Final blog post for Thinking about Theory

I have learned so much through this course. Since I teach an Adult EAL class 7.5 hours a week I feel I have a great opportunity; I get to use what I am learning as I am learning it. In Module 7 I was introduced to learning styles; I'd heard of this before but I had never put much thought into it. I discovered my learning style according to VARK; I am a visual, aural and kinesthetic learner. Realizing this I became aware of the strategies I needed to use, first of all to learn from this course and, to be a better teacher. Also I have begun to identify the learning styles of my students. Having limited hours in a week I have not taken a formal assessment of this but I have taken note of what I know and see in the students. Thus I have prepared more diverse activities.
I wrote in my last blog post about how I have been including more task based lessons into my curriculum. Before taking this course I thought I understood task based lessons, but in module 9 I learned a whole lot more about what task based means. I still have a lot to learn. All the information I learned about task based lessons I rolled around in my mind, I told my husband about the material and then I tried a task based series of lessons in my class; based on what I learned in the module (I used all three of my learning styles according to VARK to learn this). The task I used in my class was ordering vegetable seeds from a catalog. They looked through the catalog, read about the seeds, learned new words they needed through dictionaries and asking questions of me, the EA or other students. They gathered the information they needed to complete the task without me having to give it in advance. I helped as needed, they did the task and they loved it. After the task they did pair and group work to talk about what they did in  the task and answer question. They were so into the task though that the time on structure was very short, but I can work on that next week or when the seeds come in. They were so keen on the task they actually ordered seeds for their gardens. I complained last week about the problem with boring tasks, well I feel this lesson gave some insight into that; because this was a topic that was of interest to the students they had no chance to be bored.
In the beginning of this course we learned about methods and approaches; I found this useful. Naturally I have been using my preferred approach in my teaching but now that I learned the many methods and approaches I feel I know why and how the methods I choose to use can be affective. It also made me aware of using methods that work well with different students. It makes sense to be intentionally eclectic in my approach rather than just doing whatever and having it accidentally work.
I plan to keep taking the courses offered through U of W in regards to the TEAL certificate so that I can keep learning and improving my skills as a teacher. I love this profession because I interact with such amazing people everyday.

Are Task based Lessons Boring?

This week we had a module on communicative classrooms. The teaching in the module and the ideas that were contributed to the discussion were helpful. They will inspire new ideas on information gaps, authentic activities and task based lessons for my classroom.  I am always trying to adjust things in my class to be more relevant; if I learn new things I like to change things up and try it. Some things work some don't. So I have been trying to do task based lessons and use more authentic materials in my class. Interestingly, unlike what the module said, I have found lesson planning easier with task based lessons. The one problem I have run into is that my students don't always seem interested in the material, now this may be just what it appears to be but it makes me wonder. If I put myself in their shoes would I find filling in forms, reading instructions, writing notes to school teachers and the like boring. I think I might. When I ask them what they enjoy about English class and where they learn the most, they say they really enjoy reading fiction stories, they find they learn a lot, connect with the story and they are even motivated to reread it at home. Of course there is nothing wrong with stories, in fact there are lots of communicative ways to use a good story(group discussions, retelling the story, looking up new vocabulary, etc). As good as the stories are I also want the student to enjoy the authentic tasks as well. Maybe there are some ideas you have for me to make the tasks more interesting. I hope some of you will interact with me on this and let me know what you have done or expect to do to ensure the students have more interest in authentic materials.

