Entry 4: Reflection
This course has enlightened me on how ESL students learn English and
other content areas. Before this course, I did not know how many factors
affected the language learning process. I thought learning a language was
mostly rote memorization. This course taught me that teachers need to take into
consideration internal and external factors of each student as they are
learning language. Additionally, the teacher needs to take into consideration
macro level ideas, such as crosslinguistic influences and foreign language
aptitudes.
At first, I did not think this class would help me as much when I become
a teacher because I have no intentions on becoming an ESL or bilingual teacher,
however, my views on this have changed. Since I have begun student teaching I
have learned that this content should be taken into consideration by all content
teachers because a student may be in an inclusive classroom despite learning
English as a second language. As a future teacher, I bring the learning strategies I have learned
this semester into the classroom. I will constantly remember that my students
are “are highly motivated students who also enjoy high-quality instructional
experiences” (Ortiz, 2013, p. 28). As an example, my cooperating teacher is in
a general classroom but has a few ESL students. She told me she creates all of
her anchor charts with intention, utilizing all of her prior knowledge from
being an ESL teacher. In the future, I would like to work with as much
intention as her to ensure the success for all my students.
Looking back, I wish the class would have gone into greater depth on how
teachers can specifically affect the motivation of their students and less in
depth on the correlation between age and second language acquisition. I wrote
my research paper on how teachers can
affect student motivation and found it to be quite interesting. I believe it
would be beneficial for all aspiring teachers to know how their actions and
words in the classroom can have an impact on their students learning English.
Juxtaposed, I believe the relatedness between age and acquiring a second
language could be lessened. It may be because I remembered a lot of this
information from previous classes, but in psychology and educational
psychology, this material was already mentioned. Specifically, I remember
learning about critical learning periods, which is the “hypothesis that there
is a specific period of time early in life when the brain exhibits a special
propensity to attend to certain experiences in the environment” (Ortiz, 2013,
p. 13).
A large majority of the learning I did this semester was through my
VBlog. Making the videos and posts made me more involved in my learning. While
it may have been challenging to find people to interview who fit the
description sometimes, it was rewarding afterwards because I was able to see
what I have learned from my text and how it has affected people as they have
learned English as a second language or taught ESL students. Additionally, one
of my favorite parts of the VBlog was being able to see other VBlogs as well
because my peers were able to interview people who were different from who I
was able to interview. Everyone had such
diversity in their choices and it allowed me to see a lot of different aspects
of what we had learned over the semester manifesting in individuals
differently.
Hi Chelsea! Just like you, I don’t plan on being an ESL or bilingual teacher but I do think that it is important to know the topics discussed throughout this course because we might have ESL students in our classrooms and we must know how to adjust our lessons and use strategies that will help all of our students. In addition to motivation, I also think that we should try to help our students create positive attitudes towards their L2s. According to Ortega (2013), “positive attitudes towards the learning context as well as the L2 community and culture …. and current satisfaction with teachers and instruction can boost motivation considerably” (p 190). As teachers, we can help motivate L2 learners and help them create those positive attitudes that will help them be more successful with their L2.
ReplyDeleteHi Gabriela,
DeleteYou bring up an excellent point! Even if we are not ESL or Bilingual teachers, we will still have students who are learning English as a second language in our classroom. Teachers serve a pivotal role in their ability to increase a child’s motivation towards developing a second language. Students must have a positive attitude towards the second language, “such attitudes are shaped by the frequency and quality of past L2 contact but they also help shape willingness to seek and engage in future L2 contact” (Ortega, 2013, p. 204). Ortega is explaining that if we want students to continue to develop their second language, they must have constant, high-quality instructional experiences.
Hi Chelsea! It is interesting to see what this course has to offer and the growth of applying it to our future classrooms. Just like you and Gabriela, I had no intentions of becoming a specialist for language, but I am very intrigued by the thought of learning a few languages to connect with my students. In addition, it helps a lot when we have a positive mentor who can provide constructive feedback, as well as view the perspectives of ELL specialists during the video interviews. Ortega mentions although motivation nurtures more success for L2 learning, experiencing L2 learning success also boosts motivation to even higher levels (Ortega, 2013, p. 189). Therefore, both students and teachers should work collaboratively to create those real-life connections to language learning.
ReplyDeleteOrtega, L. Understanding second language acquisition. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Hi Michelle,
DeleteI love to see that you already have a passion to form connections with your students by learning additional languages. By forming these connections, you will better be able to teach your students, as we have learned in our other teacher courses. It’s also worth noting that this makes you slightly intrinsically motivated, but also slightly extrinsically motivated. Intrinsic motivation, which is motivation that is “self-initiated by choice and largely sustained by inherent enjoyment in the activity” (Ortega, 2013, p. 186), is seen by your choice to learn more languages because you have a passion related to them. However, some of your motivation is extrinsic, which is defined as “ structured by a means–end, pragmatic–instrumental causation that is imposed from the outside” (Ortega, 2013, p. 176), because you are also highly motivated by the end goal of forming better connections with your students.
Hi Chelsea! Before this class I was also under the impression that learning a language was basic memorization. At least for me, this misconception comes from mandatorily having to learning a second language in high school. In my experience learning a second language consisted of trying to imitate how the teacher pronounced each word. I think I can speak for all teachers when I say that we want our students to be invested in their learning. A great way to keep supporting students’ desire to learn is to have students use their L2, in meaningful ways just as Ortega mentions (2013, p. 62). Instead of memorizing random words, like I had to do in high school.
ReplyDeleteHi Karen,
DeleteI also remember learning a second language in high school. It was extremely boring and consisted of only memorization. As you mentioned, it is better for students to have a desire to learn instead of having them use rote memorization. However, I am torn on whether this is because we were learning a second language before this research had been shared with our teacher, or if it’s because we were learning a second language after our sensitive periods since “post-pubertal learners, however, are not likely to perform in the native speaker range (Ortega, 2013, p. 29).