TESL 160 - Assignment #2

As part of Unit 2, Transitioning to The Classroom, we had to work on an assignment titled "Job Analysis." For this assignment, we had to choose a specific context from a list of context provided in the outline. Once we had chosen such context, we had to do a little bit of research about the different aspects of the place (city, country, etc) we were intended to work. 

Also, we were required to use techniques such as Podcast, a video, Screencast, infographics, etc to present our findings of the key aspects of the place we chose for our ESL teaching job and to finalize the lesson, we had to choose a small activity that it was already made and adapt it to our own context. Both activities are presented in my lesson, the original and the adapted one, for you to see.

JOB ANALYSIS

Jenny Carmona

TESL 160 - Transitioning to the Classroom

Assignment #2

Job Analysis

CLB level: Foundations

Context Government-funded Literacy class for refugees who have been living in Canada for over two years. The class consists of 6 females and 3 males. Most of the students had interrupted schooling for 4 years or more. Penmanship has improved significantly since they began English classes 2 years ago, and most learners are at CLB 1 Stage I now.

Key Aspects of the Context 1)    The host culture 2)   Accreditation and Visa requirements 3)   Remuneration and basic expenses 4)   Availability of resources (textbooks, copying machines, the internet, student-owned devices, institution provided devices)

Lesson Plan: FOODS

I have chosen to do a short reading activity from the Bow Valley College website. Please see the activity here. In this activity, the students read about Lien who goes grocery shopping. The story provides very short simple sentences in the present tense. For the first three sentences, the name of the person is used.

ex.

●     Lien buys foods

●      Lien buys cabbage

●      Lien buys garlic

Then, the following three sentences change to using the pronoun instead of the name.

ex.

●     She buys apples

●     She buys papayas

●     She buys carrots, etc.

Modification of the activity:

Food Flyers: 

❖   The teacher will provide the students with a lot of food flyers from local market places.

❖   The students will choose a variety of food items and they will cut them out of the flyers.

❖   The Ss will collect about 5 - 8 items in total.

Booklet:

❖   The teacher will provide the students with the following booklet

Cover

_________ Buys Foods.

5-7 Pages

Glue here ___________________________________ ____________________________________

❖   The teacher will provide samples of names for the students to use in their story. The T will let the students know that they can also use any name they like i.e., the name of a family member, husband, children or their own.

Group or Pair Activity:

❖   Students will form groups (no more than three people in a group) or work in pairs in the classroom.

❖   Each student will have an opportunity to share their booklet.

❖   The teacher will provide ongoing feedback throughout this activity.

My Rationale for modifying this activity:

I want the students to work with authentic materials by using real food flyers from local food markets. The Ss will practice skimming through the flyers when choosing their food items. They will practice fine motor skills such as cutting, pasting, and penmanship. The modification of my activity allows targeting the following skill areas: Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, and Grammar.

References Teaching Refugees with Limited Formal Schooling, retrieved from http://teachingrefugees.com/instructional-programming/resources/ Bow Valley College, School of Global Access, ESL Literacy Readers, Level A, Lien buys food, retrieved from https://globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/esl-readers/lien-buys-food/ Working as an Adult EAL Teacher In Manitoba, Employment and Hiring Information, retrieved from http://manitobateam.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/6/4/13647344/working-eal-teacher-manitoba.pdf TESL Canada, Teachers Of English as a Second Language - Canada, retrieved from https://www.tesl.ca/jobs/canadian-jobs.html English Online, retrieved from http://myenglishonline.ca/careers/ TEAM, TESL Canada and Training in Manitoba, retrieved from https://teammanitoba.org/membership/tesl-canada/ MANSO, Manitoba Association Of Newcomer Serving Organization, retrieved from https://mansomanitoba.silkstart.com/companies/edge-skills-centre Dave’s ESL Cafe, retrieved from http://www.eslcafe.com/

TESL 150 - Unit 1

Developing Materials and Copyright: Where'd you wanna go? How much you wanna risk?

We began our unit by learning the different types of teaching materials and how to develop them for classroom use - materials like videos, pictures, textbooks, cassettes, DVDs, etc. are very important when it comes to taking part in your teaching, but it is even more critical to evaluate the material before sharing it with your class.

Bian Tomlinson (2014), Developing Materials for Language Teaching, talks about the development of such materials and how and who should develop them. He points out that nowadays, all teachable elements are done with the commercial profit in mind. The people who design these materials are very experienced and knowledgeable, but they lack knowing what the learners needs. Another high point that Tomilson (2014)  states in his book, Developing Materials for Language Teaching (pp 7) are the importance of using authentic tasks and texts so the learner can be prepared for the reality of language use.

Unit #4 TESL 110 Putting It All Together: Lesson Planning

Putting It All Together: Lesson Planning

Putting It All Together: Lesson Planning
We have come to the end of this course, and it is lesson planning time!
To end our TESL 110, we are required to submit a grammar lesson plan with a focus on writing.
Before getting started in the planning, we explored three main lesson plan approaches.

First, PPP (Present, Practice, Produce) which is a traditional lesson and for its sequential way, it's appealing to language instructors, in particular, new ones. This method is easily controlled, and the instructor can adequately prepare. Finding resources is more comfortable through this approach. One negative thing about PPP is that has little focus on fluency, it is teacher-centered, and presumes that language is learned in pieces.

Unit #3 TESL 110 Corrective Feedback and Assessment in Writing

Corrective Feedback And Assessment In Writing

So far I have taken a total of three TESL courses, and in all of them, we have talked about corrective feedback. We know that giving feedback to students is essential for their learning and understanding of a second language, but how much corrective feedback can we provide to our learners? 

