October 27

Module 2, Building Language Awareness was a great follow up from our discussion last Wednesday. It is very interesting that traditional aspects of language, such as grammar, are once again holding an important place in teaching English as a second language. Grammar is being brought back, but in a different light. Instead of memorizing grammatical forms and constructs through drills and rote learning excersizes, it is now important that we teach grammar through activities that include authentic materials that will teach students these grammatical forms in a variety of contexts. I thought the activities in the video were good because it gave the students an opportunity to relate an American history lesson to their own personal histories, and the use of real brochures to plan a trip was a good tool to show students certain grammatical functions in a certain context.

What is diversity? To me, to you, to American society? Why do we have to put a label on people in order to deem certain cities, schools, and classrooms "diverse." The very first page in Ann Johns' article, Linguistic Diversity and Instructional Practices says, "...in many parts of North America, the "African American" census category now includes a growing contingent whose families have just arrived from Somalia or Ethopia in eastern Africa, students very different from the young people descended from West Africans who were forcibly brought to the United States in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries." This is so very true. What makes us categorize ourselves into the White, African American, Hispanic, and Asian categories? It is clearly being based on race - skin color, the shape of our eyes, hair type - IT'S LUDICROUS! This should inspire us as teachers to embrace diversity in a different way than society is telling us to. Each of our students comes to our classroom with his or her own sets of challenges, family life, linguistic abilities. Realizing this may be key to helping our students find themselves and success.

As Johns explores the "Hispanic" group of students' discrepencies between BICS and CALP, I am reminded of the students that I have been observing over the last few weeks. It is amazing how certain students can be so talkative and social - sometimes I think why are they even in ESL? - but when we sit down to read an excerpt from the textbook or work on writing a spatial order paragraph, the student is at a loss for words. This happens across cultures, races, categories, whatever you wanna call them, but it is certainly interesting to explore the differences between 1st, 1.5, and 2nd generation immigrants from a certain country. Of course the opposite is found as well. There is one student in a beginning class that I am observing that rarely ever speaks, and yet when you look at his writing, it seems that he should be in a much higher level. His CALP is great, but his BICS needs practice. In this article, we also see the importance of distinguishing between different varieties of English and what our students know and have been taught or introduced to in the past.

I love that Johns offers solutions to this ever present struggle to embrace diversity and help all of our students achieve success. Getting to know your students is obviously the first vital step. I have seen my CT's methods, and I am very encouraged by her openness with her students. She seems to serve as more than just a teacher to her students, which is really important for children who may be so lost in every aspect of the word.

October 20

Chapter 6: Promoting Learner Autonomy was really interesting for me because I actually related it to my Material Evaluation. The textbook I evaluated, Inside, by National Geographic was an excellent resource to help teachers promote learner autonomy. Kuma says that, "The narrow view of learner autonomy involves, simply, enabling learners to learn how to learn" (133). To me, this really encompasses the underlying message of post-method pedagogy which encourages teachers to form their own teaching methods based on experience in the classroom. If the teacher knows how to promote learner autonomy, he/she will be able to, in a sense, "train" students to use their own personal library of learning strategies which will lead to success and motivation for the student. It is difficult to stay motivated when you are confused all of the time and you are constantly recieving failing grades. Teaching students learning and reading strategies is something that can help them find a starting point and improve their language skills from there. Inside did a wonderful job of explicitly explaining learning and reading strategies, and the district where I am doing my clinical observations has done a great job of building reading strategies into the curriculum which goes along with their textbook choice.

October 13

In reading this week's article, I was a little shocked to see curriculum compared to marketing strategies and who are considered the "customers" or "consumers." The article compared teachers to mothers and students to babies...the whole analogy made me take a step back and think about the way curriculum really works. I mean it's true that the text book writers, material developers, and test writers are the main customers of curriculum, but I guess I have never really looked at it that way. It is interesting to look at education from the viewpoint of marketing or politics and see the way it mirrors the society around it. If enough parents want something and they have a particular importance in a community, it will most likely affect the schools. I am always questioning this - who makes education the way it is? All of us together, of course, but it is just interesting to see it portrayed in this fashion and think about who has the most "at stake" when it comes to education. As I continued to read about content-based, process-based, and product-based curriculums, I was confused as to why we are making a distinction at all. Why don't we take all of these aspects into consideration? She does go on to say that depending on the needs of the students or area, many of these may be combined to form the curriculum, and I wonder once again, who makes that decision?

I also found it interesting to take into consideration what the role of the target language is in the particular community where a curriculum is being developed. If we truly were to take this into consideration, wouldn't all American students be learning some target language at a younger age since so many languages are spoken widely in the U.S.?

October 6

In reading Kuma's Chapter 8, Activating Intuitive Heuristics, I was faced with a similar reaction I have had to much of this book. As I began the chapter, I definitely agreed with the whole "self discovery on the part of the learner," and I still do see how amazing this would be...but I am faced with questions of practicality and if this concept is a little bit too idealistic. In episode 8.2, the teacher does a great job of fostering this self discovery, but how many classes out of 10 in that same scenario would have gotten the same grammatical structures out of looking at this picture? I bet this very teacher if placed with a different group of students would not be able to get this point across herself. What happens when you plan this great activity and present it to the class to be answered by a sea of blank faces. We could argue that this goes back to knowing your students, but what would this teacher have done to foster self-discovery in a basic ESL class? Would we still be striving for this, or would we be taking a more deductive approach? As I read about the benefits of inductive teaching, I began to think of my own learning styles. I am a deductive learner. I like to be given the rules and the opportunity to practice and master them...I am not really sure if I would do well in this type of setting. I would feel lost and without direction. I was glad that the chapter progressed to talk about more of a mixture between inductive and deductive strategies, and I think if we look at the brain and go back to what we have learned about left/right brained studens, we would see the importance of including both. This also seems to me to be very westernized...I wonder how students of different cultures would take this push for self-discovery. This would be interesting to research across levels and cultures!