Mai's TESL space: Learn as I go

Week 14 Class reffection - Testing and Evaluation

2009-04-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

We started the class by actually doing a test designed for ESL students called AccuplacerESL. I was in group 2 and the test i did contained a writing exercise, a grammar and sentence meaning exercise. Considering the principles of testing that we learned in the previous class, i think this part of the test meets the requirement of validity, since it is challenging enough for students whose English is under evaluation. However, i could hardly see authenticity on display, because all the questions were asked separately and divorced from the context. One more thing, which also was a matter of concern for many students in the class, was the fact that our essays in the writing part were graded by the computer! I was really surprised at first when receiving the writing score after submitting my answer, and seriously had no clue how the computer, a machine with practically no brain, is intelligent and flexible enough to read and evaluate human writing. I believe by making the grading process quicker and easier, the designers of the test have, in some way, undervalued human ability and intelligence.

After discussing the test and voicing all our concerns and comments, we continued with a test-designing activity which was done based on a reading text. Our group was assigned a text about US history, and we had fun creating the exercises.

The last reading reflection of the semester - Just about time for evaluation and testing

2009-04-20T11:48:00.001-07:00

As i do the reading for this week, it turns out that Chapter 24 in the HDB book was also the last reading chapter for last semester's class. However, just as assessment and testing have always been a matter of concern for teachers and students of all time, it's always helpful to re-read about them. This time, what stood out in my mind as i read is the test-taking procedure that the book mentions, including before-, during, and after-test strategies. The reason i am concerned about this is because in the book it says in order to ensure the face validity of the test, the teacher should prepare students for it, which seems to contrast with some of the experiences i had with testing as a student. What happened is for many subjects in school, we often had a kind of testing called pop quizzes, in which our teachers would give us a 15-minute test in class without prior notice. The rationale my teachers held behind this was to keep us all on task and to make sure that we all review the lesson before going to class. As much as this makes sense to me given the fact that many of us tried not to go to class not knowing what we learned in the previous class, it seems to go against the principle of testing, since the students are nowhere near well prepared. Still, on the other hand, i think this kind of testing works in a way that its spontaneity can most exactly tell the teacher what parts of the lesson stick to students the most and what not when they're not cramming for a test.

Also, anothing that is brought up in the book that i identify with is the alternative assessment techniques such as portfolios and journals. For sure these will help teachers evaluate students' performance more thoroughly and continually. Even though during my time studying English in middle and high school, i was tested mostly by formal testing techniques, i think these alternative ones will work well for students at these levels as well. For instance, the teacher can give students a writing prompt every week and have them keep a journal as a part of class work. Each week some journals will be chosen randomly to receive feedback from the teachers, so that by the end of the semester all students have their works read and corrected by the teacher.

Week 14 Class reflection

2009-04-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

This week's class started with Ahmet's presentation about his experience in teaching composition to international students. To me what stood out the most was the difficulties he had when selecting appropriate textbooks for his students, especially when he shared that once he had to change the book in the middle of the semester because it didn't work for the students. This again brought it home to me how hard it is to design a syllabus and choose an accompanying textbook that will fit a class of students whom you hardly know when you plan the syllabus. Sadly, this is what usually happens in the teaching context in my home country, especially at middle and high school level, where we have a set of national textbooks designed specifically for each grade, and the teacher has to rigidly follow the sequence of units presented in the textbooks. Another thing that caught my attention was the follow-up discussion about assessment rubrics for native and non-native students. Personally i greatly agree with Dr. Smidt that at college level, there should be no difference in the assessment process between international studentts and their American peers. Despite the language barrier, we all go to class for the same purpose and one should not be judged only by his/her language abilities.

Next, Jodi gave a presentation about assessment and i think she did a good job presenting by making us actually do the assessment ourselves.

I really liked the next activity in which we worked in group to create and match definitions of evaluation techniques. This is a good demonstration of class activities, and i think it could be effectively used to review vocabulary. Next, we broke into smaller groups to brainstorm activities that can be used to test the four skills, and then carried out a specific one. What i like about this part is that after brainstorming we switched topics and demonstrated an activity that was listed by a different group, which enabled us to share ideas and learn from each other.

The last class discussion about testing was informative, but what struck me was when we talked about authorities and power, the conflict between innovative ideas and long-rooted practices, and the issue of how to apply what i learn here to the real teaching context in my home country. I know it will be hard for a novice teacher like me to try to change routines and customs that have been around for a long time, so as everyone in class was suggesting, i will try to be well-prepared and probably start with small steps first.

Week 13 Reading reflection

2009-04-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

This week's reading continues to deal with the issue of Teaching Writing, with more focus on how to go about designing an effective writing course.

Among the issues that second language teachers need to take into consideration when it comes to developing a writing curriculum, i am particularly interested in teacher's response to students' writing, including giving feedback and correcting errors. One of the reasons why this issue captures my attention is because during my process of learning English writing, i've encountered one incidence in which the teacher collects students' papers and returns them graded, but with no major correction or feedback to indicate how good/bad the students are doing. As mentioned in the book, teacher feedback is essential to students' improvement in learning writing and can come under written or oral form. Based on students' linguistic backgrounds and preferences, teachers can choose the feedback type that works best for their students. According to my experience as a second language writer, feedback that is worded under the form of a suggestion or question rather than direct indication of errors seem to work best for me, since they drive me to get back to my paper and try to figure out how i can improve my writing by answering the teacher's questions or following his/her suggestions. Also, in my opinion, the most important and also one of the hardest thing for teachers to achieve is to make sure their feedback has some sort of influence on students' performance. This can be done by making students produce several drafts before the final products, and the teacher makes sure that teacher or peer feedback is given to each draft.

Class reflection - Week 12

2009-04-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

This week's class focused on teaching writing and the first activity we did in class was to take a look at a course syllabus designed for a college-level writing class and brainstorm all the principles in teaching writing that we see being displayed. Overall, i think the course fulfills most of the principles, and the instructor is also very clear about what she wants the students' writing products to be like. The text-heavy feature of the assignment instructions, in my opinion, rightly serves the purpose of maximizing the degree of clarity rather than overwhelms the students.

Next came Bekir and Chris presentation. Bekir focused on teaching and learning writing at a global level and brought up very thought-provoking questions for the whole class to discuss. One of the questions that i found interesting was whether to consider writing as a skill or as an art. And i agree that it should be a combination of both. Also, in my opinion to second language learners more emphasis should be placed on the first aspect than on the second one, since it is true that even though many of us can write fluently, it takes more to produce an artful piece of writing. Meanwhile, Chris addressed the issue at a more specific level, particularly he had us deal with some techniques that can be used to teach writing mentioned in the book and come up with specific writing activities.

For the last part of class we did our video tape analysis in groups and i must say this was my favorite part. Kizuna, Lilian and I had a great time watching each other's teaching video and we tried to give as constructive comments to one another as possible. I really valued the class time devoted to this activity, and felt like we were real colleagues who were working together to share experience and help improve each other's teaching performance.

Week 12 Reading reflection - Teaching Writing

2009-03-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

In this week's reading, there are a few points in Chapter 21 - HDB book that capture my attention when it comes to teaching and learning the skill of writing.

First, the book distinguishes two types of writing that has been used in academic context: real writing, in which the purpose is to express oneself, and display writing, where writing is a primary for the display of a student's knowledge. Personally i have never thought of writing in this way before, and that's probably one of the reasons why i am really delighted by this. It seems like in school the a large amount of writing falls under the second category, where students are "forced" to show teachers how well they grasp the knowledge in form of writing. And i wonder if that, in any case, may cause the lack of love for writing in some language learners, since they are not writing in their own will. Still, i think one of the things that language teachers can do here is to turn display writing into real writing, or in other words, create an authentic need for students to write about what they have learned. In my opinion, this can be done by a number of ways, one of which being to change the way a writing prompt is worded. For instance, if the prompt which asks students to write about how to make a birthday cake is categorized as display writing, creating a context for the prompt such as "The birthday of your friends' mom is approaching and she wants to make a birthday cake as a surprise to her mom. However, she doesn't know how to make a good strawberry birthday cake and writes to you for help. Write back and show your friend how to make a birthday cake." Here the issue of keeping a specific audience in mind while writing is also brought into play.

Second, the matter of timed writing is also worth mentioning. As stated in the book, for the purpose of evaluation, many in class activities require students to finish their writing in a certain amount of time and after handing the writing students rarely have the chance to get back to it and see what improvements they can made. Although timed writing is necessary in assessing students' writing skills, especially when they prepare for English tests such as TOEFL or IELTS, this does put them under a lot of pressure and make writing a painful rather than delighting experience. Also, this can also cause the bad habit of not planning or proofreading the writing, since often times students give an excuse that they run out of time to do these steps . Language teachers, therefore, need to be really sensitive when it comes to writing within time constraint, and makes sure that we give our students enough practice to familiarize themselves with speed writing when they need to.

Week 11 Class reflection - Emergent reading and writing

2009-03-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

The class began with a small discussion started by JoAnn's question as to whether or not gender makes any difference in one's ability to read and write, since according to JoAnn's experience, her daughter learned these literacy skills much faster than her son. As we discussed in groups and then as the whole class, it seems that most people agreed that this has more to do with individual differences than gender. Also, in my opinion, the fact that one child can read or write faster and better than others rests heavily on the amount of time and practice he/she devotes to reading and writing. Another thing about early reading and writing that i feel greatly identified with and which worked well for me is that very often what one reads at the early stage of the literacy development process will stay longer than anything else read at a later age, and this can also nurture a love for reading and writing which may continue to be with a child for a good long time.

