Teaching in Ecuador

Meeting objectives: 1, 2, 7

Lesson plans and teaching reflection

As a part of the training in TESOL-Ecuador program, I did a content-based English teaching (teach language through teaching content subject, which is a type of shelter ESL teaching) with two teachers in Otavalo for a month. Our content was geography (grade levels 9-12). The overall objective was raising students’ awareness of pollutions in their living environment. 

There were three teaching sections per week, and we teachers met every weekend and afternoon to plan our lesson (please refer to the attached file—lesson plan). In each class, every teacher was in charge of 30 minutes of teaching. After three sections, we did a simulate recall to reflect on our teaching and wrote a reflection journal (please refer to the attached file—teaching reflection).

post I made for teaching the life cycle of shoes

We started from discussing the life cycle of “stuffs” students used in their daily life (e.g., shoes, jeans, etc.) to help them related products with materials. Since one of Ecuador’s biggest exports is oil, it was quite successful to made students think about the relationship between oil consumption and a lot of products they used daily.

ceremony before the final open house

Then, we went on digging major pollutions issues around the world. This part was quit sensitive since Ecuador belongs to the third world which suffered for the first worlds’ exploitation economically and environmentally. Finally we narrowed the topic down to pollutions the students found in the cities where they grow up and reasoned causes and effects.

The final assessment was videotaping students’ 2 minute speeches about pollution issues they chose. The outcome was quit successful: all students prepared their speech well and presented in a proficient way. This recorded film was sent to one of our teacher’s Spanish class as an “international conversation” (students in that class also recorded a film to introduce themselves, and we showed our students this clip before we videotaped).

The experience was very meaningful not only because it was my first time teaching a class of students, but also because I felt I was connected to the topics while living in Otavalo. I learned Spanish, culture, and people while teaching. This experience motivated me further to become a teacher whose focus in not just language but the community, society, and culture.

APLNG 412 Teaching Second Language Writing

Textbook 1.

Meeting Objectives: 2, 3, 4, 6

Download the attached files

    Using one sentence to summarize this course—“it is more than second language writing, but sociopolitical issues related literacy development.” I admit that before taking this course, I viewed teaching second language writing as designing learning topics, choosing materials, and giving feedback to students’ papers. In other words, I took writing not so much as a skill, though I knew it was tightly connected to listening, reading, and speaking. However, this class turned my perception of writing to be a set of political issues correlating with power.

Textbook 2.

      The first project was a literacy biography (please refer to the attachment literacy biography). Before doing this project, I nearly forgot that becoming able to read and write was such a heavy, painful, self digging and identity constructing process, I have experienced the processes twice: learning how to read and write in Mandarin and English. This project still reminds me always put myself in ESL/EFL learners’ shoes to understand their struggle in their literacy development.

Textbook 3.

       Another project was an observation in the writing center (please refer to the attachment—reflective tutoring observation). Because of the observation, I learned that the center’s structuring tutoring process was not so natural and simple. It implied the center’s defining of “what is good writing,” but it was not necessarily consistent with expectations of instructors or literacy research.

Textbook 4.

      The final project was a combination of philosophy of literacy and a lesson plan (please refer to the file named philosophy of literacy). By the end of this class, the emotional reactions toward literacy development were refined with the theoretical knowledge. In this philosophy I articulated my feeling which intertwined with the scientific concepts, and they were applied in the lesson plan.
      Because of these projects and the issues explored in this class, I came to a whole new, more complicated understanding toward teaching writing. I decided that if I have a chance to teach writing, I will not present a “perfect” model of writing for my students to pursue, but encourage them to develop repertoire which will help them communicate effectively in different genres. 

APLNG 482 Introduction of Applied Linguistics

Meet objectives: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Download the attached files

What is the difference between linguistics applied and Applied Linguistics? Can Applied Linguistics simply be taken as language teaching?

Starting with these two questions, this course expended topics covered by Applied Linguistics from how to define “native speaker” to broader issues, such as language right and language policy. Although I have never taken Applied Linguistics as only the knowledge of language teaching, the topics introduced in this course were much broader than I expected

 

Textbooks 1, 2, 3

For every class, there was an assigned topic for one student to write a reflection paper to open up an online discussion (please refer to the file Reflection Paper and PPT file “the politics of text”). The topic I got was Critical Literacy, which takes language as a set of contextualized social practices containing ideology. 

I was leading the discussion related to Critical Literacy

The application of the concept proposed by Pennycook (2001) is a reversion of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The hardest part of the project was not understanding the concepts, but finding materials which did not obviously show the ideology (since one of the critique Pennycook gives to CDA is its revealing of ideology in political texts is sometimes too apparently), but still demonstrated the way that CDA approach to the text (please refer to the attachments). I then used the picture book, Slovenly Peter, to demonstrate how social changing affects the ideology changing, and why this is missing in CDA. 