Most second language learners do not mind getting corrected by their teacher. They know this is the way to learn, but as teachers, perhaps we tend to forget that when it comes to correct our learners' work on any particular skill area, we provide them with a long list of all the things they are doing wrong. My approach to this would be different. I think I would be more "selective" with the areas I want my students to improve on, focusing on two or three areas that need a boost instead.

As part of our reading in this unit, Harmer, J. (2001)  discusses in his paper 7| Mistakes and feedback the different ways students' performance should be assessed. Teachers can be explicit by verbally giving a positive comment and implicit when for example she directs a question to each student, and she passes to the next student without giving a positive comment. Harmer points out to be careful when you don't give a comment correction to a student "there's always the danger, however, that the student may misconstrue our silence as something else."

Another way to give correction to our students is by commenting on the learner's performance at different levels whether that happens in or out of the classroom. And finally, giving the students grades, marks, and reports are additional ways to demonstrate to the student their learning and their progress throughout their course.

Resources

Harmer, J (2001) 7 | Mistakes and Feedback

https://universityofmanitoba.desire2learn.com/content/enforced3/309458-17788.201890/Content/materials/unit%203/Readings/Harmer%20Chapter%207%20Mistakes%20and%20Feedback.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=7nmXnniVgPyR7BEhA8rmO4kGw&ou=309458

Unit # 2 TESL 110 Approaches to Grammar and Writing Instruction

Approaches to Grammar And Writing Instruction.

In this unit, we were introduced to the Grammar Translation Method and the advantages and disadvantages of using it in second language classrooms. In a publication by Mohammed Rhalmi (April 4, 2009. Updated Aug. 26th, 2014) "GTM is an old method which was originally used to teach dead languages which explains why it focuses mainly on the written form at the expense of the oral form." This method allows the L2 learner to make use of his/her mother tongue to understand the meaning of words and phrases. However, some of the disadvantages that are argued about using this method are that GTM is good at  "teaching about a language," not "teaching the language" and "translation is misleading. This is just to mention a couple.

Unit #1 TESL 110 Grammar Fundamentals

You as a Subject Matter Expert

Starting this unit made me think of my beginnings of learning a second language. I don't recall every detail on how my teacher taught the grammar piece, but I can say it was done in a way we didn't notice or even being boring for that matter.
For several years I practiced my writing, paying particular attention to my punctuation and how I construct my sentences. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the grammar rules right up until I took the Quiz. It shocked me to know how much I had forgotten about it. In other words, I fell right on my face!  What an "aha moment for me, and how embarrassing too. I find interesting how an L2 learner can go through a process of learning a language through grammar rules, internalizing those rules, becoming fluent in that language, and then not knowing how to identify the grammar pieces in a sentence. I wonder if native speakers feel the same.

Unit 10 : TESL 100

A Moment to Reflect

The Final Stretch

On this post, I am taking a moment to reflect on everything that I have learned so far, not only on this course but on the other TESL courses that I have completed. 

When I first made the decision to begin this journey I was very unsure whether this was going to be the right path for me. I was very insecure about my abilities to do a course online despite my poor tech skills; however, I realized that I was not alone in this. Many of my classmates expressed feeling the same way and that, not to make it sound mean, gave me comfort and confidence to continue thriving for what I want to do, and that is to teach.

Unit #9: TESL 100

How Do I Make Learning Fun?


We start this unit by talking about the benefits of using technology in classrooms. There is an infinite number of language apps that teachers and students can use as part of their teaching or learning resources.

Brown and Lee (Chap. 12, pp. 237-256), talk about how technology has immersed in the area of education over the years, acknowledging that the use of technology for "language learning began in the 1060s" and which is referred as CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning).

The development of CALL can be seen in three stages: behavioristic CALL, communicative CALL, and integrative CALL (Warschauer and Healey, 2009). To touch a little bit on how these stages of CALL were used, we can see that in the 1970s, behavioristic CALL was only used in universities and utilized as "a mechanical tutor" for language learning. Communicative CALL continued to be used in the 1980s "for skill practice but with more emphasis on communicative use of language, employing non-drill activities." And the last stage, integrative CALL, "began in the 1990s with the development of the World Wide Web," known as the internet.

Unit #8: TESL 100

 

How Do I Assess Language Learning?

Assessing language learning in the classroom is something that we have to take under consideration before, during and after a unit has been taught. This is what we refer to as Diagnostic, Formative and Summative assessments.

Diagnostic Assessment: it is done at the beginning of a lesson. Here, the teacher can use quizzes, tests or collect students' work to have an idea on what area to focus the lesson on.

Formative Assessment: it is done throughout the process of a lesson. This assessment is done without marking the students on their work. The students also have the opportunity of giving feedback to their classmates and do self-assessments on their own learning.

Summative Assessment: It is a compilation of what the students have learned at the end of a unit or lesson. Students can demonstrate their learning through homework assignments, portfolios or group activities that are to be graded.

Unit #7: TESL 100

 How Do I Manage My Class?

One thing that caught my attention in this unit was the possibility of something going wrong with students in a classroom. The scenarios may vary from students arriving late, to refusing to put away a cell phone during class time or a student refusing to work with other classmates due to religious beliefs. Whatever the situation, the teacher has to find a reasonable solution to the problem, and yet, not allow the students to think that the teacher will be making such changes just because the students want to. I totally agree with respecting specific requests made by students, but they also have to know that the way a teacher runs his/her classroom has to be regarded as well.
In addition to the above scenarios, there are other issues to think about. The teacher should also consider other learners with literacy needs, poverty, mental/physical disabilities, and LGBTQ and how to support them and include them like any other "normal" group.