The pros and cons to assessing Learning Style

Through this weeks module I can see how a students learning style should matter to a teacher. As a teacher I feel I am successful when my students successfully reach their goals. Learning  about learning styles has made me see that knowing a students preference to learning would be beneficial for their success. As an example I can see that a learner who is visual will need more objects and pictures and diagrams in class and an aural learner would really benefits from small group discussions and being able to ask questions. Providing re-writing time, written instructions and worksheets into a lesson could really energize a reading and writing learner, and going on field trips, making things in class and hands on activities would benefit the kinesthetic learner. When I know the styles of each student I can prepare a more powerful/effective classroom time, and thus the students will learn more. Also the process of discovering their learning style is a way for the student to become more involved and invested in their own learning. I really liked what Dr. Howard Gardner had to say about multiple intelligences. This made me think of the importance of student involvement in learning and of teachers not seeing their students as all the same. Another benefit that I like about knowing a students learning style is that from it the best learning strategies for each student can be identified. The strategies that work best with their preferred learning style will accelerate their ability to learn and reach their goals. When they know this they can use what works best for them outside the classroom. As an example a reading/writing learner could be encouraged to carry a notebook to write new words as they come up, and a visual learner could use sticky notes around the house with phrases and words attached to items and places they might say the phrases.
There are some cons to assessing learner style that I learned about this week. The research being done on the affect of learning styles with students is not complete and in some cases needs a lot more research for the researchers to feel confident in it. The main con to assessing learning styles is the question of the scientific reliability and validity of the assessments. Another con that I saw is how some learners with lower level skills would not understand or accurately be able to answer the questions on the surveys to determine their style. Also depending on the amount of hours per week a program has, the value it has compared to the time it takes would need to be considered. When I think of these cons I am not dissuaded from my opinion that knowing each students learning style is valuable and even necessary but I do think it is important to consider these drawbacks. Here are some possible examples of how I might apply this in my class, which is 10 students, multi level and only 7.5 hours a week; We could talk about the different ways of learning and through discussion see where they feel they are at; I could provide them with a simplified style assessment questionnaire and review the results together; we could discuss different strategies for learning, have them try the strategies and see which one they connected with the best.

Adult Language Training

If I don't write this right away I will probably get lazy and not write it.
I went to the Adult Language Training Conference today at CMU, it's been a long day, so here I am totally wiped from a long day of EAL workshops, but I made it and I took some notes to share with you.

- Joanne Pettis said
"Assessment is a systematic approach to collecting information on students learning and performance based on various sources of evidence to inform teaching and help students learn."

She used some 'fancy' words for this but I am going to simplify it here. Assessment is for A)placing students at a starting point , B)informing the learning process along the way and for C) feedback to determine if a goal has been reached

She asked - Does assessment improve learning? If it does are there assessment practices that are effective? --the answer YES and these are the effective practices to make it a resounding YES
the approach to assessment has to be
- planned for
- goal driven
- engaging the teacher and student in reflection and dialog

"Don't do more assessment do more with assessment" - I see this as a good statement to encourage not overdoing it in assessment. When I think about this statement and consider my observation after a full day of listening to assessment talk. I wondered about the pendulum factor. After just studying the approaches and methods that have swung the pendulum over the last 100 years is the pendulum of assessment swinging now? How far will it go?

"Assessment will empower students to be life long learners"

"Assessment will inform teaching and excite students"

Thank you Joanne for collaborating with my present learning journey.

Summary of our Discussion this week

We had a discussion on the class site this week about which language teaching approaches are our preferred and least preferred. There were some good points made in defense of some of the approaches I would have originally given little thought to. The Audiolingual approach is my least favorite method we read about, yet through discussion I realized there are some good points for it and I realized I actually use it in my teaching methods. The point was made that drills and repetition are an effective way to keep something to memory. I have experienced some of the same results as my classmate Jennifer who said about her experience in teaching,"(Learning language through songs) helped the students learn certain vocabulary and structures deeply by practicing them in a different, fun way." And as my classmate Vanessa said "Forming good habits through repetition does have value." So the Audiolingual approach can be effective, but I think it can only be  effective in teaching language if it is used in conjunction with other approaches that help the learner use the structure and good pronunciation in real world use. As for other less preferred approaches, the Grammar Translation approach came up a number of times, mostly due to it's lack of connection to real world use but some language students learn best through this approach, to this my classmate Lauren said " I think it’s very important to take this(the fact that students want it) into consideration, especially in an educational culture that is more and more student-driven." So there is even a place for the Grammar Translation Approach. By far the favorite approach rang in as the Communicative approach, and as for me that sounds good too because personally my two preferred methods are the communicative and Direct approach. I like the Direct Method because it uses pictures, miming, demonstrating, drawing and objects to show the students what is being taught. I also like this method because it encourages the  students to ask questions and speak as much as possible. I like the communicative teaching approach because it focuses on real life situations and authentic materials and all the skills are integrated right from the beginning. Others on in the discussion said they liked the approach for it's goal to communicate, learner centered nature, teachers role is as guide, use of current materials and students learn grammar inductively.
  What I have found interesting as I have been learning about approaches, is that in my ESL class I use more Audiolingual style than I would have expected, considering I don't like the approach that much. I am not quite sure why this is yet. Either way it seems I need to line up my intentions and my actions, to teach more intentionally. I have enjoyed this learning journey. A line from the article I read by Paul Davis and Eric Pearse 'Development in Teaching English' really stood out to me, it reads " Many teachers continue to use activities and techniques that have passed out of fashion. Sometimes this is the result of ignorance rather than professional judgement. But other teacher who are trained and well-informed, also take ideas from unfashionable methods because they seem appropriate for their own teaching-learning situation. This is known as eclecticism. Eclectic approaches, based on well-informed views of the nature of language, language learning and language teaching and a good analysis of the specific teaching-learning situation, are considered by many English teaching professionals to be the best." It stood out to me for two reasons. One: I often feel like the ignorant teacher who has this willy nilly teaching approach that is working but I don't know why. Two: I see my goal here; to have an eclectic approach, based on well-informed views of the nature of language, language learning and language teaching and a good analysis of the specific teaching-learning situation. That's why I am in this class.

