Communistic view. As a result of this stereotype, we view Chinese education as being too strict and old-fashioned, in a way. Hu describes this in his article about how he feels that the Chinese are being looked down upon for not utilizing CLT in their education system, and this is somehow a big tragedy. CLT pretty much describes everything that the Chinese education system is against: "centered on communicative functions", "effectiveness of communication is sought after rather than merely accuracy or fluency", and "that students should be negotiators, communicators, discoverers, and contributors of knowledge of information" (pg. 95). While these all sound ideal to those of the Western view, myself included, this is the exact opposite of way students are taught. Student in PRC are expected to be sponges, for lack of a better metaphor. They have "a deep reverence for education" (pg. 96), and they are expected to listen to absorb and repeat it back to the teacher and the teacher gives them explicit feedback and error correction. I know I cringed as I read it, and I could not help feeling like it sounded antiquated and reminded me of a classroom in the 1950's. I put my feelings aside and realized that this attitude towards education has produced impressive results. I know a few Chinese students personally, and they are so hard-working it is unbelievable. They learn English so fast! I feel like they are further ahead with their English skills than I am with Spanish in a shorter amount of time. Chinese students are used to a system that "discourages individuality, fulfillment of personal needs, and self-expression - issues that are given priority in the CLT classroom" (pg. 97). To an American, this is again quite cringe-worthy. We have grown up in a country that emphasizes uniqueness and a sort of feeling of superiority to other education systems, even though I would like to point out that we produce abysmal standardized test scores in comparison to Asian countries. Obviously, this feeling of community in the Chinese education system reflects the values of the Communistic society. I think it is important as a future Spanish/ESL to put aside our own feelings about other governments or societies and try to imagine where that student is coming from. They are going to come here and feel like a fish out of water already only to go into the classroom where they know they will excel, and be totally blindsided by the opposite values of education. I cannot imagine that feeling at all. I think we should be aware of this and do our absolute best to be sympathetic to their needs and offer them some semblance of what they are used to in order to help them assimilate better to the school environment.

9/13 Readings

References: Kuma, Chapter 3: Maximizing Learning Opportunities
Larsen-Freeman, Communicative Language Teaching

In Chapter of Kuma's book, he states the purpose of maximizing learning opportunities is that "creation and utilization of learning opportunities in the classroom are ultimately in the hands of teachers and learners who are engaged in a joint exploration of learning and teaching" (pg. 47). I found this to be a pretty powerful statement. He also states that the process should "effectively minimize the role of teachers' prepared agenda, the textbook, and the syllabus" (pg. 47) in relation to then maximizing the role of the learners and their learning opportunities. It is difficult as a pre-service teacher to just say, eh, I'll just throw the syllabus and agenda away and focus on communication and games. To most teachers, that's pretty unimaginable in their first few years of teaching. While it is innovative and intriguing for sure, I am one of those people that absolutely needs a lesson plan to gather and organize my thoughts and make sure I am accomplishing everything I planned on in that class period. I know that as a teacher, sometimes you won't get to activities that you really wanted to do, and sometimes activities come out shorter or longer than they were planned on being; that's part of the profession to adapt to every situation. I do not think Kuma is suggesting throwing away lesson plans completely, but it caught me off-guard when I was reading it. The general theme of both of these articles was focusing the communicative aspect of language teaching and therefore maximizing the learning potential of the students in the class, which I fully support. I know that personally I prefer communicative activities to 'busy work' and worksheets and lectures, but sometimes it is impossible, or at least really difficult, to work in all communicative activities necessary for language development in a single class. When I was at University High School for my clinical hours in a Spanish classroom, I found it difficult to vary up the activities more than doing games and interactive assignments along with a PowerPoint lecture for the 3 days. I wanted to, but it was hard to come up with ideas! My teacher did tell me that at first we are going to teach how we learn best, and then adapt as the year goes on depending on the classroom environment, and that really stuck with me. It definitely opened my eyes to the situation I was facing, and now I am striving to be more creative and varied in my lesson planning.

I also loved the idea of having the students fill out surveys about the lesson that they had (i.e. the McDonald's reading/discussion), because that is something that I believe teachers need to do and should want to do for finding ways to improve. No teacher is perfect all the time; they need the feedback from the students to see how they are doing. Otherwise, how are they going to know that they are reaching their students? I definitely see a humanistic approach to teaching in my future, and for me at least my classroom is centered around my students learning and understanding my content. I want to know whether the lesson was effective for them or not, and whether or not they learned the concepts during the lesson and achieved my learning objectives for the day. If they did not, then obviously I would have to work harder the next day to catch up and make sure that everyone is on the same page. No one should have to fall behind.

