TESOL at 40

This article is a good overview of the TESOL issues we have been learning and reading about in class.  It also discusses potential TESOL questions and research for the future.  Canagarajah talks about TESOL as a metaphor of growth, problem-solution dialectic, and stability.  One quote I found interesting was, "In terms of language skills, we now recognize that all four skills are integrated, and we are developing our curricula in terms of other organizing principles-projects, purposes, tasks, or portfolios, which draw from skills variously for their accomplishment" (12).  This quote shows the progress researchers are making throughout the years to move from focus on the instructors role to focus on the what the learner can produce.  I like the chart on page 15 of Brown's shifts that favor empowerment of the learner.  He defines empowerment as "enabling students 'to become critical thinkers, equipped with problem-solving strategies, poised to challenge those forces in society that would keep them passive'" (15).

In addition, the author discusses globalization and the continual increase of use the of technology for language learning.  "Digital technologies have led to new genres of communication, new conventions of language use, and new vocabulary and grammar rules for English" (25-26).  As teachers we must remember technology is always advancing, and that it is important to continue researching best educational practices as the times change.  "To begin to address these new questions, we have to recognize that language norms are relative, variable, and heterogeneous" (26).    

Chapter 7: Ideas about Language Learning

Chapter 7:
This is a great chapter to end the book on!  I like how the author has us reflect on our thoughts and views we had before reading the book, and then think about how they have changed after reading and discussing second language acquisition.  Lightbrown and Spada discuss 17 ideas we have about second language acquisition and how they relate to the studies presented in the previous chapters.  One point I found interesting was the point 10 that teachers should present grammatical rules one at a time, and learners should practise examples of each one before going to another (189).  I was not aware of the thought of developing interlanguage through exploration before I read this book.  The author explains "Language development is not just adding one rule after another.  Rather it involves processes of integrating new language forms and patterns into an existing interlanguage, readjusting and restructuring until all the pieces fit" (189).  Another interesting point is number15: Students learn what they are taught (192).  The authors make the point that learners use their own internal learning mechanisms to discover rules and relationships with languages that nobody actually teaches them.  This shows how complex our brains are and that all students can learn a second language.    


   

Chapter 6: Lightbrown/Spada, Saville/Troike

The studies in chapter six of Lightbrown/Spada where a great way to show the proof of evidence for the six proposals for classroom teaching.  I liked how they explained each proposal then presented the studies to show the evidence.  For example, in Study 13: Grammar plus communicative practice, Sandra Savignon divided students into three groups: communicative group, cultural group, and control group.  Savignon found that there were no significant differences between the groups in linguistic competence, yet the communicative group scored higher than the other groups on the communicative tests.  She points out that "language programmes that focus only on accuracy and form do not give students sufficient opportunity to develop communication abilities in a second language" (143).  In addition, "the 'Get it right from the beginning' approach was the evidence that opportunities for freer communication did not cause learners to do less well on measure of linguistic accuracy" (143).

In chapter six of Saville/Troike, I enjoyed reading the differences between academic competence and interpersonal competence because I see it with such prevalence in the bilingual classrooms.  As a bilingual teacher, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between students who are not competent academically because their interpersonal competence is so strong.  For example, native Spanish speaking students will talk face to face in English with other students and teachers, communicating very effectively.  Sometimes the students with strong interpersonal competence are placed in a level that is too high academically until we realize they are not as competent when it comes to understanding the academic language.  We must remember that just because a learner has interpersonal competence, it does not mean they are competent academically and the other way around.  

In addition, the explanation and chart of the bottom-up and top-down approach was very helpful.  Sometimes it is difficult to know which approach will be more effective for a certain topic or activity when teaching.  I also think it depends on learner preferences.  Some students learn better when they know the basic concept and can work up from there.  Others understand and retain the information better if they start with the big picture and solve the puzzle, so to speak, of the meaning of smaller components.

Lingua Franca

The concept of Lingua Franca is complex because it takes into consideration many dichotomies in language acquisition such as grammar vs. pragmatics, individual vs. community, cognition vs. context, and monolingual vs multilingual (just to name a few).  Speakers of LFE inhabit and practice other languages and cultures in their own locations yet they mutually recognize a set of attitudes, forms, and conventions that ensure successful communication (925).  This is so complex to me and show that the speakers have a double conscious mind because they are able to learn another language without assimilating into the mainstream culture.  It is also surprising that the pragmatic strategies of the language are not the same!  Another thought I liked from the article was "such individuals and communities are so radically multilingual that it is difficult to identify one's mother tongue or native language" (930).  This shows that the communities are multilingual and multicultural. 

