Teaching English For Glocalized Communication

Classroom Observations

2011-05-22T21:25:00.004-05:00

The purpose of this posting is to reflect on the numerous occasions in which I have been observed by my supervisors and peers to illustrate what has worked and has not worked in helping me become a better educator. As I plan to be a teacher educator in the near future, conducting classroom observations is a skill that usually isn't acquired before becoming a supervisor or administrator.

I have been formally observed in two different jobs, my first full-time teaching job in Japan and my first teacher training job in South Korea. I have also been formally observed as a teaching assistant at the University of Iowa. Although these classes had very little to do with ESL or EFL, they were teacher education classes on technology in the classroom.

First Teaching Job

The most stressful experience of being observed was at my first job, of course, because I was a new teacher. My first three days on the job consisted of orientation, which included of training sessions and closely observed teaching. After I completed orientation, I was observed after 2 weeks, after 1 month, after 2 months, after 6 months, and then once a year until I left the job. My orientation supervisor only observed me for the purpose of orientation. After that, I was observed by the trainer or assistant trainer of my school.

Although I was only formally observed during the times I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I felt like I was constantly observed informally as all the classrooms in the school were divided by glass walls. All teachers could be observed by the trainer, assistant trainer, director, staff, other teachers, and prospective students at any time. This arrangement was also meant to be helpful as the new teachers could observe the more experienced teachers for instructional ideas. During the two-month probationary period for new instructors of this institution, the trainer usually kept one eye on them while he was teaching his own class. (I'm using the male pronoun in this case because both of my trainers were male.) I found this to be unnerving most of the time as I would sometimes catch the trainer observing me with a serious look on his face.

For the first year's worth of observations, new teachers are told that they are assessed on their ability to follow the school's method. I recall this meant going through all (10?) of the steps in the correct order and for the correct duration. Each step was allotted a certain amount of time. I recall timing being very important during the probationary period. After the probationary period, we were given options to interpret some of the steps in creative ways depending on the needs of the students. The 6-month and the 12-month observation seemed to concentrate on this factor. After the first year, teachers were not so tightly restricted to the order and timing of the steps, although all of the steps had to be included. Trainers were often looking for creative and effective use of the school's method after the first year.

I remember that I was given some notice before I was formally observed for each time. As I taught an average of 6-7 classes with an average of 3 students in each class per day, the trainer or assistant trainer usually selected the class with the most amiable students. I mean that the students had a good rapport with most or all of the instructors and would not be deterred by being observed. Because the classrooms could only fit 4 people inside, the observer would sit either in an adjacent empty room or just outside the door. The observer usually made sure that he would sit in a place where I wouldn't make eye contact. While I was teaching, the observer seemed to be constantly taking notes and keeping the time.

Usually the class period following the observation was reserved for a debriefing in which the trainer or assistant trainer would discuss my strengths and weaknesses. This debriefing often started with a self-evaluation, where I was asked to reflect on "how it went." Because my first year seemed to have more weaknesses than strengths according to these debriefings, I have been conditioned to be highly self-critical. These observations had resurrected the perfectionist personality that I nearly subdued in college. Even now I rarely reflect upon a class and think that it went very well. "I can always do better."

I'm sure I was far from being a good teacher at the beginning as I had little training and experience, but I remember that some criticisms I received were not exactly about teaching. Some of my colleagues had the same impressions. Some of us were critiqued about our clothing. For example, a patterned shirt is not appropriate; instead wear a solid color shirt. Also some critiques were about nervous habits like the tapping of a pencil. Although I received some silly criticisms such as these, I also learned how important it was to be reflective about my teaching, and that there is always room for growth. That is probably the biggest lesson I took away from classroom observations at my first job.

Special Visits to Korea

Although the first job's observations were stressful in that I was a new teacher, observations were frequent, and some criticisms were unpredictable, they did prepare me for equally stressful observations at my first teacher training job in Korea. It was stressful because we were observed by American university professors. The program was accredited in the United States, so our students could finish up their MA in TESOL or related fields in certain American universities. It was also stressful because these professors were also my academic advisors. I did not want to let them down.

The classroom observations took place once every term, which is a little longer than a typical semester at an American university. Either one or two professors from the program's sister university in the United States would fly in to assess the instructional methods of each teacher trainer. Both curriculum and teaching method was designed by these professors and all trainers were not allowed to stray too far from them.

Because our observers had to fly in to Seoul, we usually had at least a one month notice before they arrived. Once they arrived, we had a meeting with our observers and the Korean administrators. Here we would be briefed on what they would look for, which was basically the same each semester, correct implementation of the program's teaching method, which is similar to the reciprocal teaching approach to reading.

Unlike my first job, all teachers knew specifically what our observers were looking for as we were given a rubric. This rubric was similar to the one I used to evaluate my teacher trainees when they performed their microteaching lessons. To summarize the most important element, the observers were looking for individual students speaking as much as possible with correct modeling of the language provided by the instructor, a direct approach to building oral proficiency skills. This was similar to my first job in that reducing teacher talking time (TTT) was a top priority. Both of these jobs taught me to limit my talking time in order to provide students with more time to practice theirs with corrective feedback.

At first, the standards for this method seemed to be set very very high, almost unobtainable. This confirmed my neurotic belief that there was always room to grow. Many new teachers in this program were told that had a lot of room to grow. To be fair, the assessment was transparent as the observers would share their notes with us after the lesson. I was able to see how often and how long I spoke. I also got to see how many students participated and how often each one was called on. During my best observation I was told, "That was good, but do more (of these techniques). You can never have enough."

Informal Observations

I have been informally observed as a Senior English Language Fellow in Russia and as ESL instructor at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse.

My Russian counterpart occasionally watched me teach and would provide feedback. What I gathered from her feedback is that we were two very different types of teachers. She came from the school of neuro-linguistic programming or desuggestopedia, which one of my graduate professors had very little respect for, so I was very much aware of the weaknesses of this type of teaching approach. She probably had the same critique of the approach I was using. Although I enjoyed working with her, I believe she would not have hired me if she were on a hiring committee.

At La Crosse, each new teacher needed to be observed by the program director during his or her first semester. Because of my previous jobs, I was ready for the worst. Things were looking up when I got to choose the class and time for the observation. After she observed my class, she gave me glowing feedback. In my mind, I had prepared a lengthy list of areas for improvement. She heard a few of the items off the list, and perhaps I convinced her that I was a very self-critical and reflective teacher, so she didn't have to worry about me. I've heard from some of my colleagues that I was more reflective than other teachers they have encountered, and I took that as a compliment.

As Teaching Assistant

At the University of Iowa, I have been humbled by taking a teaching assistant position after a decade of teaching students and teachers. The scariest thing about this job was the content. I was teaching technology and not ESL. Many of my second language teaching approaches would seem funny if implemented in this context. Also, almost all of my students were American, a culture I wasn't used to teaching.

Observations for this job occur once a semester and operate very much like my previous ones, although feedback is sometimes delayed to a week afterwards. Because I was used to immediate and critical feedback, I was a bit uneasy when I got neither during the first semester. When I found out a week later that everything was fine, I relaxed.

When I had some difficulties during my second semester, I did receive critical and relatively immediate feedback. However, I was again surprised that the observer trusted that I would make immediate improvements. If this were one of my first two jobs, my observer would not take my word for making improvements and would insist in seeing them in a follow-up observation or requesting a follow-up report from either me or a student. Because the observer trusted that I would remedy the situation, I felt a bit more respect as a teacher. I've only felt this respect from my observers during the past few years, but I'm not ready to correlate that with experience. I could easily relate it to universities in the Midwest. Or I was luck enough to have had two understanding and respectful supervisors recently.

What have I learned? How would I conduct a classroom observation?

Do:

Encourage self-evaluation and self-reflection
Treat the teacher respectfully
Speak calmly to the instructor
Let the teacher know ahead of time what you are looking for
Share the assessment tools, if possible, with the teacher
Balance strengths with areas for growth
Provide feedback as soon as possible
Provide details
Make sure the teacher clearly understands your criticism
Understand the teacher's disposition and how his or her personality affects instruction

Don't:

Interrupt the class (unless the teacher's behavior is erratic)
Nitpick/Look for weaknesses just to balance them with strengths
Panic (unless it is absolutely warranted--the teacher lit a student on fire)
Steal the show from the teacher before or after observation
Treat the observation like it is a waste of time
Treat the feedback session like it is a waste of time
Be a perfectionist/Expect the lesson to be perfect
Expect the teacher to be or teach like you

A Multiliteracies Approach to Second Language Teaching and Learning

2011-04-25T11:37:00.003-05:00

On Saturday, April 30th I will be presenting a literature review that combines multiliteracies and second language teaching and learning for the 2011 Second Language Acquisition Graduate Student Symposium at the University of Iowa. This presentation is the more theoretical complement to the more practical presentation I gave last fall for MIDTESOL in Dubuque, IA.

Multiliteracies is my second research interest area, so it is a topic that I will not be investigating for my dissertation. However, I have a very strong interest in multiliteracies, especially in applying the multiliteracies approach (MLA) to the ESL or EFL classroom. When I get the opportunity to teach ESL and EFL again, I will try to implement this approach if applicable to the program. Also, when I get the opportunity to educate pre-service and in-service ESL or EFL instructors, I hope to create a unit or a course addressing multiliteracies.

Here is the link to the handout for the SLA Graduate Student Symposium.

Incorporating Skeptical Thinking into the Classroom

2011-03-12T08:13:00.009-06:00

Here is my presentation for the International TESOL Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 18, 2011. Below the presentation, you will find a link to the handout I distributed. This presentation is an update to a similar one I gave at the 2009 MIDTESOL Conference in Springfield, Missouri.

Incorporating Skeptical Thinking into the Classroom on Prezi

This is the link to the handout.

The 2-page handout is a PDF, so you will need Adobe Reader to view it. Click here to download the latest version of Adobe Reader.

Response to questions raised during the presentation:

After the presentation, I realized that 2 points should have been made clearer: 1) the reading ability of the students, and 2) the course objectives. I have described these below and I believe this will make it easier to understand how far along the students were in terms of reading the ability to think critically.

I may have made the wrong assumption that most attendees were familiar with ACTFL's proficiency standards, and I should have been more elaborate on the reading ability of the students upon entering the course.

