Tomorrow Morning

I want to start with a quote straight from our L&S text: "Knowing more about second language acquisition research will not tell you what to do in your classroom tomorrow morning." (194). This was probably the biggest problem I had when it came to engaging with this text because I was constantly trying to put the knowledge I was gaining into an immediate classroom context. I was hoping that I could use something from these chapters with my ESL tutee, but things as simple as error correction are hard to implement right after reading. I don't think that this difficulty stems from my inexperience as a teacher (although I've only met with my tutee once and inexperience is a factor), but like the text says, these are subjects that require some thought and experimentation.

In chapter seven one of the subjects that was touched on which I thought was interesting was number 14 on page 191 (When learners are allowed to interact freely, they copy each other's mistakes). This was interesting to me for two reasons: 1. I have done group work in my second language (German) and I didn't find it very helpful & 2. I wasn't sure if this statement was correct or not. I of course found out that according to L&S the learners do not copy each other's mistakes (which makes sense because I never adopted my partner's mistakes in my German class when I was aware of them), but I also found out that learners at similar levels of proficiency are usually unable to correct a partner's error (which also makes sense since I rarely ever told my partner his/her mistake if they made one. I didn't for a couple reasons: 1. I wasn't the teacher & 2. (like L&S say) I couldn't truly tell them WHY they were wrong. I could easily have told them that they were wrong, but I would've been unable to explain it in a clear way). So does this mean that tomorrow if I have more than one tutee (or in the near future, a class of students) I will absolutely avoid group work? Probably not, but because of my own experience in my L2 (along with the research from the text we read) I will be able to know what to expect from my students when they are engaging in group work... Keeping them on task will definitely be important.

Substantive Entry 2 of 2

To continue on what I was discussing in my first blog I went back to the readings from this week. I actually found a few instances where the article I found and the readings agreed with eachother, but I didn't manage to find the one I was looking for in particular.

The first portion of the readings that I want to link to the article I found was in the textbook: How Languages are Learned. On page 46 there's something called Processability Theory. This is similar to the article that I found in that it focuses on a person's ability to process information. In the article that I found the processing of language comes into play when a student is engaged with the class. According to the article a student can stay engaged simply because they have a larger storage space for short-term memory or it may be due to how the teacher engages their students.  And in the textbook the theory on page 46 discusses how "easy" some parts of language are to process as compared to others. So I think an interesting experiment might be to use some of these easily processed language features in conjunction with an engaging activity in order to see whether or not it significantly affects the student's comprehension of the subject being learned.

Of course if a student learns something in an engaging environment they will probably learn it better, but the extent to which they learn it is what interests me. On page 22 of the same textbook is an interesting example. It talks about a child named Jim who had deaf parents who couldn't interact with Jim through oral language and didn't use sign language with him either. Jim did watch TV and listen to the radio though, but it was not enough input to develop his language skills correctly. This caused Jim to fall behind in his use of language until he had one-on-one conversations with an adult tutor. In this example it seems that Jim learned the language much quicker simply because he was engaged in speech with another person. This way he got corrected whenever he used his speech incorrectly. I think it is interesting that since someone showed an interest in teaching Jim it caused him to engage in the subject completely. So maybe when we go out of this classroom to teach we don't have to have the most elaborate lesson plans ever created. Maybe all it takes to effectively engage a student in learning is the ability to show the student(s) that you sincerely want them (and each of them in a large class) to be able to learn something from you? I think that as teachers, if this is our goal, then our own enthusiasm for teaching will transfer into the students' enthusiasm for learning.

Substantive Entry 1 of 2

Ok, so I was all wrapped up in the Multi-Genre research this weekend that I forgot I had to write TWO blogs instead of just one. I did manage to find some great sources though. In the assignments syllabus it says that one of these reflections should be on our readings and the other (for grads) can be a reflection of what we've learned in class. For this first blog I'm going to start by discussing what I've learned in class so far:

Like I said, I devoted a lot of time to finding helpful sources for the multi-genre research paper this weekend and I think that what we discover by completing this project will be very helpful to how we will teach in the near future. Already we have gotten a taste for how difficult it will be once we start teaching (i.e. Veronika's blog about their presentation). Even though we will be focusing on what we want our students to learn we will also have to take how our students learn into consideration. This includes everything from the psychology of our students to the time management of our classrooms. Since I don't really feel like discussing time management, I'm going to say a quick word about student psychology.

Usually when I think about psychology I think about how people behave, but rarely do I mull how our brains actually work. This weekend I found an interesting article titled: The Influence of Working Memory on Reading and Creative Writing Processes in a Second Language. In the article it explains that working memory is just a more precise term for short-term memory, but the thing that I found interesting was that it claimed that a person's short-term memory or attention span affects their learning of a language. Salim (the author) states, "Researchers contend that the different shares of processing and storage may be the source of individual differences in reading comprehension. A skilled reader is a more efficient processor, so s/he has more information storage capacity. That is, s/he has more attention left for information storage." What I took from this little excerpt and the beginning of his essay was the fact that IF we can increase our students attention span or their enthusiasm for learning then it might be possible to teach them English more effectively. 

If I remember correctly I think that this subject was also touched on in one of our readings this weekend. So if I can find it then that will be my subject for the second portion of this week's blog.