For the first activity, we watched a short clip about a teacher teaching reading to a group of young students and then jotted down the literacy development principles that we saw being demonstrated. The list that we were able to come up with after that includes guessing the content of the reading, explaining difficult words, reading aloud, taking school activities home, taking into consideration students' interests, and another interesting feature spotted by Stephanie is "finger following along". A couple of ideas were then brought up to explain why the teacher did that (and this is also usually done by teachers who work with young learners as well). In my opinion, this gesture might be used to keep young learners focused on what they're reading, in case a large number of reading lines may distract them. This analysis of reading principles very much reminds me of a reading software that i was exposed to while i tutored English language learners at Franklin Elementary school last month. The software is called Reading Naturally, and as i learn about the principles for developing learners' reading skill, it becomes clear to me that the software follows closely these principles. The reading texts in the software are categorized into different levels and based on their language level, each learner is assigned to work with a certain number of reading passages. A goal is set for each learner by the teacher and he/she has to reach that goal before being able to advance to a higher level. Each reading practice starts with the learner choosing a topic he/she is interested in. The computer will then pick a passage and the student first needs to guess what the passage is about based on the picture given. New words are then explained and the learner is asked to pronounce them along with the computer. Then comes the main part of the practice: the student reads the passage along with the computer several times before reading alone. Comprehension questions are then asked to check how well the student understands what he/she has just read. Personally i found this software a very good tool to help second/foreign language learners practice their reading skills, both reading aloud and silent reading. Students can also learn accurate pronunciation of words and good intonation as they read along with the computer.

The next and also last activity was a fun one, when in groups we went out looking for and chose among library resources some artifacts that can be used to teach reading and writing to young learners. Chris, Stephanie and I picked a book about farm animals and decided to use puppets as reading aids. Each student is assigned an animal role and is given a puppet representing the animal. As the teacher reads the story, the student whose role is mentioned would make a sound of the animal role he/she plays. We thought such direct involvement would make reading more fun and exciting to young learners. After working in our group, we got the chance to work together with Thea, Rachel and Brian and exchange the activities we had. I must say the books our partner group chose were all suitable for teaching young learners, and Thea was a really good narrator as she demonstrated the activity to us.

Reading for Week 11 - Literacy and Second Language Teaching and Learning

2009-03-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

This week's reading focuses on literacy skills in early childhood and then shifts toward literacy development in second language teaching and learning.

The first part of Chapter 5 in P&B book reminds me very much of my own experience in learning how to read and write in my native language. I remember at the age of 5 i often held a newspaper upside down, made up things and read it to my father, having no idea why my mom was trying to resist herself from laughing. I also took all of my mother's notebooks (she is a teacher) and traced her handwriting after having been bored with drawing a whole lot of meaningless and disorganized lines. This perfectly matches what is described in the book about young learners' great desires to grasp and develop literacy skills. It also brings into attention that adults or teachers can take advantage of this feature to "plant" the love for reading writing in children.

Literacy development in second language learning, however, oftentimes does not seem to work in such a motivational way. In fact, apart from very young children who learn a foreign language roughly at the same time as they learn to read and write in their native language, many second language learners find it challenging to practice and master literacy skills in their target language. A wide range of literacy development activities mentioned in the book are therefore very helpful as language teachers work with students to help them develop their reading and writing abilities.

Week 8 Class: Creating Creative Speaking Activities

2009-03-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

This week's class continues to focus on the skill of speaking, which seems to be a never-ending topic to talk about when it comes to second language teaching and learning.

Marya started her presentation by posing two questions of choice: accuracy and fluency; segmentals and suprasegmentals. Personally i think it is not easy for language teachers to separate these concepts when it comes to real teaching contexts, since the lean toward one or the other depends on what and whom we teach, and that the imbalance is only applicable at a certain point in the teaching, not throughout the curriculum. For instance, if we teach students a grammar point or how to pronounce a new word, it will be tremendously helpful if the focus is on accuracy, since we do not want our students to have an incorrect perception of that grammar point or word pronunciation right from the beginning. Meanwhile, in a speaking activity where the purpose is to get students to talk, fluency should come first and accuracy should be present only when the teacher corrects students' errors afterwards.

The next part of the class that took place in the GLL was about running a google search for speaking activities after a quick wholeclass brainstorm. Again the Internet is a great tool to look for teaching ideas, and we were able to find quite a few resources that can be used for teaching speaking. I myself found a website where music is multipurposefully used in TESL, such as as speaking prompts (have students listen to the song "And i love you" by The Beatles and use it as a prompt to describe their boyfriend/girlfriend or an "old flame"), or materials to practice intonation, etc. In my opinion, apart from achieving the language goal, songs or music, as culturally enriching artifacts, can also be a good way for students to know more about the L2 culture. Also, i liked the activity of each group going over to another group's findings and using what had been found to create a speaking activity. This was undoubtedly a very effective way to share resources among teachers, since the Internet resources are huge and one might not be able to find what others do. My group worked with some very interesting pictures and we created a story-telling activity based on the pictures.

Peer review of Part 1 of the Final Portfolio, the last activity of the class, was useful as always. The break-up of this assignment into two parts did help reduce the workload we will have to do at the end of the semester, which i really like.

After today's class, the biggest thing that lingers in my mind is how to create speaking activities that are fun, inspiring and engaging to students. In my opinion, this requires a lot on the part of teachers, such as of experience, creativity, good observation, the researching and learning spirit, motivation... The list may then go on...

Week 7 - Class reflection - "Let's talk about talk!"

2009-03-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

This week's class started with Kizuna and Aaron's presentation about teaching the skill of speaking. I think they were very successful in leading the discussion and getting everyone in class to share our own experience in learning to speak in a foreign language. Apart from the issues that may pose difficulties for students mentioned by Kizuna that i greatly agree with, to me another challenging problem when speaking in English is the lack of vocabulary. Since the impromptu nature of speech does not give me enough time to think and choose the vocabulary, i often find myself running short of words to express my thoughts. Therefore, i really liked it when in the next part of their presentation, our presenters mentioned some speaking strategies that can be used to get students talk and facilitate their speech.

The next part of the class which took place in the GLL was very interesting and inspring to me. Since the computer did not work very well, we were divided into two different groups, one listening to the recording and evaluating the students' oral performance, and the other designing speaking activities using props and puppets. Personally, i found the SLOM criteria are too general to reflect the oral strengths and weaknesses of students. However, it can be a great guideline from which language teachers can build a more specific evaluation form depending on the proficiency level and the needs of their students. Next, i found it very exciting and intriguing when watching the other groups who were assigned to work with puppets present their activities. I love Bekir and Jodi's use of animal puppets to teach the modal verb CAN. I like "Chris and company"'s Minnesota-based activity. I was inspired by Kizuna and Brian's use of frog act as story-tellers, and found Chao, Marya and Stephanie's choice of props very interesting, especially the model of organs that Stephanie "wore", which i think can be very useful for teaching about body parts. This fun and practical activity greatly reinforced the usefulness of realia and props in making a scene for a speaking activity and arousing students' interest in the task, thus getting them to talk more freely and enthusiastically. Also, this activity brought to my attention the bountiful resources for language teaching and learning that are available in our library.

Week 7 Reading reflection - Teaching Speaking

2009-02-22T20:18:00.000-08:00

As i read chapter 4 in the P&B book, i felt identified with a lot of what was stated since i've experienced some of them as a language learner. Also, the reading gives me more indepth ideas of the speaking skill from a teacher's perspective.

First, i like the techniques to promote oral language development which are put forward and find them all very intriguing as a learner. Among them, the one which has the most lasting impression in my mind when it comes to practice speaking is drama. I remember doing a lot of short skits in my freshmen year's English Speaking class. My teacher would start by giving us a picture which could be interpreted in many ways, and as a group we described the picture, came up with a short story that related to the picture and then acted it out. My friends and I always had a lot of fun creating the plots and reciting the skit together. More importantly, i could see a lot of improvement in my friends' oral competence as the semester proceeded, since in the skit, all of us got a role and even the shyest person needed to speak up to contribute to the whole performance. The technique worked so well that at the end of that semester, I even started to develop a love for acting, a skill i had never thought i would be good at. In my opinion, this fun activity, together with other interesting ones listed in the book and else where, should be regularly used in the speaking classroom. Just as we don't like to talk when we feel anxious and stressed, language teachers can hardly expect students to speak up if they don't feel comfortable with the atmosphere and the people around them. Creating fun activities, therefore, can be a great solution. Also, i agree with what the book says about letting students have some say in selecting speaking topics and materials. Again the student-centered principle works here and it reminds us of how beneficial it can be to give students a certain amount of freedom in their learning.

How to assess students' oral performance is also an isssue which is worth mentioning. Personally i think both informal and formal assessment play an important part in the evaluation process. Informal asssessment may reflect students' speaking ability better if students feel so nervous in formal assessment that it adversely affects their performance. Meanwhile, formal assessment will give teachers a better idea of how students perform in formal contexts such as individual/group presentations. Besides, in my opinion, it is good that language teachers have a list of evaluation criteria in mind before they go about assessing students, and that these criteria may vary depending on the main focus of students. Moreover, it'll be a good idea to make these criteria clear to students right from the beginning of the class, so that they'll know what to focus their efforts on and somehow turn these standards into their own learning goals.

Week 6 Class: Teaching Listening

2009-02-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

In this week's class, i think Stephanie and Thea did an awesome job presenting the topic of teaching listening. I really liked the way they demonstrated different teaching methods and then got the whole class to provide the name of each technique. I also enjoyed the activity they carried out after that and thought the drawing made the listening very interesting. These activities best exemplify one of the statements mentioned in the book, which says students' listening ability is at its best when they listen for a purpose, and in my opinion, it even works better when that purpose is fun and inspiring.

Next we had a small discussion about the most effective listening activity we had either carried out or been taught, and it was interesting to hear which methods work for each of us, as well as different ideas about one activity, such as dictation. While Kizuna and Stephanie found it boring and ineffective, dictation seemed to work well for Chris and Bekir. I don't think any one is completely right or totally wrong here, it just depends on each person's learning style, preferences, and the way he/she was taught as well. For me personally, i experienced a lot of dictation when i learned Vietnamese in elementary school, and as far as i can recall, this method helped me tremendously with my spelling and punctuation. In second/foreign language learning, i think dictation can also help with students who have difficulty with punctuation, since i know a lot of students might not know how to appropriately use periods or commas when writing in English.

The next part was Solen's presentation about his experience in teaching the four skills in his ESL classes. As i am observing his ESL 101 class, i was able to see a lof of truth in what he shared, and personally i greatly admire his language competence as well as his teaching.

The last portion of class time was devoted to planning for the Final portfolio. We were able to get into groups and discuss how we would go about collecting artifacts for the first half of the porfolio. Adib, Bekir and I were able to decide which artifact to use for which standard, as well as distribute the work among the three of us. I feel more comfortable with the final portfolio this time compared to last semester, since we have everything made clear right from the beginning.