Knowledge, Ability and Effective

Competence ----
When I think about competence I think about 3 words; knowledge, ability and effective. From the readings this week I have learned a few things about communicative competence. We read an article by Vesna Baraic and Jelena Mihaljevic Djigunovic called defining communicative competence. Even though I sum up this meaningful word, competence, with; knowledge, ability and effective, there is so much more to it. I can see a lot of thought, research and discussion has gone on through history to bring us to better understand competence . Many people contributed to our present day understanding of communicative competence. Chompsky separates competence and performance, he says competence is about knowledge and performance is about the actual use of language. Hymes brought a sociolinguistic perspective to Chompsky's view and defined communicative competence as an ability to grammatical competence in a variety of communicative settings and situations. Widdowson made a distinction between competence and capacity and he was the first to give more attention to real language use. According to Canale and Swaine there were 3 types of knowledge, knowledge of underlying grammatical principals, knowledge of how to use language in social contexts and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions in respect to discourse. Also skill had 2 distinctions; underlying capacity and real communication. Then Savigon became an influential thinker, she described communicative competence as the ability to function in a truly communicative setting. Dynamic and relative were key terms for her model. Bachman called communicative competence 'communicative language ability' and he and Palmer focused their definition in two broad ways, language knowledge and strategic competence. Because their model is clearer, more complex and coherent than others, it has been favorable. Their attention was specifically on the aspects of language use; achieving a communicative goal in a specific situation. Finally I read about the CEF 2001 model and it's additions to the way we can understand communicative competence. This model balances knowledge and use by weaving them together. Each component; language, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences have 'ability to use' ridding on their backs so to speak.
I like to keep things simple and easy to understand, so this is the definition for competence that I've come out of this module with - to know and be able to use resulting in a desired effect. When I originally thought about the word competence, before I worked through this module, I defined competence as; to know and be able to do. After reading the article I saw something was missing from my definition so I took the goal focus from Bachman and Palmer and changed the way I defined competence by adding "to use with a desired effect" as part of my definition. For me I see it clearly that the goal of communicative competence is about combining knowledge learned and  the ability to use  the language in the desired situations, with the desired effect.


And here is a picture just for fun .... to break up the bla bla bla.:)



















Sometimes I feel like this flower.

History and our Place in the Story

For class this week I read about the history of Language learning theory.

The reading brought us from the Monks memorizing Latin in 1500, to authentic communicative language learning for anyone today. It was a brief brush through the past and it gave a good overview of how we have come to the place we are today. Each generation came through history with a desire to learn language, for different purposes and to do their best. When major events happened in history, language learners and teachers used those events to their advantage and they influenced the way language was learned or why it was learned. I found it interesting that after WW1 people were motivated to learn foreign languages so they could promote better communication between countries. Through this I can see clearly how learning language makes the world a better place. This is one of the reasons I enjoy teaching EAL so much, because I know it will improve life for newcomers to Canada. As the years went by many methods, approaches and techniques were used, new ways to teach were developed and old ideas were scrapped only later to have them brought back with yet newer integrations. I picture it as a spiral. The science behind learning a language and research also became more and more important for language learning. All the great language thinkers, inventors, scientists, researchers and forerunners in the field of language learning brought us to today, where we have the communicative approach. With the communicative approach culture, context and authentic language learning are critical. I like culture, context and authentic. I feel that my preferred learning style fits well with the communicative approach. The art of teaching language is always going to be developing, so this is not the end but rather our place in the story. We get the benefit of the work put into the field before us and now get to help shape the future.