Chapter 5: Knowledge for Whom

This chapter explains the power behind learning the English language.  I had never really realized that speaker's of other languages considered English to be a language of the elite.  Like we discussed in class, it would be nice to be able to separate a person's identity from the language they speak but often times that is hard to do. 

Vygotsky's quote "We must develop the curriculum to challenge, to stimulate, to arouse!" (163) stuck out to me because as teachers we need to take our students needs and desires into consideration when planning a curriculum.  We must ask ourselves what do they want to know and what knowledge will help our students be successful.  "Our goal as teachers is to provide the students with access to English and all the personal and professional possibilities that come with the ability to speak English, and to decolonize the teaching of English" (165)

Another concept I found interesting was the difference between double consciousness and assimilation.  Through the development of double consciousness, students have a sense of identity and a sense of wholeness uniting two cultural worlds.  They keep their own identity and are able to learn the new language and culture in addition.  However, with assimilation, students loose their identity and are forced to blend in with the mainstream culture.  As teachers we must strive to promote programs that teach students double consciousness rather than assimilation into our culture.   

Chapter 4: Learning by Doing

I found Palol Freire's point on "true generosity" and "false charity" interesting.  False charity encourages the oppressed to extend their hands in supplication and true generosity encourages those hands to work to transform the world.  Freire believes in humanization and says learning takes place through practice in transforming the world.  Both Dewey and Mao agree that "knowledge consists of experience and can only be acquired through active human inquiry in experience" (137).  According to Mao, "Experience serves a check-up for true leaning and leads to further experiments, learning and growth" (138).  I find this theory true in my own life; the more experiences I have with students, the more I learn how to optimize each individual situation while teaching.  Another key part of learning by doing Dewey discusses is reflection.  He says, "Experience in itself might not lead to knowledge nor be part of a larger moral vision of social transformation.  Experience could only have educational value when there when there were connections drawn between the experience and the other experiences" (138).  Teachers should take this into consideration when teaching students to read and write a second language because if students are able to reflect on previous experiences that took place in their first language, they can make connections that apply to learning the second language. 

Sources

Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for applied linguistics research and ELT. TESOL Quarterly, 33(1), 9-35.

This article uses research about Japanese culture to show how learners’ backgrounds  affect the way they learn a second language. The article is relevant to my research topic because it offers a way for teachers to understand cultural differences.  It also explains the cultural characteristics that students with non-English backgrounds bring to ESL classrooms.  In addition, the article discuses the affects of culture in elementary education, which is the age group I am researching.

Holtbrugge, D., & Mohr, A. (2010). Cultural determinants of learning style preferences. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 9(4), 622-637.

This article discusses the relationship between cultural values and learning style preferences.  It explains how individuals from different cultural backgrounds learn languages differently.  This is relevant to my topic because the study performed on Chinese students show results of how the learning process of diverse students differs.

Zhang, Yang. (2010). The research of individual differences and English learning strategies. US-China Foreign Language, 8(4), 49-54.   

This research presents English learning strategies and discusses how to use these strategies to relate to individual differences among students.  My topic includes researching types of strategies that are most influential in assisting diverse groups of learners.  This article explains cognitive strategies, comprehension, and metacognitive strategies. 

Hollos, M., & Beeman, W. (1978). The development of directives among Norwegian and Hungarian children: An example of communicative style in culture. Language in Society, 7(3), 345-355.

This article is about the communicative style of learning and explains how it is distinct in different cultures.  In addition, this article explains the investigation of children’s strategies of communicative behavior.  This will provide useful information for my paper because I want to learn how cultural backgrounds affects communication. 

Chapter 3 Taste of the Ginkgo Nut: Problem Posing

Henri Bergson intrigued me with the quote "I may experience the time of my teaching not as a series of minutes to be counted but as an excitement of the moment of discovery, which erases that clock sense of time" (85).  I thought this was an excellent quote because it is true that when everyone is enjoying learning and engaged in the project or lesson, the time seems to fly by.  Rather than “transmit” information to students, we need make sure they are engaged in learning and play an active role in communicating.