1) Reading Ability - All of the students entered the course completing a novice-high reading course at the ESL Institute. This means they have read at most one page of text from an ESL textbook for a given class assignment. They had the ability to answer comprehension questions including personalizing and a little evaluation. My class is the first time they are introduced to a book. After 2 semesters, I discovered that a balance of academic and non-academic texts satisfy their linguistic and affective needs.

2) Objectives - The objectives of the course can be found in the class blog I presented, but I will reprint it here for your convenience.

ESL 111-001 is designed to assist ESL learners in the development of reading for academic purposes, emphasizing science fact and fiction. Student will develop their reading skills and strategies in and outside the classroom environment as well as improve their vocabulary. Students will be introduced to the concept of skepticism. They will be provided with the foundation of the scientific method. Students will also read various science-fiction short stories. Online science guides will supplement their understanding of certain concepts.

Primary Goals - By the end of the Spring 2009 semester, ESL 111-001 students should be able to perform all of the following tasks:

read fiction and non-fiction at the level of an American high school student
preview fiction and non-fiction texts
identify the main idea of fiction and non-fiction texts
identify general and specific statements
guess vocabulary from the context of the reading materials
identify contrasting statements
identify causes and effects
identify support for the main idea of the reading materials
summarize fiction and non-fiction texts
identify the setting, character, and conflict in fiction
identify themes in science-fiction

Secondary Goals - By the end of the Spring 2009 semester, ESL 111-001 students should be able to perform most of the following tasks:

practice and use their newly acquired reading vocabulary
make inferences based on the reading
infer conclusions from the reading
make outlines of the readings

Tertiary Goals - By the end of the Spring 2009 semester, ESL 111-001 students might be able to perform some of the following tasks:

demonstrate an appreciation for the sciences
apply skepticism when encountering pseudoscientific claims or statements
seek out science readings or science-fiction stories on their own

Incorporating Multiliteracies into the ESL Classroom

2010-10-18T10:33:00.004-05:00

Here is my presentation for the 2010 MIDTESOL Conference in Dubuque, IA on Friday, October 22.

Incorporating Multiliteracies into the ESL Classroom on Prezi

Media Literacy as a Second Language Skill

2010-04-27T12:48:00.013-05:00

This previous semester at the University of Iowa, I have taken interest in media literacy, specifically information literacy in terms of online or digital information, in the context of teaching English as a second language. I was hoping to investigate into this topic for one of my classes, Reading in a Second Language, however there weren't enough peer-reviewed articles for an adequate literature review. I broadened my search to extensive reading online and came up with a few more articles, but still not enough for a satisfactory literature review. Finally, I broadened the search to online or digital reading in a second language. If interested in this broader topic, please visit the website I created for my presentation.

For this posting, I will discuss how my teaching experience prompted interest in media literacy, followed by identifying who advocates and researches media literacy in general, and I will conclude by calling for research into and teaching media literacy as a second language skill. Media literacy, according to NAMLE, is "seen to consist of a series of communication competencies, including the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information in a variety of forms, including print and non-print messages. Media literacy empowers people to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language, and sound. It is the skillful application of literacy skills to media and technology messages." If you are familiar with second language teaching approaches, you will find how media literacy fits in well with teaching a second language with the term "communication competencies." If you are not familiar with communicative competency, please visit this page.

My Experience & Media Literacy
As a teacher educator in teaching English as a Second Language, I learned a lot about myself in terms of the teaching approaches and philosophies that appealed most to me. One of them is advocating critical thinking and learner autonomy. My first exposure to applying critical thinking to pedagogy was implementing Bloom's taxonomy in the form of questions. As a teacher educator and an ESL instructor, I would often encourage my students to think critically for a number of reasons.

While an ESL instructor at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, I found it to be easiest to implement critical thinking into the reading course. In this program, the four skills are divided into separate courses. Although I integrated critical thinking to all my courses, it was the reading course that had shown me the best results. It was also the reading course that helped me develop ideas for media literacy.

I noticed that some of my students would often refer to Wikipedia as the source of information. Instead of banning the use of Wikipedia like many professors at the university did, I encouraged them to use Wikipedia's links that took the reader outside of Wikipedia. From there, I believed the sites would be more reliable and easier to detect bias. So Wikipedia was a gateway to more reliable (or more biased) information.

During the semester that I mulled over the use of Wikipedia, I had an idea for the following semester. To encourage media literacy and intercultural communication simultaneously, I wanted to use Wikipedia's multi-language function so students could compare the content in the English language versus the content in their first language. I decided against implementing this idea because it was the course design was taking away my focus on the current semester and my colleagues disliked my advocacy for the use of Wikipedia. At the time, many professors at the university were vocal about blocking the site on the university's server.

After the semester had ended, I did a little investigation into how media literacy is taught. I came upon the conclusion that a media literacy course is essential for second language learning, but I didn't know how it would fit into our program. I let the idea sit and continued to teach the reading course focused on academic reading rather than media literacy, although the two areas are merging together quickly.

Advocates for Media Literacy

The biggest advocates are Canadian. At first I didn't understand why, but after reading "The Canadian Experience: Leading the Way" by Pungente, Duncan, and Andersen, it became quite obvious. The Canadians get more American media than any other country in the world, and developing media literacy was a way to help students distinguish the two media, cultures, and ideologies.

In terms of academic departments, I've found most literature about media literacy in library and information science. It's not surprising to find the literature there, but it did surprise me that it dwarfed the amount of literature on media literacy in education. From what I have gathered from reading the 104th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (2005), media literacy hasn't been widely accepted in K-12 schools in the United States compared to Canada and the UK. In the United States, the people who are most aware of the need are in the llibrary and information sciences.

If you're looking for advocates for media literacy online, all you need to do is enter "media literacy" into a search engine. There's the Center for Media Literacy, the National Association for Media Literacy Education, and the Media Awareness Network. These are just a few of the sites that can give you a better understanding of everything that entails media literacy.

A Call for Practice and Research into Media Literacy as a Second Language Skill

As I was about to write this section of the post, I came across a different term, multiliteracies, that is more widely used in the field of second language education. Media literacy is one of the many multiliteracies, and there has been substantial preliminary research done on this topic. Chief among the first articles is A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures by the New London Group. This article basically is a call for practice and research into multiliteracies.

Although there is a larger body of research on multiliteracies compared to media literacy, the research seems to be in the formative stages. I will continue my investigation into this field, but I urge anyone interested in this topic to practice and/or research multiliteracies in teaching ESL.

Why I teach ESL

2010-02-15T15:39:00.006-06:00

This semester, I'm taking a seminar on teacher education. The readings and discussions have prompted me to reevaluate my motivations for teaching English as a second language. I have found it useful to answer the question, "Why do you teach?" because students have come up to me and asked. This question has caught me off guard as I didn't expect them to ask me this question as I met them in the hall. I believe that I didn't give them the best answer I could, so I disappointed myself. Perhaps that disappointed them.

So, why do I teach ESL? Or better, why do I choose to remain an ESL instructor? I can answer these questions in a few categories.

Intellectually Stimulating

I like having my worldview challenged. Living and working in another culture have certainly challenged my American worldview. After living in three different countries for nearly a decade total, I can safely say that my worldview is not the same as it was before I started teaching English.

Of course being immersed in a new culture is intellectually stimulating, but what about teaching? Part of teaching English is finding the connection between the teacher's background knowledge and the students' background knowledge. I love the challenge of discovering the gaps in my knowledge that cannot meet the needs of the student. When I discover these gaps, then I spend a good deal of time learning what I need to meet his or her needs. Sometimes this directly conflicts with my teaching approach or philosophy. That's when I have to make the crucial decision of who needs to change? When I teach overseas, it's usually me who has to change during the first year. When I teach in the US, it's usually the student, but that doesn't mean I refuse to change.

Teaching in the United States to a culturally diverse class can be more challenging. The unifying factor is that we are in an American classroom, so I have to find techniques to bring students into a more American frame of mind. Some students do it willingly and others do not. This is not brainwashing as I do not force my students to believe that the American way is the best way. However I have to let them know how Americans view rules and certain behaviors. I know some of the techniques to appeal to Japanese, Korean, and Russian students but those techniques are not widely used in America. This has brought me to the conclusion that I need to acquaint them with American teaching styles even though we will face emotional obstacles because of it.

Even more intellectually stimulating are the discussions that students or I evoke in class. I like to encourage open-mindedness, so I and sometimes students will volunteer discussion topics that may threaten a more close-minded person. I think nothing interests me more than discovering the thought processes of someone from a different cultural background, and this person doesn't necessarily have to be from another country.

No, I really don't like arguing, but I like to see how one's viewpoints have been formed. I can discover this in nearly any class regardless of their English-speaking ability. Students with a lower proficiency of English can illustrate their worldview by expressing preferences or raising topics that are not raised as often in my culture.

This is why I prefer teaching adults. Most of them already have a well-developed worldview because they have established their identity. My personal and professional goal is to find commonality between our worldviews, so that, professionally, I can teach them better; and personally, I can understand that worldview better. Perhaps I should have been a sociologist because I like to encounter as many worldviews as possible to broaden my worldview and to avoid unnecessary conflict. That said, I do not expect all conflict to be avoided but there are certain kinds that can be and should be avoided.

Creativity

This is a personal trait of mine that I have been aware of since I can remember. Many of my family members and friends have commented on my creativity. Because of this feedback, I have made sure that my future jobs would allow for a reasonable amount of creativity. I do not need total creativity because sometimes the best creativity comes out of restriction. I just request no excessive restrictions on my creativity.

My first teaching job had such restrictions, but it was my first job so I had no teaching experience to fall back on. I was quite the teaching drone for the first year, but I was granted a very modest amount of creativity for the second year. If it wasn't for my second year of teaching at this entry-level position, I probably would not have made the decision to make ESL education my career.

For this job, I was bound to the textbook and the school's method of instruction. In my second year, I added supplementary material that complemented the textbook, imitating its style and linguistic objectives. I also created material that bridged the gap between the core textbook and the very dull but very popular supplementary text on idioms and phrasal verbs. I received compliments from fellow instructors for the authenticity of the language and contexts in my materials.

Other than creating materials, I also challenged myself by reducing my dependence on the core textbook. I found this to be most useful for students who have gone through the textbook at least twice. This new approach made me more learner-centered. I spent the first third of class with an activity or discussion to find their grammatical weak points, and then I referred them to the appropriate chapter or I created an impromptu lesson on the spot. After several weeks of this, I realized I had a gift for teaching impromptu.

