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What really struck me about this reading is to realize that I have followed outdated models for teaching listening for so long.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.

Reading log 6

The Three Dimensions

The three dimensions of language Meaning, Form and Use, are different from the linguistic approaches that understand language in a hierarchical way. But both are necessary, and complimentary, I believe. It all depends on what educational setting one is in, and what the goals of instruction are. For instance, people who are studying language to become language instructors crucially need of both approaches. However, most language learners approach institutions to learn how to communicate effectively in a broad variety of contexts.

         Taking that into account, the systemic nature of the MFU approach would surely benefit more language learners, especially because so many teaching materials and approaches lean on integrated-skills approach that call for speakers, listeners, readers and writers that can convey meaning appropriately and grasp meaning from different kinds of texts.

         What this reading showed me was that one needs to be more rigorous when preparing lessons, and one needs to analyze each piece of language we are about to teach with beady eyes. That way, we instructors are really prepared to help students when they encounter the subtleties of language. And they will find plenty of them in their life in English!

Reading log 5

The Fine Art of Listening

This article has struck me because that’s how I feel about that dual aspect of communication, listening versus offering and saying. Many people think that if you don’t say really clever ideas, and as much as you can, then you’re not a thoughtful person to be around. And I wonder, how do people become knowledgeable and experienced in the first place? Probably by listening to others.

         Speaking specifically about education and the role of teachers in their communities, developing a good listening skill is key. In order to understand learners better, and to take the best courses of actions to help them, teachers must listen carefully and be aware of signs of success or frustration, comfort or distress, and the hints of the impact of our instruction in the setting where we teach.

         Someone told me once that we should never press our hands to our ears when people who actually hold negative feelings towards us speak to us. There’s always some truth even in the words that come from people who don’t have good intentions. Obviously, that’s an extreme statement, but I see some of it in this reading. The moral I can extract from this piece about the art of listening is that being a good listener makes one apt to properly receive and deal with the huge amount of information that comes from countless sources, and process that information critically.

Reading log 4:

Teacher change and the role of reflection

Reflection and sound reasoning can impact people in radical ways. I enjoyed this article because there is a huge trend in modern education that calls the implementation of critical thinking in different aspects of our lives, and in education. The problem is that when it comes to actually applying higher order thinking to the different techniques and activities in class, educators might feel overwhelmed because they don’t know where to start.

         The reflective cycle proposed by Carol Rodgers seems to me like an strategy teachers can use to subject their teaching practice to scrutiny and assessment.

         The main advantage I see for using the cycle of observing, interpreting, generalizing and planning is that this process, when done systematically, can help educators improve their teaching because it will make them more aware about what helps or challenge learning.

         One question I have about the reflective cycle is whether we could implement and use a version of it that could be presented to students, so they can also evaluate themselves in order to become more independent learners. 

Reading log 3

A cycle from Birth to death

Team work is not an easy task. When people embark on a common project of accomplishing common goals, it’s beneficial for them to know about what working together on a team involves. This article discusses a very interesting dynamic that goes from the moment when groups form, up to the moment when they accomplish their goal. I'm curious about the fact that this article claims that it’s founded on studies that ultimately came to the description of the four stages: forming, storming, norming and performing, and transforming. One aspect that caught my attention about this article is how groups evolve from disagreement and strife into a fraternal association of people that can put aside their personal interests, in order to succeed at accomplishing common goals.

         For future occasions on which I need to work on a team, I don’t want to forget that very positive things can come out from difficulties, and that it’s natural and healthy for people with strong views to clash at some point.

Reading log 2

Providing a set of activities that support students learning

Teachers may have a very committed group of students who have genuine motivation to learn, and a good set of tools to carry out their activities, but those activities we bring need to give the class learner-centered approach.

         The ECRIF framework and its encountering, clarifying, internalizing and fluency stages helps framing the task so the learners and the focus of teaching at all times.

         One quote from this chapter that I find interesting is one by Lev Vygotsky, “What a child can do today with assistance, she wil be able to do by herself tomorrow.” This statement seems true not only about learners, but also about instructors who trying to find ways to help their learners.

         Something I want to remember about this reading is the concept of scaffolding. Every lesson should have smooth transitions that lead the learners from easier tasks to more complex one. This process will hopefully help them achieve their fluency objective by the end of the lesson.

Reading log 1

Learning objectives and their connection with long-time learning

The different kind of objectives within a lesson serve an important purpose-they help set and clarify what students are expected to learn, and how we instructors can observe whether learning has taken place. These two chapters suggest that objectives are crucial because if we can devise well-written, refined objectives, then learning is much more likely to happen. However, learning objectives and teaching objectives need to be established with an aim to help the students, and not from the teacher’s perspective alone.

The ECRIF approach to creating an objective, designing a flow of activities and staging all the components of a lesson, proposes a shift in which teaching and planning are “flipped” from a teacher-centered point of view to a student-centered point of view.

What I found really interesting about it was that no matter the topic or context we are teaching, the ECRIF approach can help us to visualize more readily if learning has happened because of its observation focus, which is  placed on the students at all times. For example, the authors chose the skill of juggling to discuss and elaborate this approach. I cannot think of many things that are more complex, difficult to do, and frustrating than these kinds of practical abilities. And I suspect that many people feel the same, too. Nonetheless, establishing a viable set of objectives, choosing appropriate techniques to teach a skill and practice it, and observing and reflecting on the outcomes, will sure make a difference in terms of what teachers and students can achieve together.

Questions to consider: How to apply this to framework to the context of fixed lessons and syllabi?