blog 11/26

            I feel very strongly about testing and assessment, so these readings had things I liked and I did not like about testing students. Tests are a very difficult task for teachers to succeed with. It takes a lot of time to come up with a test that contains the five basic principles of language assessment that were talked about in Brown’s book. It is important to have practicality, be reliable and valid, authenticity, and washback. It can be a difficult task to include all of these above principles and have a good test. You can have a test without one of these, but then it may not be reliable or valid which does not effectively assess your students.

            In my opinion, many of the different kinds of tests are important and necessary, but I do not agree with all of them. I specifically feel strong about the ACT and tests like those because I do not believe students should only be tested on information to decide whether or not they make it into a college. I think there are so many reasons behind that why that is not an accurate way to admit students into a university because there are so many other aspects in a student’s education that could go into them being an accurate fit for a certain school.

            I think other tests such as, achievement tests and placement tests, to name a few are very helpful and necessary in the school systems. Placement tests are important, so that students are being placed in classes that are specific to their needs. If we did not use placement tests than students could be placed in a class too hard or too easy for them, which would make a student, fall behind or become bored.

            Achievement tests are also helpful because they allow teachers to see how children are progressing throughout the year. This allows them to decide whether to move on and continue with the curriculum/unit, or if they need to slow down and review something that the students may not have understood so well. Although testing is not my favorite, I believe it is necessary in the school system to see the students’ progress throughout the year and their education.

            Along with that, the tests need to be constructed correctly in order for the students to be tested in a good manner. The steps that Brown talked about are important for teachers to follow because it allows them to write an appropriate test for their students. I think a lot of teachers pull tests together and do not spend the time on reviewing them and double and triple checking them. There have been many times where a classmate or me has found a mistake on a teacher’s test and it throws students off. Students work hard on their homework and projects, I think teachers should take the same time while making tests and grading assignments.

            Testing is a difficult task for teachers and a decision teachers get to make (whether or not to do it), but there should be steps they should follow to succeed in doing so. 

11.11 blog

           I was able to connect to a lot of different points they talked about while writing lesson plans and by evaluating your lessons. Brown talked about how it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of your lessons. It is always important to evaluate yourself, the students, and the actual lesson after performing a lesson with your class because you want to decide whether or not you can use it again. We have been taught over and over again in our education classes about how important it is to evaluate yourself after because if the students ended up not liking or, did not understand, or you found it difficult to teach, then there is no use in using that lesson plan again. It is especially important with second language learners because they are already learning something difficult, so a lesson they are learning for the day does not need to be complicated or confusing to make it even more difficult for them. Although you want to challenge them, you do not want to make lessons anymore complex or confusing for them than it already is.

            Something that is important in all lesson plans is the objective(s). The objectives are what the students are going to get out of the lesson being taught. It is important to make the objectives obtainable to each student. You want to be sure that your objective(s) are very clear to you and your students. An example of an objective is, “students will be able to count out loud to the number 10, three out of the five times they practice”. You want to be precise about what you expect from the students to learn after doing the lesson you planned.

            Kumar talked about when a teacher evaluates the effectiveness of their teaching, they can make sense of what happens in their classroom. Teachers need to take control of their classroom and learn how to prepare and evaluate their lessons correctly. Sometimes it may be really easy for a teacher to put a quick lesson together for their students, but it takes a devoted teacher to look back after all their lessons and think about whether it was effective or not. They need to continuously develop new and improved lessons that work for their individual students. Although a lesson worked one year with your set of students, the next year you may have completely different students and they may learn differently than your students from the year before.

            Although it is important to look at the specific lessons and decide whether they are effective or not, it is also really important to look at the bigger picture; evaluate your lessons and decide whether they are embedded in the overall goals of the curriculum. It’s important to make your lessons appropriate for your class, students, and individual children, but it is also important and necessary to embed it into the overall goal of the curriculum.

            There are very important aspects that go into making lessons and teaching your students a certain way. You cannot continuously use the same lessons year after year because students are different and you have to teach each individual as the unique person they are. 

Research blog

      My research question is “how can teachers best help high school L2 students improve their speaking and listening?” I revised my question so that it specifies a more specific group (high school students) and I included listening into my research as well. I am going to focus on three main points for how to best help these students improve on their speaking and listening. I am going to focus on conversational discourse, teaching pronunciation, and accuracy & fluency. These can be covered with speaking and listening because when you are having a conversation there is one person speaking and one person listening and then vis versa. So far, I have found a few articles and the Brown book can help me a little as well.

Kayi, H. (2006). Teaching speaking: Activities to promote speaking in a

            second language. The internet TESL journal, 12(11), Retrieved from

            http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kayi-TeachingSpeaking.html.

