The “Group Investigation Expands Cooperative Learning” model, described by Yael Sharan and Shlomo Sharan, is a type of collaborative learning that groups students for research based on their common interest in a topic. The group members work together to plan the research topic, and then they divide the teamwork among individual members for independent individual research, and finally, the group synthesizes and summarizes all members’ research, and presents the results to the class. During the whole process, the teacher works only as a guide, providing a wide range of topics for students to choose from, brainstorming and stimulating students to think and raise questions about the topic, and helping them to pick a topic. The teacher may also work with the students to prepare the final evaluation standard. It is a truly group work.
There are six stages in the process, which can last from a week to a few months:
Stage 1: Identify the topic and form the student group.
Stage 2: Plan the investigation in groups. Present subtopics. The team decides which to pick for research, and how to cooperate. Then, internally organize the subtopics.
Stage 3: Carry out the investigation (both collectively and individually).
Stage 4: Prepare a final report.
Stage 5: Present the final report.
Stage 6: Evaluation.
According to the authors’ research data, Group Investigation works much better than the traditional classroom-teaching model. It is efficient because it gives students more control over their learning. Students have the freedom to choose a topic they like, and group together based on their common interests, and to plan and carry out the research on their own. They teach and help each other in order to complete the final project. It has the advantage of both teamwork and individual work. It includes contributions from all the students in the group and is a result of the collective wisdom and effort of the entire team.
The limitation of this model is that it takes a rather long time to prepare and complete. It needs careful planning and plenty of flexible time. It will be difficult for a subject teacher who has to cope with the pressures of a rigid curriculum required by the school and prepare students for standardized exams. It also requires the students to have basic vocabulary, language and analytical skills to conduct the group discussion and research. This is especially true with a foreign language class. Therefore, it is not a good choice for very small kids, for example, K to 2nd graders, because they lack analytical and synthesizing skills to do the research. For younger children, a short collaborative learning activity in class is preferable; for example, read to each other during a reading class, or discuss in groups about what to write in an essay during a writing class.
From my own teaching experience, Group Investigation suits intermediate and advanced level language learners more than it does beginning language learners. I tried a similar method in my intermediate college level Mandarin course and it worked well. The way I did it was to have students give an oral presentation in pairs after every unit’s study. I gave topics related to the unit to students, and paired students up based on their language level. Each pair of students had to work out the draft for the oral presentation (a dialogue), and make sure the draft was grammatically correct. They then practiced outside the class; and finally presented to the class. Students who were on lower language levels in the class later on told me that it was very challenging for them. However, they got help from their partners, and learned a lot by doing it. What I did mainly was brainstorming at the beginning of the project and correcting their drafts during the process.
Looking back, it was a very fulfilling experience though I did not know much about collaborative learning then. I only wanted to give students chances to speak the target language in an authentic manner. Now I can see that it was successful largely because it involved and stimulated students to help each other and teach each other in a collaborative manner. Indeed, during and after my teaching the class, the atmosphere in the class was very relaxed and students usually were willing to talk because they interacted with one anther well in every unit presentation. They felt that they were sitting with their friends in the class, not strangers. My teaching would have been more effective if I had known more about Group Investigation projects. Because in the final survey I did with my students at the end of the semester, some of them said they wished they had had more chances to talk in the target language in class; Group Investigation would have created a perfect opportunity for them to speak to each other during both the discussions and final presentations.
However, I feel that Group Investigation, a long-term project that requires certain language skills in the target language, does not suit beginning language learners well. Beginning language learners need more chances to hear authentic language from the teacher, and practice under the teacher’s observation and corrective feedback. In some ESL beginning lessons (in both elementary and middle/high school settings) that I have observed, during the group work, the students were unable to conduct the discussions in English, instead, they discussed the topics in their native languages.
Recently, I went for a campus visit at a private boarding school in New York for an ESL teacher’s position. During my visit, nearly every faculty member or administrator that I met mentioned the urgent need to blend the international ESL students with American students in school. (Each group counts for about half of the student population.) The fact is that the international students tend to group together during and after classes, without opportunities to improve their English. Because of this, they also have difficulty with their content course, because they are not proficient enough in English to grasp the material as readily as the American students.
I thought about this situation and about how Cooperative Learning might be helpful, and wrote an email to the principal with my suggestions:
1) peer tutoring program
Pair the ESL learners with the American students one-to-one, based on the students’ mutual needs (like an exchange tutoring). For example, math/science/art for English.
If an ESL student is good at math, science or arts, he or she can be paired with an American student who is good at English but needs help with math, science or arts. Research shows that tutoring is the best way to learn. Give the ESL students opportunity to receive language help, meanwhile, give them the opportunity to use the English language by being tutors. School credits also can be given to American students who qualify and volunteer to be English tutors after one semester.
2) collaborative learning
Teachers can implement the collaborative learning model, which involve many collaborative learning activities among students. For example, short-term or long-term learning projects involving students’ collaborations in and outside class. The purpose is to blend students.
3) Have more ice-breaking activities or other fun activities in content classes, especially at the beginning of a new academic year. This way, the students will get to know each other quickly and be friends outside the classroom. This will also create a stress-free atmosphere in the class so the ESL students will be more willing to talk in class. It is also a good way of blending students.
With the tool of Group Investigation in hand, I feel I will do better with my future teaching, whether it be ESL or Mandarin teaching.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Communicative Language Teaching
Communicative language teaching, as it says in its name, is all about communication: the goal and objective are communication, the method of practicing is communication, the learning materials are authentic written or non-written language products from real world, and the assessment is also by assessing how efficient the learner can be when communicating in the target language.
The reading of Richards and Rodgers’ book "Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching" (2001, second edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.) has cleared some of my long-time confusion about what exactly communicative language method is, which I had heard repeatedly during my teacher’s training and at all kinds of workshops but I could not grasp what it was exactly. It is about delivering meaningful messages to one another in social context. It is emphasizing the social function of the languages rather than its surface form.
More importantly, my reading of the chapter has equipped me with a number of useful classroom activities that prompts and initiates communication and negotiation in class. For example, an authentic event provoking conversation by any of the following scenarios: a talking about personal identification, a customer visit, a supplier visit, a shopping experience, a travel experience, describing something, asking for information, providing information, expressing emotions and feelings, and agree and disagree with an opinion. In a word, it can be anything that happens in our daily life that engages human interactions. Therefore, the class activities can be anything that evokes a conversation. For example, a shared reading and a discussion followed, a role play, an imaginary scenario and acting it out, an inquiry from either the teacher or the students, a grouped study, a silent reading or a “reading to” activity followed by comprehension questions, and reading the authentic materials that the students and the teacher collect together in class.
At any rate, the Communicative Language Teaching is the golden tool that I have ever learned so far as a language teacher. I am very thankful.
The reading of Richards and Rodgers’ book "Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching" (2001, second edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.) has cleared some of my long-time confusion about what exactly communicative language method is, which I had heard repeatedly during my teacher’s training and at all kinds of workshops but I could not grasp what it was exactly. It is about delivering meaningful messages to one another in social context. It is emphasizing the social function of the languages rather than its surface form.
More importantly, my reading of the chapter has equipped me with a number of useful classroom activities that prompts and initiates communication and negotiation in class. For example, an authentic event provoking conversation by any of the following scenarios: a talking about personal identification, a customer visit, a supplier visit, a shopping experience, a travel experience, describing something, asking for information, providing information, expressing emotions and feelings, and agree and disagree with an opinion. In a word, it can be anything that happens in our daily life that engages human interactions. Therefore, the class activities can be anything that evokes a conversation. For example, a shared reading and a discussion followed, a role play, an imaginary scenario and acting it out, an inquiry from either the teacher or the students, a grouped study, a silent reading or a “reading to” activity followed by comprehension questions, and reading the authentic materials that the students and the teacher collect together in class.
