Tesol Approaches

I think that it is so interesting the history of education. I mean I really wish that I could be there back then when teaching was really just getting started. Although in history there has always been a role of an educator and a learner in that they used to teach others. It makes me wonder if people are born with this virtues and the ability to teach. I for one feel that yes I was born to be a teacher, I feel that teaching just comes to me naturally and I enjoy being a leader in almost all situations. So this article was interesting to me because it allowed me to see how education has changed thourought history and how each approach led to the creation of another approach because the previous one did not work. I really like what the article says about how each approach is grounded on a slightly different theory or view of how people learn second languages or how people use languages. It's interesting that throughout the history of second language learner, there has been many different needs for the use of the language, in that in history at some times there was not a need to use oral skills of the language but instead there was only a need to know how to read the language. I like all of these approaches and plan to use them in my future teaching classes when the material that I present can be made clearer by using such approaches. But as we have discussed in class, there is absolutely no one size fits all approach that will always be successful in the classroom. As future ESL teachers we need to learn to differentiate instruction and make sure we are not just using one approach but rather that we are incorporating all of the approaches in the appropriate times.

One thing that I really want to criticize about the Comprehension-Based Approach is the third explination of the approach- it says: "Learners should not speak until they feel ready to do so; this results in better pronounciation that when the learner is forced to speak immediately. When I read this I was like, WHAT? That is so stupid. As we discussed about in class part of learning a language is taking risks in using it even if we are unsure of the proper way to do so. Just by listening to the language you are not going to learn anything, through actual use of the language students can test their hypothesis's that they have on the rules of grammar and continue to learn from their mistakes. Also, if you are going to tell students that they do not have to use the language in oral form until they are 'ready', then the majority of them will probably say that they are not ready and push off using the language allowed because they do not feel comfortable. Learning to use a foreign language orally is uncomfortable and that is something that the students have to know from the beginning. The more and more they practice using it allowed the more the will become comfortable in using it and then their competence will grow. It is important for the teacher in the classroom to establish an environment where the students are respectful and courteous to those who are brave enough to practice using the language in front of the whole class, and the class can learn from the mistakes of others. Furthermore. that part of the approach just truly shocked me and made me kind of mad because I just thought to myself how can teachers in the past think that would really work.

Chapters 1+2

I really like that Brown uses the term pedagogy instead of the term methods. I like how the book explained it also, where it says methods "implies a static set of procedures, whereas the latter (pedagogy) suggests the dynamicc interplay between teachers, learners and instructional materials during he process of teaching and learning." To me that just made perfect sense because it is important to keep all of these things in mind when you are teaching students.

There was a lot of material to digest in this chapter. A lot of new terms that are all so important for my future in teaching. I found the first chapter to be interesting because it kind of took you through the history of how teachers taught a foreign language in the past. I do not know why they would ever think that there was one way to teach everything, or specific method that will be effective enough for the students to learn. Now I know from many classes that I've taken that there is a variety of practices you can use to teach and some work better for different material.

One thing that I really liked from the first chapter the quote at the bottom of page 11 that says "the cycle goes on". The article is explaining that in being a teacher you must constantly be taking risks in teaching in the classroom, then assessing how they work, and understand their effectiveness. If something does not work then the teacher is then able to reshape what they did and modify it for next time until they get it right and it becomes effective.

8/25: Cultural Diversity in the United States

"Immigration has brought the world into the US schools." -Diaz-Rico & Weed

I found this article to be extremely interesting. The United States is constantly changing it's identity due to the large amount of immigrants that have come to this country. Many say that the United States is like a melting pot, but I do not agree with this because there is not one culture here in the US but rather a mixture of different parts of different cultures all together. Therefore I believe that it's more of like a salad bowl, or a kaleidoscope as the article says, in that there are very many distinct parts of it and that they are constantly changing. What really intrigued me about this article is that it explained all of the different contributions that each race brought to America. It's weird because you do not think of what life here would be without some of those things had they choose not to move here. 

When I think about how the topic of this article will effect me in my future teaching, it just makes me realize that once I begin to teach I need to understand that I am going to have a variety of students all from many different cultures, races and backgrounds. Therefore it is necessary for all pre-service teachers to have a strong understanding of the different cultures and customs of our future students. Just as the quote from the article says, immigration brings the world into the US schools, meaning that inside my classroom I will many students from different backgrounds of the world.