My TESL Journey

Unit 3 brought forward the concept of a dictogloss , which I had never heard of before (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.479).  The concept behind this approach to teaching English includes ‘warming-up’ the class through a discussion of a topic.  Following the ‘warm-up,’ the learners are read a passage about the topic for which they were warmed-up and they are asked to listen and take notes of the words and phrases they thought were important.  After that, the learners are put into groups and asked to use their resources together to re-create the passage they were read (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.479). I have done some exercises that are similar to this one but seeing the steps that are taken to both prepare the students and give them a chance to experience their own learning is very interesting to me.  As I continue to plan ways to teach my students English I hope to use this concept. Also, this approach seems to really help students internalize a concept without really noticing it. Brow

This unit focused more on the differentiated classroom and having multiple levels in a class. In all learning situations, you will never find a classroom that is completely homogenous. Everyone learns at a different pace and so you can start with a group of learners that have similar skills and strengths, but as time goes by, their learning will vary as well. However, it is also possible to have classes with beginner, intermediate and advanced learners all grouped together due to many different reasons. According to Mathews-Aydinli and Van Horne’s article, it is important when you have a multilevel class to discuss this with the learners and let them understand that working with more than one level can be beneficial for them (Mathews-Aydinli and Van Horne, 2006, p.2). They also describe different strategies that can be used to help students to work together based on combined skills as well as individualized work (Mathews-Aydinli and Van Horne, 2006, p.2). I have actually had the chan

Listening is a very important part of learning but it is important to not expect learners to know how to listen. Wilson’s text brings up key aspects to teaching listening and what is important to consider when planning listening activities for the learners. The text brings up the key points of believability, relevance and new information (Wilson, 2008, p. 25). These are key as they will make the learners want to listen. It is important to find a story or recording of a story that is believable and relevant to the learners. They will be more willing to listen attentively to what is being said if they believe it and the source of the story.  I have seen this in my own classroom, as students will not listen or find themselves doing something else if it is not interesting for them. It is important to consider content as well as the delivery for listening activities. When discussing content, it is important to find listening activities that are enjoyable and gripping, have cultural releva

Reviewing Unit 3 has been a very interesting experience for me.  As a teacher, especially an English and French teacher, I have spent many years learning about different aspects of language, how to teach language, how language is learned, and my own misconceptions surrounding language.  This unit included an actual English grammar quiz that forced me to critically look at my own knowledge of English and challenged me to think about that knowledge in a way that would allow me to teach it to others. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I went to school in Quebec and my more in-depth grammatical teaching took place in French schools.  As such, I have not received as grammatical training in English and I believe that made it more difficult for me to complete this quiz. I was able to consider some parts of grammar from the perspective of my French education but this was also difficult because I had to think about that concept and how it is applied in French then convert it to English and see if

Speaking activity For the purposes of this exercise, I chose one of the Canadian Language Benchmarks for English as a Second Language for Adults: − Responds appropriately to common greetings, introductions, and leave-takings. This lesson is as a review for a beginner level course. The activity I chose to do is what I call the “Ball Game”. It is one that the learners tend to enjoy as a review instead of sitting in their chairs. The lesson/activity would start with learners sharing the different greetings they remember and the instructor writing them on the board. Then, as a way to practice common greetings and introductions, the learners will find a spot around the room, though not too far away. They do not need to stand in a circle (though they can). Once everyone has a spot, the instructor starts by saying a greeting, for example, “Hello Joe, how are you?”. Then the instructor would throw the ball to Joe (one of the learners). Joe would then respond with an appropriate

I decided to use Sample 3 (Tina) to create this lesson. It is only a short lesson of about five minutes. When talking, she had difficulties with the /sh/ sounds, in particular when she was talking about shopping. The objective of this lesson is to help her develop and strengthen this sound. As it is only a five minute lesson, I would start by modeling the sound. I would follow the modelling of the sound with having the learner repeat it. Then I would use different examples or images of words that have that sound. - Shoe - Shout - Shop - Shrimp - She - Shell We would then go over the words together, again in a model and repeat style. After this, we would use these words to create some easier tongue twisters that the learners can then practice. - “She shops for shoes and shrimp” - “She shouted at the shell.” - “Shoe, Shop, Shrimp” After the easy tongue twisters are mastered, I would give the learners more common and difficult tongue twisters like “She