Larsen-Freeman's article defines Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as "apply[ing] the theoretical perspective of the Communicative Approach by making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledging the interdependence of language and communication" (pg. 1). I completely agree with this method and I see its value, yet I did see some flaw in the plan, per se. Communication is a huge part of language, yes, but at the same time, if all we are doing is focusing on the oral communication aspect of language, then we are easily going to neglect the grammar and reading aspect. Oral communication inherently involves listening comprehension, which works well in its favor, because you do have to comprehend what the other person is saying to form your response. On the other hand, if the activity has no reading component, then reading comprehension will not be involved at all, and neither will grammar. I learned English grammar by reading constantly as a child, and so then I knew the structure internally and subconsciously. Some people may not be like me, I understand that, but I am a firm believer that each lesson needs to include all modes of communication and those need to be intertwined seamlessly, or the lesson will be unsuccessful. Students need all aspects of the language for a complete picture, and that is where CLT has a bit of a downfall. I liked the idea of the predictive picture story where the students had to predict what was going to happen next; I thought it was a nice combination of listening comprehension, oral communication, and included a good aspect of reading comprehension on all parts, so in this case, I could see the value in it. Some other lessons that were described did not really allow for this aspect, so that needs to be worked on in the future.

9/8 Reading

Reference: Critical Approaches to TESOL, Pennycook

While Pennycook's article was quite dense, it was nonetheless very informative and actually a great detailed summary of what is going on in language teaching today. Pennycook discusses yet again the concept of Paulo Freire and the idea of the teacher as a transformative pedagogist. He punctuates this with the question: "How does this particular approach to education hope to change things?" (pg. 330) I think that, while the idea of the teacher being a transformative intellectual is really a revolutionary concept because it is not exactly what is expected from a teacher, it is rather limited in its applications in the real world. It sounds like this amazing idea that all teachers can do, but like we discussed in class, it is an intimidating role. A teacher cannot necessarily just change the minds of all students in their classroom. It just is not going to happen. Students, especially those in the middle school/high school age, are already beginning to get set in their ways about their belief systems. We as teachers do not want to interfere with their individualism, especially as teenagers. Plus, parents are not going to appreciate someone who does not live in their home teaching them their values. Again, this depends entirely on the political/social/religious factors in the town where one is teaching. It may be a very liberal community in San Francisco or a very conservative town in Mississippi; teaching for sure is context-dependent. I want to be a role model to my students, but I do not think it is a smart idea to impose my ideas on them at such an impressionable age.

Another thing I found interesting was the focus on the inequalities in the teaching environment in this article. A quote I found eye-opening from Pennycook was this: "This process of becoming Black is intimately tied with the forms of English and popular culture with which these students start to identify" (pg. 332). I found it amazing that Ibrahim's article that was found in this issue where the article was published was about how African students began to "act black" so to speak and fit in with the "racialized world of North America" (pg. 332). It is a rather strong statement to make. Sometimes our ESL students will be from countries that have no access to American history, and even if they do, they will never completely understand the racial tensions that exist here. Our generation only knows because of textbooks and possibly parental examples; my parents grew up during the Civil Rights Movement, so they know what it was like here, and that's at least what I have to go off of when I am talking about it. It was not surprising to me that these African students would want to find a cultural identity similar to their own, and they have to adapt to survive here, but it was still strange to just see it in print. It is another thing I do not think I could ever discuss with my students; it is something they should know if they plan to stay here, but at the same time, it is not politically correct to do so. It is such a Catch-22, it's hard to really decide what is correct to do and what is not.

9/6 Reading

References: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching, Chap. 1 and 2, Kuma

What I found interesting about Chapter 1 is the role of the teacher section. When I read Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" last year, he referenced this shift from being the passive educator to an active one, which to me seemed like a no-brainer. Kuma is correct when he says that it "has been a perennial topic of discussion in the field of general education as well as language education" (pg. 7). Being an education major, I have to constantly think about my teacher personality and teaching style, and what type of educator I am going to be. I really do not want to think of myself as being passive in any way; education is an active process, at least that is what I have always perceived it to be. I feel like I want my classroom to be interactive and communicative, because I am a huge proponent of teaching a language through interpersonal and presentational communication strategies, like role-play, skits, and real-life simulations. The main focus for the students learning the language is to fit in with their new country and the social aspects that come along with it. I have talked to people who teach at the ELI, and all students have wanted to know so far is how to go to the doctor, how to ask for things at the grocery store, practical applications for the language, basically. I think that the same goes for high school students learning Spanish in my classroom. Motivated students want to get across an idea to a native speaker and be understood. Language is essential to maintaining social relationships and an overall language community.

I feel like this quote from Zeichner and Liston on pg. 11 makes an excellent point, "learning to teach does not end with obtaining a diploma or a degree in teacher education but is an ongoing process throughout one's teaching career". This is undeniably true. Teaching is a continuous process, and we must be very open to adaptation and change, no matter when or where we are; in the classroom or outside of it. The education world is constantly changing and creating new ideas for how to become the best teacher, but yet again, I still do not feel like there is a concrete answer or theory to becoming the "best". To me, being the best teacher I can be is adapting to the dynamic of my students, and teaching them what they want and what they need to know while making it useful for them in their daily life.

Finally, in Chapter 2, Kuma talks about the "postmethod condition", and I feel like these quotes sum it up best for me, "the postmethod condition empowers practitioners to construct personal theories of practice" and "signifies teacher autonomy" (pg. 33). While I do not entirely understand what the postmethod condition actually is and what its implications are, I have to say that he poses a good argument. I feel like for too long, there have not been enough studies that include teacher-made practices. We talked in class about the inequalities between the female teachers and male theorists in the education world, and it still rings true. To get a real and honest perspective on education, why not ask the teachers themselves? Seems rather intuitive from my end. Teachers are the link between theory and practice. Why not include them in the research?