At any rate, the Communicative Language Teaching is the golden tool that I have ever learned so far as a language teacher. I am very thankful.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Language Teaching Methodology
I want to talk about a few “popular ideas about language learning” that are most useful for me:
1. Language is learned through imitation. However, it is the learner who decides what to imitate. The power of imitation, although important as a basic tool for learning a language, is limited and it is not universal. It does not fit everyone. What is more important than imitation is to use the target language to communicate meaningfully and authentically. This makes complete sense. No matter how well an apprentice learns, it does not mean much unless she puts her skills into practice.
2. Feedback – I have always found that corrective feedbacks most effective in mastering a language. This is why adult English learners, including me, spend a much longer time learning English compared with young children. Still, adult learners may never be able to master the target language because they lack the privilege that the young students have at school - formally receiving corrective feedbacks from professional teachers.
3. The influence of the learner’s first language can be good and bad at the same time. It is good because it provides a storehouse of knowledge about language and a reference system that the learner can always go back to. It is bad because the learner tends to copy the same structures and grammatical rules from her native language to the target language. I have witnessed both children and adult ESL learners make many of the same mistakes.
4. The most effective way of learning vocabulary is to expand it through reading in general and also through reading materials that are appropriate in level and content. This has verified what I have learned from theories, from my teaching practice and my own English learning experience. Level appropriate means the unknown words in a reading article should not exceed 90% (I have also read that it should be 95%). The idea is that there should be only a few unknown words when reading. Content appropriate means the reading materials should be interesting and meaningful.
5. The cultural diversity of today’s world has made practicality more valuable than the traditional ideas of accuracy. Because the standard for accuracy has changed, we have to be flexible with the idea of being accurate.
6. Grammar must be taught in sentence context. It definitely cannot be taught separately and isolated. This is especially true with younger children. However, no matter what age group a teacher teaches, getting students involved is a must. Otherwise, the teaching cannot go on effectively. Teaching grammar dryly and isolated from context will certainly turn students off. I asked my students whether they read the grammar notes in the textbook, and they said no unanimously.
7. Errors that students make are a resource for a teacher to understand why such errors are made. Usually, it reflects the learner is inappropriately transferring her first language patterns to a target second language and over-generalizing the second language’s rules (for example, yesterday I read this sentence from an article written by a Chinese woman: “You hurted me so much.”)
8. It is key to always have high expectation for students, and therefore to always keep the learning challenging. I have purchased a Chinese language textbook and workbook written by a New Jersey public school teacher. I chose her books because they are accessible, step by step, interesting and easy to use. It is her goal to make Chinese learning easy. However, she told me that some of her students still could not functionally communicate in Chinese after four years of studying. After receiving the books recently, I realized that they lacked challenge. The content deliberately avoids higher-level vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammars. I would have added more difficult materials to the book.
9. Cooperative learning – I have to remind myself repeatedly that I have to give students time to practice in class. I was so used to giving a teacher-centered lecture, although interactive and dialogue-based, that I tended to give very little time for students to practice. I have noticed the difference between giving more time for students to speak with each other and giving little time. Cooperative learning shifts the center from a teacher to students. It often makes the classroom more dynamic.
1. Language is learned through imitation. However, it is the learner who decides what to imitate. The power of imitation, although important as a basic tool for learning a language, is limited and it is not universal. It does not fit everyone. What is more important than imitation is to use the target language to communicate meaningfully and authentically. This makes complete sense. No matter how well an apprentice learns, it does not mean much unless she puts her skills into practice.
2. Feedback – I have always found that corrective feedbacks most effective in mastering a language. This is why adult English learners, including me, spend a much longer time learning English compared with young children. Still, adult learners may never be able to master the target language because they lack the privilege that the young students have at school - formally receiving corrective feedbacks from professional teachers.
3. The influence of the learner’s first language can be good and bad at the same time. It is good because it provides a storehouse of knowledge about language and a reference system that the learner can always go back to. It is bad because the learner tends to copy the same structures and grammatical rules from her native language to the target language. I have witnessed both children and adult ESL learners make many of the same mistakes.
4. The most effective way of learning vocabulary is to expand it through reading in general and also through reading materials that are appropriate in level and content. This has verified what I have learned from theories, from my teaching practice and my own English learning experience. Level appropriate means the unknown words in a reading article should not exceed 90% (I have also read that it should be 95%). The idea is that there should be only a few unknown words when reading. Content appropriate means the reading materials should be interesting and meaningful.
5. The cultural diversity of today’s world has made practicality more valuable than the traditional ideas of accuracy. Because the standard for accuracy has changed, we have to be flexible with the idea of being accurate.
6. Grammar must be taught in sentence context. It definitely cannot be taught separately and isolated. This is especially true with younger children. However, no matter what age group a teacher teaches, getting students involved is a must. Otherwise, the teaching cannot go on effectively. Teaching grammar dryly and isolated from context will certainly turn students off. I asked my students whether they read the grammar notes in the textbook, and they said no unanimously.
7. Errors that students make are a resource for a teacher to understand why such errors are made. Usually, it reflects the learner is inappropriately transferring her first language patterns to a target second language and over-generalizing the second language’s rules (for example, yesterday I read this sentence from an article written by a Chinese woman: “You hurted me so much.”)
8. It is key to always have high expectation for students, and therefore to always keep the learning challenging. I have purchased a Chinese language textbook and workbook written by a New Jersey public school teacher. I chose her books because they are accessible, step by step, interesting and easy to use. It is her goal to make Chinese learning easy. However, she told me that some of her students still could not functionally communicate in Chinese after four years of studying. After receiving the books recently, I realized that they lacked challenge. The content deliberately avoids higher-level vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammars. I would have added more difficult materials to the book.
9. Cooperative learning – I have to remind myself repeatedly that I have to give students time to practice in class. I was so used to giving a teacher-centered lecture, although interactive and dialogue-based, that I tended to give very little time for students to practice. I have noticed the difference between giving more time for students to speak with each other and giving little time. Cooperative learning shifts the center from a teacher to students. It often makes the classroom more dynamic.
Multiple Intelligence
Theoretically, it sounds exciting to apply MI theory in the classroom. However, in reality, it is usually unrealistic to design different activities in one short class based on each student’s talents and likes. I have found that, in practice, there are fewer differences among students’ intelligences than stated in MI theory. Research says that about ninety-five percent of people are visual learners, and I have found that nearly all of my students have responded to auditory, musical, and kinesthetic teaching approaches, in addition to visual methods.
Human natures are more or less similar. This belief underlies my opinion on MI theory in the classroom. The majority of people has five senses, with which they interact with one another and the outside world. People who seem to be more talented with one type of intelligences generally invest more time and effort on that particular intelligence.
In our actual teaching, it is impractical to design different activities for different students in a short lesson lasting only for forty-five minutes or one hour based on the students’ learning styles. I have yet to see any teacher effectively accomplish this in an educational setting other than kindergartens and elementary schools, where the teachers are able to set up different stations for different types of learning activities due to the spatial and time advantages the teachers have. Unless a teacher has his or her own permanent classroom, and teaches the same group of students consecutively everyday, it is difficult for a teacher to have different MI activities in one short class session.