Quite similar to my first teaching position, my first teacher training position also limited my creativity in that we were bound to a teaching approach and a very specific curriculum, sometimes planned to the minute. As a new teacher trainer, this was perfect for me. I didn't expect to bring in any creativity until my second year. However, after my first semester, there was a need to revamp the practicum course, and I had the ideas that were needed.

The second semester was an interim practicum course in which half of the curriculum was from the previous semester and the other half was from my recommendations. The supervisor and course coordinator took a close look at student feedback and found that the newer curriculum matched the students' needs better. In the second year, I took on the task of recreating the practicum course. The outcome of this was published in 2007 in the English Teaching Forum.

I reached the peak of my creativity in curriculum development in Russia and the ESL Institute in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In both places, I was granted a gracious amount of creativity. In Russia, I designed my own outreach teacher training program for the Greater Volga Region. In La Crosse, I designed two of my four courses from scratch, and later on piloted a new pronunciation and academic skills lab. The feedback from Russia was enormously positive. And the feedback from Wisconsin was neutral in the first year, but positive in the second year. I left both places with excellent plans. Although I don't regret leaving, I often daydream how the second outreach teacher training program in Russia would have been and how my reading and speaking courses in La Crosse would have been.

A dynamic field
Although I don't enjoy it to the extent I did 10 years ago, I still enjoy the process of change. There are not many professions that change as rapidly as the field of ESL education. Here's a list of all the changes that could occur in one year:

School or location - An ESL teacher can teach nearly anywhere in the world at any one time.
Students - If I choose to stay in one place for a long period of time, the cultural diversity of my class can change rapidly from semester to semester. The recent trend in intensive English language programs has seen a shift from a Saudi-dominated classroom to a Chinese-dominated classroom.
Popular approaches to teach - Content-based or task-based? Form-focused or holistic? Integrated skills or skills divided into separate classes?
Technology - computers and their software, online technology, distance education, new media
Language - English changes year after year, especially idioms and vocabulary
Market-dependent motivation in adult students

None of these 6 items stays the same for too long. Because of this rapidly changing field, I have to remain flexible and adaptable to these changes or else my teaching approach, principles, and philosophies will become obsolete. If I take on these changes without panic or anxiety, then I can manage to age gracefully and maintain my youth through my openness to constant change. How can anyone stay bored in this field?

Personal reasons
I have written about this on my website, about how I come from a multicultural family and I have always had a love for the English language and all languages in general. It seems logical to me that ESL education was the place where my interest and background in language and culture merge.

Concise Annotated Bibliography

2009-12-03T17:14:00.006-06:00

For a class, I wrote a 7-page annotated bibliography and presented a 7-minute presentation on role-plays in task-based instruction, which is one of my areas of interest for research.

The most useful bit of information I got from this research was that the preferred term in this area is "information gap task" as opposed to "role-play" or "simulation." The term "role-play" reminds most educators about the suggestopedia method or drama (which many instructors rule out as time-consuming and chaotic), so it often does not get much respect in second language education research. Information gap tasks can be tied easily to task-based instruction, which is a more recent and widely used approach to language teaching than suggestopedia.

Another great find was Dr. Teresa Pica from the University of Pennsylvania. She appears to be the leading expert in information gap tasks and would be a very valuable resource if I decide to do my dissertation on this topic. If I go ahead with this research, I intend to look into how cultural backgrounds can affect the outcome of given information gap tasks. Therefore my interest lies in the pragmatics of task-based instruction.

I also learned how my teaching philosophy fits into the field of second language acquisition. It seems that I am a social constructivist based on the Lainema article I referred to in the presentation. I would have to do more research into social constructivism to realize how much of the movement I agree with. I have also reconfirmed my fondness for experiential learning, which doesn't get much respect in education research.

Is It Important for Learners to Speak Like a Native Speaker?

2009-11-19T08:17:00.004-06:00

I do not think it is important for learners to speak a second or foreign language like a native speaker. To clarify my position, I have interpreted “speak” to mean having the same pronunciation and accent of a native speaker. Of course, a second or foreign language learner should try to use the same grammar and vocabulary like a native speaker. Trying to have the same pronunciation or accent like one for most learners is too much of a lofty goal for most adult learners.

Brown mentions this argument most directly in Chapter 3 in the section entitled “The Significance of Accent” on pages 62-65. The point of this section is to illustrate that evidence for the critical period hypothesis is most apparent in the inability of second or foreign language learners to acquire authentic pronunciation of the target language. The critical period is defined by Brown in his glossary as “a biologically determined period of life when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire.” This would rule out nearly all adult learners to acquire authentic pronunciation.

There are learners who have been able to acquire authentic pronunciation, but they are an exception. In my experience, adult learners who strive to achieve this goal are often frustrated. After years of practice, most of them either accept their “inauthentic” pronunciation, but some of them give up learning the language entirely. To relieve these learners from their frustration, I believe that the instructor should not expect them to have native-like pronunciation.

As for children, they can acquire authentic pronunciation more easily. As they continue to learn the language beyond the critical period, they may be able to be mistaken for a native speaker when heard. In this context, I believe it is important for instructors to encourage their learners to speak like a native speaker. Then the question is, “How do you know when your learners started learning to speak the language?” And I believe it is an important question to ask learners when they enter a second or foreign language classroom.

Even if learners learned how to speak before the critical period, I believe they are not guaranteed to speak like native speakers. First of all, perhaps they received instruction from a non-native speaker who modeled his or her accent. Even if the non-native instructor did not model his or her own speech, he or she would have used recordings in an accent that is not the target accent. For example, what if the learner eventually wanted to acquire American English but was taught a British or Australian English accent via recording? Another point of having a non-native speaker as an instructor is that he or she cannot adequately assess their pronunciation. My experience as an EFL teacher trainer has shown me that many non-native speaking instructors cannot tell the difference between various English accents.

This brings me to ask, “What is a native speaker?” It is easy to answer when learning the target language in the target country. As for English, most second or foreign language learners learn it in their home country as opposed to one of the many target countries. Not only is there is a difference between in accents between countries, but there can be more noticeable differences within the target country. When I teach pronunciation to adult learners, I like to ask them, “Which English accent would you like?” Most of them say my accent or “standard American English,” and then I disappoint them by saying that I don’t speak standard American English. Then I restore their confidence by explaining what standard American English according to their perspective. It is most often the language of newscasters or Hollywood celebrities.

In class, we discussed that most second language studies research the acquisition of European languages, most often English. Perhaps there is no evidence of the critical period hypothesis when Koreans learn Japanese or Urdu speakers learn Shona. This idea would also solve the problems of defining a native speaker if the total population of native speakers was small (in Papua New Guinea?) and perhaps there were little or no variation in accent. In these cases, the goal of achieving authentic pronunciation may be more realistic.

Lastly, I will take a look at the question again from the point of view of a learner who has no knowledge of this research, “It is important for me to speak like a native speaker.” I am now addressing the topic of motivation as covered in chapter 6. Because the importance is “for me,” I can say that the learner is intrinsically motivated. But then I have to understand why the learner places so much importance on speaking like a native speaker. If this learner is a young adult in China, one likely possibility is that she has an instrumental orientation (p170) to get her MBA in the United States. If this learner is refugee from Afghanistan who has just moved to Iran, perhaps he has an integrative orientation (p170) to blend in as quickly as possible. Rethinking this question to fit these contexts makes me answer, “Yes, or course, it is important to speak like a native speaker.”

Incorporating Skeptical Thinking into the Classroom

2009-10-09T20:03:00.003-05:00

This is my presentation at the 2009 MIDTESOL Conference in Springfield, Missouri on Friday, October 16, 2009.

Teaching Speaking Skills

2009-06-15T08:55:00.006-05:00

Of the four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), I have had the most practice teaching or, better put, developing students speaking skills. However it hasn't been until recently that I've had a difficult time implementing a solid course on speaking skills alone.

Background in Japan
My first full-time ESL job was teaching conversational English in one of the biggest private English schools in Japan. The school's primary goal was to develop their "customers'" ability to hold and initiate conversation in English. Its secondary goal was to review and practice English grammar. Most adult students in the program sincerely wanted to develop their conversation skills, but many of them were more comfortable learning grammar without conversation. My goal was to have them use the grammar they were comfortable with in a conversation that they were not comfortable with. After a little over a year, I became quite good at this using the school's method with a little twist of my own approach.

At this Japanese school, I was praised for keeping my teacher-talking time low. The school's goal was to have students speaking 2/3 of the time, and I almost always managed to do this. The remaining 1/3 should only be devoted to guiding students and modeling the language. Many instructors were tempted to elaborate on either guiding or modeling, but then precious student-talking time would be cut. I realize that many teachers feel the need to speak more in order to help more, but in this context, it really wasn't the case.

I received the most praise from novice-level students, and I believe it had to do with my patience. I allowed them as much time to create their own sentences. In our field, this is often called "wait time." It is a bit controversial because wait time causes silent gaps, which makes many native speakers uneasy. But for most of my Japanese students, they were comfortable with these silent periods. Learning to grow comfortable in silence was a key for me to become a better teacher in Japan and to understand Japanese culture as well.

Background as a teacher trainer
In Korea, our teacher training program emphasized developing oral proficiency in all classes, methodology, second language acquisition, and intercultural communication, to show the evidence that practice makes perfect in a group of give-and-take techniques called "classroom interactions." This teaching approach made me a better speaking instructor for larger classes. My average class size in Japan was 3, but in Korea it was between 20 and 25.

When using classroom interactions, I developed a teaching mantra that for every minute or second that I spoke, the students had to speak just as much. This changed the teacher-student talking time ratio to 50/50. I was teaching ESL methodology content in this format, so students developed a knowledge base of teaching and a skills base of speaking and listening. This is the formula to that program's success.

I continued this teaching approach when presenting workshops and teaching demonstrations in Russia. I surprised that the older English teachers in Russia have encountered the same techniques. Some of them learned classroom interactions from my mentor in Korea, which surprised and delighted me even more.

Background as an ESL instructor in the United States
One of the classes that I have taught in Wisconsin for the past two years was a speaking course for novice-high speakers. I thought this would be the easiest class to teach because of my background. For one reason, I had the most success with this level in Japan. For another, I spent the last four years mastering my ability to conduct classroom interactions as the average class size has been around 15.