One of the activities I designed: analyzing the picture book Slovenly Peter

What I learned from the assignment was designing activities to get my colleagues to apply the concept immediately instead of “telling” the concept. The experience of this practice was and is still “alive,” even after I started teaching.

 My final project was also related to “the politics of language.” I did a small research project reflecting on how the two major “language in education planning” in Taiwan have changed the status of languages (please refer to the attached file—final project). This small project demonstrated why language teaching should not be taken as teaching other content knowledge, but as a nationwide identity transforming process (for detailed research, please refer to the attachments).

  To conclude, this introductory course serves as a fundamental basis of my preceding professional development as a language teacher proposing teaching critical literacy.

APLNG 491 Second Language Acquisition

Meet objectives: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7

Download the attached file 

This course introduced five major themes in SLA research chronically from “SLA in the head (cognitive approach, Monitor theory),” “instructed SLA (Input Process Theory),” “social approach SLA,” “SLA as socialization,” and “SCT and SLA.” Each theme covered at least five key concepts and researchers. Instead of lecturing, the instructor followed the inquiry-based approach: students in a group of three were assigned one theme and taught all the key concepts in three sections of class. In addition, students chose another theme aside from the assigned theme to write a short research paper discussing its possible educational application.

My individual project was “SLA in the head” (please refer to file named SLA in the head—first project). Through doing the project, I found many concepts (such as input hypothesis, negotiation for meaning) were consistent with the theoretical foundation of many materials I had used before. I then understood the rationales of the sequences, followed Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis, as well as the activities (e.g., giving output), which helped me become able to give critiques.

In group teaching: I was giving an introduction course about language socialization

       The group project was more challenging in choosing assigned articles for the three class sections (they should be research which can explain the key concepts thoroughly). Additionally, we could not just lecture, but had to create at least two to three activities for our classmates to engage them to play around with the key concepts (for the material we developed please refer to the series files starting with “second project”). After designing the tasks, these concepts and theories became clearer than just reading through the materials. I not only internalized the knowledge, but also used the knowledge in teaching.

    

        What about I like this course particularly is how it brought me this major SLA research in one semester, and I became able to transform the knowledge in other courses (please refer to the final exam—concept, definition, and implication). This outcome reveals the power of inquiry-based teaching as well as SCT: the mode of learning, through doing inquiries, affects what learners will learn.

Map of the Portfolio

This blog is built to record my professional development process as a language teacher, language learner, and language lover. As the guild line for you to locate what you might be inserted in easily, this Map will introduce the contents and the categories in this blog.

To enjoy your exploring of this blog, please click the following link for more interactive guiding :

Map of the E-Protfolio 

After you go into the Prezi, click the gray arrow à to “animate” the Prezi

       To locate a particular entry, please follow the folloiwng lable. 

About Me: Self-introduction (my CV included) and my developing teaching philosophy

Professional development in Penn State MA-TESL program (MA-TESL): The courses I have taken and documents made for these courses

MA-TESL

APLNG 482 Introduction of Applied Linguistics APLNG 484 Discourse Functional Grammar APLNG 491 Second Language Acquisition APLNG 583 Methods of Language Assessment APLNG 595 Internship (ESL015) APLNG 412 Teaching Second Language APLNG 493 Teaching English as Second Language APLNG 581 Discourse Analysis APLNG 587 Theory & Research in L2 Teacher Education APLNG 589 Technology in FL/SL Education APLNG 597A Meaning in L2 Learning

Professional development in TESOL-Ecuador program (TESOL-Ecuador): Internship and learning in Ecuador

TESOL-Ecuador

WL ED 444 Language, culture, and the Classroom WL ED 483 Evaluating Schools’ Performance & ESL Programs WL ED 400 Foundations of Second Language Teaching

My Teaching: My experiences of teaching ESL015 and shelter English in Ecuador

Meanwhile, this blog demonstrates the Ma-TESL program objectives as the follow list. For each entry there will be a label indicating the meeting objective(s):       

Objectives of MA-TESL program (Form PSU, Department of AppliedLinguistics):

1. the ability to design and evaluate instructional materials, technology, media, and other resources that meet the specific instructional and language related needs and abilities of students;
2. the ability to reflect on, critically analyze, and evaluate your own teaching practices;
3. the ability to articulate a philosophy of language teaching grounded in current language and learning theories;
4. an understanding of the complex social, cultural, political, and institutional factors that affect language teaching and students' language learning;
5. knowledge of research and research methods for studying language teaching and learning;
6. knowledge of the teaching field (English);
7. participation in collaborative projects with others.