Week 6 Reading - Teaching LISTENING

2009-02-16T14:14:00.000-08:00

Confusion

Anxiety

Fear of technological problems

Insecurity

Embarrassment

Lack of materials

These are just a few things i had on my list when i think back at my past experience in learning the skill of Listening. As i do the reading for this week, i greatly agree with the author when he states that Listening was even a more neglected skill than Speaking in Language teaching in the past. The book mentions a lot of reasons why this happened, among which i feel highly identified with the idea that because the listening ability comes so naturally in one's first language acquisition, and no one has ever been taught how to listen in their native language, the same assumption is applied when it comes to second language acquisition. However, the truth is: Listening in a second/foreign language is a completely different story, and learners definitely nees a lot of instruction and practice in order to become a competent listener in their target language.

About Teaching Listening, I really like Brown's idea of dividing the set of skills into two: macro and micro. In my opinion, these two levels create the main principles and criteria upon which language teachers can build up their own syllabus in teaching Listening depending on the proficiency level of students, as well as conduct their formal and informal assessment on students' performance. Also, the listening techniques listed in the Brown book can act as a guideline for language teachers, and i think they will work best if there are a good combination of bottom-up, top-down and interactive exercises. One more thing i would like to add to the teaching principles is to always set a specific goal for each listening lesson and lead students to using specific skills to obtain that goal. For instance, for one particular lesson, the goal can be listening for main ideas, and the skill exercise might be one which requires students to answer questions about what the speaker wants to convey in his/her speech. These goals of course vary depending on students' needs, but form my point of view, to make sure that students are always listening for a reason is very important. This is reinforced in Morley's principle of task orientation in developing listening materials put forward in the Apple book.

Moreover, like other language skills, the mastering of the skill of listening requires a lot of practice outside the classroom, especially in the case of EFL learners. Back to the Listening-experience list i made above, in order to overcome these obstacles and better understand spoken English, i did a lot of self-study and practice. It was not easy at all at first. Imagine how frustrated you will be when listening to people talking but can only have a very vague idea of what they're talking about, you'll know how hopeless i was at the time. Not to give up, then, was my biggest challenge, since naturally no one wants to listen to something they can't understand. And it turned out that to me, even though it does not make me a perfect listener in English, practice does enable me to make progess. Therefore, i greatly agree with what is discussed in the book about the development of self-access listening materials. This will raise students' awareness and drive them to do more self-study in listening, especially to EFL students whose exposure to the target language mostly takes place in the classroom.

Week 5 class reflection - Feb 9

2009-02-15T11:51:00.000-08:00

In this week's class, we started with Stephanie and Rachel's presentation on Teaching Vocabulary. I really like their idea of using a list of strange words and getting us guess their meaning based on the context they were used. In my opinion, this is a very good way to raise students' awareness of the important of contexts in teaching and learning vocabulary. Besides the contexts, learning word roots can also help students when they encounter new words, as in our group, Thea was able to guess the meaning of the word Mesonoxian correctly right away, since she knows in Latin -ox has to do with night. However, in my opinion, this vocabulary learning technique should be used for high-intermediate and advanced students only, since as teachers we wouldn't want to make vocabulary learning more complicated to our beginners' level students.

The next part of listening to Diana presenting her research on teaching vocabulary was practical, since it's always good to listen to a senior sharing experience. As i am observing the ENG 101 class in which Diana is trialling her vocab teaching technique, i have been able to see that the vocab cards work for the students in the class. Since this activity gets these students to spend a certain amount of time each week sitting down and investigating closely a certain number of words in several aspects (meaning, collocation, word-map, etc), it helps faciliate the learning of vocabulary and help students understand what it means to really know a word, and build up for themselves a good vocab learning strategy in the long run. Still, explicit vocab learning like this, from my point of view, works better for adults/ mature students who know clearly the importance of having a large vocab size in learning a foreign language, than for young learners whose learning style and goals are much more vivid and stimulus-based.

The last activity which took place in GLL focused on Grammar instruction. I was puzzled at first when Dr Smidt raised the question of "the difference between focusing on form and focusing on forms. This reminded me of how one small grammatical item could make a difference considering the meaning of words, and how important it is for learners to be thorough when learning new words. Back to grammar instruction, the activity of going back to our previous lesson plan and thinking of all grammatical items we think students need to know in order to understand the lesson was fun yet demanding. It turned out that we would have to provide students with a lot of grammatical background knowledge in each of the lesson, and what's more challeging is how to integrate such knowledge into the whole lesson so that students won't feel overwhelmed.

Reading reflection - Week 5: Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary

2009-02-08T20:05:00.000-08:00

In this week's reading, the focus is on the teaching of vocabulary and grammar, two important areas which have undergone quite a lot of ups and downs in the language teaching history.

Generally speaking, i myself feel highly identified with a lot of ideas which are brought up in the reading, such as no matter how important the communication approach is in the modern language teaching world, vocabulary and grammar cannot be underestimated, since these two elements provide the backbone for all language skills. Anothing i like is the conclusion that grammmar and vocabulary are acquired most effectively when they're presented in concurrence with other language functions and items. That is to say, students will learn best when the lesson is not primarily focused on intense learning of grammar or vocabulary, but is designed with a specific communicative goal in mind.

Also, i find the Grammar teaching techniques in the Teaching and Principle book really helpful. As a language learner, i have experienced many of these techniques such as charts, objects, maps and drawings and most of them worked for me. Since grammar has a lot to do with rules, these systematic generalizations, in my opinion, help make grammatical structures ease their way into students' mind. However, since grammar is dynamic, it is necessary that language teachers also direct students' attention to some exceptions and changes that may happen, especially in real-life language usage.

As far as vocabulary learning is concerned, apart from the main principles put forward in the book, in my experience, it is important and helpful that the language teacher guide students toward developing vocab-acquisition strategies. This may include a number of factors, which may vary depending on learners' learning style and preferences. For instance, visual learners may learn best when associating new words with pictures and illustrations; while auditory learners may prefer to listen to the word several times before they really remember it. Also, memorization, even though it is passive, is greatly needed in learning new words and phrases. Encountering and using words in context is also a very effective way to learn vocabulary. To me, a new word cannot enter my mind until after i actually use it in speaking or writing, or after i encounter it at least 3 times. The use of monolingual dictionary, as mentioned in the book, is also a good method to learn vocabulary, since it minimizes the incidence of L1 translation. The list of vocab learning strategies can then continue to be built up by both the teacher and students and at the end of the day, students will have a wide range of options from which to choose those that work best for themselves.

Class reflection Feb 2 - Culture's fun

2009-02-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

Today's class focused on an issue which, i think, is interesting to most English language teachers, especially to Non-native English teachers who teach in the EFL setting.

Thea and Rachel started off with a very interesting question that somehow surprised them in the reading. I was also puzzled at first when reading what the book stated about how native students would feel when someone (especially non-native students) borrows their notes. Even though i myself have never actually borrowed notes from my classmates since i came to study here, i wouldn't think they will be reluctant to lend me their notes if i ever ask them, and perhaps that was also why Rachel and Thea found it somewhat "shocking". In my opinion, even though the writer is American himself and as a highly educated person what he wrote about the American culture is mostly reliable, his viewpoints do not represent those of all Americans, and this was clearly shown in class today. I believe any ESL learners who come across the article and read this cultural note would never dare to ask their American classmates for the notes, while the issue might not be as serious as the author said. This brings it home to me that it always helps to be cautious when making judgements about any particular cultural issues. And generalizations, even though they're necessary in creating a significant initial idea of a culture, should be kept in moderation. This is what language teachers should always keep in mind when learning about the L2 culture.

The presentation went on really well as the two presenters got us to talk about more culture-related issues such as cultural differences in speaking and writing between L1 and L2. The idea which was highlighted was that non-native speakers may use inappropriate language behaviors that they themselves don't even notice. According to my experience, inappropriateness in language use here not only refers to speakers being unintentionally impolite when using the target language, but also to the fact that some may be too polite and use very formal language in casual contexts. This was made clear in the following class discussion about the way foreign students addressing professors in the US. The issue of appropriateness, therefore, should be viewed from two ends and deserves considerable attention on the part of language teachers.

The following discussion about cultural differences was very interesting. Since everyone in the class has had some encounters with cultural differences in some way, it was very nice to listen to everyone sharing different stories. However, i think it would help if we could go into more details about how the language teacher goes about teaching culture in the language classroom, as inspired and suggested in the book.

The next part of working in groups and picking an approach to design a rough unit plan was intriguing as well. Chris, Stephanie and I chose Experiential as our approach and we had a lot of fun creating a week-long lesson plan for students to learn about fundamental astronomy through a field trip to the planetarium. Though we misunderstood the instruction a little bit and made a week-long instead of a month-long unit plan, the activity did give me an idea of how to create an actual unit plan later.

Overall, today's class was fun (and short :D) and apart from the professional knowledge, i walked out of class learning more about the culture of the language i am learning. "Groundhog day", "super bowl", "lemon stands" - all these culture-specific terms, i believe, will stay with me for a good long time in my teaching and learning life.

Reading Refection Week 4 - Culture in the English classroom

2009-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

This week's reading in the MCM book delves into an issue which, as far as i remember, was mentioned as one of the teaching principles in the Teaching by principles book: cultural issues in the language classroom.

Looking back on my English learning process, it now becomes clear to me that while i was clearly taught how to write a good academic essay when it comes to the skill of writing, i barely had any idea how to use formal and informal language when it comes to speaking and normally transfer the conversation norms from my first language to English. And even until now i still find myself not competent enough when it comes to conversing in English in formal contexts. Therefore i greatly agree with what the book says, that the incorporation of the L2 culture into the teaching of English in an EFL setting is highly necessary. One more thing being stated in the reading that i feel greatly identified with is that the teaching of L2 culture does not separate from the teaching of the language skills such as Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking. In fact, cultural characteristics, especially invisible ones, will be most effectively conveyed when they go hand in hand with what the students are practicing in class. This, however, may conflict with the 4-F approaches to teaching culture (folk dances, festivals, facts, and foods) brought up in the discussion questions at the end of the article. In my opinion, the 4-Fs approaches should be used to teach culture to student-teachers or English majors who need to have in-depth knowledge about the culture of their target language rather than to ESL/EFL students.