This has been the only class that I've encountered the most problems every semester. I will reflect on these problems point-by-point in chronological order.

#1 - Multicultural class: This would be my first time teaching students from various cultures in one class. However this was never a problem in my first 3 semesters. It became more-or-less of a problem in the 4th semester because the cultural groups were evenly distributed, and this may be one reason that kept the students from getting along with each other.

#2 - No content: In Japan, the content was dictated by one page of a book each day, and I had a different group of students each day. In Korea and Russia, the content was teaching methodology. In this program, there was no content. And it was the students who should be speaking, not necessarily me. Before the first semester, I had to think of what the students would talk about. Content from their listening and reading classes? Their lives? Everyday things?

I asked my supervisor what the content was for the previous instructor. I was told that most speaking classes in our program were to develop public speaking ability. So in my first semester, I had students give group presentations that moved up in cognitive difficulty according to Bloom's taxonomy. Although students were satisfied with my first semester, my teacher-talking time was way too high in most classes as I was modeling how to give certain presentations that required no questions and answers.

So I developed the second semester around cooperative learning activities. In this semester, my teacher-talking time was at its lowest in any other semester or class I taught in the program. Students developed their speaking skills so quickly that I nearly lost control of them near the end of the course. Of all the semesters, this speaking class received the most student complaints. The biggest were not enough individual presentations and not enough individual feedback.

I focused on giving and receiving feedback for the third semester as that was the weakest area in the first two. I also focused on role-plays as I was getting ready to do some preliminary research for my PhD. During the first half of the class, students were split into groups to perform various themed role-plays. During the second half of the class, students worked together in a television news program simulation. Students enjoyed and praised the first half, but didn't enjoy the second half as much as I also challenged their speaking skills by pronouncing complex sentences correctly.

Even though students were satisfied with the role-plays in the third semester, I believe I didn't prepare them with enough background knowledge to put on a realistic role-play. So for the fourth semester, I dedicated more time to preparing the students from group role-plays based on three themes. After each group role-play, students then had to present a speech on their own using PowerPoint. Personally, I thought this to be the most successful of the four semesters in obtaining my objectives of building confidence and fluency. However the timing of the course seemed to negatively affect their outcomes. Many students complained about how early the class was and some noted that the pronunciation difficulties varied widely among the first languages in the class.

#3 - Skills are not integrated: The class is officially labeled as "speaking and listening," but there is another class dedicated towards developing listening skills for the same level of students. Of course, students have to listen to each other while they are speaking. This fact was emphasized most in the first and third semesters, when the feedback was best. From this, I realize that I need to incorporate more structured student-student interaction than previous semesters.

When speaking is not integrated with reading or writing, I find it more difficult to give and assess homework. The most common speaking homework in our program is to interview native speakers around campus, which can be easily faked, and to require students to record their speech on tape recorders or recording software. As authenticity is my always one of my goals, I prefer students to speak in situations where there is body language and instant feedback. Of course, interviewing native speakers works best. But then I would like to hear from the native speakers as well, and recruiting that many volunteers or teaching assistants can be very difficult, time-consuming, and/or expensive.

With little or no content and difficulty with assessing speaking in authentic contexts, the speaking class comes down to two components: improving pronunciation and practicing presentations. I've covered presentations, but pronunciation is the next problem.

#4 - Pronunciation: I can teach pronunciation, but I dislike teaching pronunciation, especially when it's isolated from the context. Not only that, the issue of linguistic imperialism comes up. Using a CD or other recorded form, students usually get a very contrived California/middle America pronunciation. Using myself, they get a slightly different reduced Midwestern accent. I prefer my students to be exposed to various forms of English accents and dialects, and I don't want them to be afraid of their own accent. My class is not an accent reduction course.

That said, students love to practice improving their pronunciation. And I get great feedback when I teach pronunciation when isolated from the context. This is my internal conflict, choosing between appeasing the students or sticking to my principles and the research that I've read. Put another way, should I meet the students' emotional needs or linguistic needs? Whenever I come across a choice like this, the teacher trainer in me answers, "Both."

I can only stand teaching about a week's worth of pronunciation in isolation. After this time, a few students catch on that the listen-and-repeat type of practice isn't really helping them in the long term. This doesn't mean I stop teaching pronunciation. It's just that I stop teaching it isolated from context. To sum up, teaching pronunciation frustrates me the most as an ESL instructor. It's not my forte.

A Successful Formula?
After completing four semesters of teaching speaking to novice-high speakers of English, I've developed a plan for the next time I have the opportunity.

On a daily basis, I will have a few students give informal speeches to the class. Their classmates must ask them questions with follow-up questions. Humor will be encouraged. After this activity, I will give feedback on pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary with instruction if needed. I believe this follows the task-based instruction formula well.

On a biweekly basis, I will have students give formal speeches with visual aids. Their classmates will also ask questions, but they must be well thought out and seriously academic. I would also give feedback but based more on appropriateness and organization.

This is just the framework of a such a lesson. Once I know the program's requirements and each student's needs, I will flesh it out. I hope I will be able to implement this one day soon.

Incorporating Skeptical Thinking in an EAP Classroom

2009-06-12T16:16:00.012-05:00

In a previous posting, I mentioned my experiment with teaching science fact and fiction in a reading class for intermediate students. I was connecting two ideas I had about teaching reading. The first idea was one I planned for my second year as a Senior English Language Fellow in Samara, Russia. I was going to demonstrate how to teach content-based instruction using American science-fiction. This never came to be.

My second idea came about last year when my wife and I became increasingly interested in the skeptical movement after becoming avid listeners to the podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. While listening to the show, I was thinking how certain topics would encourage my students to apply critical thinking to their reading. Some of the topics, such as UFOs and psychic ability, would be understandable and entertaining for students at the intermediate level. In addition, I think most topics in the realm of superstition and pseudoscience are of interest to most people around the age of twenty.

The biggest challenge was to find the right text for intermediate readers of English. If reading ability were not an issue, I would have chosen Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, filled with elegant prose. However, I needed a text that was organized more like a textbook to help students learn how to use the table of contents, indexes, and bibliographies. I also wanted a text with some visual aids or graphic organizers. I visited the local library, a used bookstore, and one of the big chain bookstores to find the best text for the class.

I picked up James Randi's Flim-Flam!, Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things and Terence Hines' Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Although I believe James Randi would be the best source for skeptical inquiry, the latter books were published more recently and organized more like a textbook. It was a difficult decision to choose between Shermer and Hines, but I went with Shermer's book because it wasn't as intimidating in appearance to intermediate readers of English.

In my said previous posting, I briefly went over my approach to help students acquire the reading strategies needed to get the gist of the whole text. I stated that I was using language-driven content-based instruction, where the language is more important than the content. Specifically, my primary goal was to develop students' reading strategies. A secondary goal was to encourage their skeptical thinking.

On a personal level, I thought this would be an interesting class to discover my students' beliefs, tolerance for other beliefs, and their ability to think critically. Because the large majority of my class was Chinese, I assumed that many students would hold many superstitious beliefs, especially concerning luck. I was surprised to find this to be true for about half of my Chinese students. I discovered that the more skeptical Chinese students tended to have the Communist party's stance on old Chinese thinking.

As my previous posting on this subject was more about teaching reading, this rest of this posting will focus more on how and what skepticism was taught.

During the first week, I let students read through the table of contents to select the chapters that seemed most interesting to them. Here were the top 5 in order of chapter:

Chapter 3 - How Thinking Goes Wrong
Chapter 4 - Deviations (about Edgar Cayce)
Chapter 5 - Through the Invisible (about near death experiences)
Chapter 6 - Abducted! (about alien abudctions)
Chapter 12 - Doing Donahue (about free speech and Holocaust deniers)

I thought we would have enough time to cover at least these 5 chapters, but I was wrong. We only had enough time to cover chapters 3 through 5. However, I made it mandatory to read the prologue and Chapter 2, which is about the difference between science and pseudoscience. We would not continue reading the book until all students knew the general purpose and audience of the text and the new the core idea of science versus pseudoscience.

Chapter 3 was covered in my class and in an adjunct course to help develop testing skills. I gave students one week to preview chapter 3 on their own before they would have an open-book exam on chapter 3. After that exam, they would be lectured on how to improve their open-book test-taking skills.

Even though I believe the contents in chapter 3 are important to understand the skeptical movement, I thought the material was too dense to cover in a reading course. Chapter 3 alone could have been one course. So students took only what they got out of chapter 3 for themselves.

When we came to chapter 4, I already assessed that most students were generally able to find the main idea from each chapter well enough for the class, so we worked on getting details. However, getting the details from an i+2 (a modification of Krashen's input hypothesis) text would be quite challenging. So I made most of the tasks simple enough for them to achieve in order to gain confidence. Here are some examples of the tasks I asked them to do when reading chapter 4:

What is Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightment a classical example of?
What is the main idea of the last paragraph on page 65?
List 3 topics that interest you most from the first paragraph on page 66.
List 3 topics that you do not believe in from the first paragraph on page 66.
What is the main idea of the second paragraph on page 66?
Which paragraph starts to give details about Edgar Cayce?
What details about Edgar Cayce are important to support the main idea of this book?

It was around this time that students' reading ability took a huge leap forward and they noticed it themselves.

For chapter 5, I demonstrated to the class how to make an outline as an example of good note-taking techniques. Here's an example:

I. Introduction
A. Jack Schwarz’s seminar, “Voluntary Controls of Internal States”
1. Jack is a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp
2. The seminar teaches mind control through meditation
3. Shermer was impressed by Jack putting a nail through his biceps
B. Organization of his seminar
1. Part 1 is educational – chakras and mind control
2. Part 2 is practical – how to meditate
3. Shermer’s experience of trying but failing
C. Retrospective = the act of thinking about one’s past
1. Some people believe more easily
2. Near-death experience is similar
(the format of this outline cannot be published in the way I would like)

From this example, students could identify that that the Roman numberals represented the section of the chapter, the capital letters represented the main idea of each paragraph, and the numbers represented the supporting details of the main ideas. For the second section of the chapter, I provided the main ideas of each paragraph and they had to provide the details. For the third section of the chapter, I provided the details and they had to provide the main ideas.

