After a semester of this course and a nearly a full school year of working with ELL students, my understanding of learning a second or additional language has grown from what it was last semester with Second Language Acquisition and my own learning experiences as a former ELL student. Learning a second or additional language is more than memorization or vocabulary; in fact, there is a multitude of factors that affect an individual’s learning experience that we teachers must take into account, such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, lexicon, spelling, and variations in the English language (Wright, 2010). One of the topics that I have found an interest in are the influences that affect how teachers make instructional decisions and teach. From my other methods classes and this class, I have learned that much of how educators decide to instruct are shaped by personal influences and beliefs, their school’s and/or district’s beliefs, and of course, policy such as standardized testing. In spite of some have said about education, I believe that there is politics in teaching. Curriculum is political. Standards are political. Testing is political. Politics is closely related to morality, and I believe that many teachers choose to teach due to whatever morals have led them to education. For example, many teachers want to help children and teach the change they want to see. From what I have seen as a student teacher, policy and standardized such as STAAR holds a strong influence over Texas districts and schools, which holds a strong influence over many teachers and how they make instruction decisions and teach. Consequently, many measure student success by test scores, including ELL students. I often wonder how many more meaningful and effective learning experiences for ELL students could come to fruition if success was defined by personal and academic growth seen on a day to day basis. However, as a teacher, I hope to teach with no regrets and how I would with or without the STAAR test over my head.
For this course and Second Language Acquisition, I found the blogs particularly beneficial to me because I was able to interact and learn from individuals from the education field, including other teacher candidates, teachers who have worked with ELLs, and former and current ELLs. In fact, I believe that they were my favorite part of this course since they gave me the opportunity to go talk to people and ask questions I would have probably never asked on my own. From this course, I was able to learn from different experiences and perspectives. My own perspective on teaching ELLs was broadened and the blogs helped me see the relationship between theory and practice. I found that sometimes SLA theory was reflected in practice and sometimes, was not. However, my findings are just a reminder that everyone’s language learning and language teaching experience is different and dependent on so many variables. I particularly enjoyed being able to interview and observe different ESL teachers and gain insight from experienced teachers. The blogs were also a great opportunity to gather strategies and ideas from my classmates and future teachers. I enjoyed being able to see my peers’ work, commenting, and asking them questions.
Something that I had never considered is how our education system contains many characteristics of politics. I like the view you take when explaining because it makes things more understandable. It is quite unfortunate that students are ranked based on their ability to pass a standardized exam that does not appeal to all students. One thing that we did not have in common was the blogs. I enjoyed participating and learning from others, but I do not believe that it had a drastic effect on my ability to learn the material.
ReplyDeleteHi, Nadia! Thank you for your comment. I'm glad you were able to see and think about how politics plays into education. I agree, I think it is unfortunate that the state sees student achievement through STAAR. Everyone learns different and shows their knowledge different. While it keeps students and teachers accountable, I wish there was not such an emphasis on STAAR that pressures both teachers and students.
DeleteHi Thanh Thao
ReplyDeleteYour reflection is very great; I enjoyed a lot reading it. This semester I learned so much from this class, and the information I received from classroom observation. I also believe making blogs in this class gives me the opportunity to gain knowledge from other and sink for help. You make me looking forward to next semester to take Second Language Acquisition. Wish you the best luck.
Hi Fei, thank you for your comment! I'm glad you enjoyed the blogs just as much as I did. I believe that it was a great opportunity for us to apply what we learn from this class in a different way. I loved being able to learn from the perspective of others and their take on this class and its content. Having taken Second Language Acquisition already, I know that it is more technical than this course, but also very interesting!
DeleteHello Thanh, thank you for your blog entry. I too felt that the blogs were beneficial in this course because I was able to talk with other students about their beliefs and thoughts throughout this semester and share my own as well. I also wanted to say that I agree with your statement that policy and high stakes testing does affect the way teachers are able or willing to teach sometimes. Wright shares a time in which he was required to give a standardized test in English to his second grade ELL students whom scored poorly on it. He goes on to state that when he reported these results to his principal he also took examples of student progress and the principal agreed that those gave a clearer picture of the student’s capabilities and progress (pg. 144, 2015). I think it will be important to keep track of all students progress, but especially ELL students progress, to show those whom might be concerned how hard that student worked and how much that student progressed rather than a number score for one test.
ReplyDeleteHello, Christine! Thank you for your comment! I'm glad you enjoyed the blogs and learning from others just as I did. I believe that the blogs were beneficial for us as long as we were able to apply what we learned in this course. I'm also glad that you agree with me on standardized testing. Our students are so much more than a test score and we teachers know their capabilities more than anyone else-- more than a test.
DeleteHello again Thanh. I agree, the blogs were beneficial because they were a way to apply what I have been learning in this course and combine them with my thoughts and beliefs. As you said, as a teacher we will know our student’s capabilities more than any test ever will. It will be our job as the teacher to vouch for our student’s capabilities and keep track of them through resources such as e-portfolios.
DeleteHi Thao,
ReplyDeleteFrom this course I also became more aware of the factors that affect learning a second language. One of them that stood out to me was pragmatics. “Pragmatics includes the study of “invisible” meaning or how we recognize what is meant even when it is not really stated.” (Wright 2015, p.34) I was not really aware of this. I did not realize the impact this has on social constructs. I relate very strongly to your statements regarding student success and this course has given me some more insight into that. Your reflection was great. Thank you for sharing!