Class reflection Jan 26 - Issues in Professional Development

2009-02-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

This week we focused on professional development and different ways in which teachers can develop professionally.

In his presentation Brian was able to bring up and get the class to brainstorm many issues concerning professional development, among which attending conferences seemed to be the most catchy and popular one.

Concerning professional conferences, i myself attended a workshop at my home university held by an organization named Teachers helping Teachers (THT) in conjunction with the Japanese Association of Language Teaching (JALT), in which experienced English teachers from Europe, North America, Australia, South America, and Asia come to give presentations to English teachers at developing countries such as the Philippines, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Even though i attended the conferences as a student-teacher, i could see they were really helpful for our in-service teachers who do not always have an opportunity to be exposed to new changes and ideas in the language teaching world. Also, considering the fact that in many countries in Asia teaching is an honorable yet not economically wealthy career and teachers very often have a lot more to worry about outside the classroom apart from their teaching, conferences and lectures are good chances for them to immerse themselves in a highly integrative and professional atmosphere and talk and share ideas and experiences with each other, as well as motivate them to never stop learning and enriching their professional abilities.

Also, in my opinion, to non-native English speaking teachers, studying/going abroad to get to know more about the language and the culture they are teaching is a fruitful way to develop professionally, since however well a teacher is trained to teach a foreign language, it's always useful that he is able to get first-hand experience in using the language himself. Bearing this in mind, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training has set a goal to send 2/3 of our English teachers to English speaking countries to study/ do research and enhance their abilities by 2020. Even though this is not easy concerning our economic situation, i greatly hope this goal will be met within the time prospected.

The next part of brainstorming all the questions we might have about various issues in language teaching and learning and writing them down was practical and useful in many way. My group came up with quite a few of them and decided to focus on the use of podcast in language teaching. It was interesting and at the same time challenging to create a detailed plan on how to carry out the research after that.

Last blog entry - Class reflection

2008-12-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

The very last class was short and sweet. It was fun to go around and have a look at all the groups' posters and leave comments. It was also interesting to see how each group's research product came out and how after the research everyone got to know their topic better and deeper.

To me personally, the class was not at all a piece of cake. Reading and reflecting, researching and discussing, all of these and many other things kept me constantly busy and even overwhelmed at times. However, after all the hard work, what i experienced and learned was numerous and useful. I was able to gain thorough knowledge of several issues in second language learning and teaching, as well as reflect on my own language learning process. I learned how the language teaching theories developed over time, and how each method can be applied into the real teaching context so that students can benefit the most. All of this will apparently be very helpful for me in my future teaching, since it now becomes clear to me that as a teacher it's important to not only know how to teach, but also to understand why i teach the way i teach.

The process of doing the multi-genre research paper is also fruitful and inspiring. Even though there were times i felt confused about what i was supposed to do, overall i learn how to manage my time, look for references, work in groups and be as creative as possible in creating the genres.

Class interaction is also what i like about the class. The fact that we work in groups most of the time to complete class activities as well as class projects did make learning more cooperative. And at the end of the day, i am glad that each of my classmate has a lot for me to learn from. I loved the experience-sharing part and was inspired by their teaching stories.

The very last READING REFLECTION of the semester: Assessment and Teaching

2008-12-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

I am not sure whether this is just a coincidence or a purposeful arrangement, but this week's reading comes at a very sensitive and presumably right time of the semester and touches on an issue that is of great concern to students and teachers alike.

As a student i (and i am sure i am not alone when it comes to this matter) have always wished that we could just go to class and study without having to take any tests and exams. School life would be much less stressful and easier to students then, but at the same time it has to be taken into consideration that without tests, exams and other assessment methods, it would be very likely that students would get out of school with a mostly blank mind! And in my opinion, this may be one of the reasons why testing and assessment have, for a long time, become an indispensable part of every school system, or as stated in the book: "a way of life".

Personally i find the principles of language assessment presented in the book extremely helpful and practical, especially to novice teachers who have little experience in test designing. Among these principles, validity is, in my opinion, the most important and also most difficult requirement to meet, since this feature dictates the overall quality of the test as well as the extent to which the teacher is aware of what he/she is teaching and the students' performance.

Another issue which captures my attention is ethical matters in language assessment. While standardized exams produce reliable reflections of the language proficiency level of test-takers, they do not take into account many individual differences that may adversely affect learner performance in the test. I have a couple of friends who are very good language learners in class, but always struggle when it comes to exams. The reason is because they do not work well under the pressure of time constraint and thus usually do not have enough time to finish the test. This brings it home to me that a variety of language assessment methods should be implemented in the language classroom in order to reduce the level of stress and anxieties that students may suffer. Continuous long-term assessment is also preferable and should be given priority in language teaching.

Week 14 - Class reflection – Content-based instruction and Group work implementation

2008-11-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

This week’s class started with Dr. Lybeck’s presentation about using Content-Based Instruction (CBI) in teaching Writing to non-native speakers. I was greatly inspired by the idea, especially when the content being implemented was Second Language Acquisition – a topic which is close to every language teacher’s heart. Also, since none of my language skill classes were instructed in this method throughout my English learning experience, it was hard for me at first to imagine how a CBI language class was like. And the presentation with detailed descriptions of how the teacher goes about teaching the students helped clear the mist of the unfeasibility of CBI in an EFL setting that had been with me since I was introduced to this method of instruction. This change of mind drives it home to me how as a teacher I can teach differently from the way I was taught, as long as the method benefits my students. Besides, as Dr. Lybeck stated, she wasn’t sure if the improvements the students made were due to the instruction or if there were any other contributive factors, still, I believe the instruction has an important part to play. One more thing this CBI writing course that I find really stimulating is that at the end of the course, students walk out of the classroom equipped with not only the skills needed to prosper in their academic writing life, but also a considerable amount of knowledge about second language acquisition that is surely beneficial to their language development in the long run.

Bekir, Kizuna and Veronika’s presentation about learning styles and strategies which followed was really concise and informative. One issue which was brought up by JoAnn during Bekir’s presentation about the use of group work and which is quite familiar to me was the fact that during group work, students may turn to their native language without teacher’s notice. Even though this is a quite natural thing to do when students at a modest language proficiency level have difficulty expressing themselves in the target language, it takes away one of the main purposes of group work implementation, which is to foster the use of English within smaller communities and to maximize students’ talking time. In my experience, many of my teachers used “financial punishment” to deal with this problem. That is to say, the teacher goes around to observe the students while they are working in groups, and apart from taking notes of mistakes and answering questions, he/she also listens and notices students who use their first language more than 2 times in the discussion and writes their names down. At the end of the class, the teacher reads the name list out loud and students whose names are on the list must give a particular amount of money to the teacher. In my case the amount was not too big but it was large enough to “bother” students who resort to their first language too often. Though this solution did work for some of the speaking classes I was in, personally I don’t like it since it seems too straight-forward and the involvement of money may adversely affect student-teacher interaction. To me, a more effective solution teachers might use is to assign each student in each group a specific role, and among which there is one called “moderator” – whose job is to make sure all group members limit their use of the native language during group discussion. The moderators may be asked by the teacher at any time during the group activity to report on how many times their groups have turned to the native language to make sure they are doing their job properly.

The last activity of peer-reviewing on the last two genres was useful as always. Also, I was glad that Dr.Smidt gave some explanations and examples of the posters that we are to make during the last week of class. This gave me a clearer picture of what to be included in the poster presentation.

Week 14 Reading reflection - Learning styles and strategies

2008-11-24T13:37:00.000-08:00

This week's reading discusses the issue of second/foreign language learning from quite a different perspective: learners' learning styles and strategies.

According to the learning styles analyzed in the book, i categorize myself as a visual, extrovert, sensing-sequential, closure-oriented learner. However, before reading the chapter in the Apple book, i hardly had any idea of what my learning styles are except for the visual one, since i remember we did a survey on this matter during the first weeks of class. That's why i really like what the book says about the teacher's own awareness of his/her own learning styles, since they go a long way toward dictating his/her teaching style. Also, thanks to the reading i come to fully understand how important it is for language teachers to always keep in mind various learning styles of the students when designing classroom tasks/activities. Of course as teachers we can't cater for all of our students' need, but it always pays off to do as best as we can.

Another issue which captures my attention is whether or not to teach students learning strategies. In my experience as a foreign language learner, this is definitely useful and necessary. Such strategies as how to memorize new vocabulary and use them appropriately or using guessing abilities when reading, listening and speaking in a foreign language that I learned from my language teachers have been really beneficial to me. However, as indicated in the book, the teaching of learning strategies should not be made into a separate lesson, rather, it should be a small part which is well incorporated into the language lessons, so that learners can take it as a piece of advice rather than something they HAVE TO remember.

Week 13 classtime reflection

2008-11-22T14:43:00.001-08:00

Although the reading covers many things, this week's class primarily focused on the use of literature in the language classroom.

Starting with Adib's concise and well-run presentation on using a short story (or fairy tale) as a teaching material, the class proceeded with another short story-based activity, and i really enjoyed the task we were asked to do: thinking of as many teaching activities developed from the story as possible. Our group worked hard and came up with 20 activities, and it was also interesting to hear other groups share their ideas. Through this activity i came to fully understand how such a small literature work can generate lots of teaching ideas and a variety of thoughts, how important it is for language teachers to be creative and adaptable in creating learning tasks, and one last thing being the sharing spirit among teachers. Since different teachers may have different approaches toward the same teaching materials, sharing experience and the tasks that are designed can help enrich the teaching scenario and circulate bright teaching ideas.

Also, as the issue of blogging was raised, i think i am one of the students in the class who likes blogging and find it interesting and inspiring. Since i have been keeping a personal blog on Yahoo360! for more than 2 years, to me blogging is not a stranger, rather, it is a good way for me to express my opinions, feelings, ideas and more importantly, to share and to be shared. Unlike a personal diary in which the writer writes to herself/himself, blog entries, as long as they are not so personal, are for the writer to share his/her viewpoints and emotions, which very often come out more easilyby means of writing than speaking. The exact same things apply to this learning blog of mine. I find the blog another means for me to communicate with my teacher and my classmates besides class hours. And it seems i am able to express myself much more here than in class, since 4-hour meeting each week is defintely not enough for everyone's ideas to be listened and shared. As a future teacher, i will definitely use blogs as one of my teaching tools, especially when i teach writing.