·      Although this is a short article, it gives me a few points and ideas I can talk about in my paper. It first talks about how they believe one of the best ways to help students’ practice their speaking is through communicative language teaching and interacting with their classmates. Also, it has a whole list of ideas of different activities you can do with students to promote speaking. This is extremely helpful as a future teacher and for my topic.

Jenkins, J. (2006). English pronunciation and second language speaker identity.

            (pp. 75-91). New York, NY: Tope Omoniyi, Goodith White and

            Contributors.

·      This article will help me with one of my main points: pronunciation. It will give me good insight on teaching English pronunciation to second language learners. There was research done on how if non-native speakers learn pronunciation in a target-like manner, then they will learn correct pronunciations.

Ying, Z., & Elder, C. (2011). Judgments of oral proficiency by non-native and

            native English speaking teacher raters: Competing or complementary

            constructs?. 28(1), 31-50.

·      This article discusses the oral English proficiency by the College English Test-Spoken English Test (CET-SET) of China. They researched on whether the proficiency differed when non-native teachers were speaking or native teachers; they tried figuring out whether that had an impact on the oral proficiency of students who were taking this test.  

Brown 26 Kumar 11 & 12

          Even though we have discussed it many times in this class and other classes, I have realized after reading these chapters how important it is to bring every student’s cultural background into the classroom. We have talked a lot about teaching children about the culture around here, but also allowing them to keep their cultural identity and share it with the class. When students begin to learn a new language, they are learning the culture, language, the people, etc., not just the actual language. Sometimes students feel like they are losing their original identity and eventually lose their other culture completely. It is our job as teachers to incorporate everyone’s culture into the classroom, so that no one feels lost or left out.

            When students are learning a second language, their teacher is a huge influence on what they learn about that second language, the culture, the people that speak it, etc. It is the teacher’s job to give them a non-bias and good view as to what the culture is like. You do not want your students to have a bad idea of what the culture is. You always want to incorporate their culture as well, so they are learning their new culture, but do not lose their other one. It talked about how it is important to let your students know that their language and cultural style is unique and wonderful. We are not trying to change their cultural background in any way; we are just introducing another one to them. It is important to constantly let them know how important their other cultural background is as well. Another thing the book said that I thought was great advice for every teacher was that we should create critical cultural consciousness among our students; it is an obligation not an option. We are the ones teaching the children their knowledge, so while doing so we need to do it appropriately.

            Deciding what the appropriate teaching materials are to use with your second language learners is a difficult task at hand as well. They need to be taught in an appropriate manner, so they do not lose their cultural background and understand how important it is to them. Also, the role of their home language is something that needs to be considered as well. These students are learning a second language, which can sometimes be difficult enough and on top of that have to learn the culture behind it and other important aspects of learning a new language. Teachers need to take into consideration the language that is being used at home and how it may affect their learning. Depending on how they use the language at home, how much they use it, where and when, etc. can affect how the child is going to learn their second language. Many of these aspects of learning need to be taken into consideration when teaching a second language to these students. 

brown 17 kumar 9 & 10

          I thought one of the most important things I read was about interweaving listening, reading, writing, and speaking together along with language skills so that there is no separation of what language skills are. Those four aspects of learning another language are so important and when you bring them all together, the language and culture of the language all come together, which is exactly what you want your second language learners to pick up. When I was learning Spanish, I thought the speaking became easier the more vocabulary I picked up which was when I read and watched TV or movies in Spanish. Another thing Kumar brought up was how using various resources help this situation as well. When I was learning a second language I found using other resources besides a textbook were very helpful. I would occasionally watch TV in Spanish, read an article, listen to Spanish music, or listen to a radio clip. Listening and reading other resources besides a textbook made the language more interesting to me and helped me understand the language more. Reading and listening to other sources also helped me pick up new and different vocabulary than what I was hearing in the classroom. The only problem I had with these resources is that they did not help me with my speaking. My teacher was not good at enforcing us to speak in my second language in the classroom, so I was not getting enough practice inside or outside of the classroom.

            Another thing I could relate to was how integrating language skills can assist learners to engage in the activities going on in the classroom which involves them in meaningful engagement with language skills (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). Sometimes the best way to involve students in the classroom is through activities that are engaging and fun for them, so they do not always think of it as learning. If you have students work together in groups to do an activity or interact with each other in some way, they are more likely to become interested in the topic which also helps them learn. I was always much more interested in class when my teacher had a fun activity planned or put us in groups so we could work together on something. Making educational games is also very helpful especially with younger kids because it makes learning more interesting for them and they become involved and engaged. I was always more likely to talk in class when I was working with a group and coming up with strategies or answers or we were playing a game where I felt confident about what we were learning. As talked about many times before, it helps a learner when they are more confident and feel comfortable in the classroom environment in order for them to participate in class. I believe that these are some important skills and tasks that should be done in the classroom in order for the four strands (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) to become integrated with language skills.