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.