The following discussion about the final portfolio was really helpful, and Bekir and I were able to figure out what we needed to include in the portfolio. I found Pair-work work really well here.

Week 13 Reading reflection - Overwhelmed with knowledge!

2008-11-17T14:53:00.000-08:00

This week's reading covers a whole bunch of practical issues in teaching and learning, and even though i felt overwhelmed to be taking in a large amount of knowledge all at once, there are quite a few issues that i am really interested in.

First, it is the use of literature as a material for content-based language teaching. I used to think literary works are very often difficult for learners who learn a foreign language. However, as the author indicated, there are at least three advantages to using literature in the language classroom, the most important of which, in my opinion, being that literature gives students insights into what and how language can be used to convey personal viewpoints. Thanks to the reading in which the author describes clearly how a content-based literature lesson operates , i can picture in my mind how i will be using literary works in my future teaching in a way that they bring effectiveness and freshness to my language class.

Another highlight I can perceive while reading is the use of project work and group work. These methods are extremely helpful in getting students to have closer contact with the target language outside the classroom, especially in the EFL setting. The wide range of project topics that are proposed in the book is really inspiring and practical as well. I am determined to appropriately apply these into my future teaching. With a bit of adjustments and creativity, i believe such group work projects would benefit students in many ways and create an authentic learning experience.

Week 12 class reflection

2008-11-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

This week's class focuses on classroom observation and the features of different classroom settings.

Marya's presentation was very focused and task-based. I think our group had a good discussion in finding arguments to support for the use of communicative instructional settings. Also, the fact that this setting has the most advantages also made it easier for us to prove our points.

The next activity of observing and commenting on an English classroom in Korea was demanding yet interesting. The activity the teacher in the clip was carrying out was very much creative and practical, which can give students authentic language practice. However, he was apparently dominating the classroom with too many instructions and a lot of talking. As i was watching the class, i wonder if the students understood what the teacher explained or not, since they mostly just smiled and nodded their heads. But then i came cross the next clip which featured the students' activity right after the first teacher-talking clip, and it seemed all the students knew what they had to do and the exchange between the student customers and bank tellers went really well. This indicated that even though his instruction-giving techniques needs more skills, the teacher was able to get the students understand his instructions. Through this activity it became clear to me that apart from teaching, observing and evaluating other teachers' teaching is also an important part of being a teacher. As in many other professions, teachers can learn a lot from each other's success and failure. It is therefore necessary to develop a critical mind so that constructive criticisms can be made to enhance the teaching quality.

The next part of peer-reviewing the next 2 genres was useful. Our group reviewed the works of Aaron, Stephanie and Adib and i must say their genres are very well-connected to their research questions and after reading their genres i can clearly see the benefits of using creative written works in teaching. Also, our works were reviewed and commented by another group. The recipe received good feedback, but the diary genre definitely needs more work. I was really disappointed when i first heard the comments on our diary genre and for some moments it occured to me that the genre was a complete failure. However, as i think more about my classmates' comments and advice, i came to realize how subjective i was as a writer when i created the genre and i feel thankful because I had a chance to have my work reviewed.

Week 12 Reading reflection - Approaches to second language learning and teaching

2008-11-15T09:44:00.000-08:00

In this week's reading i am especially interested in the three different approaches to second/foreign language learning and teaching that are brought into focus.

In an EFL setting, it seems to me that each of these approaches has its own strengths that can be beneficial to language learners at certain points in their learning process. In particular, for students at the beginning level, structure-based instructional setting can make it easier for new language items to be conveyed and absorbed, since linguistics items are presented and practiced in isolation and errors are frequently corrected. However, as students progress to a higher level, communicative instructional setting with greater focus on authentic language practice works best. Meanwhile, high-intermediate and advanced students may benefit the most in the natural setting, where the target language is frequently and naturally used.

Also, the natural acquisition setting with its unique characteristics captures a lot of my attention. Growing up in a tourist city in Vietnam which hosts a large number of foreign tourists every year, i have met with many language learners who are mostly souvenir-sellers and street-vendors and who learn the language mostly in the natural setting with no or very little formal instruction. Most sellers in a big market in my hometown can speak at least 3 languages and can switch back and forth among them depending on the nationality of the customers they serve. It is true that their language ability is very limited and most of the time speaking is the only skill they have, but the natural setting in which they use the language does make them fairly intelligible. This again brings into concern the importance of a natural acquisition setting in teaching English in an EFL context, which is sure not an easy task to achieve...

How technology can adversely affect the learning outcomes

2008-11-09T18:08:00.000-08:00

It goes without saying that technological advances which have so far been used have gone a long way toward facilitating teaching and learning and make the classroom a much more modern and advanced environment to be working in for both students and teachers alike. However, on the other side of the coin, there also exists some situations in which the technology being used does not have as good influences on learners as expected.

In my own learning experience, technology-aided teaching has become a very common term to teachers of all teaching contexts, from elementary, middle, high school to university. Every year teachers are required to teach a number of lessons with the help of technology, which in my country would be automatically associated with the use of computers. However, what happened when i was in high school was as students we were mostly attracted by the fancy power-point presentation, how the animations were created and how vivid the animated effects were than the lesson itself. Once in my Mathematics class our teacher showed us a demonstration of how a certain type of graph was made and changed and it was so amazing that the whole class turned into a chaos of discussion about which shape the moving graph made right after that. It then took my teacher nearly 10 minutes to get everyone's attention back. Also, there were times when the power-point presentation went too fast that we felt like in a rush, which was affected by the fact that it was hard for teachers to estimate the time for students to take notes when he had had everything beforehand and did not write the stuff himself. Besides, the use of technology sometimes put into question the role of the teacher in the class. I had a couple of teachers who did nothing in class but read from his/her power-point.

Luckily, these incidents happened less often in my language classes. Still, it did occur that sometimes we students felt we missed out on emotional interaction, especially eye contacts with the teacher because she/he was more busy operating the technological equipments.

All of the above is just taken from my own experience and they surely do not speak for any conclusion or theory. It may be just a reminder that no matter how advanced and developed technological achievements are, they can never take the place of the human figure of the teacher in the classroom, since it's because of teacher-student interaction that people are going to school for.

Class time reflection - 3/11

2008-11-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

This week’s focus is technology and how it can facilitate the teaching and learning of a second/foreign language. The first activity of brainstorming all the technological advances that can be used in the classroom is really engaging and inspiring, since apart from the usual equipments which are normally used, it was interesting to see my classmates come up with some very innovational ones such as coffee-grinder, oven, etc. I was bit puzzled at first at how these equipments could be used in the English class but then it became clear that all of them can be realia for teaching vocabulary. Also, personally I think the list would have been more concise and well-related to TESL if the definition of technology had been discussed before we started the brainstorming activity, for it is true that our present life is so much influenced by technology that it’s understandable for people to get confused between what’s technological and what’s not.

Besides, the short wrap-up clip about text and technology that we watched in class did leave an impression in my mind. I felt like I was blown away with the galloping development of technology described in the clip. That again reinforces in me the importance of honing my technological skills to be well-qualified for teaching English in the new era. I fully understand there are so many things about the application of technology in the field of English teaching that I have yet to know, and that’s why keeping an opening eye on these is important for me as a future English teacher.

Bekir and Brian’s presentation which came next was interesting and demanding. The textbook evaluation activity was practical and useful, although I wish we had had more time to work on it.

The last part about the final portfolio was, I must say, tough. It was at first confusing too, since I didn’t get it right when the professor mentioned the final porfolio at the beginning of the semester. Now as far as I understand we have to make an overall review of all the stuff we have been creating during the semester and put them under specific standards. This is definitely not easy, since in my opinion we could hardly meet all of these demands with the work in one course. However, it’s good to know we can do this in pair, which means I can share what I have with my partner and be supplemented with what I don’t have.

Reading reflection - Week 11

2008-11-03T12:27:00.000-08:00

This week's reading focuses on a lot of issues that are close to the heart of second language teachers and the more i do the readings as the course proceeds, the more practical the knowledge in the books become to me, which very much nurtures and strengthens my teaching inspiration.

One thing i noticed about Chapter 11 in the HDB book is the different types of drills that are mentioned. As a language learner I found the drill practice carried out by my English teachers very helpful for me as i first learned a new grammar point. In fact, drills and the repetition that go with this kind of language practice give students necessary practice before they move on to the next stage of being able to manipulate the language by themselves. However, as mentioned in the book, the teacher should be careful when using drills, since the overuse of this technique can make learning repetitive and boring. Therefore, in my future teaching, i will try to make good and appropriate use of drills, with more focus being given to meaningful drills where students are required to produce both questions and answers, not just repeat a sentence and make some minor changes.

Textbook adaptation is also a matter of great concern to me, since i know not everything written in the textbook is appropriate to my students, especially when in Vietnam, English textbooks very often contain exercises/tasks that are mechanical and not very meaningful. For some exercises students do not understand the meaning of the sentences but still can do them correctly. Textbook adaptation therefore becomes more important to me as a way of improving my teaching quality.

The next chapter about Techonology in the classroom is also very informative and practical. Living in the technological era, hardly can any teachers in general and language teachers in particular turn a blind eye toward the technological equipments which are designed to enhance the teaching and learning quality. The benefit of using technology language teaching is of course numerous. One of my writing teachers once used an online forum as a supplement for his writing class and whenever a new thread was posted, it really got everyone in the class involved and contribute, which could hardly happen in a real classroom context. However, one thing that i myself have experienced and which i think can actually happen is that there are times when the visual-audio techniques being used are so dominant and impressive that they take away students' attention and it then takes a long time for teachers to reset the order. In short, whether or not technology has a postive impact on the language learning process all depends on the technological conditions available and the teacher's flexibility and creativity.

Class + Presentation reflection 10/27

2008-11-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

Before our presentation Kizuna and I discussed with each other many times and it was really hard to come up with the activities that would be interesting and engaging to a class of all excellent classmates. Even though I did quite a few micro-teaching and presentations when i was at my home university before, that was my first time presenting in a foreign context and i knew it was not going to be easy.