I think that there will always be different levels in classes because while everyone may start at the same level, people learn at different rates. It is important to keep this in mind when teaching a class. A way that I tend to approach multi-level classes is by finding the common ground between the three and then planning units based on that. For example, if you find that all three levels look into verb tenses, you can then pick the different verb tenses based on their difficulty and work with different groups. For example, the instructor can separate the class into groups based on levels, in this case, say we have 4 groups (2 beginner and two intermediate). While working individually with each group, the others can work on the knowledge they already have on the topic. This makes it so that each individual group has time to learn  something new or something they have been having difficulty with, while the others are working on different activities such as grammar work or listening to

My ‘Aha’ moments about the instruction of pronunciation I found the Harmer chapter, Teaching Pronunciation , quite interesting as I teach 4th grade English in a French school and that is their first year of English class. While many students either speak English at home or have listened to it on tv or the radio, I always find teaching pronunciation a difficult and tricky task. The Harmer article gave me some insight and ideas of how to approach teaching it in my classroom. I found the section on ‘how to teach pronunciation’ very thought provoking (Harmer, 2001, p.186). Separating pronunciation into different types of learning experiences is a great way to see the different possibilities for teaching it.  The differences between ‘whole class’, ‘discrete slots’, ‘integrated phases’, and ‘opportunistic teaching’ can all play a role and be switched up to offer a change of pace for the students (Harmer, 2001, p. 186-187). The different activities offered also gave me ideas of how to

How to approach giving feedback? According to Chapter 7 in Harmer's book The Practice of English Language Teaching (2001), the way to approach giving feedback is dependent on where you are in the lesson, the type of activity the learners are doing, the type of mistake that was made, and who made the mistake (p.104). There are different types of activities that can be done and it is important to take into consideration if it is a 'non-communicative' activity, one that focuses on accuracy, while there are others that are 'communicative' which focus on how fluently you can speak (p.104). During activities that focus on accuracy, it is important to give feedback and help make corrections if there are mistakes. If you are focusing on fluency, it is important to gauge if your feedback will halt the conversation and if it is of high-enough importance. Too many corrections can be less effective as it can hinder the classroom environment (p.105). There are many ways

During the first unit of this course, we discussed the importance of speaking and how to teach speaking as well as the importance of how to give feedback. It is important to take into consideration both the learner and how they learn or approach learning when it comes to teaching them or giving them feedback. How to teach speaking? There are many different types of knowledge that go into speaking and having conversations. According to Thornbury's book How to Teach Speaking (2005), there are two main categories that play a role in speaking, extralinguistic knowledge and linguistic knowledge (p.11).  Extralinguistic knowledge is knowledge that is separate from language that impacts speaking (p.11). For example, it can include cultural knowledge, the importance of context, and the speaker's familiarity with both topics and other speakers (p.11). Linguistic knowledge focuses more on the language itself. Knowledge of genre, participation, and planning are examples of linguist

I have had quite a few memorable teachers throughout the years. I would have to start with my elementary school physical education teacher. She got me interested in teaching by taking the students interests to heart and helping us do activities that would interest us. For example, when I was in 3rd grade, knowing that I was a competitive gymnast, she got my help to plan the “gymnastics unit” for the other students at school as well as got me to help demonstrate for each class and I got to help teach a class for an hour every day of the first week they did the unit. I valued that she took into consideration what we, the learners, cared about. She used our interests to help us learn. I also had other teachers throughout the years that did similar things which made learning more interesting and easier to understand because they would approach the information in a way that we could understand. I also valued many of my teachers because they didn’t treat us like children, they talked to