Human natures are more or less similar. This belief underlies my opinion on MI theory in the classroom. The majority of people has five senses, with which they interact with one another and the outside world. People who seem to be more talented with one type of intelligences generally invest more time and effort on that particular intelligence.
In our actual teaching, it is impractical to design different activities for different students in a short lesson lasting only for forty-five minutes or one hour based on the students’ learning styles. I have yet to see any teacher effectively accomplish this in an educational setting other than kindergartens and elementary schools, where the teachers are able to set up different stations for different types of learning activities due to the spatial and time advantages the teachers have. Unless a teacher has his or her own permanent classroom, and teaches the same group of students consecutively everyday, it is difficult for a teacher to have different MI activities in one short class session.
"Whole Language" Approach
The theory of “whole language” from “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” by Richards and Rodgers has reinforced my beliefs on some basic principles of language teaching that will help motivate the learners:
• Write for pleasure / for real communication (natural approach)
• Read for a real purpose
• Emphasize meaning and make sense of meaning; contextualize language in an authentic situation, making the expression meaningful in a social context.
• Use a student-produced text for teaching and learning
• Students have options over what they read and write
In my own teaching practice, I have been trying to apply some of the above-mentioned principles in my class, and the more I use them, the more I have found the power of them. For example, when I teach the lesson on “the home”, I use real apartment rental advertisements that I found in a Chinese newspaper (I made slight modifications to remove some unfamiliar words so the students would not be discouraged by too much new vocabulary). I found that the students were really interested in reading them.
When it comes to writing and speaking, I let students create a dialogue about dating (the unit we studied), and perform it, which was both successful and unsuccessful. It was a success because everyone was excited to perform and to be able to see his or her videotaped performance, and this motivated everyone to participate. It was not a complete success because more than sixty percent of the students wrote their scripts closely following the dialogue in the text, including the scenarios and sentence patterns. I felt this was not authentic enough. I feel that the students would not be able to apply fully what they have learned in the “real world,” and therefore, they have not mastered the content.
Some insights I had from the reading include the ideas of using students’ work and giving students options for reading and writing materials. I feel that there is still a distance from where I am now and where I should be in terms of motivating students and making my classroom truly dynamic.
There are some arguments that I disagree with from the reading. Making language meaningful and purposeful is no less significant for adults than for young children, while the author claims that it usually works only for young children. In my opinion, it is more effective to use the “whole language” approach for adults because adults learn languages with a clear purpose in an educational setting. Many of them learn a language for their career, personal needs and academic pursuits, some learn for their personal interests.
• Write for pleasure / for real communication (natural approach)
• Read for a real purpose
• Emphasize meaning and make sense of meaning; contextualize language in an authentic situation, making the expression meaningful in a social context.
• Use a student-produced text for teaching and learning
• Students have options over what they read and write
In my own teaching practice, I have been trying to apply some of the above-mentioned principles in my class, and the more I use them, the more I have found the power of them. For example, when I teach the lesson on “the home”, I use real apartment rental advertisements that I found in a Chinese newspaper (I made slight modifications to remove some unfamiliar words so the students would not be discouraged by too much new vocabulary). I found that the students were really interested in reading them.
When it comes to writing and speaking, I let students create a dialogue about dating (the unit we studied), and perform it, which was both successful and unsuccessful. It was a success because everyone was excited to perform and to be able to see his or her videotaped performance, and this motivated everyone to participate. It was not a complete success because more than sixty percent of the students wrote their scripts closely following the dialogue in the text, including the scenarios and sentence patterns. I felt this was not authentic enough. I feel that the students would not be able to apply fully what they have learned in the “real world,” and therefore, they have not mastered the content.
Some insights I had from the reading include the ideas of using students’ work and giving students options for reading and writing materials. I feel that there is still a distance from where I am now and where I should be in terms of motivating students and making my classroom truly dynamic.
There are some arguments that I disagree with from the reading. Making language meaningful and purposeful is no less significant for adults than for young children, while the author claims that it usually works only for young children. In my opinion, it is more effective to use the “whole language” approach for adults because adults learn languages with a clear purpose in an educational setting. Many of them learn a language for their career, personal needs and academic pursuits, some learn for their personal interests.
Teaching Grammar
As an English learner, I have a lot of experiences of learning grammar, most of which are negative. I spent many years learning English in China. For at least half of the time, if not more, the teachers taught grammars in a dry and deductive way. This method of teaching grammar is also what I naturally inherited and used in my teaching Mandarin. After I learned Communicative Language Learning method, I have changed my teaching approach from deductive to an inductive: instead of giving an abstract grammar rule first, I list a series of sample sentences, and let the students figure out what the grammatical rule is by asking them to write down the structure on board. I have noticed the latter approach is much more engaging than my old method.
The other good thing I have learned about teaching grammar is to teach it in context – not just any context but a meaningful context. So what I do is that I incorporate the grammar into interrogative questions associated with content of the lesson and students’ daily lives for the students to answer in every class. I have found that this approach is also quite engaging.
Grammar is only a tool for language learning, not the goal. The goal of learning a language is to acquire communicational skills. I remember that a few years ago, I went for a Mandarin teacher’s job interview. The first question that the head teacher asked was, “do you have a grammar book?” I said no and it upset her very much. I could not come up with a theory to reject her obsession on getting a grammar book. But I felt by instinct that I would not read it even if I had one. I hate to read dry grammar rules. I guess many students are the same as me. A few years have elapsed, I still do not have a grammar book and I am getting along well with teaching Mandarin. In fact, I have found that the students do not even read the grammar notes in a textbook. Human nature just rejects monotonous and isolated grammar that is disconnected from an authentic and interesting language context, just as we reject anything that is unnatural and stiff.
The other good thing I have learned about teaching grammar is to teach it in context – not just any context but a meaningful context. So what I do is that I incorporate the grammar into interrogative questions associated with content of the lesson and students’ daily lives for the students to answer in every class. I have found that this approach is also quite engaging.
Grammar is only a tool for language learning, not the goal. The goal of learning a language is to acquire communicational skills. I remember that a few years ago, I went for a Mandarin teacher’s job interview. The first question that the head teacher asked was, “do you have a grammar book?” I said no and it upset her very much. I could not come up with a theory to reject her obsession on getting a grammar book. But I felt by instinct that I would not read it even if I had one. I hate to read dry grammar rules. I guess many students are the same as me. A few years have elapsed, I still do not have a grammar book and I am getting along well with teaching Mandarin. In fact, I have found that the students do not even read the grammar notes in a textbook. Human nature just rejects monotonous and isolated grammar that is disconnected from an authentic and interesting language context, just as we reject anything that is unnatural and stiff.
Instructional Tool
Among the most useful tools I have acquired from my teacher’s training are the learning strategies. Middle-school students may still not know how to read and write properly. They need to be taught with reading and writing strategies. In addition, I have learned that the metacognitive process plays an important role in learning. In other words, we have to teach students to be aware how they think when they learn, and understand why their brains work that way they do.
Combining the above thoughts, I have designed two instructional tools: one for reading, and one for writing, both of which are partnership workshops. I picked the partnership work model because I have greatly benefited from it during my course study.
The Reader’s Workshop is designed for a middle-school literacy reading class. It also can be used in a content reading class. There are four stages in the tool:
-- first, prepare and engage students to read the article.
-- Second, give specific directions about how to read – know what information to look for during the process of the reading. For the first reading, let students look for only lower-level comprehension questions.
-- Third, reread. In the second reading, look for the higher-level comprehension questions.
-- Finally, students should raise questions about the reading, and explore the best answers in class. The limitation of the tool is that I do not know whether the steps I listed are complete. I will need to revise the questions over time to better serve my classroom teaching.