We started quite well with the explanation of the first activity but then what we were afraid the most did happen: the questions were quite easy to the two teams and we wasted a large amount of time on timing for the answer. Also, the fact that there were quite a few students absent in the class that day did affect our arrangement. Luckily we received on-the-spot suggestions from our teacher and our classmates and finally were able to adjust our plan. The second activity went a bit wild but the follow-up discussion about novice teachers and experienced ones was really interesting to me and i'm glad our short skit was able to arouse quite a few issues for everyone to think about.

Though the presentation is not a requirement for me, i am glad that i did it because i was able to learn about things and skills that i would never know unless i myself actually carry it out. The saying "Learning is by doing" works perfectly for me in this case. I also came to realize that as teachers it's better to give students a task and make them produce a particular and real product at the same time. In other words, as Dr Smidt suggested, students should do something while they're discussing in order to be fully involved in the lesson. This would be a really good lesson for me and i'll keep that in mind in my future teaching.

Also, the next part about peer teaching and lesson plan review was very much fruitful and useful. I was able to discuss with my groupmates about my own lesson plan as well as learn from theirs. The 10-minute micro-teaching were also very effective and i can feel our group worked very hard and we had fun at the same time as well.

Week 9 Classtime reflection: I enjoy classtime and this turns out to be my longest entry ever! =)

2008-10-20T22:02:00.000-07:00

First, I greatly enjoyed Stephanie and Chris's presentation, which clearly showed careful preparation and great efforts. I like the way they organized and carried out all the activities in a well-connected, smooth and lively way, which in itself is a good model of flexible and thorough lesson plan. One more good thing is that they two cooperated perfectly during the whole presentation, which somehow puts me under some kind of pressure since next week Kizuna and i are going to do our presentation on the same topic.

Also, Thea's sharing on her own experience in having students do the multi-genre research project was really interesting to me. Seeing the products made by Thea's students did help me visualize and understand better how diverse and creative the genres can be. Added to this, it was useful to know how Thea and other students in the class as well as my teacher would deal with plagiarism in the follow-up discussion. Every teacher obviously has his/her own way of handling students' misbehaviours, but here a common feature that can be seen is that tolerance and understanding play very important roles. From this i learn a good teaching philosophy: Don't ever push your students too hard and don't say to them: "You are NOT able enough to do this/that".

Additionally, the brief touch on "teachable moments" really attracted my attention. That was the first time i heard of the term and it sure is very much interesting. This, in my opinion, affirms the flexible nature of lesson planning and how being able to realize and utilize teachable moments can help language teachers arouse students' motivation and guide them towards a higher level of performance based on their personal interests. However, this ability undoubtedly does not come naturally. A lot of sensitivities, good observation and quick reactions on the part of teachers are surely needed.

What's more, i think the peer review session is really fruitful. Our group got a chance to have our works reviewed and commented by another group, which is an excellent way for us to look at our product from a less biased perspective. We were glad to receive a lot of constructive comments from Stephanie, Aaron and Adib and i think we'll be able to improve a lot on our genres based on their review. Apart from that, to me it was a great experience to read and review on the genres of Chris, Rachel, Mitch and Thea, who are working on the topic of Humor in TESL, which i find really interesting. Due to the lack of background knowledge, it was difficult at first for me to understand the humor presented in the products, but after listening to Brian's explanations, both Kizuna and I were very excited. However, as Chris pointed out to us, the most important thing about the genre is not the jokes themselves, but more significantly, they are able to prove that there is a close relationship between humor and the outcome of classroom interaction. One thing about this topic that just crossed my mind when i am writing this entry is: Does the teacher have to be a humourous kind of person to incorporate humor into his/her teaching? The reason i am asking this question is because i am not the person who are good at telling jokes or making other people laugh. A good sense of humor is just not a part of my personality and i wonder whether there are any rules/techniques that can be used. I know this sounds like a wild idea but i just can't help wondering. =)

One last comment I would like to make is that I really like the way the class gets more interesting with time and I am able to learn a lot from my teacher and my classmates. Also, one thing i can feel and enjoy is that as the course proceeds everyone in the class seems to loosen themselves a little more. All of this makes learning a much more non-threatening experience.

Reading reflection Week 9: How my teaching desire grows stronger...

2008-10-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

In this week's reading, I found the chapter on textbook evaluation and implementation greatly practical and useful. After reading the chapters i am able to identify where i will be at in my future teaching concerning the choice of textbooks. Specifically, in my future teaching context in Vietnam, the Ministry of Education and Training publishes their own version of national textbooks and i will have to stick to their designs as long as i am still teaching at Mid/High school. I know this means i will not have much freedom regarding what to teach, but at the same time it gives novice teachers like me crucial initial guidelines as to how i am to plan and teach a lesson of my own. Also, as stated in the book, a nationalized textbook does not close off all of teachers' own choices. The door to creative and active teaching is still wide open provided that language teachers know how to maximize their "power".

Also, the part about "The fit between Students and Texts", in which one of the criteria under investigation is how Exercises/Tasks provided in the textbook relate to students' interests, did very much remind me of the different textbooks that i had when learning foreign languages. These examples again are about my French versus English learning experience, and this time it is about the textbooks being used. For my English classes, all of the content of the textbooks used in all grades focus on very general everyday and social issues such as environment, festivals, family, school life, etc., which are of course all useful for us students with respect to vocabulary and grammar acquisition. However, when it comes to my French textbook (which was the authentic ones written by native French speakers), since the title of the textbook is "ADO" - the abbreviation for "adolescent" in French, the story is totally different: most of the book is amazingly about popular teenage issues and problems such as dressing styles, hairstyles, boyfriend/girlfriend affairs, generation gap/conflicts and so on. It is therefore not very difficult for you to imagine how much we loved the fantastic French textbook compared with its practical yet not-very-fanciful English counterpart. As a result, even though French is not our main foreign language, my friends and I really enjoyed the class and we even tried to look up the new words before class to understand the teenage stories that were featured in the textbook, which really amazed my French teacher. This greatly brings it home to me how a student-oriented textbook version can help make teaching and learning more interesting and appealing to teachers and students alike.

Finally, to tell you the truth, the more I read about lesson planning and textbook evaluation in this week's reading, the more my desire for teaching grows stronger and the more i want to apply those guidelines and evaluation techniques that are put forward in the book into my future teaching. I can feel very clearly here how inspiring this reading time is to me as a reader and a future language teacher.

Week 8 Classtime reflection

2008-10-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

First, regarding the class discussion about our ancestors' language, i was really amazed by the fact that many of my classmates have very diverse family backgrounds and it was really interesting to hear how the language their great-grandparents talked connect to them and why knowing the language helps them better understand their personal identities. Though in Vietnam families members very often speak the same language throughout the family history, i have met here in the US many young Vietnamese Americans being born and growing up with the English language and knowing very little Vietnamese who also develop a desire to learn Vietnamese at a later point in their life as a means of defining who they really are. This, together with what many students shared in the class, helps solidifies the idea that learning a language is indeed a process of discovering one's own self, and though it is always good to master a foreign language, it is even better that you don't lose your own unique identities as you try to integrate into your target language's environment.

Also, I found Jodie's presentation really interesting, especially when she showed a short video featuring how people speak different dialects in different places in the US. This reminded me of one element in this week's reading, that teachers should not only teach students standard English but also need to direct their attention to various varieties of English, so that the students know what to expect when encountering real English usage in everyday contexts.

The following activity of using post-it items to match settings with definitions was a little bit messed up but still it helped reinforce what i previously read for the class and sort out important points.

Week 8 Reading reflection: NESTs vs. Non-NESTs

2008-10-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

This week's reading delves into an issue about which i have always developed and nurtured quite a lot of thoughts: Who makes a better English teacher, Native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) or non-native English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs)?

As i read the first part of Peter Medgyes's essay in the Apple book, i was filled with a feeling of inferiority and a lack of self-confidence. The reason is clear: as a non-NEST, i would hardly be able to reach a language proficiency level of that of a NEST colleague who was born and grew up with the English language. And it was even tougher when the author emphasizes "In no areas of English language proficiency can they (non-NESTs) emulate NESTs" and "... very few non-NESTs are able to catch up with their colleagues" regarding language ability. However, as i read on to the part which discusses the bright side of being non-NESTs, security and self-confidence began to return to me. Since as the book stated, both NESTs and non-NESTs have a lot to offer their students and each group possesses some uniques values that the other does not.

Also, with regards to the differences in teaching behaviors between NESTs and non-NESTs, though i agree with most of the teaching characteristics of non-NESTs indicated in the book, i strongly think that in today's teaching context, besides maintaining their teaching styles, more and more non-NESTs are turning toward their NEST colleagues and adapt some teaching behaviors which focus more on fluency, meaning and oral skills; and vice versa, a considerably large number of NESTs who come to teach English in a foreign context learn some teaching tips from their non-NESTs. This shift, in my opinion, helps minimize the dichotomy between the two groups, since whether the teachers are native or non-native speakers of English, they both head toward the same goal of producing generations of students who can communicate well in English.

As the chapter came to the end, i was able to meet with a preferable answer to the question i previously have, that there is no fixed rules on which the concept of an ideal teacher is built, and both NESTs and non-NESTs are capable of being good English teachers based on their language ability, pedagogical skills and teaching experience. These statements very much strengthen by self-confidence as a future non-NEST.

Week 7 - Classtime reflection

2008-10-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

In this week's class, i found the part in which the guest speaker gave a talk about how to utilize the library resources very relevant and helpful. Still, one thing i noticed while searching for reference materials during the process of doing the multigenre research paper is that while the online databases offered in the library website are very diverse and large, the books related to ESL in the library catalog are comparatively limited and somehow it is hard to find those that relate to our topic. I am now still trying to figure out the most effective way to look for library books and it would therefore be great to be receiving advice regarding this matter.

Also, i enjoyed Rachel's presentation and the way she divided the class into two groups of girls and guys to "compete" against each other. As both groups were very excited to answer the questions, get points for their group, and more importantly protect their gender pride, it brought it home to me that sometimes it can be helpful for teachers to conduct activities that aim at arousing students' self-respect, so that they are more motivated to get involved and prove themselves.

Besides, the following activity of revising the lesson plan of another group was also very helpful for me. I could learn a lot from my classmates while we talked and discussed with each other. What's more, even though i did make some lesson plans before, the way things are organized here are quite different from what i previously learned. Therefore, activities like this give me a good chance to practice and get used to the lesson plan making process.