During this exercise, the students and I learned a lot about each other concerning our attitudes towards death. Surprisingly many of my students didn't give much thought to death. Even more surprisingly, a large majority of the class were highly skeptical of a life after death. Some students did not know why this chapter was in the book, and I had to point out that many cultures believe in life after death. I proceeded to explain the predominant Christian belief that many Americans hold about this topic.

By the time we finished chapter 5, only a week remained to cover Shermer's text. As stated in the previous posting, we skimmed through the other chapters to find the main ideas. With the little time we had, we discussed our culture's belief towards the topics of aliens, witches, Ayn Rand, evolution, creationism, Holocaust denial, and racism.

The diverse mix in my class provided interesting beliefs towards the religious end. I had a few Christians, a Muslim, and many atheists or agnostics. The idea of creationism seemed preposterous to all of the atheists and agnostics, and at least one Christian who said she interpreted the Bible metaphorically. Those who believed in creationism knew they were in the minority and kept quiet for the most part. I encouraged open-mindedness in my class, but they were still afraid to say too much.

However my students were not afraid to speak their minds about the Holocaust. Nobody in my class denied the Holocaust of World War II, but many students held ideas about the Jews that would seem uninformed to many Americans. I expected this from a few students but not from a good portion of the class. I was not prepared to go into a lengthy debate about Jews, so I let it end quickly, but I kept it in my mind for a later class.

In conclusion, I'm not sure how much skeptical thinking I encouraged in my students, but I am sure that I improved their reading abilities. They did not take my class to become more skeptical although they did take it to develop critical thinking, from which skepticism branches off.

In a future posting, I will address how I would like to apply skeptical thinking in future ESL classes and teacher training workshops and seminars.

Proficiency & Discipline

2009-06-08T08:36:00.004-05:00

Lately in my career, I have been paying more attention to assessing students in terms of academic discipline or the ability to utilize certain study strategies on their own. This has been most important in two of my positions, one as teacher trainer at Sookmyung Women's University-TESOL in Korea and one as an instructor of English for Academic Purposes at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse.

Personal Background
In Korea, the TESOL program was developed so that students were assessed in generally the same way in all classes. All instructors had to follow the same guidelines for implementing and carrying out the terms and conditions for absences, tardiness, late and missing assignments, missing tests, and classroom participation. One reason for the success of this program is that these guidelines were followed very strictly by all the teacher trainers. A misbehaving or cheating student was detected quickly and usually was not awarded the TESOL certificate.

In La Crosse, I have more flexibility in creating my own rules guidelines. The program does have a standard for absences, tardiness, and late and missing assignments, but each instructor enforces these standards in their own way. Because of my experience in Korea, I took the stricter interpretation of the rules. This caused some students to disfavor me and/or my class because I would not show flexibility with them. In their defense, most of these students were undergraduates in America for the first time whereas all of my students in Korea were graduates with good undergraduate grade point averages.

Assessing Students
A common topic of discussion at the ESL Institute at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse is how to assess students, and to make the decision to pass or fail them in the course. (Except for the highest level courses, all courses are graded as pass or fail.) All the instructors agree that students' language proficiency should get the most attention in the assessment. However, I find that we disagree on how much attention should be placed on their academic discipline.

Our program's main goal is to get students ready for non-ESL academic courses at the university. I believe many people not familiar with ESL may assume that instructors only prepare them linguistically for university courses. But I, along with many others in my profession, believe that we are also preparing them culturally for university courses. I am mostly referring to the fact that expectations for student performance is different in the United States to those in other countries.

My Experience
During my first year at the ESL Institute at UWL, my grading scale heavily emphasized developing language skills. However, I noticed that students were approaching the class with the strategies that helped them get through their ESL or EFL courses in their home country. For many students, these strategies would not get them far in American higher education. The most famous example is the attitude towards plagiarism.

During my second year, I incorporated a more structured approach to facilitate learning in adapting to and adopting American study habits. Incidentally, I volunteered to teach a pilot course with the sole purpose of elaborating on developing study strategies during that second year. I have discovered that, with students lacking these skills, the majority of them were thankful for learning them. However there was a minority that resisted to develop the study strategies needed to get through a four-year American university. For many of those who resisted to change their study habits, it was a matter of pride, either self-pride or national pride.
I could only wish them good luck.

Possible Research
With all this in mind, I have gained interest in assessing students based on developing language proficiency in addition to the appropriate study strategies. When students come in to most ESL programs, they are given a diagnostic or placement exam so that they can be placed in the right level. But, to my knowledge, there is no placement exam for study strategies.

When students are in my courses, I am immediately drawn not to the students with the highest language proficiency but the to the students with the best study strategies. Especially in an EAP course, I am confident that these students will do well in American higher education. These students usually catch up and sometimes surpass the students who had higher language proficiency at the beginning of the course.

Personally I feel at a loss for students with good language skills but do not improve as quickly as others in my class. They only pass because their language skills were high enough at the beginning that a slight improvement was all they needed. I feel even worse for those with lower language skills that show little or no willingness to develop the study strategies to become more autonomous learners. They will do all or most of the homework, but they cannot take constructive feedback well. I'd like to learn how to get through to the students who do not take this constructive feedback. I know that for some of them they do not understand the feedback, but for the ones that do, I feel that I need to develop my own strategies to help them develop internal motivation to improve themselves.

Reading Science Fact and Fiction

2009-06-04T08:58:00.008-05:00

Earlier this week I submitted a proposal to the 2010 TESOL Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. The topic of this proposal concerns my success with my intermediate reading course I just finished last month. I believe it was my most successful reading course I have taught at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse yet.

Students
I had 14 students who were at the intermediate levels according to ACTFL's proficiency guidelines. One student was from Vietnam, one from Japan, one from Kuwait, one from Taiwan, and the rest from mainland China. Their primary motivation is to enroll in non-ESL courses at UWL. Students at the intermediate level tend to be the least motivated at the ESL Institute because they are no longer new to the program and they still have at least another year to complete the ESL program. In addition, reading is usually the least favorite skill for students to practice among reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Therefore, this particular reading course usually has the least motivated students in the whole program.

Course Design
Links to the grading scale, course description and goals and be found at this link - http://esl111s09.blogspot.com/search/label/syllabus

I selected science as the primary content because I firmly believe that content-based instruction is the among the better approaches to teaching English for academic purposes. As the primary instructor for ESL 111-001, I decided that the fall semesters would be dedicated to social sciences and the spring semesters to the sciences. As indicated in a previous blog, the fall 2008 content was the 2008 US Presidential Elections.

Course Texts
The biggest challenge for most instructors is getting students interested in the content. I assumed most students would not be interested in science, so I chose texts that might increase their appreciation for science.

The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Best Science Fiction - Historically in our program, students have responded well to reading fiction. I found this out when using The Golden Compass as the core text for the Fall 2007 semester. When students finish the text, they are filled with a great feeling of accomplishment.

Why People Believe Weird Things - I chose this text because many students and people in their early twenties are interested in topics on the fringes of science, such as psychic ability, UFOs, and alternative medicine. In fact, I was drawn to science recently through the skeptical angle as I became a fan of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast. I have discovered that students respond better to instructors who show enthusiasm and passion for what they are teaching, so I looked forward to teaching science through skepticism.

Reading Approach
After browsing through these texts, one will quickly learn that they are appropriate for undergraduate students or AP high school students. They are definitely not books one would expect intermediate readers to read, and I did not have this expectation. I took into consideration Krashen's Input Hypothesis, especially the i+1 theory, which means I should be using material that is slightly above their current ability.

Because the texts were much higher, I called my approach to this class i+2, but I would simplify the tasks so much by assisting them with as many reading strategies as possible. This enabled me to focus on the language more than the content, making this a language-driven content-based course. Here's how I developed their reading strategies for the science-fiction text.

The primary goal to read this text was to skim one short story a week to develop extensive reading skills.
Students had to be able to identify the setting, the main characters, the main problem or conflict, and what branch of science was referenced the most. They also had to be able to summarize the story in an outline or a 200-word summary.
During the first few weeks, we read the first short story "Blood Music" together.
We read 2-5 pages in class and another few pages for homework.
When they came back we discussed what they read.
After completing "Blood Music," most of the students felt confident enough to read one story a week on their own.

Here's how I developed their reading strategies for Why People Believe Weird Things:

We spent the first couple of days previewing the text. Without reading the book, students were able to answer "What is this book about?"
As an extension of previewing, I taught them the difference between skimming and scanning the prologue. After reading the prologue, students had a clearer idea of the book.
I also selected an average of 5 new vocabulary words per day for students to internalize for later quizzes. My goal was to have them personalize instead of memorize the vocabulary so they would be able to use it appropriately on their own instead of simply recognizing it the next time they came across the vocabulary.
I taught them how to read charts, which often summarized the sections of the chapter they were in. Sometimes they did not have to read the section if they understood the charts.
The class then skimmed chapter 3 to develop their skimming skills further.
Chapter 4 was dedicated to further developing scanning skills.
Chapter 5 was dedicated to taking notes from a text in the form of an outline, which in turn improved their skimming and scanning skills.
By then, we had run out of time so I created an activity in which students had to skim the remaining chapters of the textbook, matching the chapter to its main ideas.

Results
My assumption that most students would not be interested in science was wrong. Out of the 14 students, only 1 adamantly disliked science, and a couple more expressed no interest in science. That left 11 students interested in the content to my surprise and delight. I think this interest greatly aided the students' motivation.

Students liked reading "Blood Music" as a class, but feared reading a whole SF short story on their own at first. However most students showed little or no resistance in the attempt to read upwards of 50 pages of i+2 reading material on their own.

By the end of the class, I had sufficient evidence that all but one student had read large chunks of authentic text extensively and independently.

Several students took time to tell me that they noticed a huge progressive leap in their reading ability. One very motivated student said that she could read The Economist more easily, understanding a great deal more than at the start of my course. Another student was surprised that when she picked up the local newspaper that she understood nearly all of it with a month remaining in the course.

At the beginning of the course, I administered my own reading diagnostic test to find their ability. I was afraid for a few students who tested lower than I expected. I thought that they would struggle all semester long and then fail the course. However this did not happen. The first month looked grim, but after that month, they showed a dramatic increase in reading ability and in-class participation. By the end of the semester, two of these students who were assessed at the novice level were demonstrating their ability to skim and scan better than their average classmate.

