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. 

brown 22 kumar 7&8

        After reading these three chapters I realized how difficult deciding what to teach to your second language learners and what not to teach is very difficult to decide. Every teacher, researcher, and person is going to have their own opinion on what is important to teach their second language learners and what is not important; teaching grammar is one of those situations. There have been many debates about whether teaching grammar is important or whether they should focus more on speaking, reading, writing, and listening.

         I have found through my experience in taking a second language that learning grammar in a second language can be very difficult to comprehend and I can only imagine how difficult it is to teach it. It is hard to decide what is “the most important” to teach when teaching a second language because there are so many aspects of the language that need to be taught for the learner to become fluent in the language. Personally, I think speaking, reading, listening, and writing are more important than learning specific grammar details. I know grammar is important to learn in order to write and speak, but learners can learn the gist of the language without knowing too many grammar rules. Grammar gets very complicated, especially in the English language. How do you teach all of this necessary content to second language learners and decide what is the most important to teach them first?

           The chapters talked about language awareness and how it is essential for the realization of an individual’s full potential (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). A language is collections of different aspects of it to all come together. There are so many components that go into speaking a new language and they need to all be taught to a learner to become fluent. It is important to pull everything together in order for a learner to fully understand the components of their second language. Input and classroom interaction when used correctly, can help learners understand L2 grammatical systems. Teaching grammar and components of language at the right time and doing it correctly can be another challenge for teachers. Not only do you have to decide whether or not if you should be teaching it, but how and when is it appropriate?  

blog 10/15

       After reading about listening and speaking last week, it was interesting to read about teaching reading and writing this week because they are very different. They are all very different skills that a second language learner has to develop and there are so many ways to go about it. Something I could relate to was that when you read for pleasure it is much different than reading for a school assignment or reason. When reading for pleasure, you do not have to look up words you do not know and they found that highly correlated with overall language proficiency. But, how do you incorporate appropriate readings into the classroom? When I took Spanish, I was in a much more relaxed state when reading on my own then when I had to read something for class. When I was required to read an excerpt or book for Spanish, I would be stressed out from looking up all the words I did not understand because I needed to do an assignment with the reading. It helped me to read on my own because I would pick up the language without having to be stressed out with understanding the reading material word for word.

         Another point I could relate to is how readers are able to read at their own pace, so they may not learn how to read at a faster pace. It could be helpful to teach learners how to read at a quicker pace because you do a lot of reading throughout your school career. However, learner’s reading skills are not affected by whether or not they can read at a fast pace. I found myself reading at a slower pace when I was reading in another language because I needed time to comprehend what I was reading and to translate into English.

         As for writing, I think there are many techniques to help second language learners on how to become a better writer. One I strongly agreed with is self-writing; taking notes & journal writing. When writing journals or diaries, learners are able to write what they want and it is usually something about themselves. When writing something about yourself, it is usually easier to come up with what you want to say and can become a little easier in a second language. When I was a second language learner in Spanish, I found it much easier to write about myself than it was to write about a passage I read or a topic I did not understand as well in the second language.

         Writing can also become difficult in another language because there can be different symbols or letters necessary for that specific language. One of my biggest errors I would find throughout my career of taking a second language was missing accents or letters in necessary places. Although there are many difficult aspects to writing, reading, listening, and speaking, they are all very rewarding once a second language learner becomes fluent in them. How can a teacher incorporate all of these necessary skills into their lessons?