Week 7 Reading reflection

2008-10-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

This week's reading covers many practical issues which are close to the heart of language teachers regarding individual differences in second language learning. I was really amazed at the extent to which the authors of the books were able to address many questions about language teaching in a very concise and understandable way.

Among the issues under discussion, my attention is especially directed toward the matter of personality mentioned in Lightbown and Spada book. As a language learner, i used to think that i am well aware of the influence of learners' personality on their language learning performance, that obviously extroverted people are to master the target language more easily than quiet ones. However, as i read the chapter, it dawned on me that the generalization may work best for the oral competence, but for the other language skills it may not be the case. This leads me to develop a new philosophy that as a language teacher i should never judge my students' language capability based on their extroversion, and to always keep in mind that quiet students also have a lot to offer. One more thing i found useful in this part of L&B book is when the author mentioned the positive effect of anxiety. Before that i did not think worries or anxieties could do any good to learner's performance in the language classroom, whereas in fact they do have a good impact on students in certain cases as stated in the book. This also adds one more thing in my future teaching guidelines: language teachers should know how to make a balance between relaxedness and anxieties, so that they can place on their students an amount of anxiety which is enough to drive them toward a higher level of performance.

Added to this, the parts about teaching across age and proficiency levels are also useful and informative. The author succeeded in pointing out different characteristics of learners of different ages and levels and how teacher's instruction should develop accordingly to match those features. However, personally i found those explanations are somehow general and theoretical. It would have been more practical if some case studies on sample classroom practices were employed to illustrate the principles/rules that are put forward.

Intrinsic motivation and lessons from an old-aged English learner

2008-09-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

As we talked in class about various teaching principles, motivation and its effects on learner achievement, I was reminded of a short YouTube clip that some of my friends shared with me a couple of months ago and which had made me think a lot about my own English learning experience.

The following clip was shot by an American tourist during his trip to Vietnam in March 2007. Coincidentally, Barry (the tourist) is from Minnesota. The 5-minute clip featured a short conversation between the Minnesotan visitor and an old Vietnamese man who sold postcards in Ben Thanh market - the biggest marketplace in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon), Vietnam.

(Please click on the play button to watch the clip - If you have difficulty watching it directly on the blog, follow this link You Tube - Meet Bill from Saigon, Vietnam)

The first time i watched the clip, i must say i was amazed by this old man's English, the brilliant and lively spoken language that is hardly taught in any language classes. He may not be 100 % grammatically correct but is perfectly intelligible, which is one of the most important features of good communicative competence. As i sought for the reasons to explain the man's incredibly good use of English, the things that first came to my mind was his strong motivation to learn the language and the willingness to communicate in English. As he said in the clip, he loved American accent, watched a lot of American movies and readily incorporated spoken phrases that he heard in the movies into his daily conversations with foreign customers. In this old-aged learner's English learning process i could see the presence of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Clearly he learned how to speak English in order to sell postcards and earn money to support his disabled daughter, but that alone could not have enabled him to speak English with the American accent nor master the use of conversational phrases such as "No sweat!" or "What's up, man?" It was the inner motivation, the desire to learn, the love for the language and the culture (in this case the movies) that drove him to his present state that was captured in the clip when he could speak fluently in English with the "American accent". Added to this, the power of intrinsic motivation in this old man is much more strengthened when we consider the miraculous fact that he learned English all by himself without going through any official language instruction! Obviously, social pressures, teacher evaluation or peer pressure exert no weight on this learner.

Though Bill's learning condition and style are very special and different from the majority of language learners, the investigation into his English learning process did make me think a lot about the power of self-motivation in learning a foreign language, and how the willingness to communicate can fasten learner's acquisition. Truly speaking, from my experience, many young English language students in Vietnam who have spent years learning English at school do not have the fluency in speech as this self-taught adult learner does. This puts into question the role of language teachers, the teaching activities, the textbook and many other pedagogical features in creating and maintaining positive motivation in students.

As I looked up this short clip of Bill on YouTube, i came across the sad news: he passed away last month in Saigon because of pneumonia. After the Minnesotan tourist posted this clip on YouTube, Bill became famous and many foreign tourists who came to Saigon went to Ben Thanh market to have a chance to talk with him. That's why the news of his death was passed fairly quickly. Bill is no more, but I believe his lively and admirable English learning experience will remain a good inspiration for many English language students who are lucky to be receiving formal language instruction.

Learner characteristics: Classtime reflection

2008-09-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

In this week's class, we focused on specific principles for second language teaching and paid closer attention to intrinsic motivation. I think Aaron's presentation went very well, since he managed to touch almost all the main issues and engaged the class into an interesting discussion.

One thing that i found quite inspiring during the discussion was the issue of reward. As far as i am concerned, rewards in language teaching to some extent are a form of teacher's positive feedback. However, the matter of when and how to give rewards is very much controversial. As an English learner, I have experienced a large, if not excessive number of such extrinsic motivation as rewards. Many of the times when my teacher held an in-class activity, he/she often pointed out clearly from the start what kind of rewards were awaiting us at the end of the process, which very often made us work harder and more concentiously to finish the task. Another thing about this principle which was brought up in class is the fact that not every student in the class will be able to receive the reward. And most of the time this prestigious "ball" are tossed among a group of "elite" ones who conceivably outperform others. In my opinion, in order to decrease the frequency of this and help all students in the class feel good about teacher's rewarding, teachers can make it clear to the class that this particular student has done a really good job and receives the treat, but this does not mean he is the single best student, and that anyone in the class could catch up to achieve similar good result provided that they have the desire. Besides, i like the way Dr Smidt modeled the use of rewards when she asked us to go around the classroom and put an aterisk next to the point we felt strongly about. Clearly this activity has the drawback of "making public things which should be private" (as she put it) and caused some disappointment to some individuals, but it directly told how students would feel when they receive rewards and comments from the teacher. The follow-up discussion proved how teachers should consider different techniques of reward-giving so that they will work best for their students.

An activity that we did in class which i am interested in was the diagnostic of learner's learning style. This very much directs my attention to the fact that as language teachers, it is important to bear in mind different learning styles that students might have in order to design various activities that cater for a wide range of students' needs and strengths. In my opinion, one's learning style has a close connection with his intelligences and here the theory of multilple intellengences should be taken into account when we examine the effectiveness of language teaching. Even though language teachers cannot cover and strengthen every field of learner's intelligence, it is important that the acivities carried out in the class provide a good diversity.

Week 6 Reading: Cultural issues in Second language teaching

2008-09-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

Among the 12 principles that are put forth in the HB book, the one which focuses on the connection between language and culture in second language teaching really inspires me.

Learning a language is not merely learning about its lexical or grammatical systems, it also means learning about a new culture in the most comprehensive meaning of the word. Many linguists and culturalists have stated that and hardly anyone has ever challenged the idea. In my process of learning foreign languages, i have very different experiences with the connection of language and culture. In my English classes, because of both objective and subjective reasons, most of my teachers were more concerned with giving students language instructions than exposing us to the cultural issues that lie underneath the language cover. The textbook once in a while mentioned some typical cultural features of Britain and the US, but most of the time the knowledge flipped very quickly out of our mind due to the lack of emphasis and reinforcement. In contrast, the story is completely different with my Japanese learning experience. In my Japanese class, my teacher constantly reminded us of the cultural factors that are represented in the language and how understanding Japanese culture can help us use the language more appropriately. The teacher also gave us some very interesting cultural facts about Japansese customs and traditions, which very much aroused my curiosity and increased my interest in learning the language. Clearly, cultural interests and awareness can be a factor that motivate students to learn a language.

As a result, in my future teaching, i am determined to convey cultural traits that are typical of British and American society to my students, so that they can build up adequate knowledge and ideas of the countries where their target language is spoken.

Also, last year my friends and I carried out a research which focuses on the implementation of cultural games about traditional holidays in British and American culture such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas into the teaching of English in high schools. We did some in-class experiments and what we noticed was that whenever there was the involvement of cultural activities, the language classroom was much more lively and fun and the students were more excited and motivated. Now that i have acquired more knowledge of this issue, my wish is to continue with the research after i graduate and expand it to other features of British and American cultures.

Content-based teaching in EFL setting

2008-09-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

As Dr. Smidt had us watch a short clip about the SIOP method and raised a short discussion about content-based instruction in class last week, i have been thinking a lot about this instruction type and its feasibility in my future teaching context.

Personally i have never officially had any experience with this method when learning English. However, in high school i had seen some of my French-major friends learn Mathematics and Physics in French and the results of this were fantastic. Not only could those friends of mine communicate fluently in French but some of them even passed the entrance exam to get admitted to universities in France thanks to their good command of the Mathematics and Physics knowledge. When i asked those friends how it felt to study a subject matter in a foreign language, many answered it was hard at first when they need to transfer technical terms they already know to another language, but as time went by they got addicted to the subject and almost forgot about the language, which had then become an instrument for them to study the subject matter. And at the end of the learning process they achieved a fruitful outcome in both the use of language and the mastery of the subject matter.

This, in my opinion, is a good example of the bright side of using content-based instruction (CBI) in second/foreign language teaching. One thing should be taken into consideration, though, is that those friends of mine had already reached a relatively high proficiency level in French when they were exposed to this teaching method. Therefore, the use of CBI in second language teaching is, as far as i am concerned, should be implemented only to students at an approriate proficiency level. It would do no good if students are made to perform tasks that are far beyond their ability and find themselves get stuck in both learning the language and acquiring the subject matter.

Also, in the EFL setting where students normally have very few chances to use the target language outside the classroom, I think it is really difficult to implement content-based instruction. More specifically, in my future teaching context (middle/high schools in Vietnam), students have to work very hard to achieve good scores in mainstream subjects such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, History etc. It would therefore be a double burden if they have to deal with these subject matters in English classes. As a result, i am thinking that it might work if CBI is used at some point in the teaching of reading or writing skills in the EFL classroom, in which teachers direct students' attention to the reading and writing material rather than the language itself. One example of this is the creative writing task in which students' work is to produce a short story, poem or a work of art in English.

Week 5 Reading: How I learned to be polite when speaking English

2008-09-22T13:53:00.001-07:00

In this week's reading about second language acquisition, I find the text under the subtitle of "Learning to use English in socially and culturally Approriate use" in the P&B book very practical. This is because it reminds me of a past experience in which i learned how to make myself sound polite in English.