I function much better as a reader when I read with clear reading instructions and procedures, and a partner to work with. I believe this reader’s workshop will work very efficiently with my secondary school students’ English art reading, or foreign language (Chinese) reading.
The Writer’s Workshop focuses on brainstorming and gets students to start the writing. The most difficult part for writing is to get started. From what I have observed, students’ writing difficulties often occur because the teacher did not brainstorm the students well enough or did not break the brainstorming questions into smaller units. For example, the teacher should ask, “What information is needed to do this piece of writing?” “What do you know about the topic?” “What do you not know about the topic?” “How can you get the unknown information?”
There are five steps in the Writer’s Workshop:
--brainstorming,
--information collecting,
--writing,
--analyzing,
--revising.
Except for the actual writing, each student will work with their partner to complete all other steps. This way the students will have valuable input a peer, and will have chances to do self-evaluation and self-correction. The limitation is that a content teacher or reading teacher has to accommodate the writing topics based on needs of class.
Combining the above thoughts, I have designed two instructional tools: one for reading, and one for writing, both of which are partnership workshops. I picked the partnership work model because I have greatly benefited from it during my course study.
The Reader’s Workshop is designed for a middle-school literacy reading class. It also can be used in a content reading class. There are four stages in the tool:
-- first, prepare and engage students to read the article.
-- Second, give specific directions about how to read – know what information to look for during the process of the reading. For the first reading, let students look for only lower-level comprehension questions.
-- Third, reread. In the second reading, look for the higher-level comprehension questions.
-- Finally, students should raise questions about the reading, and explore the best answers in class. The limitation of the tool is that I do not know whether the steps I listed are complete. I will need to revise the questions over time to better serve my classroom teaching.
I function much better as a reader when I read with clear reading instructions and procedures, and a partner to work with. I believe this reader’s workshop will work very efficiently with my secondary school students’ English art reading, or foreign language (Chinese) reading.
The Writer’s Workshop focuses on brainstorming and gets students to start the writing. The most difficult part for writing is to get started. From what I have observed, students’ writing difficulties often occur because the teacher did not brainstorm the students well enough or did not break the brainstorming questions into smaller units. For example, the teacher should ask, “What information is needed to do this piece of writing?” “What do you know about the topic?” “What do you not know about the topic?” “How can you get the unknown information?”
There are five steps in the Writer’s Workshop:
--brainstorming,
--information collecting,
--writing,
--analyzing,
--revising.
Except for the actual writing, each student will work with their partner to complete all other steps. This way the students will have valuable input a peer, and will have chances to do self-evaluation and self-correction. The limitation is that a content teacher or reading teacher has to accommodate the writing topics based on needs of class.
Reading for Understanding
After I read “Reading for Understanding” chapter 4, I have understood how important a role the metacognitive dimension plays in middle and high school students’ reading behavior. The chapter gave me the following insights regarding motivating students to enhance their literacy.
First, middle and high school students are adolescents who are mature enough to be able to think independently. It is necessary to work on their mentality, open up their mind, and make them do their own psychoanalysis. This is not only to make them understand that reading is a necessary skill that bridges the gap from their present stage to their future survival, but also to make them think about and monitor their reading behavior, analyze it, find the problems and then solve the problems on their own.
This metacognitive approach includes letting students know that literacy inadequacy is not a shame but a norm among all learners. Therefore, and most importantly, students should talk about what their reading problems are, so the teacher-student partnership can work together to solve the problems with appropriate strategies.
Second, what a great idea it is to set up a literacy-reading program and require students to read books based on their personal interests and proficiency level. As a Chinese language teacher, one of the biggest challenges in teaching Chinese language to non-Chinese speakers is that there exists very little level and content appropriate reading material. That is an urgent call for all Chinese teachers. It is also something I am very interested in doing – to write readable books for Chinese language learners.
Third, set up a system accountable to operate the literacy-reading program. It is very important to give students a clear purpose and reason for their reading; let them read with questions in mind, and find the answers to the questions while reading. It is the same idea as teachers asking students to do a “KWL” chart. I have always found this method a very efficient reading tool as both a student and a teacher. The “SSR” (Silent Sustained Reading) log is an excellent tool. A SSR log not only requires students to write down all their confusions and important reflections on their reading, it also requires the both teacher and students to follow their reading progress in detail. I certainly will borrow this for my future teaching.
First, middle and high school students are adolescents who are mature enough to be able to think independently. It is necessary to work on their mentality, open up their mind, and make them do their own psychoanalysis. This is not only to make them understand that reading is a necessary skill that bridges the gap from their present stage to their future survival, but also to make them think about and monitor their reading behavior, analyze it, find the problems and then solve the problems on their own.
This metacognitive approach includes letting students know that literacy inadequacy is not a shame but a norm among all learners. Therefore, and most importantly, students should talk about what their reading problems are, so the teacher-student partnership can work together to solve the problems with appropriate strategies.
Second, what a great idea it is to set up a literacy-reading program and require students to read books based on their personal interests and proficiency level. As a Chinese language teacher, one of the biggest challenges in teaching Chinese language to non-Chinese speakers is that there exists very little level and content appropriate reading material. That is an urgent call for all Chinese teachers. It is also something I am very interested in doing – to write readable books for Chinese language learners.
Third, set up a system accountable to operate the literacy-reading program. It is very important to give students a clear purpose and reason for their reading; let them read with questions in mind, and find the answers to the questions while reading. It is the same idea as teachers asking students to do a “KWL” chart. I have always found this method a very efficient reading tool as both a student and a teacher. The “SSR” (Silent Sustained Reading) log is an excellent tool. A SSR log not only requires students to write down all their confusions and important reflections on their reading, it also requires the both teacher and students to follow their reading progress in detail. I certainly will borrow this for my future teaching.
ESL Picture Book
“Children’s Informational Books” by Nancy Hadaway and Jane Mundy analyzes how a high school ELL (English Learner) class successfully initiated a literature program by using children’s picture books. It inspires me greatly to think about the role a visualized and level appropriate reading book plays in literacy and language learning.
During another literacy teaching method class that I took before, we were required to read 20 children’s literacy books including fictions and non-fictions for elementary school students whose age ranging from grade one to three, and write lesson plans for these grade levels’ students. I had surprisingly found that I enjoyed reading these books tremendously. I loved the stories of the fictions as well as the informative books, both of which were written in interesting, simple and clear English. I also learned new English vocabulary, phrases and expressions enjoyably and easily, and I felt a sense of accomplishment because I had finished reading 20 books quickly, much quicker than I read news on the New York Times. It was a new experience to me.
I thought about my English learning experience and my Chinese language teaching experience, I realized how beneficial it is to provide level appropriate reading books with visual aid for English or any other target language learners. Adult English learners as me are unable to find such kind of both level and age appropriate reading books. Children’s reading books are a good option, especially good Children’s books; because they are written for both children and the parents.
For ELL students, children’s picture books are good because of the following reasons:
It is reader friendly and inviting. Less new vocabulary means less intimidating. Simple sentences and short lines make the reader feel a sense of accomplishment. It is very encouraging for a struggled learner or a beginning learner have such feeling.
It is visual. One thing I have learned about teaching literacy is that it is most important to make your teaching instruction visual in both concrete picture images and text images. When the students see things with their eyes, they project the visual images into their mind, and turn them into symbolic language codes. There is certainly a direct connection between the outside images and the thoughts in the brain.
