Reflections on Five Teaching Principles from Brown & Lee (2015)

 Gouin's Series Method - I found the concept of teaching using a series of sentences in the Second Language intriguing. Repeating words from sentence to sentence to emphasize them and draw attention to specific words has potential at least as a task as part of a lesson plan.

Community Language Learning - CLL to me seems almost contradictory to the initial premise of being Learner focused. There seems to be too much emphasis on the Teacher being the only person in the class that is working. The Learners are simply repeating random phrases and sentences which the Teacher is translating. No one needs to understand the Second Language sentence because it has already been said in the L1 of the Learners.

Content-Based Language Teaching - CBLT being focused on the Learners' interest and needs appears to be a constructive form of L2 teaching. Although a little broad and vague in Brown and Lee (2015), CBLT should encourage motivation to learn by being learner focused.

Immersion - The immersion model of L2 learning is a strong approach especially for children. I believe this approach may be more difficult for adult learners to acclimate to. 

Corpus-Based Teaching - With such a multitude of possibilities, CBT promises to be very useful in L2 teaching. 

 Acquisition and noticing in Second Language Acquisition

Classroom activities that promote language noticing	Classroom activities that promote language acquisition
·         informal chat at the beginning of the lesson ·         showing part of a film on DVD ·         listening to a song ·         oral fluency practice with role plays	·         concept checking the meaning of new vocabulary items ·         grammar gap-fill practice tasks ·         grammar-analysis tasks ·         controlled oral language practice dialogues

The Scaredy-Cat: A Halloween Story

Scaredy-Cat

The Scaredy-Cat: A Halloween Story

Learn English from the ESL Library.

Language Analysis Task

 

Language Analysis Task

Describe symptoms to a pharmacist in order to get an appropriate medication.
Linguistic competence	Learner needs to know vocabulary which describes their health and symptoms, such as: types and levels of pain. Body locations of pain and/or sickness. Other symptoms, such as: nausea, heartburn, upset stomach, diarrhea, etc. Learner also needs to know word order, in particular adjectives before nouns to describe types and levels of pain and sickness.
Pragmatic competence	Learner needs to prioritize symptoms to enable diagnosis. Learner also needs to understand socially acceptable ways of addressing the Pharmacist, such as polite and gracious, yet firm and clear. It may also be important to inform the Pharmacist of what does not hurt or feel sick.
Discourse competence	Learner needs to understand that the Pharmacist needs to ask questions to provide accurate care. Learner needs to listen and understand the questions from the Pharmacist. Learner needs to formulate clear replies that address the questions from the Pharmacist.
Strategic competence	Learner needs to know basic dosing terms to appropriately administer the medication.
Fluency	Learner can present symptoms clearly and firmly in complete sentences. Learner can understand Pharmacist questions and formulate responses which are clear and answer the questions.

 

Needs Assessment 

Thinking about the Homestay Students we have invited into our home, I would consider their primary need to be pronunciation. I found that their biggest hindrance to communication was being able to pronounce the words in an understandable manner.

 My PLN

 Unit 3

I do like grammar, although I do not know as much as I thought I did. Or at the very least I was/am unsure of some of the terminology.

Bolitho, R., & Tomlinson, B. (2005).

I was very surprised at how much I did not know when taking this self-assessment test. I had never considered different categories of nouns, verbs, etc. This is definitely something I need to work on in the near future.

Brown, D., & Lee, H. (2015). Chapter 19

I disagree with Brown and Lee (2015) comment on the phrase “That is enough.” The idea that the meaning will change depending on pronunciation and whether the verb is contracted or not seems to be an oversimplification and an under simplification at the same time. To begin with, the pronunciation of the words does not change depending on the meaning. At most the stress on the different words and the inflection of the words would change, not the pronunciation. Also, the idea that contracting the verb or not changes its meaning is overstating the issue. It is perfectly fine to use the contracted or uncontracted form in most situations. At most, it is an issue between formal and informal vocabulary.

The use of the word “grammaring” I found to be interesting. It defines the fluid nature of language very well.

I believe a balanced approach to teaching is the strongest approach to use when dealing with classrooms and multiple students. People learn in different ways so approaching teaching from a variety of angles will best help the variety of students.