Two years ago when i was in my second year at college, i worked as a private tutor of a half American-half Vietnamese boy who was 6 years old then. His father is an American journalist who travels back and forth between Vietnam and the US to write articles and reports. Every year the family would live half of the year in Vietnam and the other half in the States. Since at the time there was no international school in Hue - my hometown and the little boy's first language is English (he speaks very little Vietnamese), he couldn't go to the local elementary school where the language of instruction is Vietnamese. That was the reason why his parents decided to have private tutors to go to their house and teach him. At that time i was teaching him Mathematics in English. And during that time i must say i was able to learn as much from him as he did from me. In fact, i taught him how to solve Math problems and he (unconciously) "taught" me how to use English in a socially approriate way. One of the most interesting lessons i learned from him was to say "please" at the end of a command or imperative sentence to show politeness. How i acquired this language behaviour was interesting. During the first days when i gave my little student some math problems to solve after having explained to him the rule, i often said: "Do this problem, Cullen (his name)!" or if i needed some thing that i wanted him to give me, i would say: "Give me a pencil!". I did not realize anything wrong in those utterances until one week later when after one of my commands, he suddenly said to me: "Teacher is not polite!". I was very surprised and immediately asked him why. The answer was that his father told him to always say "please" when he wanted somebody to do something for him. Of course he gave that comment in a normal non-sarcastic way that a child usually says when he experiences something which is different from what he is taught, and from that time onward i always try to remember to put "please" into my imperative utterance to show my politeness. Though this is just a small element in learning English, none of my teachers had ever directed my attention to it before my little student actually pointed it out to me.

Now that i read the text about "learning to use English in socially and culturally appropriate ways", i come to understand better how important it is for English teachers to raise students' awareness of social and cultural norms that are reflected and used in English, for it is true that the ability to use a foreign language fluently does not easily entail the capability to use it appropriately.

Week 4 Reading reflection: Second Language Acquisition Theories

2008-09-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

Among the many theories put forth by linguists and psychologists described in Chapter 2 of Lightbown and Spada book, i especially take interest in the Behaviourist theory, the affective filter hypothesis in Krashen's "monitor model" and the interaction hypothesis.

The reason why i'm interested in the behaviourism theory is because i find it very familiar to me. In fact, for a long period of time in my English learning process, my classmates and i were made to imitate our teacher and learn by heart most of the dialogues in the textbook. Then in the next class the teacher often called on some students and had us recite the whole dialogue. After that grades would be given depending on how much of the dialogue was properly covered. Although as students we usually complained with each other about how hard it was to memorize a passage written in a foreign language and only did it under the pressure of grades, it turned out in the end that to me and some of my friends, the language that we involuntarily memorized at some point returned to us with very little conciousness and became very helpful, especially when it comes to making conversations in English. From this personal experience, although i do not totally agree with the behaviorist theory, i do believe second language acquisition rests partially on habit formation, and imitation and memorization can be creatively utilized to make students get into the habit of using the target language. This, in my opinion, may work well in the EFL setting in which students have very few chances to be exposed to the target language outside the classroom. Therefore, in my future teaching, i will use imitation and memorization in a suitable amount to familiarize my students with the new language form, and the techniques being used will be more varied and interesting, not just the usual learn-by-heart.

Another hypothesis which is quite close to my heart is the affective filter. As indicated in the book, affective factors such as feelings, motive, needs, attitudes and emotional states can be a barrier that prevent learner from acquiring language. This theory is perfectly true in the foreign language teaching context in Vietnam. In fact, many native English teachers who come to Vietnam to teach English shared the same experience that the first time they went to class and asked students a question, most of the time the answer they received were long periods of silence! This does not mean that the students do not know the answer, it is either because they are not "brave" enough to raise their hands and give the answer, or they are not sure about the answer and thus fear to lose face. Besides cultural differences, affective elements such as shyness and anxiety have a part to play. This hypothesis therefore focuses my attention on students's feelings when teaching and how they can affect students' performance in learning a language. And as a teacher-to-be, i am determined on creating a relaxing study environment in which students will feel free to express their ideas in the target language without fear of losing face.

One last theory that i find practical and interesting is the interaction hypothesis and the concept of Zone of Proximal Development. This theory again reminds me of my time studying French. It now becomes clear to me that the reason why i often find myself struggle when speaking French is because i hardly have any social interaction in learning the language. There was a time when i thought i could practice speaking French to myself, but what turned out was i did not know how well i was nor whether or not i could be understood by other people. As a result, in my opinion, as language teachers it is necessary to give students ample opportunities to practice the language with their friends as well as native speakers of English or those who can produce good English. Also, it would help if teachers are well aware of learner capability so that they can design appropriate interaction activities to elevate students to their zone of proximal development.

Week 3 and 4 - Class-time reflection

2008-09-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

To be honest, that night when i walked back to my dorm after the first class three weeks ago, i felt a lot pressure in my steps. I didn't expect that my first class at a new school in a completely new place thousands of miles away from home are comprised mostly of graduate students who have had a lot of experience in language teaching. I looked at myself and a feeling of fear suddenly filled my heart: I'm almost the only undergraduate in the class, I hardly have any teaching experience, and I am an international student who has been abroad for the first time and who knows almost nothing about the new environment I am living in.

Week 3
I still had that feeling of pressure with me when i went to class the second week. However, as class proceeded, i started to feel much more secure and less worried. I really like the presentation about different teaching approaches and methods presented by Chris and Veronika. I like the short clip of movie that they used to introduce the topic, which is a very good and vivid example of two different teaching methods, one that is motonous and classical in which the teacher is like a preacher giving a speech in the church, and the other in which the teacher is very engaging and humourous. Also, i especially found the following part in which our professor had us work in group and match each teaching method with its corresponding definition very effective. Not only did that ativity help me sort out specific information from the reading but it also made my brain work hard to differentiate various confusing methods. From that activity i learn from my teacher the method of getting students to organize the knowledge they have acquired by giving them a chance to really work with it both by themselves and with the help of other fellow students. To put in another way, "learning is by doing". If the teacher just tests students' understanding of the lesson in the usual questions-answers way, he can never be sure that every student in the class understands the study material. Instead, having students to go out of their seats, go around, talk with their friends to figure out the answers is a way of making learning an effective and fruitful process.

Week 4

This week we learned about first and second language acquisition, with more emphasis being put on the latter since our goal is to teach English as a second language. Like last week we had a lot of reading before class and i somehow felt overwhelmed by different theories put forth by linguists and psychologists. Luckily, in class Dr Smidt directed our attention to 8 specific theories that are most important in second language acquisition process and thanks to that i was able to have a closer look at each theory and know what i should focus on. Again i learn from my teacher the importance of knowing "when to do what" when teaching. Even thought the main role of teachers in the modern language classroom is to guide students toward solving a problem by themselves, there are cases in which teachers should take part in the learning process earlier and give students the help they need at the right time, instead of waiting until they get lost in the forest of professional knowledge to give them a hand.

Also, I really like the activity in which we worked in pairs to figure out a good way to present a theory to other students in the class. Apart from the knowledge being shared and discussed, to me working in groups is a good way to get to know my classmates and feel a friendly atmosphere pervading the classroom. I would therefore definitely encourage the use of this technique in my future English class.

Until now after three meetings, i am starting to feel a lot more secured in class and am very much expecting a fruitful time learning about English teaching methods here. I know the road ahead is not going to be easy, but i have this philosophy which i have always kept in mind and which, i believe, will work for me at this point of my life: "Try your best and God will do the rest."

(To this end you may realize this entry has wandered off the point. I didnot intend to put that many emotional thoughts into a class-time reflection but somehow my thinking has carried me away. Thank you very much for reading and sharing with me).

Reading reflection Week 2: LANGUAGE TEACHERS AND TEACHING METHODS

2008-09-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

It goes without saying that to every language teacher, the study of teaching methods is important and helpful in many respects. However, to be honest, before doing the assigned readings for week 2, the one and only teaching method that I can call by name is the Communicative Approach. The reading of MCM and HDB chapters on Methods and Approaches in language teaching has, therefore, greatly opened up my horizons both theoretically and personally.

From the first three chapters of Brown's Teaching by Principles, I come to understand in greater depth how long the history of language teaching is and am acquainted with different stages in the development of language teaching methods. It becomes clear to me that like all other professions, language teaching has undergone a great deal of ups and downs, high and lows, rejection and acceptance, as a result of which new methods were continously invented and applied by language teachers. Also, the process of reading and learning about various teaching methods and their corresponding terms such as the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method, the Silent way, ect. was, to me, an exciting journey into self-analyzing my own experiences in learning foreign languages. At many points in reading the chapters, I kept flashing back on my previous language classes and tried to identify which of the methods being described in the book had been used by my teachers. For instance, I found out during my 7 years learning French at school, I was taught mostly in the Grammar-Translation method, which probably is the main reason why even though i did quite well on French grammar tests, it seemed to take me forever to put all of those grammatical points and the vocabulary I had learned together to produce a good utterance in French. Also, after reading through the chapters, I realize to my amazement that as a language learner, I have, to a certain extent, been exposed to almost all of the teaching methods under description. To me, these methods are like friends whom I previously knew by face, and I am now thankful to the readings for giving me their names.

What is more, the reading of methods and approaches in language teaching gave insight into my perception of language teaching. I came to realize that as a language teacher I can’t just copy my teachers’ methods and teach my students the way I was taught, or just follow the methodology book with no in-depth knowledge of why certain techniques are taken. In fact, as far as I am concerned, every method carries in itself principles that are suitable for certain teaching contexts and styles, and it is a language teacher’s obligation to carefully consider those principles before adapting any particular method, as Larsen-Freeman (2000) stated, teachers should be “clear about why they do what they do”, which then will enable them to “teach differently from the way they were taught”.

Last but not least, as clearly indicated in the reading chapters, no single method is perfect, that is to say, each of them has its own drawbacks and most of the time one specific method only works best to students at a certain proficiency level or in a certain social and psychological teaching context. Again it falls on language teachers to make a wise decision on what methods to be used in each stage of their teaching. As a future English teacher, I would prefer to make a good blend of different methods so that my teaching will be most effective to my students in their language acquisition process. This ambition undoudtedly requires a lot of efforts and experiences on the part of the individual teacher.