In addition, it is a great brainstorming and metacognitive process. It is like a center idea in literacy study from which it scatters out and radiates related new ideas, for example, if “exercise” is the center idea or theme for teaching, from that we can extend to “run”, “swim”, “dance”, “weight lifting” and all other exercises activities. We can also see it as a start point that can lead to related but deeper and higher level material. Since this approach is gradual and natural, students will likely be embracing rather than resisting it. It is an ideal warm-up activity and stage for ELL learners; it also can be an excellent way of bringing content topics into classroom.
During another literacy teaching method class that I took before, we were required to read 20 children’s literacy books including fictions and non-fictions for elementary school students whose age ranging from grade one to three, and write lesson plans for these grade levels’ students. I had surprisingly found that I enjoyed reading these books tremendously. I loved the stories of the fictions as well as the informative books, both of which were written in interesting, simple and clear English. I also learned new English vocabulary, phrases and expressions enjoyably and easily, and I felt a sense of accomplishment because I had finished reading 20 books quickly, much quicker than I read news on the New York Times. It was a new experience to me.
I thought about my English learning experience and my Chinese language teaching experience, I realized how beneficial it is to provide level appropriate reading books with visual aid for English or any other target language learners. Adult English learners as me are unable to find such kind of both level and age appropriate reading books. Children’s reading books are a good option, especially good Children’s books; because they are written for both children and the parents.
For ELL students, children’s picture books are good because of the following reasons:
It is reader friendly and inviting. Less new vocabulary means less intimidating. Simple sentences and short lines make the reader feel a sense of accomplishment. It is very encouraging for a struggled learner or a beginning learner have such feeling.
It is visual. One thing I have learned about teaching literacy is that it is most important to make your teaching instruction visual in both concrete picture images and text images. When the students see things with their eyes, they project the visual images into their mind, and turn them into symbolic language codes. There is certainly a direct connection between the outside images and the thoughts in the brain.
In addition, it is a great brainstorming and metacognitive process. It is like a center idea in literacy study from which it scatters out and radiates related new ideas, for example, if “exercise” is the center idea or theme for teaching, from that we can extend to “run”, “swim”, “dance”, “weight lifting” and all other exercises activities. We can also see it as a start point that can lead to related but deeper and higher level material. Since this approach is gradual and natural, students will likely be embracing rather than resisting it. It is an ideal warm-up activity and stage for ELL learners; it also can be an excellent way of bringing content topics into classroom.
Why Is Reading Important?
In “Reading for Understanding” chapter 2, Schoenbach and her colleagues outline a “reading apprenticeship framework” that underlies their pedagogical strategies. Among the four dimensions – social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge— they listed, I feel that the social dimension is most significant and compelling in literacy teaching in my content area, which is Chinese language teaching. It is most crucial to create a classroom environment that has met the students’ social needs, where students can benefit from the “more competent others” by participating the social interactions; and teacher is the key role in creating such an environment.
Literacy is a social activity. Social needs have propelled language development. The contemporary literacy pedagogy encourages teachers to rebuild an inviting environment in classroom that is as authentic as possible as the real outside language world, so students can make sense of all their classroom literacy study aiming at practical use. This method motivates students, and arouses students’ interests. It has been proven efficient in both my classroom teaching and my private tutoring.
In my previous classroom teaching in a community college, I designed all classroom conversations associated with the students’ daily life, for example, expressions about their families, their study and work, their personal interests and activities. My students were eager to learn sentences about themselves in Chinese. For my private tutoring, I had lost students because I could not provide appropriate reading material that the students could relate themselves to. Once I realized that there was no way I could find age and level appropriate reading material in the market, I decided to prepare it on my own. I have been writing reading material for different level’s students based on interesting newspaper news, and I try to prepare different topics for different students based on their personal interests and career needs. This strategy has been working quite well with all my private students. I plan to get my reading material published someday if possible.
In classroom, where the “a social-cognitive interactive process” (page 21 in “Reading for Understanding”) is taking place, the expert of the apprenticeship – the teacher, is the key role of the apprenticeship. This is my reflection especially after I have observed some elementary lower grade literacy classes; it is also my personal experience as an English learner.
In childhood (from K to 5th grade) education, literacy occupies most of the daily class time. Especially with lower grades like Kindergarten, first and second grade, the children consistently listen, speak, read and write; all of these activities were monitored and guided by the classroom teacher. In one of the literacy teaching method class I took at Brooklyn College, the professor, who was also an elementary school classroom teacher, showed us a “student reading and writing journal” to us. She monitored each individual student’s reading and writing progress and kept track of it, and made conferences meetings with different groups of students every day in class, talking to students about their reading and writing progress and problems, helping them solve their reading problems and making suggestions. She also emphasized that teacher must use a nurturing tone during the daily conference. This is exactly what the authors of “Reading for Understanding” suggest in chapter 2. The authors suggest that the students learn by participating in activities with “more competent others” who provides support for the activities which the students cannot yet by themselves. Who is the number one “competent others?” No doubt, it is the teacher.
As an adult English learner and a language teacher, I have been reflecting on why it has taken me so many years to acquire English language and why it takes a much shorter period for immigrant children to acquire English language skill in general. I have also discussed this with my English tutor, and the conclusion I have is that I have not had a classroom teacher, a “more competent others” who could constantly provide me with an intensive and supporting learning tool and environment. No matter how motivated I was, no matter how hard I tried, I was on my own, an apprentice without a master. A learner cannot win without a teacher, the most important role in literacy’s social dimension.
Literacy is a social activity. Social needs have propelled language development. The contemporary literacy pedagogy encourages teachers to rebuild an inviting environment in classroom that is as authentic as possible as the real outside language world, so students can make sense of all their classroom literacy study aiming at practical use. This method motivates students, and arouses students’ interests. It has been proven efficient in both my classroom teaching and my private tutoring.
In my previous classroom teaching in a community college, I designed all classroom conversations associated with the students’ daily life, for example, expressions about their families, their study and work, their personal interests and activities. My students were eager to learn sentences about themselves in Chinese. For my private tutoring, I had lost students because I could not provide appropriate reading material that the students could relate themselves to. Once I realized that there was no way I could find age and level appropriate reading material in the market, I decided to prepare it on my own. I have been writing reading material for different level’s students based on interesting newspaper news, and I try to prepare different topics for different students based on their personal interests and career needs. This strategy has been working quite well with all my private students. I plan to get my reading material published someday if possible.
In classroom, where the “a social-cognitive interactive process” (page 21 in “Reading for Understanding”) is taking place, the expert of the apprenticeship – the teacher, is the key role of the apprenticeship. This is my reflection especially after I have observed some elementary lower grade literacy classes; it is also my personal experience as an English learner.
In childhood (from K to 5th grade) education, literacy occupies most of the daily class time. Especially with lower grades like Kindergarten, first and second grade, the children consistently listen, speak, read and write; all of these activities were monitored and guided by the classroom teacher. In one of the literacy teaching method class I took at Brooklyn College, the professor, who was also an elementary school classroom teacher, showed us a “student reading and writing journal” to us. She monitored each individual student’s reading and writing progress and kept track of it, and made conferences meetings with different groups of students every day in class, talking to students about their reading and writing progress and problems, helping them solve their reading problems and making suggestions. She also emphasized that teacher must use a nurturing tone during the daily conference. This is exactly what the authors of “Reading for Understanding” suggest in chapter 2. The authors suggest that the students learn by participating in activities with “more competent others” who provides support for the activities which the students cannot yet by themselves. Who is the number one “competent others?” No doubt, it is the teacher.
