Teaching English as a second language has become popular in the contemporary society based on the demand to be adept with the language in terms of communication. However, mastering the language is not a straightforward task, and both prolific polyglots, as well as beginners, jointly attest to the fact that they undergo difficulties and challenges in learning and mastering the language at one point or the other. In this regard, specific teaching approaches can be materialistic to both me as the instructor as well as the ESL students in teaching and learning the language respectively. An example of the approach that I would recommend towards this effort is the direct method that has been in practice for years. This method is particularly beneficial in the sense that it immerses students in English via practical demonstrations that educate on how to use the language. This is achieved using realia and visual aids such as the DOTS chart. As a high school ESL instructor, I believe that the implementation of the approach should be done inductively, especially in teaching grammar. Fundamentally, this means that rules pertaining to grammar are not seriously adhered to, and instead, the emphasis is put on proper pronunciation while shunning the use of native language.
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is yet a fundamental language that I would recommend in instructing ESL students. The competency of this approach is that it focuses on the interactions between the learner or student and the native English speakers or those who masterfully use the language. As such, in implementing the approach, it is important to focus and emphasize on BICS and CALP. Under the CLT approach, ESL students are encouraged to use English to come up with meaningful and significant interactions and on the same breath practice on how to say phrases and words in different ways.
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Another method is the natural approach, which strives to emulate the mechanics involved in learning the native or first language. To this end, the instructor creates links between the native language and English as the second language and thereby takes on the communicative approach. Here, the focus is only on basic communication abilities and skills such as BICS.
Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students are those who come from communities where English is not the native or first language. These students are often referred to as either non-English proficient or limited-English proficient. As an instructor to the CLD students, implementing the CLD student biography will be materialistic in guiding me through documenting and following students’ progress. The CLD student biography card will also assist me in making crucial decisions regarding grouping as well as constantly scaffolding to meet the CLD students’ linguistic, sociocultural, academic, as well as cognitive requirements. In fulfilling the students’ sociocultural needs, I will acquire and document their demographic information through directly interviewing them, their family members, or a previous instructor through the portfolio.
In satisfying the students’ linguistic needs, I will determine either through formal or informal means the students’ first language reading and writing proficiencies. Subsequently, I will assess the students’ English language proficiencies pertinent to speaking or listening, reading, and writing. Ultimately, I will rank the students according to the five stages of second language acquisition. In further assessing the students’ second language mastery, I will listen more to their conversation than active engagement. However, regardless of how minimal it will be, my input will be geared towards bolstering learning via questioning, restating, encouraging, as well as praising during the class conversations. Fulfilling the students’ cognitive requirements will be in tandem with improving the students’ CALP abilities. In addition, I will set up a class meeting where the students and I will jointly plan and set learning preferences, set up academic goals and objectives as well as design instructional activities that foster collaboration.
Meeting the students’ educational needs based on their biographies will involve considerations of the past knowledge, experience, and exposure that could promote content learning as well as the transfer of knowledge regarding English as the second language. This step involves grouping students in small or huge groups based on not only their preferences but also their friendship, academic ability, project, as well as language to bolster interaction. In achieving this step, however, I will start by changing the classroom’s sitting arrangement to accommodate the students’ group and individual needs thus enabling them to communicate and work jointly. Moreover, the arrangement will be geared towards fostering meaningful conversation between the students’ groups and I on a regular basis. I will also involve the students in planning the group activities as well as how to move from one activity to the next, for instance, from a large group introduction to small group activities such as clean up, dismissal, among others.
To this end, rather than just ensuring all the students participate in the group activities and conversations, as a proficient and competent instructor, I will ensure that the discussions are guided and geared towards including the students’ judgments, views, and rationale through text evidence as well as other substantive support. Despite the fact that constant correction and restating can be demoralizing, I will ensure that it is done in a positive manner that is optimistic and in line with the academic goals and objectives. Assessment during the learning process is important, and as such, I will implement the use of learning logs through which the students can indicate or document the instructional conversation goals achieved. In further propelling the groups into influencing students to become active participants in learning, I will employ the use of graphic organizers.