Unfortunately, one student failed the course, but this was mainly due to academic dishonesty, failure to follow directions, and failure to turn assignments in on time if at all. This student showed little progress throughout the course in terms of reading ability. I am not sure why this student maintained this attitude through the course.

In terms of attitude, several students who showed a dislike for the course design at the start of the semester had a completely change of attitude after the mid-term. During the second half of the course, they demonstrated a better willingness to learn and showed more respect towards me.

To conclude, I firmly believe that I have improved their ability to read and I have definitely increased their confidence to approach challenging reading material. In terms of science, I can only hope that they have developed skeptical thinking skills.

In later postings, I will discuss in more detail the development of critical thinking and skeptical thinking in the contexts of this course.

MA Research Proposal

2009-05-23T12:35:00.004-05:00

Today I found the summary of my research proposal as a graduate student in the ESOL/Bilingual Master's program at UMBC. I'd like to share it with everyone now.

Who's Improving?

2009-05-21T10:23:00.003-05:00

I've taught three classes in which I never changed the content of the course and I only changed the teaching approach by very little. They were my advanced writing class at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse and both methodology courses at Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul. In all three classes, I noticed a marked improvement in the students semester after semester. Either the students were getting better or I was improving.

I taught the same material in relatively the same manner in Seoul for 3 years, which is 6 different terms. In La Crosse, I did the same for 4 semesters. However my feelings about the outcome were different for each case.

Seeing better results from my students from term to term in Korea was rewarding. This meant I didn't have to spend as much time explaining certain vocabulary and concepts as I did in previous terms. The students' English levels weren't necessarily higher, but it seemed that their understanding of the content (TESOL methodology) was. The objectives of the methodology courses were always met at the end, but during the last few terms it seemed that students didn't have to struggle as hard to develop sample lesson plans and get good scores on exams. However nobody ever told me that the courses were too easy.

Seeing better results from my students from semester to semester in La Crosse was frustrating. Every semester it seemed that students would reach my course objectives earlier by a month. For the semester that just finished, I believed that 90% of the students reached the objectives by the mid-term. I was told that students' abilities waver from semester to semester, but for this course it didn't seem true. They just got better and better. Nobody told me that my course was too easy, but a few student's attitudes and body language indicated so.

I had to think back to the first semester of teaching the same class. I used the same book and I taught in nearly the same way. The biggest difference was the conferencing (peer editing) stage of the writing process. Outside conferencing, I noticed that the majority of students had a difficult time understanding how to construct a 5-paragraph essay until the very end of class. This was not so in subsequent classes. Every semester, students would understand how to construct a 5-paragraph essay sooner and sooner.

I have talked with instructors who teach at around the same level as my essay writing class, and most of them have also noticed marked improvement in the majority of students during the last 3-4 semesters. Perhaps it is the students who are improving. If this is truly so, then the next semester should be made to be more challenging.

But then I think back to my experience in Seoul. The content I taught was more challenging, and I taught the subject with greater ease from term to term. I was also able to answer questions with less ambiguity and more confidence. In this case, I believe it was me who was improving, but I can't rule out the students.

I believe this kind of exercise is useful in the development of an instructor. If you feel that the course objectives are being met quicker, don't be too quick to take credit for improved instructor and also don't be too quick to believe that you had a wonderful batch of students that semester. Take time to think it over, so the right adjustments (if any) can be made for the next time you teach the course.

Authenticity and Autonomy

2009-05-19T13:56:00.007-05:00

I have been teaching English as a second or foreign language now for ten years. Five of those ten years were spent training teachers of ESL or EFL. At this point in my profession, I've demonstrated to myself that my guiding principles are authenticity and student autonomy. (On a personal note, I find it oddly coincidental that my newborn daughter's name share's the first vowel sound as my guiding principles.)

Authenticity
When I was a teacher trainer in Seoul, Korea, students in many of my methodology courses informed me that the word I most often used was "authentic." Looking at the base content, the word didn't come up as frequently as I mentioned it. I confess this was my spin on delivering the TESOL methodology content designed in a collaborative effort between professors at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and at Sookmyung Women's University-TESOL.

But it wasn't really spin more than exaggerating what I believe to a fundamental principle in communicative language teaching and, more specifically, content-based instruction. According to Donna Brinton in Practical English Language Teaching, one of CBI's principles is to "select authentic texts and tasks." At Sookmyung-TESOL, we used Teaching by Principles by H. Douglas Brown as the core reading text for the methodology courses. This text was initially designed for students who could read English at the graduate level. All of my students were at the graduate level, but many were non-native readers. Reading Brown's book gave students the opportunity to practice reading English at their professional level. The tasks assigned to them were also authentic to a graduate course in the United States. This was one example of the appeal of an intensive CBI teacher training program, and why the program is still around today after over a decade.

After teacher training for several years, I returned to teaching ESL to students rather than instructors at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. The curriculum here wasn't based on content-based instruction, but I still wanted to develop my courses around authentic materials. After a couple of semesters, I found the right balance between authentic texts and tasks in most of my courses. Here are some points of authentic texts and tasks I used at the ESL Institute at UWL:

Intermediate students were exposed to college-level textbooks in a reading course
Tasks were authentic for their level of reading proficiency.
Novice-high students were given authentic tasks of giving 5-10 minute individual speeches in a speaking course
Advanced students used an essay writing text that many native-speakers used in their first-year English composition courses.
Tasks were authentic for their level of writing proficiency.
Intermediate and intermediate-high students were exposed to authentic listening texts in an academic skills building lab.

There are many excellent contrived ESL reading texts for all levels. A contrived text is one that is specifically written for ESL students at a given level. I try to stay away from these texts for a couple of reasons. The first is that a contrived reading text can basically teach itself, especially if students are autonomous learners. I've had experience where highly motivated students will work ahead and complete the book a month or two before the rest of the class. I appreciate this work ethic, but their in-class participation starts to diminish once they have reached their personal reading goals.

Another reason I stay away from contrived texts is that it indicates to the student that he or she is an ESL student and not a university student. Around 90% of our students want to finish our ESL program so they can take university courses. Because this is the basis of their motivation to pass my course, I want them to be exposed to authentic university reading texts as soon as possible. My personal belief is that novice and novice-high students can used contrived or simplified texts, but starting at the intermediate level, they can use authentic texts at the high school and college levels. I will elaborate on this point on a future posting about the reading course I just completed.

Why do I believe in using authentic materials so much? As a second language learner, I would want to start using authentic materials as soon as possible. When I realize that I can apply my language skills to authentic materials, my confidence and motivation increase. After living abroad in a few countries, I can note my own improvement after being exposed to so many texts in menus and public transportation systems. This in turn motivates me to try and read children's textbooks and newspaper headlines. Although I know I won't understand it all, I will gain satisfaction after getting meaning from the bits I understand.

Learner Autonomy

My experience with building learner autonomy comes from my first full-time teaching job in Japan. There I was teaching conversational English with emphasis on grammar. I found that many of my students preferred to learn grammar from my explanations or contrived drills than use grammar through authentic practice. My supervisors let me know that I could teach the novice level students very well, but there was a drop in satisfaction with the intermediate students.

Intermediate and especially high-intermediate students are well equipped with the basic knowledge of grammar. I believe Lightbown and Spada's textbook, How Languages are Learned, spells this out quite well. It's at the intermediate stage where students need to initiate more and experiment more with their grammar. Because it was a conversation school, I had to encourage them to speak 50-75% of the time. I found that many of my intermediate students preferred to learn the language passively through simple drills, explanation, and entertaining teaching, but I resisted to cater to these needs. Without going any further, I will say that the set-up of this private language school made it difficult for me to improve on my approach and their motivation.

Because of my experience in Japan, I learned that I was a teacher who did not like giving the answers right away if the students couldn't come up with them. I learned in my MA program that I preferred a negotiation of meaning to take place before one of us gives the correct answer. I want to know how much they know before they tell me they don't know. I did this by asking questions about their background knowledge, and I helped them along with hints and cues.

I believe learner autonomy must be taught at the intermediate level and then practiced at the advanced level. When teaching intermediate students in La Crosse, I teach grammar and vocabulary somewhat directly but then give them the tools to practice and learn more on their own. By the time they are advanced students, I no longer teach grammar or vocabulary directly. Instead, I direct them to the right sources for practice. I expect my advanced students to have sufficient grammar and vocabulary learning strategies. At that stage, I am there to encourage more practice on the skills, to note errors they need to work on, and to work on higher-order critical thinking tasks.

How have my classes promoted autonomy in the classroom?

I provide the students with more opportunities for decision-making. In my essay class, I gave students a choice between 5-10 different topics to write about. In my reading class, I provided them a choice for their final projects. In my speaking class, they could choose among 20 different topics for their individual speaking presentations.
On the first day of each class, I tell the students that they can control their language input. I bring a poster board with expressions such as "Could you speak more slowly?" and "Could you speak more loudly?" We practice these expressions so they are comfortable with requesting these things.
I let students know that I love questions, and I encourage questions as much as possible. After I answer a question, I ask for feedback on my answers. If I answered a student, but they indicate that my answer did not help, we go through a negotiation of meaning.
I vary my instruction to expose students to various ways of learning and to find the better ways to teach the language or content.
I let some students make the wrong decisions so they can learn the consequences. If their decision is a big one that may cost them a passing grade, I will coach them through the decision. However, I will still avoid making the final decision. This is called hypothesis-testing.

These are just a few of the examples of how I promote autonomous learning. I used Phil Benson's principles from Practical English Language Teaching as a guide.

Reading Across the Curriculum

2009-05-18T14:52:00.005-05:00

At the ESL Institute in La Crosse, I have been teaching a reading class for intermediate students. I wrote a paper about my initial reaction to this course which is pending publication in the English Teaching Professional. This posting serves as a follow-up to that article.

Upon entering my second semester (Spring 2008), I experimented more with content-based instruction. In the first four weeks, students read World Folktales by Anita Stern. In the last ten weeks, students read their choice of an academic text. The following are my guiding principles for the course. I will refer to the first module as WF for World Folktales and the second module as AT for "academic text."

Students practiced reading in groups (WF) and individually (AT).
Students read WF in a jigsaw activity that incorporated the entire text, thereby leading them to more autonomy with less dependence on the instructor. I acted as a guide rather than an instructor.
More student autonomy was developed when students chose their own text for AT.
Students were assigned a unit or chapter per day from AT that focused on a reading strategy (such as KWL, guessing unknown words, etc. ) or a study skill.