As an adult English learner and a language teacher, I have been reflecting on why it has taken me so many years to acquire English language and why it takes a much shorter period for immigrant children to acquire English language skill in general. I have also discussed this with my English tutor, and the conclusion I have is that I have not had a classroom teacher, a “more competent others” who could constantly provide me with an intensive and supporting learning tool and environment. No matter how motivated I was, no matter how hard I tried, I was on my own, an apprentice without a master. A learner cannot win without a teacher, the most important role in literacy’s social dimension.
Class Management Skills Are Vital
I started to teach Mandarin to 7th graders at M408 in Fall 2010. I discovered at once that I faced a great discipline challenge. The first few classes were disasters. First, I changed the seating chart, but it did not help much. One time I had to send a troublemaker to the Assistant Principal’s office, and the parent accused me of being unfair because I did not eject other kids who made trouble in class. In general, the students were not attentive. They talked, were disrespectful and disrupted my class. Often, I could barely teach.
A few staff at the school suggested that I ask for help from the math teacher, who was also my students’ previous classroom teacher and whose name has a magic power to my students. So I did. She told me about how she managed the class: Prepare a performance slip and ask the students to rate themselves daily; the teacher approves or changes their rating according to their performance. Every weekend, the students have to bring the slip home and ask their parents to sign it. On Monday, the students bring back the slip to the teacher. She said it took a lot of time but that it was worth it.
She also told me to send disruptive students to her at any time, or assign them to lunch detention the next day.
I also had a talk with the Assistant Principal. She suggested that I videotape the class so there would be proof if there were any disputes; for example, if the students would not admit that they have engaged in disruptive behavior. It can also be shown as proof of a child’s misbehavior to parents.
It took me a few weeks to finalize the format of the “daily performance slip.” I revised the syllabus by adding that the performance slip will count as 50% toward the final grades, and that students who receive high scores on the their performance slips will be rewarded with red stars, which will be turned to points and added to their final grades.
The daily performance rating helped a lot. In addition, I occasionally called parents for help. I also took firm action to send disruptive students to their math teacher and to lunch detention, and rated down students who did not concentrate in my class.
The above actions had changed my class. I could concentrate on teaching more than ever.
This experience shows me that in order to teach successfully in a grade school, one must be able to manage the class successfully. Class management skills are vital for a teacher.
A few staff at the school suggested that I ask for help from the math teacher, who was also my students’ previous classroom teacher and whose name has a magic power to my students. So I did. She told me about how she managed the class: Prepare a performance slip and ask the students to rate themselves daily; the teacher approves or changes their rating according to their performance. Every weekend, the students have to bring the slip home and ask their parents to sign it. On Monday, the students bring back the slip to the teacher. She said it took a lot of time but that it was worth it.
She also told me to send disruptive students to her at any time, or assign them to lunch detention the next day.
I also had a talk with the Assistant Principal. She suggested that I videotape the class so there would be proof if there were any disputes; for example, if the students would not admit that they have engaged in disruptive behavior. It can also be shown as proof of a child’s misbehavior to parents.
It took me a few weeks to finalize the format of the “daily performance slip.” I revised the syllabus by adding that the performance slip will count as 50% toward the final grades, and that students who receive high scores on the their performance slips will be rewarded with red stars, which will be turned to points and added to their final grades.
The daily performance rating helped a lot. In addition, I occasionally called parents for help. I also took firm action to send disruptive students to their math teacher and to lunch detention, and rated down students who did not concentrate in my class.
The above actions had changed my class. I could concentrate on teaching more than ever.
This experience shows me that in order to teach successfully in a grade school, one must be able to manage the class successfully. Class management skills are vital for a teacher.
A Challenge I Have Encountered
In fall 2009, I started to teach Chinese language at a community college in New York City. It was the first time I taught in a formal educational institute in America. I quickly encountered some challenges: Students were not interested in my lectures, students lost attention quickly, and some students did not make enough progress, and class time management (the class always ran much faster than I expected, I could teach at most half of the materials I prepared).
At that time, I was doing a Spanish classroom teaching observation at Brooklyn College Academy. So I went to ask the Spanish teacher Mr. Malval for help. Mr. Malval was an experienced teacher. I told him about my frustrations; for example, my students refused to participate in a self introduction presentation. Mr. Malval told me that Chinese language is entirely different from all other western languages. A Chinese language class has to be very simple at the beginning. It has to be very visual, and slow paced. He said the presentation might be too difficult for my students at that time.
Thanks to Mr. Malval’s suggestions, I started to put my class materials into PowerPoint presentations—I visualized all the vocabulary in vivid and funny pictures, and use it to replace my old dry lectures. It worked out wonderfully. Students are visual, and a vivid image impresses a person more than flat sentences.
When it came to time management, Mr. Malval told me to teach less, and I reduced the content, and made it clear and simple. I constantly asked my students if they understood and if they had any questions. I also did surveys among my students to improve my teaching.
As for how to interest and motivate students, I learned a few major techniques from Mr. Malval: Conduct lecture in an inquiry way, associate the class content with the students’ daily life, encourage students’ participation enthusiastically and genuinely, and walk into students while doing oral speaking practice to get their attention.
In Mr. Malval’s class, he started his class with five to six “Do now” sentences, all in questioning form. The students were always enthusiastic about participating. Because the questions were always associated with their daily life, the students were always taking an interest in answering questions such as “What did you eat at breakfast today?” (when learning food and eating).
It is a way that came as a suspense to arouse the students’ curiosity instead of just telling the meanings flatly. In this process of finding the answers to the suspense, the students had to think actively and be engaged. I have been using these techniques into my Chinese teaching classes: They worked well.
At the end, I received a very good teaching evaluation from the department for the fall semester, and had stepped out my first firm step as a New York teacher.
At that time, I was doing a Spanish classroom teaching observation at Brooklyn College Academy. So I went to ask the Spanish teacher Mr. Malval for help. Mr. Malval was an experienced teacher. I told him about my frustrations; for example, my students refused to participate in a self introduction presentation. Mr. Malval told me that Chinese language is entirely different from all other western languages. A Chinese language class has to be very simple at the beginning. It has to be very visual, and slow paced. He said the presentation might be too difficult for my students at that time.
Thanks to Mr. Malval’s suggestions, I started to put my class materials into PowerPoint presentations—I visualized all the vocabulary in vivid and funny pictures, and use it to replace my old dry lectures. It worked out wonderfully. Students are visual, and a vivid image impresses a person more than flat sentences.
When it came to time management, Mr. Malval told me to teach less, and I reduced the content, and made it clear and simple. I constantly asked my students if they understood and if they had any questions. I also did surveys among my students to improve my teaching.
As for how to interest and motivate students, I learned a few major techniques from Mr. Malval: Conduct lecture in an inquiry way, associate the class content with the students’ daily life, encourage students’ participation enthusiastically and genuinely, and walk into students while doing oral speaking practice to get their attention.
In Mr. Malval’s class, he started his class with five to six “Do now” sentences, all in questioning form. The students were always enthusiastic about participating. Because the questions were always associated with their daily life, the students were always taking an interest in answering questions such as “What did you eat at breakfast today?” (when learning food and eating).
It is a way that came as a suspense to arouse the students’ curiosity instead of just telling the meanings flatly. In this process of finding the answers to the suspense, the students had to think actively and be engaged. I have been using these techniques into my Chinese teaching classes: They worked well.
At the end, I received a very good teaching evaluation from the department for the fall semester, and had stepped out my first firm step as a New York teacher.
My Teaching Philosophy
I believe that every child can learn. I have high expectations for every student, and I am committed to help every student learn and achieve his or her academic success.
