Reading log 10

The Cultural Experience

The framework for exposing learners to culture and its four knowings helps learners and instructors to identify where we come from culturally, and others to encounter and try to understand our culture.

         Out of the four knowings (knowing about, knowing how, knowing why, and knowing oneself), it occurs to me that the most important ones are knowing why and knowing oneself. When people understand why others hold certain beliefs and values, and why they have their customs, it’s easier for comprehension, tolerance and fraternity to arise in a community with people from different origins and cultures. That is crucial in our profession because ESOL instructors need to be prepared to immerse themselves in cultures different from their own, and they need to be tolerant with the cultural phenomena around them in order to do good work, and have good rapport with their students.

         One questions that I have is how cultural awareness and the cultural framework fit or might be pertinent within  EFL  groups. I think an answer for this might be that we can address teaching cultural features of the societies students will most likely interact with in their future lives.

Reading log 9

The changing Face of Listening

If one reads between the lines in this reading, one interesting aspect from it is that pedagogy is never static. It continually changes depending on many factors, but most importantly, depending on the people instructors teach and their needs.

What really struck me about this reading is to realize that I have followed outdated models for teaching listening for so long. I believe that the overly structured approach used in previous decades might be a reason why students can’t adapt their listening skills to the different contexts in which they have to interact. But following the Pre-Post-During approach will certainly have an impact on the objectives students might accomplish in terms of listening comprehension.

One of the many interesting aspects of this course, is that we had the opportunity to engage in conversations with people who have many varieties of spoken English and accents, and that was rewarding but challenging at the same time for some of us. So one question this reading left me with is how we can help students develop listening strategies to interact with speakers who have many different speech patterns and accents.

Reading log 8

Teaching Reading in a Foreign Language

Just like in the case of listening, reading activities and tasks are also more successful when carried out with Pre-During-Post approach. Each particular stage in a reading lesson can use learning-centered activities that will help students understand both, main ideas and specific details.

         Something I found interesting about this reading is that teaching reading can be more effective under two conditions. First, building reading skills will be more fruitful if students benefit from exploring texts that use different models. Poetry, news, short stories, and authentic materials. And second, every student faces texts with their different learning styles. This is an aspect that was not deepened in the text, but I would like to learn more about.

         The main constraint that I have encountered when teaching reading in my context is that so many students have such a low level of reading strategies even in their own language. It really poses a challenge for many students when they face texts on certain length. And the trouble is that students need to go over readings that are not level and age appropriate for them just because they are in the texts they bought for their courses. So my question is: how can I make students become interested in pedagogically-prepared material that might not be appealing to them?

Reading log 7

Implications for Teaching

It’s interesting how we can relate almost immediately to some implications for teaching more than others. I suspect this is closely connected with who we are as instructors and what we bring to our classes and academic settings like this SIT TESOL Certificate course.

         The two implications I connected with when I read this article were implication 1 about meaningful input and implication 2 about interaction patterns. And as far as I am concerned these implications where the ones that we exploited the most through our teaching practice here. Throughout the PRE stages of the lessons here we chose strategies to convey meaning and present a meaningful context that was ideally interesting or useful for the students. In addition to that, we tried to keep most of the activities students centered, taking advantage of the Think-Pair-Share technique to maximize interaction.

         I have always paid special attention to the language analysis I class, but the think-pair-share technique, and in general, communicative activities that foster interaction between students, is something that I definitely need to work on. I think that both implications have a tremendous impact on students learning, because they foster meaningful and useful language, and a strong sense of community in the class.