Here is how that course played out point-by-point.

#1 - The students enjoyed reading in groups, although I felt left out of the class. I was only essential at the beginning and end of class to explain the objectives and summarize the goals achieved. This feeling completely changed when students read individually. I was lecturing too much on how to improve reading strategies and study skills with few examples. Most individual reading was done outside of class as homework. I should have dedicated more time to students returning to class and sharing how they practiced their reading and what they learned from their academic text.

#2 - Most students enjoyed the jigsaw activity, although a couple of students with lower reading ability felt they could not contribute anything to their group. I tried to balance reading assistance between myself and the group. My goal was autonomy, so I didn't want these students to completely depend on me by telling them the answers. These couple of students were uncomfortable with my role as guide rather than instructor.

#3 - Some students were thrilled to choose their own academic text, while others were hesitant to jump from a book at or below their ability to one definitely above their ability. Nearly all students knew what their major would be after completing ESL classes, but one or two did not know what to pick. After reading from texts of their choice, most of them felt better about reading material from their major. Some of them felt they needed more practice, thus more instruction from me. The worst case concerned one student who admitted that he lost interest in his major because of my class.

#4 - Most students appreciated learning how to approach difficult texts with new reading strategies and study skills, however most students did not like the way I delivered this information, through lectures with little or no interaction. Here I felt the challenge of making reading difficult academic texts fun. I tried to vary the way I delivered instruction, but most of the time students were not entertained. I felt like this was my biggest flaw in the course, so I wanted to change it.

When reflecting upon this course and thinking of the next one, I realized that a lot of authentic reading material on one topic would be inundating the media--the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections. I thought this would be a great topic for the Fall 2008 semester. Here is how I designed this course:

Students read two academic reading texts at the high school level, We the People and Cast Your Vote.
Students read various online news articles. Each student was given a different news source from The New York Times to FoxNews.
All reading tasks were authentic and appropriate for their reading abilities.

Here is how that course turned out point-by-point:

#1 - Most students passionately disliked We the People as they did not care about the history of the American government and election process. Most of them thought the vocabulary that they were learning would not be useful. Some students disliked Cast Your Vote because it was too simple, but others liked it for that reason. However, in the end, students were thankful that they understood American politics better than many of their American peers.

#2 - Students enjoyed reading the news articles more as they related to their lives better. The became very well informed about John McCain and Barack Obama and why most Americans are split between Democrats and Republicans. However, students felt overexposed to these topics and were sick of hearing about McCain and Obama by the time the elections came. But I thought that reflected how Americans felt as well.

#3 - The reading tasks for the textbooks were authentic for American high school students, and I believe my students did not appreciate feeling like they were in an American high school when they were in a university. As for the news articles, some of them enjoyed researching given political topics from their news source. Nearly all students showed great improvement in writing summaries and reaction papers. I received praise from students who noticed that their reading abilities remarkably improved. In fact, word was getting around campus that my class was helping students receive higher scores on the reading section of the IELTS and the TOEFL.

After completing that class, I realized that the media wouldn't collaborate again on such a topic for months on end. However, I felt the formula of this class was successful. By the end of that fall semester, I was brainstorming about an academic subject that most students would find interesting. At first, I thought of business, marketing, and the like, but I didn't want to teach those topics because I don't have enough passion for these subjects. Eventually, I came to the idea of teaching science fact and fiction for Spring 2009. I will cover this highly successful class in a future blog.

New Introduction

2009-05-14T09:26:00.003-05:00

I haven't written in this blog for nearly two years. Let me re-introduce this blog by answering the 6 WH questions:

Who...
is writing this blog? Me (Jeremy Slagoski). You can see my profile in the margin.

is this blog for? Take a look at the list below, which is prioritized from primary audience to secondary audiences.

All ESL and EFL teachers around the world, primarily ones who are teaching or will teaching English in Japan, Korea, Russia, and in American universities
EFL and ESL teacher trainers
Researchers in the fields of curriculum & instruction, teaching & learning, intercultural communication, and related academic fields
Those involved in the English Language Fellowship Program
Anyone interested in teaching EFL or ESL
English language learners
Instructors in general
Anyone else who has interest in my profession, my interests, and myself.

What...
is a blog? Click here at http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g

is this blog about? See below for another list.

My observations on teaching English in Japan, Korea, Russia, and Wisconsin
My insight into ESL & EFL teaching methods and approaches
My reflections on my work as an associate lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse and as a Senior English Language Fellow
My answers to FAQ (frequently as questions) from Russian teachers of English

Where
I am living in La Crosse, Wisconsin until I choose the best PhD program for myself
I have worked in Kumagaya, in Japan, Seoul in South Korea, the Volga Region in Russia, and La Crosse in the state of Wisconsin.
My hometown is Kenosha, Wisconsin.

When
I started working at the ESL Institute in the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse in September 2007.
My future PhD program will start in either August or September 2009.

Why...
am I teaching English as a foreign language? (summarized answer)

I grew up in a multi-cultural family with siblings adopted from Korea and the Philippines.
English has been my best and favorite subject since I elementary school.

am in La Crosse, Wisconsin?

After teacher-training for five years, I had the desire to go back to teaching English as a Second Language to see if I could practice what I preached.
I wanted to live in the United States to start a family and be near more family and friends
I wanted to teach ESL full-time in the United States to broaden my abilities and observe the similarities and differences of teaching ESL abroad

How
do I teach English? I teach English using the communicative language teaching approach, more specifically using the task-based and content-based approaches. (summarized answer)

do I speak Japanese, Korean, and Russian? I speak all those languages at the beginning level. My Japanese speaking and listening is probably the best, but I can read and write Korean and Russian much better.

do I go to work? Since my daughter was born, I've been driving to work more often.

is the weather today? It's partly cloudy and pleasant.

Leaving Russia

2007-06-14T11:29:00.001-05:00

In a few days, I will be leaving Russia. I have accepted a teaching position in the United States, so I will not be returning to Russia as a Fellow next year. However, I plan on returning to Russia to continue my work.

Unfortunately, this blog has not been well developed. I was hoping to answer more questions on this blog, but either I was away from the Internet during my many outreach programs in the last few months or I was busy preparing for these programs and the Samara programs while I was at home.

If I can find time, I will try to address 3 more topics or concerns that were raised since March 2007: #1) Survey jigsaws, #2) Content-Based Instruction for Young Learners, and #3) Reflective Learning with emphasis on dialog journals.

I plan to continue blogging once I begin my new job. Sometime in August or September 2007, I will post one more time to redirect you to my new blog--that is, if you are at all interested.

Goodbye Russia and all the English language teachers and students I met in the Volga and Black Earth regions. I will miss you.

Why Role-Plays Fail

2007-05-02T04:29:00.001-05:00

After conducting several workshops entitled, "Successfully Conducting Role-Plays in the English Language Classroom," the most common concern I get is about a teacher trying but unsuccessfully implementing role-plays in her classroom. To paraphrase her, "Why can't I get my students to do a role-play?"

My first response was that she needs to prepare her students for the role-play. Some teachers who are inspired by my workshop rush to their classes and implement this new activity without warning. I believe the students first reaction is shock and then resistance.

Students resist because they don't know the teacher's reason for a sudden change in the curriculum. If the change comes in the middle or at the end of a course, there's little chance that the students will be willing to try something new. They have already planned their own learning strategies for the course, and a new activity such as a role-play threatens their well-established learning strategies. "Why change a good thing?"

Role-plays should not fail when the students know ahead of time that they will be performing them and they know how it works into their language development and assessment.

In my classes, I make it clear to them that active participation, cooperation, and interaction lead to a higher grade. And if my course focuses on listening and speaking, I engage them in interactive speaking activities every day. If they know the evaluation standards and they are used to frequent cooperative speaking activities, a role-play should not be a surprising activity if added later into the course.

However, a role-play will be surprising if the role-play does not seem necessary in terms of assessment. For example, if a writing test is all they need to pass or fail the course, then it will be difficult to convince students that a role-play is helpful.

Secondly, if the teacher does not engage students in frequent cooperative speaking activities, the students will resist because the role-play is a new type of activity. They are comfortable with the activities that have already been established in the course.

This is just the initial stage--for students who are new to the role-play. But what about students who are familiar with role-plays? Why do these students have problems with role-plays?

The answer goes back to preparing students for the role-play. To check my students' comprehension of the role-play instructions, I go over the 6 WH questions before they begin:

What - Do the students know what is happening in the role-play?
Where - Do the students know where the role-play is taking place? Do they know in what type of situation they are in?
Who - Do the students what roles they are playing? Do they know what roles their group members are playing? Who is who?
When - Do the students know if they are talking about the past, present, or future? (especially important if grammar is the focus)
How - Do they know how their roles feel? Do they know how to begin the role-play? Do they know how to end the role-play?
Why - Do they know why they are speaking? (shows necessity for an information gap)

Although this list is a bit tedious, most students can demonstrate their comprehension in a matter of minutes. If students know the answers to these WH questions, then the chance for failure is reduced.

However, even the best designed role-play can fail with the brightest and most linguistically proficient students. Teachers and students should be reminded of this. The goal of a role-play is usually to practice using the language, not for final evaluation. I sometimes tell my students that quantity is more important than quality in the role-play because the more mistakes made equals the more opportunities to learn.

These are just some of the many reasons that role-plays might fail. This blog post is mainly directed towards secondary school teachers, university teachers, and teachers of adults. Advice is much different for teachers of young learners. I hope this gives you more confidence in implementing role-plays in your classroom.

Asking Questions

2007-04-01T10:48:00.001-05:00

One of the most basic functions in communication is asking questions. Language teachers ask students questions all the time. This turns their students into clever responders. However I have seen evidence that students do not get enough practice asking questions. In my opinion, asking a question is the most important speaking function to teach.

Why?

Questions are essential to survival. For example, "Where is the bathroom?" or "Is this train going to New York City?"
Questions demonstrate curiosity and a willingness to learn and understand the language and content of the course.
Questions are essential in the negotiation of meaning.
Questions are useful when one cannot answer. For example, "Could you say that it again more slowly?" or "Are you asking my opinion?"
Students who need and want to understand ask questions.
Students with inquisitive minds ask questions.
Students get more answers when they ask more questions.