Vygotski made some good points about how we develop a taste for certain things such as food, language, and arts.  Our likes and dislikes are influenced by our family, culture, and history.  Karl Marx says that what makes humans different from animals is that we transform to our habitat.  We tend to participate in activities, enjoy the food, and like the things around us.  Vygotsky regarded children as "active agents in development, contributing to the creation of internal mental processes by collaborating with others in meaningful cultural activities" (93).  In other words, we cannot just mimic what people say in order to learn a language.  It takes practice communicating and social interaction to develop languages.

The Heinz dilemma has always interested me.  We talked about possible responses to the question "should Heinz steal the drug?"  in my child psychology class and how students develop a sense of morality according to Kholberg.  I had never thought before of how this cognitive development could affect second language acquisition and how gender plays a role in our reasoning process.              

Wong and Toohey

The first part of chapter 2 discussed dialogic learning in a community.  Vygotsky says that "Development of thought and language occurs on the social plan or in community before it occurs independently or individually" (49).  I believe social interactions and learning in a community are important parts of second language acquisition.  As it is explain in the section, the desire to communicate successfully within the community helps to motivate language learning.  This comes naturally for a young child because it is their natural instinct to develop a first language and learn to communicate.  I believe having that desire to communicate within the community is a huge motivator to learn a second language.  Immigrants want to be a part of the community and learn the language around them.  When I went to Mexico and was able to use the Spanish language for the first time outside of the classroom, I was motivated to continue learning and put even more effort into the second language.

Also, Jim Cummins' framework for empowerment of language minority students is a good concept.  Many of the schools in central Illinois promote a subtractive model of second language acquisition rather than an additive because of lack of funding and lack of support by the community.  Unfortunately with this model, students are encouraged to lose their home language, which is a part of their identity.  Instead, like Cummins proposed, programs should be geared toward appreciating and valuing all cultures by encouraging the development of the native language along with the second language.

As a first grade teacher of ESL students, I really related to the article “Breaking Them Up, Taking Them Always:” ESL Students in Grade 1 by Kelleen Toohey.  I understood the teacher’s seating arrangements of the students because like she said, it is great to have children in groups so they can talk and collaborate.  I like my classroom to be set up in groups; however, due to behavior and other factors, sometimes it is necessary to separate students.  This was one example of how a teacher managed her classroom, but we have to treat each group of students differently according to the student’s needs and what the final goal is.  Sometimes it is important for students who speak the same language to work together and other times it is important for students with different language backgrounds to work together.  This is the same for high and low level students.  In my classroom I placed the high reading level students in the same group and low reading level students in the same group so that we could work on specific skills for them to improve.  Either way, the most important thing is that all cultures and languages are valued and appreciated, and the lack of this is the problem in our schools today.         

Political and Philosophical Roots of TESOL

In chapter one of Dialogic Approaches to TESOL, I enjoyed reading about Clifford Prator's "cornerstones" to consider in developing TESOL methodology.  His question of "What Are the Aims of Instruction" related to me when he explained that accent is a part of our identity.  When speaking Spanish in other countries, I always feel self-conscious about my accent and feel like native speakers will not think I capable or worthy of speaking because I sound different.  Prator made the point that our accent carries the story of who we are and that the aim of instruction should not be to change the way we talk but rather to teach the language and help language learners to be successful.  This made me feel empowered in my Spanish speaking ability because I know I can communicate well and should not feel like I am judged by my accent.

Also in the chapter I was surprised by how many teaching approaches there are for teaching a second language.  I am most familiar with the Communicative Approach because I studied foreign language pedagogy. The communicative approach is specific to learning a foreign language and helping students use the target language to communicate.  Another approach I found interesting was the Communicative Competence and the Communicative Approach.  This approach seems like a mixture of several other approaches put together.  I would like to learn more about Del Hymes’s themes related to this approach.  

While there are benefits and fall-back to each approach, I believe the teacher should take into consideration the goal or purpose of learning the second language and use the approach that best fits the needs of the students.  For example, if one was trying to learn a “dead” language such as Latin, the Grammar Translation Approach may be appropriate.  However, if one was learning a foreign language to be able to communicate when traveling abroad, the Communicative Approach may be better to use. 

Good Language Learners

In the first article The Forum, I found it interesting that research shows attitude and motivation were the best overall predictors of success in second language learning.  I find this true in my own life when I am studying something.  If I am interested in a subject or language and motivated to learn about it, I spend more time studying and am more successful overall.  In the article Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning, Bonny Peirce explains that investment is just as important as motivation.  She says learners not only need to be motivated but also to be able to put investment of time into learning.  She brings up the point that motivation is not necessarily a fixed personality trait and that we must realize investment will change depending on social relationships and the learner's identity.  People's interests can change as they get older or develop more interests.  I was initially interested in the Spanish language and my interests in cultures and how people develop languages developed due to my initial interest and investment in learning Spanish.