Although I was trained to be a teacher in my native China, it took years for me to understand that teaching is a blessed career. In our limited life span, what else can be compared with the opportunity to shape the lives of young people? How blessed it is to enrich young minds with knowledge; to help young people explore their intellectual potentials; to fill young hearts with goodness; to help them when they need emotional and other supports but have nobody to turn to, just as we had received support from our teachers in the past.
I see my role model in my graduate advisor in China, Mr. Cao Mufan, a distinguished scholar in Chinese literature and philosophy. It was his insight in the academic disciplines and the world, and his sense of responsibility that has had a big impact on my view of life. But most of all, it is his parental care and moral strength that helped me going through the lost days in my youth. These qualities will be the essential components of my teaching philosophy.
I learned from Professor Reed, my teacher during my teacher’s training program at Brooklyn College, what a good teacher is like. He demonstrated to us what a positive connection between a teacher and the students is. He showed us how critical thinking and new ideas can be evoked by intellectual inquiries. I believe that only when a teacher cares for the students, can he or she develop a true connection with the students.
By reading some wonderful books for the class about great teachers such as Leonard Covello and Jessica Siegel, I understood we, as educators, are obliged to help balance the striking social inequality in American education. We are obliged to provide the high-quality public education that the students from the affluent social class receive for the poor people’s students.
I believe the goal of language teaching, is to equip students with a new skill, a key to a broader new life. Contrary to what is happening in many New York public and private second language classes, I believe, beyond the mere transmission of language skills, it is probably more important to stimulate students to think critically. For example, a second language, whether it is English or Chinese, can give students the tool to examine their own culture, society and themselves. By leading students to observe the critical issues about another country where the target language is spoken, both the positive and negative aspects of its development, students will appreciate their own history, society and themselves in a much bigger context and in a much more profound depth. I learned this from my own academic study in America.
Under this philosophy, I believe in the integrated teaching methods, exemplified by the way Jessica Siegel integrated English language, literature, history, political science and the contemporary immigrant experience all together in her English and Journalism classes. My curriculum will reflect this philosophy. In my class, I have had the students watch some excellent documentaries about Chinese society (such as “A Century of Revolution” and “The Nan king Massacre”) and did a series of class discussions and presentations. I have in my classes introduced some famous Chinese music pieces played with Chinese musical instruments, and elaborated upon what cultural scenarios they convey. It was much welcomed by the class. I referred students to You Tube and Google websites to explore the traditional dragon and lion dances, and other cultural events.
In terms of teaching methods, first, I try all ways possible to motivate my students. In order to do so, I make my class interesting and fun. The best teaching method I have learned is to conduct my class in an inquiring and inductive way. Always question the students about how they can assemble a new sentence with the characters and phrases they have just learned; always ask them to think and try before giving them the answers. Before studying a new lesson, always ask them what they know about the context. This is to give some suspense and arouse curiosity, and moreover, to stimulate students to think, to engage students in interaction. I find this works wonderfully well with my recent classes.
It is very important to motivate a student by positive encouragement. Even when a student raises a question that is disruptive to the class schedule and timing, a teacher should be patient and encouraging.
Second, I have clear academic goals. They include long-term and short-term goals, collective goals for the entire class and goals for each student. With my goals in mind, I plan each of my lessons carefully in a detailed written form. I try to infuse my class with dynamic, interesting and student-centered activities by which students can practice the content knowledge wholeheartedly. This proves also the best strategy to maintain the students’ attention.
I have tried the following activities in my class: cooperative learning (group students by use different learning style, cultural and language background so they can help one another), activities involving musical, verbal, logical mathematical, naturalistic, and visual activities; group based projects, and presentation. Students love to participate in team competitions on character recognizing and character writing, pair conversations, guessing, picture and words matching, play bingos, physical movement, singing, dancing, storytelling, and mini drama performance.
In order to reach my academic goals, I differentiate my teaching strategies based on students’ academic levels and learning styles. I provide differentiated teaching materials, lectures, and activities for different groups of students. Especially for the struggling students, I design simple, visual and interesting group lessons to motivate them; provide extra lecture, level appropriate and interesting reading (read to, read together or students read to each other), writer’s workshop, and technology (for example online reading software) and other learning resources to help them. Grouping struggling students with well-performing students is also helpful. I also adjust my approaches constantly to meet the students’ needs.
Third, it is very important to make the teaching materials as visual as possible. I use PowerPoint presentations to visualize Chinese characters. I also deconstruct Chinese characters from the perspective of how they are constructed. It proves to be a very impressive approach. My students remember the characters by the picture image the characters present, which is the most distinguished feature of Chinese characters: Picture graphic. For example, a sun in Chinese 日 is an image of a shinning spot in the middle, which represents the sun itself, surrounding by a circle, which represents the track that the sun revolves along in the sky.
I also use sound stimulations in class as much as possible to get the students exposed to the authentic Chinese language environment. For example, I use CDs, CD-ROMs, You tube clips, audio books, and other online sound file resources for daily assignments.
I believe a teacher should always ask students about what they feel about their classes, what they wish to learn, what they liked and dislike about the class. This is also a part of interactive teaching. The feedback I have gotten from my students through periodic surveys has helped me improve my teaching in a way that no other experiences can.
In addition, I found the students would be very frustrated and lose interest if a teacher does not give enough explanation, or does not slow down the teaching pace when introducing new concepts. Even if this happens with a single student, it should not be ignored: That student’s refusal to participate can disrupt the class.
I believe teaching is a process of constant learning. It includes learning from colleagues, students, people who are articulate and expressive, humorous and interesting including actors or actresses. I have been learning French and I find it tremendously helpful to understand what language contexts my students are being exposed to. I took the speech class by which I believe will help me become a better communicator so I can deliver me messages more efficiently in class. I attend the Greater New York Area Chinese Teachers’ Association workshops and other professional conferences as often as I can, at where I meet many teaching professionals and learn many inspiring ideas that are helpful for my teaching.
Although I was trained to be a teacher in my native China, it took years for me to understand that teaching is a blessed career. In our limited life span, what else can be compared with the opportunity to shape the lives of young people? How blessed it is to enrich young minds with knowledge; to help young people explore their intellectual potentials; to fill young hearts with goodness; to help them when they need emotional and other supports but have nobody to turn to, just as we had received support from our teachers in the past.
I see my role model in my graduate advisor in China, Mr. Cao Mufan, a distinguished scholar in Chinese literature and philosophy. It was his insight in the academic disciplines and the world, and his sense of responsibility that has had a big impact on my view of life. But most of all, it is his parental care and moral strength that helped me going through the lost days in my youth. These qualities will be the essential components of my teaching philosophy.
I learned from Professor Reed, my teacher during my teacher’s training program at Brooklyn College, what a good teacher is like. He demonstrated to us what a positive connection between a teacher and the students is. He showed us how critical thinking and new ideas can be evoked by intellectual inquiries. I believe that only when a teacher cares for the students, can he or she develop a true connection with the students.
By reading some wonderful books for the class about great teachers such as Leonard Covello and Jessica Siegel, I understood we, as educators, are obliged to help balance the striking social inequality in American education. We are obliged to provide the high-quality public education that the students from the affluent social class receive for the poor people’s students.
I believe the goal of language teaching, is to equip students with a new skill, a key to a broader new life. Contrary to what is happening in many New York public and private second language classes, I believe, beyond the mere transmission of language skills, it is probably more important to stimulate students to think critically. For example, a second language, whether it is English or Chinese, can give students the tool to examine their own culture, society and themselves. By leading students to observe the critical issues about another country where the target language is spoken, both the positive and negative aspects of its development, students will appreciate their own history, society and themselves in a much bigger context and in a much more profound depth. I learned this from my own academic study in America.