How can I get my students to ask (more) questions?

The teacher must train students to ask questions.
For example, in some of my classes, I require students to ask as many questions as they answer.
If my students claim that they don't have a question, I still require them to ask one. If it's not about the subject, then I train my students to announce that the question is about something else or a "silly question."
Remind students that "There is no such thing as a stupid question." And discourage laughter and mockery when a student asks a question.
I sometimes say one silly question is worth two good answers and one good question is worth all the answers of the day.
Silly questions break the ice and demonstrate the language learning doesn't always have to be serious.
Tell students that questions demonstrate curiosity, interest, and a willingness to learn.
When a student asks a spontaneous question for the first time, I always praise him or her.
When a student asks a critical thinking question, I give high praise and then write the question down in my notes. I let the class know that this question is very valuable for me as it demonstrates both the linguistic and academic achievements of my class.
A spontaneous critical thinking question is the precious gem of my class.

Question Follow-up Training

Outside of the classroom, I meet many non-native speakers who are poor at asking questions.
The most recent example I encountered was a personal question with no follow-up.
As teachers, we must teach our students to provide follow-ups to many informal questions.
For example, asking "How old are you?" or "Are you an American?" requires a follow-up to the answer.
If there is no follow-up, most native speakers feel uncomfortable. They think, "Why did he or she suddenly ask me that?"
Informal questions are excellent to start small talk or an informal conversation, but this conversation will fail if there is no follow-up.
Example: "How old are you?" -> "I'm thirty-one." -->
Follow-up suggestions: "Me too." "You're older than I thought." "You look young for thirty-one." "My son is thirty-one." "What's it like being thirty-one?"
Second example: "Are you an American? -> "Yes, I am." -->
Follow-up suggestions: "You're the third American I met this year." "You don't seem American." Plus many compliments or safe opinions (at first) about America, or any number of "why" questions about leaving America and visiting another country.

Conclusion
I can tell that many non-native speakers received poor speaking lessons when they have problems maintaining conversation. I do not doubt their command of grammar or vocabulary, and I do not usually blame them. I know it is often times the teachers that did not give them opportunities to ask questions in class.

I met many non-native speakers from many countries who are good at a answering my questions, but cannot ask any engaging questions or follow-up to informal questions. And it often falls into my hands to keep the whole conversation going, but in the end I often feel as if I am an interviewer or a teacher--not on equal terms as far as the conversation going. So the conversation becomes less enjoyable and more like work. I feel very bad and sometimes guilty for ending conversations with a great person whose speaking skills are not balanced. If only they learned good question skills.

For more information on building critical thinking question skills, visit The Critical Thinking Community.

From Passive to Active Learning

2007-02-28T02:15:00.001-06:00

Almost all of my workshops and seminars promote active learning in the EFL classroom. And the feedback I get is usually positive. Some of the bolder participants will tell me that, even though they enjoyed my seminars, they believe that it won't work in their classes. The bottom line of this belief is that their students are "too passive."

This posting is about what I tell the skeptics of active language learning. Not only does active learning require more work from the students, but it also requires more work from the teacher. The first thing the teacher must do is desire an active class. Once that desire is in place, then the teacher must transform that desire into action.

CAUTION: It is difficult to change a passive classroom into an active classroom in the middle of a course or program. Students have already been "programmed" into passive learning. From my observations and experience, the passive students will resist changing into an active class.

If one wants an active learning environment, the instructor must establish the guidelines and expectations on the first day. The instructor must make it clear to each and every student that they will be evaluated on their active participation in the classroom everyday. The instructor must also provide reasoning behind this evaluation.

Reasons to evaluate students based on their active participation in a language class:

Communication is a primary goal of learning a language.
Using the language correctly is more important than knowing the language well.
Interacting with classmates in English demonstrates one's language ability.

Instructors must ask students why they are in the class. If they want to use the language in real life, then they must practice in class. If they want to pass a test, remind them that many tests score one's ability to express himself or herself in writing and speaking.

The instructor should make it clear to the learners that he or she wants them to be able to communicate and interact very well in the classroom so that they will be able to communicate and interact well in real English-speaking environments and on tests. Most students should agree to that.

Once these objectives and expectations are set on the first day, the instructor and the students must be prepared for lots of communicative activities. Refer to my website for various examples of communicative approaches and activities with many including the theories behind them.

If there are still doubts, many of my Korean and Russian teachers-in-training have successfully transformed their passive learning students into active learning students. It works.

Ulyanovsk

2007-02-23T11:23:00.001-06:00

On Monday, February 26th, I will be going to Ulyanovsk, which is relatively close to Samara compared to the previous two cities I've visited--Orenburg and Saratov.

For those not familiar with Russia, Ulyanovsk is most famous for being the birthplace of Lenin. When he was born, the city was known as Simbirsk. I found a website with some pictures of the city at http://graysite.bicada.com/phototown1.htm. Ulyanovsk has roughly the same number of people as the city of Baltimore, and is located in a region roughly the same size as Maryland. Other than that, I don't expect to many similarities with the city where I once lived.

What will I do there? I will be conducting teacher training seminars the first day to teacher trainers, who will hopefully disseminate the information to teachers through the Ulyanovsk region. On the second day, I will be conducting a teacher training workshop for pre-service teachers about cooperative learning activities. In recognition of the 200th anniversary of US-Russian relations, I will also be presenting some materials on American Studies.

Unfortunately my wife, Jenevieve Nelson, who usually comes with me to regions outside of Samara, will not be coming with me this time. Ulyanovsk will be the second time I will be traveling alone. Nonetheless, I look forward to meeting new people in a new city.

Venn Diagrams

2007-02-21T10:53:00.001-06:00

I have recently discovered that many English teachers here in Russia have never heard of a Venn diagram. I make reference to Venn diagrams, assuming that teachers already know about them, during my seminars about critical thinking and cooperative learning activities. It was my mistake to assume "everybody" knows about Venn diagrams.

Here is an image of a Venn diagram I got from Wikipedia. As you can see there are 2 circles: circle A and circle B. For a compare and contrast exercise, circle A can represent one item and circle B another. The overlapping section represents the similarities between A and B have in common. The separate sections represent the differences between A and B.

For reading and listening exercises, students can create a Venn diagram as their central task to compare and contrast items in the text. For example, if Russian students are listening to someone lecture about life in the United States, they can compare and contrast their Russian life to American life. For another example, if students are reading two advice columns for the same problem, they can compare and contrast the two bits of advice.

I believe that Venn diagrams are excellent for critical thinking because they can work on many levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Here are some of my ideas:

Knowledge

Compare and contrast the sounds of one's native language to the sounds of English
Compare and contrast simple objects (shoe vs. glove) or animals (dog vs. cat)

Comprehension

Compare and contrast two items in a given text for reading
Compare and contrast two items from a speech for listening

Application

Compare and contrast one's own experience with the experience of a character from a text
Compare and contrast what one did yesterday with what what is doing today

Analysis (think in terms of English for Specific Purposes)

Business: compare and contrast two companies
Law: compare and contrast two legal systems
History: compare and contrast two wars
Pros and cons of political issues

Synthesis

Compare and contrast two theories about global warming: what if global warming speeds up vs. what if global warming slows down
Compare and contrast the fact that the Allies won World War II against the idea if the Allies lost World War II to the Axis Powers

Evaluation

Compare and contrast one's English ability at the start of class to one's ability now
Compare and contrast ethics of a political or scientific idea

That's just "the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to Venn diagrams and critical thinking.

I also mentioned Venn diagrams for cooperative learning activities. Students can work in groups or pairs to create and fill in Venn diagrams. Not only can cooperative learning be combined with critical thinking, but it can be combined with other classroom activities.

Here are some more cooperative learning ideas for Venn diagrams:

Teambuilding - students in teams make Venn diagrams about themselves in order to learn more about each other
Classbuilding - the class as a whole can make a (very complex) Venn diagram
Feedback - circle A represents good opinions, circle B represents critical opinions, and the overlapping section represents facts about the class or activity being evaluated
A visual aid for a class or group project

For more information on Venn diagrams, visit Wikipedia. I'm going to put a link for Wikipedia on the left column on my blog right now. My next posting will be an introduction to Wikipedia for English teachers who have never used it.

Introduction

2007-02-16T08:55:00.001-06:00

Let me introduce this blog by answering the 6 WH questions:

Who...
is writing this blog? Me (Jeremy Slagoski). You can see my profile in the margin.
is this blog for? Take a look at the list below, which is prioritized from primary audience to secondary audiences.

Russian teachers of English
Those involved in the English Language Fellowship Program
Non-native speaking EFL teachers around the world
All ESL and EFL teachers around the world
EFL and ESL teacher trainers
Those conducting research in curriculum & instruction, teaching & learning, intercultural communication, and related academic fields.
Anyone interested in teaching EFL or ESL
English language learners
Instructors in general
Anyone else who has interest in my profession, my interests, and myself.

What...
is a blog? Click here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
is this blog about? See below for another list.

My observations on teaching English in Russia
My insight into ESL & EFL teaching methods and approaches
My reflections on my work as a Senior English Language Fellow
My answers to FAQ (frequently as questions) from Russian teachers of English

Where
I am living in Samara, Russia until July 2007.
My work covers the Volga Region of Russia.
My hometown is Kenosha, Wisconsin.
My last American place of residence was Westminster, Maryland.
I have also lived in Japan and Korea.

When
My Fellowship started in September 2006 and ends in July 2007.
I spend about 2 weeks per month in Samara.
I spend the other 2 weeks of each month in other cities of the Volga Region.

Why...
am I teaching English as a foreign language? (summarized answer)

I grew up in a multi-cultural family with siblings adopted from Korea and the Philippines.
English has been my best and favorite subject since I elementary school.

am in Russia?

The English Language Fellow Program selected me out of hundreds of qualified English teaching professionals and then asked if I would like to work in Russia. I agreed.
I have always been interested in Eastern Europe because of my Polish heritage.
I wanted to educate myself in Russia, which is often misunderstood by the rest of the world.

How
do I teach English? I teach English using the communicative language teaching approach, more specifically using the task-based and content-based approaches. (summarized answer)

do I speak Russian? I speak Russian poorly, but I am taking lessons.

do I go to work? I usually go to work by tram.

is the weather today? There's not a cloud in the sky, but it's very windy and very, very cold.