Cultural Awareness

Raising cultural awareness in a classroom is extremely important.  It is important for every classroom, whether there is a non native speaker in it or not.  In cases where there is a student from another culture, teachers might often try to make that student feel comfortable my including their culture into the classroom acts, but it is necessary to teach those other students about that culture as well.  As a way of not singling any one person out, I have always thought that it would be fun to dedicate a week every so often to learning about another culture.  

Especially with the technology and internet, it is becoming more and more important for students to be able to interact with other cultures every day.  All over the internet, people from many different cultures are interacting.  Whether it be facebook, playing online games, or even in researching a topic for school, it is important to take in the ideals and thoughts of those from other cultures to understand what you are viewing.  If students are unaware of what's out there, they can become very closed minded and  possibly even xenophobic.  In teaching cultural awareness to your students, you are helping them to become citizens of the world and hopefully building towards a tolerant classroom, which becomes a tolerant school, and others will learn from that as well.



Paper articles:

1. Learning to Read in a Second Language: Research,
Implications, and Recommendations for Services by ESTHER GEVA, PhD
http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/documents/GevaANGxp.pdf

2. Writing Theory and Practice in the Second Language Classroom: A Selected Annotated Bibliography by Torild Homstad & Helga Thorson http://writing.umn.edu/isw/assets/pdf/publications/Homstad_Thorson94.pdf

3. English-as-a-Second-Language Reading Instruction in the United States: A Research Review by Jill Fitzgerald
http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/27/2/115.full.pdf

Grammar Teaching

In the activity that we did last week, I listed grammar as something that is not one of the most important things in language learning.  However, when looking at it more carefully, it comes down to a lot of questions, and the learner's particular variables.  Some of the things that Brown lists as the variable that determine the importance of grammar include age, proficiency level, educational background, skill, register, and need or use.  I think when I did the activity last week, I was looking at grammar in terms of speaking for survival.  I don't think that perfect grammar is necessary when communicating to a native speaker for directions, however, what about writing?  If an adult is trying to write a professional, formal letter, grammar and vocabulary are extremely important.

So, as I have learned in my other education classes, writing is the hardest of the different language arts subcategories to teach- so how to we teach this to second language learners?  Are the same techniques used in both situations?  Of course it depends on what I stated before: age, proficiency level, educational background, skill, register, and need or use.  

Some of the things that Brown presents to teach grammar include using charts, objects, maps and drawings, dialogues, and written texts.  However, my question is: Say, if I am teaching a general 5th grade classroom with a few English language learners in it (who are all at different levels), how do I give them assignments?  We have talked in class about how to assess the work of L2 learners in different ways, but how do we make assignments for English Language learners who are so far off from the proficiency level of their classmates?

Reading Strategies.

The techniques for teaching reading strategies are something that I learn a lot about in my other classes, and reading is something that all students struggle with- not just second language learners.  Brown says that students need to identify the purpose, learn left to right, top-bottom decoding, learn silent reading techniques for rapid reading, skimming, scanning, mapping/clustering, guessing, vocabulary analysis, distinguish meanings, and process relationships.  I think that a major part in learning to read is motivation, or finding something that interests each particular student the most.  This could also mean, in teaching English as a second language, that the student reads in their primary language.  If a student is having difficulties learning in their L2, it could mean that they never fully learned how to read in their L1.  They may have difficulties getting motivated doing something that they never fully learned in the first place, so by reading in their first language, the student can get motivated to practice their reading skills.

Supporting the first Language

The article by Cary is something that is a big issue in teaching English as another language, which is how to support a student's first language when you don't speak the language.  I thought it was interesting to find that students who are placed in a bilingual program, with first developing a strong foundation for their first language, will out perform students who are placed in ESL classes which are all English.  However, I think that bilingual classes are more of a luxury because I feel like it's rare to get a group of students who all speak the same language, all live in the same area, and that area happens to have a teacher who speaks that language to make a bilingual class.  This is something that is common with Spanish, but can be really difficult for other languages.  The article also talked about parent involvement with the classes, with an emphasis on encouraging the use of primary language at home, such as writing and reading stories.  I think that parent involvement is extremely important when children are in younger grades, and with students whose parents' do not speak English, this can be very difficult for schools and teachers to get those parents involved.  The article mentions oral and written translations in the classroom.  In the article, Dolores learned to say simple things such as "please", "thank you", and "good morning" in a dozen languages, and I think that this is a very simple way to show parents and students that you care and want to help.  Through getting support from a wide variety of bilingual helpers, she was able to make a big difference in her classroom.

Week 6

In chapter 4 of Brown, the principles of cognitive, socioaffective, and linguistic are discussed as the foundation of teaching practice.  One of the things that is discussed here is the importance of learning a language’s culture when learning a language.  I remember in high school when I learned Spanish, the book that we had often made connections to the Spanish culture.  However, many languages are spread across vast cultures, so how do we teach a culture with the language?  English, for example, is spread across tons of countries, not to mention the cultures within those countries, so what culture do we teach with it?  If I were to teach English as a foreign language in Japan, what English culture would I associate with?

Chapter 16 of Brown reminds me a lot of a podcast that I listened to recently for one of my other education classes.  The podcast talked about teaching writing to students, and stated that you can give them ideas for writing strategies, but in the end, the student needs to have their own strategy and style in order to become a successful writer.  Brown discusses a similar idea when talking about language learning strategies, by saying that students can be intrinsically motivated on their own, but by allowing students to develop their own strategies, they may become more motivated.  This is similar to many other situations in life, such as reading.  If there is a book that I am supposed to read for a class, I cannot get myself motivated to read it, because I am being forced to do it.  However, if I was relaxing with no homework to do, I might decide to read that same book because I have decided to do it on my own time for fun.

Week 5

In The End of CLT: A Context Approach to Language Teaching article, the author states that CLT is starting to have a negative effect.  The article gave a lot of examples for this reasoning, such as, “the view seems to be 1) assume and insist that CLT is the whole and complete solution to language learning; 2) assume that no other method could be any good; 3) ignore people’s own views of who they are and what they want; 4) neglect and ignore all aspects of the local context as being irrelevant” (Bax 280).  In my opinion, we cannot rely on one method of language teaching to be the best one.  There are all different kinds of learners, ages, and days, and the teacher must be prepared to switch up their teaching methods when necessary.  This goes for all aspects of teaching, not just language teaching.  If a class does not understand the material or not getting involved, it is the teacher’s duty to step aside, and see what they can change about their own teaching.

In connection to the article listed above, HU’s article about the educational Chinese culture backlashed with the End of the CLT article because those ideas seem to be thrown out the window now. However, it seemed to me that education philosophies around the world can be surprisingly similar to each other, and most teachers really do want what’s best for their students.  The quote that affected me in relation to other TESOL ideas that I have learned is “education can bring along social recognition and material rewards” (97).  Educational ideas really can be seen eye to eye from culture to culture.

As a Future Educator

Through gaining my TESOL minor, I hope to be able to effectively teach and learn about students from all cultures.  As time goes on, more and more classrooms will have students from more and more different  countries and cultures, so I hope to become a teacher who can make a difference in those students' lives.