In essence, while in the collaborative groups, graphical organizers aid the students in pointing out the man ideas as well as the relationships between content and information. The graphical organizers fundamentally give a purpose while reading and at the same time enhance interaction using the English language. Active participation can be achieved through assigning the students to reading partners within the class who are friendly and fluent English readers. In attempting to accomplish this as an instructor, I will ask the partnered students to take turns such as alternating sentences or pages in reading aloud to each other. Afterwards, I will randomly require each pair of partners to either summarize what they will have learned or rehearse and read the content in class.
Other than the groups, I will incorporate the CLD students’ culture in the curriculum to encourage active participation. As an experienced instructor, I find that incorporating the students’ cultures and backgrounds into the course content through instances in geography, world cultures, literature, games, art, and thematic units gives a sense of pride to the students. In turn, this translates to excitement and confidence in actively participating in the learning process. I will incorporate this concept into the groups whereby the students will discuss their lives, experiences, and cultural identities thereby fostering engagement and excitement regarding group learning. It is worth pointing out that I have found this technique to reduce anxiety, and as a result, it boosts self-esteem pertaining to social behavior patterns, pronunciation, as well as grammatical errors. Essentially, a warm and welcoming school culture and classroom milieu give a sense of comfort and the feeling of being ‘at home.’ This encourages not only active participation in learning but also a collaboration with each other in a positive manner.
The three primary functions of memory are encoding, storage and retrieval. As such, in developing the students’ vocabulary, I will invoke the first function of memory through demonstrations and practical examples via the DOTS chart as well as the graphical organizers. In addition, I will engage the students in learning the simple vocabulary and let them progress according to difficulty and complexity. These strategies will be geared towards initially familiarizing the students with the vocabulary relating to the English language. In invoking the memory’s second function, that is storage, I will engage the students in choral reading that will be coupled with partnering the students in pairs as discussed previously. I strongly believe that choral reading creates a unique memorization pattern that the brain can relate to and store whatever information is being repeated and loudly encoded.
Choral reading and creating content or vocabulary summaries as well as using the learning logs invokes not only the mere storage function of the brain but also the long-term storage precept. Ultimately, the retrieval of the vocabulary learned will be achieved through assessments and tests. Other than the learning logs, additional significant assessment techniques include probing and scaffolding which requires students to restate or report what they have learned regarding the vocabulary under a particular topic. Testing, on the other hand, is more formal and requires students to write down or speak the vocabulary learned or taught by the instructor. However, retrieval can as well be invoked during the student interactions and conversations where I will encourage the students to practice how to pronounce and say the English vocabulary in different ways.
In ensuring that the CLD students are exposed to similar challenges and curricula activities as the rest of the students, a significant and basic method is interacting the CLD students with the rest of the students. As discussed above, one of the approaches I will use is putting the students into groups and partnering them with the linguistically fluent students. Additionally, I will use technology such as the internet and mobile phones in my instructional teaching to create a class platform through which I will use to post the curricula accessible to all students.
An integrated curriculum that supports development and learning of new language that is in line with the life experiences at home and at school that all students can relate to will be effective. In exposing all the students to the same challenges, I will involve them in instructional activities such as group discussions and individual reading of passages or excerpts. Similar to the rest of the students, the CLD students will be asked to maintain learning logs in which they will be required to record their progress regarding the new vocabulary or content learned. Ultimately, the CLD students will be probed on the pronunciations of new vocabulary, which will subsequently be followed with restating and encouragement.
The Think-Pair-Share is a collaborative learning technique through which students jointly work together to answer a question regarding a particular assigned reading. This technique requires the students to individually think about the assigned question or reading then give and share their ideas with classmates. As an instructor, I will utilize this technique through designing instructional activities in a manner that encourages student collaboration in accomplishing a joint task. As such, this technique will further be achieved through the use of the groups. For instance, I will pose a question to the students regarding a particular reading, require them to note down their thoughts regarding the subject and subsequently allow them to discuss it in groups.
In doing so, however, I will ensure that I allocate adequate time for the instructional activity to be accomplished satisfactorily. In essence, my role will be limited to listening to the conversations in every group with occasional correction and restating or rephrasing of the erratic vocabulary and grammar. Regardless of my limited role in the group conversation, I will still participate in the general discourse by providing overall direction that steers the conversation towards the academic goals. In the end, students will participate actively and in the process expand their knowledge regarding English as a second language.
