Linguistic Diversity and Instructional Practices

In Ann Johns article "Linguistic Diversity and Instructional Practices", it is interesting to see the linguistic and educational differences between Hispanic generations. These descriptions emphasize the importance of being aware of your students’ abilities and what motivates them in order to cater to their educational needs.

This article also stresses the importance of making diverse students feel comfortable in the classroom, and ways to help them succeed. Many of the questions that Ann Johns brought up were helpful. Teachers need to think about how they can truly help students on the search for their identity. It’s sad to think that diverse students feel that they have to be stripped of their culture in order to fit into the ‘norm’. Johns states that as teachers, we need to “Discover who are students are”, and by putting value on getting to know their backgrounds, will give them a sense of pride in who they are. I liked how Johns gave advice on how to enhance the learning opportunities of all students. She gave prompts for how teachers can assist students in writing goals, as well as ways that the students can assess themselves, and promote learner autonomy.

Module 3- Integrating Language Skills

The Module 3 video discusses the significance of integrating specific language skills into a language classroom. It states that “the use of language for meaningful purposes requires the use of Integrating Language Skills. They spoke about receptive skills (listening and reading), productive skills (speaking and writing), as well as sub-skills (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and non-verbal skills).
In the video, there were 3 separate classrooms taped during the integration of these language skills. The students in the first classroom got to choose any picture from a magazine article to write about, and then present to the class. The students in this classroom used a combination of receptive and productive skills. I really liked the way this activity went, and how the students got to communicate actual information as opposed to rote memorization or conversation drills.
I think that integrating all of these language skills will be of utmost importance in my classroom. It’s clear to see that a collaboration of all of the skills will be the most effective way of teaching. Each skill enhances the other, so it would be silly to stick to just one. From these videos anyone can see that the use of natural language in listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills is the most authentic way to prepare students for real life social interactions.

Progress on Final project

I began observing in a Bilingual classroom last week. My classroom is 5th graders, whom all have gone through this Bilingual program from K-5. Unfortunately for me, at the 5th grade level, they are being taught 70% in English and 30% in Spanish. I was hoping to observe in a more immersion type classroom, and hopefully I will throughout this semester. Starting in kindergarten these students are taught in 90% Spanish 10% English, and as the years go on it decreases in order for the students to maintain quality reading, writing and speaking levels in both languages. I am really enjoying my time in this classroom. The students are allowed to read, write, or speak in either language at all times, and the teacher will accept the work. Each class period they have 'readers workshop', and each week they focus on a different aspect of evaluating something that they have read. About half of the class has chosen their readers workshop books in Spanish, so it has been fun for me to go around and have them read to me, as well as discuss and evaluate the book. Next class I am going to talk to the students about what they think of being in this type of school, and the advantages and disadvantages that they think about the program.

Kuma Ch. 6

“helping learners become autonomous is one way of maximizing their chances of success."

Kuma Chapter 6 discussed how difficult it is for a teacher to find ways to maintain their students’ motivation to learn. Although as teachers we can guide them in this direction, the students have to be “willing to learn”. As a teacher, you have to be subject to change your approaches and lessons in order to appeal to each specific learner. This may be difficult to go about if your students are only motivated by external factors (such as needing to pass for a credit.

Since I am going to be teaching Spanish in high schools, as well as teaching English to speakers of other languages, I think that it will be interesting to see both ends of the spectrum. From my experience, most students that take Spanish in high school only do so for a graduation requirement or for college acceptance, but typical EFL and ESL classes in the US contain students that are motivated to learn the language in order to somewhat ‘survive’ in The United States as practically monolingual culture. I would feel exceptionally appreciative to have each and every one of my students be internally motivated about learning, but that is just not realistic.

On page 140, Kuma gave ideas for how learners can become autonomous. He stated the importance of going beyond what they get in the classroom for additional language learning. I definitely agree with this and think it is of utmost importance to help provide your students with authentic materials and situations that will make their language learning relevant to their life. Also, promoting participation in cultural events and getting involved will help the language learner become autonomous.

Curriculum Design and Materials Development

Kuma 8

This chapter really opened my eyes to intuitive heuristics and inductive teaching methods and how it shows to increase grammatical comprehension. Although I have been in Spanish and English classes my entire life, I had never really thought about the way the grammar of each language was being presented to me. After reading this chapter, it seems to me that each and every teacher I have had had chosen a deductive approach. In my lower level Spanish classes, where learning grammatical rules took place, I can recall always being spoon fed rules, rules, rules. They were either written on the board, or printed in our books for us to simply copy down. My teacher would always read aloud the rule, and we would listen.

I think that this chapter shows that students should be involved in higher level thinking and incorporating their own conclusions on grammar rules. It seems to me that the teachers should work as facilitators to prompt students to explain how they come about getting the ‘answer’ rather than giving it to them. This in turn will help them to find their own confidence in the language.