Under this philosophy, I believe in the integrated teaching methods, exemplified by the way Jessica Siegel integrated English language, literature, history, political science and the contemporary immigrant experience all together in her English and Journalism classes. My curriculum will reflect this philosophy. In my class, I have had the students watch some excellent documentaries about Chinese society (such as “A Century of Revolution” and “The Nan king Massacre”) and did a series of class discussions and presentations. I have in my classes introduced some famous Chinese music pieces played with Chinese musical instruments, and elaborated upon what cultural scenarios they convey. It was much welcomed by the class. I referred students to You Tube and Google websites to explore the traditional dragon and lion dances, and other cultural events.
In terms of teaching methods, first, I try all ways possible to motivate my students. In order to do so, I make my class interesting and fun. The best teaching method I have learned is to conduct my class in an inquiring and inductive way. Always question the students about how they can assemble a new sentence with the characters and phrases they have just learned; always ask them to think and try before giving them the answers. Before studying a new lesson, always ask them what they know about the context. This is to give some suspense and arouse curiosity, and moreover, to stimulate students to think, to engage students in interaction. I find this works wonderfully well with my recent classes.
It is very important to motivate a student by positive encouragement. Even when a student raises a question that is disruptive to the class schedule and timing, a teacher should be patient and encouraging.
Second, I have clear academic goals. They include long-term and short-term goals, collective goals for the entire class and goals for each student. With my goals in mind, I plan each of my lessons carefully in a detailed written form. I try to infuse my class with dynamic, interesting and student-centered activities by which students can practice the content knowledge wholeheartedly. This proves also the best strategy to maintain the students’ attention.
I have tried the following activities in my class: cooperative learning (group students by use different learning style, cultural and language background so they can help one another), activities involving musical, verbal, logical mathematical, naturalistic, and visual activities; group based projects, and presentation. Students love to participate in team competitions on character recognizing and character writing, pair conversations, guessing, picture and words matching, play bingos, physical movement, singing, dancing, storytelling, and mini drama performance.
In order to reach my academic goals, I differentiate my teaching strategies based on students’ academic levels and learning styles. I provide differentiated teaching materials, lectures, and activities for different groups of students. Especially for the struggling students, I design simple, visual and interesting group lessons to motivate them; provide extra lecture, level appropriate and interesting reading (read to, read together or students read to each other), writer’s workshop, and technology (for example online reading software) and other learning resources to help them. Grouping struggling students with well-performing students is also helpful. I also adjust my approaches constantly to meet the students’ needs.
Third, it is very important to make the teaching materials as visual as possible. I use PowerPoint presentations to visualize Chinese characters. I also deconstruct Chinese characters from the perspective of how they are constructed. It proves to be a very impressive approach. My students remember the characters by the picture image the characters present, which is the most distinguished feature of Chinese characters: Picture graphic. For example, a sun in Chinese 日 is an image of a shinning spot in the middle, which represents the sun itself, surrounding by a circle, which represents the track that the sun revolves along in the sky.
I also use sound stimulations in class as much as possible to get the students exposed to the authentic Chinese language environment. For example, I use CDs, CD-ROMs, You tube clips, audio books, and other online sound file resources for daily assignments.
I believe a teacher should always ask students about what they feel about their classes, what they wish to learn, what they liked and dislike about the class. This is also a part of interactive teaching. The feedback I have gotten from my students through periodic surveys has helped me improve my teaching in a way that no other experiences can.
In addition, I found the students would be very frustrated and lose interest if a teacher does not give enough explanation, or does not slow down the teaching pace when introducing new concepts. Even if this happens with a single student, it should not be ignored: That student’s refusal to participate can disrupt the class.
I believe teaching is a process of constant learning. It includes learning from colleagues, students, people who are articulate and expressive, humorous and interesting including actors or actresses. I have been learning French and I find it tremendously helpful to understand what language contexts my students are being exposed to. I took the speech class by which I believe will help me become a better communicator so I can deliver me messages more efficiently in class. I attend the Greater New York Area Chinese Teachers’ Association workshops and other professional conferences as often as I can, at where I meet many teaching professionals and learn many inspiring ideas that are helpful for my teaching.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Free Writing for ESL Students
There certainly is a point about encouraging free writing. I think this strategy will work very efficiently with young and middle-grade level children. I remember all those years while I was in elementary school; I was so frustrated about writing class. “What to write?” is always a number one question. The nightmare was not over until I had had four-years of training in language and literature in college. I saw such struggling going on with schoolchildren in China, and schoolchildren in New York schools.
The point is to keep the students motivated to write. Only when they are interested in telling things about themselves and things they like to do, will they be highly motivated to write. In this sense, free writing is one of the best approaches.
The second point is that free writing permits the flow of the writer’s mind, whether the writer be a native English speaker or not. The habit of compulsive and premature editing hinders that flow. I see that our native English-speaking classmates have had such experience. For many years, I have often suffered struggling to produce academic papers. It is my dream to be able to write. So more than once I told my husband that the writing was too painful for me; if I had to do this for the rest of life, this would kill me; I did not see how someone could have fun writing. Then, my husband would comfort me, “when you really write what you want to write, it will never be as hard and boring like this. For god sake, I am sick of editing your papers. Too boring!” and indeed, he usually enjoys reading my free writing, which happens quite rarely, because I was too busy, and probably the real reason was because I was afraid, as a non-native English speaker, of writing incorrect English.
Recently, I witnessed the same apprehension at an ESL class at a primary school in Brooklyn during my observation. The students were asked to write freely about themselves and the paper would be used for the next grade’s teacher as a means of assessing their language levels. Students had struggled for over half of the class and barely had written any sentences. Then, the ESL teacher told the students to write in their native Chinese if they did not know certain words in English. This saved the whole class. Quickly, they all started to write fluidly.
Finally, maybe free writing should not be evaluated formally, but the writing should be looked at by the teachers and corrected grammatically. Otherwise, what is the purpose of asking the students to write freely?
The point is to keep the students motivated to write. Only when they are interested in telling things about themselves and things they like to do, will they be highly motivated to write. In this sense, free writing is one of the best approaches.
The second point is that free writing permits the flow of the writer’s mind, whether the writer be a native English speaker or not. The habit of compulsive and premature editing hinders that flow. I see that our native English-speaking classmates have had such experience. For many years, I have often suffered struggling to produce academic papers. It is my dream to be able to write. So more than once I told my husband that the writing was too painful for me; if I had to do this for the rest of life, this would kill me; I did not see how someone could have fun writing. Then, my husband would comfort me, “when you really write what you want to write, it will never be as hard and boring like this. For god sake, I am sick of editing your papers. Too boring!” and indeed, he usually enjoys reading my free writing, which happens quite rarely, because I was too busy, and probably the real reason was because I was afraid, as a non-native English speaker, of writing incorrect English.
Recently, I witnessed the same apprehension at an ESL class at a primary school in Brooklyn during my observation. The students were asked to write freely about themselves and the paper would be used for the next grade’s teacher as a means of assessing their language levels. Students had struggled for over half of the class and barely had written any sentences. Then, the ESL teacher told the students to write in their native Chinese if they did not know certain words in English. This saved the whole class. Quickly, they all started to write fluidly.
Finally, maybe free writing should not be evaluated formally, but the writing should be looked at by the teachers and corrected grammatically. Otherwise, what is the purpose of asking the students to write freely?
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