Social Contexts of SLA

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory is interesting to me because I found that I became much stronger in my second language through social interaction.  Although this theory does not have a set structure like most theories, Vygotsky says that learning occurs when simple innate activities are transformed to higher-order thinking.  When I was in a relaxed social setting where native speakers were using the language to communicate, I was able to think and respond and use higher-order thinking to learn new vocabulary.

Scaffolding is also important when learning languages.  Using scaffolding while teaching a second language, allows students to develop the language by adding more to simple stuctures.   

Wild Child

This was a very interesting movie because it is a great test of the critical period hypothesis.  The boy was around seven or eight years old and had not developed language during the critical period for children's knowledge of language to be activated.  The wild child shows that the critical period hypothesis is accurate in some ways.  One example is that we could see the boy really struggling in the movie just to finally say one word.  His innate ability to learn a language was not used; therefore, it was difficult for him to understand and communicate through language.  However, Victor was making progress especially in his ability to recognize letters and words that were associated with certain objects.  In my opinion, he was able to build vocabulary in his mind and understand what people were talking about but had no sense of grammatical rules and how to produce the words through speaking.  

I thought it was really sad how the townspeople reacted to him when he came to the village.  They put him in a barn with straw and treated him like an animal.  Rather than coming to visit him like it was a show, I thought people would think of what a tragedy it is that a real human being was abandon and left in the wilderness for eight years of his life.  It seems heartless that they would think of him as merely an animal from the woods. 

Second Language Acquisition

One of the concepts I found most interesting in these readings was the development of interlanguage.  I have taken many classes on second language acquisition but now I feel like I have a better understanding of how the interlanguage is formed.  In her book Introducing Second Language Acquisition , Muriel Saville-Troike explains in detail, the characteristics of interlanguage, which include systematic, dynamic, variable, and reduced system (both in both form and function).  This tells us that the IL is discovered by what the learner can produce and interpret.  I also found universal grammar to be an interesting topic because Chomsky tells us that language abilities exist in children and they only need to build on it to learn the language.  Is this innate resource still available to people who are acquiring additional languages beyond the age of early childhood?  If not, at what age do we lose this innate ability and why?

Chapter 1 and 2

Chapter One

One part I found particularly interesting in Chapter one was on diversity in learning and learners.  While teaching bilingual first grade for the last three years, I have questioned and researched why some L2 learners are more successful than other.  It was interesting to me to read how the thoughts of linguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and social psychologists all differ in their response to why some L2 learners have more success than others.  Psycholinguists make distinctions based on individual aptitude for the L2, which include different learning strategies.  I have found it to be true that students are more successful when a variety of learning strategies (hands-on activities, songs, visual, etc.) are used in the classroom when learning a second language.    

Chapter Two

Chapter two gives a good introduction to the foundations of second language acquisition.  The approaches to the study of SLA address the what, how, and why questions researchers ask about second language acquisition.  Chapter two explains the different perspectives and frameworks including linguistic, psychological, and social.  In addition, this chapter explains in more detail the role of natural ability to learn languages.  This is interesting to me because I started learning Spanish at age 15, which means according to the critical period hypothesis, it would be very difficult for me to reach native fluency.  When I speak to native Spanish speakers, they are able to tell I am not a native speaker by the way I pronounce some of the words or letters.  I would have loved to learn more languages at a younger age when I was still developing.  I think it is amazing that children have the capacity to learn all languages around them!

Early Theories in Second Language Acquisition

In this article, Vanpatten and Williams explain Behaviorist Theories and how language learning is seen as the acquisition of a new behavior.  Children imitate sounds and structures they hear in the environment and reproduce them.  What I found interesting was research on transferring knowledge about the L1 to the L2.  I had always thought this was a positive thing, but in the article they talk about how it can have negative effects as well.  The article also explained Krashens’ theories on SLA.  One hypothesis I can identify with is the Affective Filter Hypothesis.  When I was learning a second language in college, I could easily speak and understand Spanish when I was in a comfortable, natural setting.  However my affective filter was raised when I was in the classroom and felt like I was under pressure to say the right things.  This still holds true in the graduate classes I am taking where the course is instructed in Spanish.