May We Never Lose the Wonder

Wonder and happiness. What two desired yet abstract thoughts. When I think of those two words the first thing that comes to mind is a little child going for a walk but stopping every few steps to look down at the ground to find an ant carrying a twig, or grabbing a leaf that fell of the tree or snatching a frog they see hopping. A little child is filled with wonder and happiness. How many times have we heard a toddler as “but why?” There is a wonder at the unknown yet they are delighted in their ponderings.

What does this have to do with teaching English as a second language? The article “New approaches to learner autonomy in language learning” talks about new approaches to learning. Two approaches they mention are the wonder approach and the happy learning approach.

The article talked about how when students are in wonder at what they are learning, that is, intrigued and fascinated by the subject, their motivation to learn increases dramatically. A struggle for ESL learners can be the fact that they lack a metacognitive mindset entering the classroom, being unprepared and unmotivated at the beginning of class. It is important as teachers to engage our student’s minds in what they are learning. The article “Motivating Students” says this about encouraging wonder in students, “include fascination with the subject, a sense of its relevance to life and the world.” It is impossible to force wonder and fascination onto a student, yet we can create an environment that appeals to their wonder. There are many ways in which teachers can do this.

One way in particular that can cause wonder in students is by having wonder as a teacher. Being clearly fascinated by what you are teaching about, draws student’s attention. Most people can probably think of a teacher they have had who was not fascinated by the subject they taught and as a result, you did not care about the class/subject. On the other hand, you have probably (and hopefully) had a teacher who was extremely fascinated and excited about the subject they taught. I have heard many testimonies of students falling in love with a subject merely because of their teacher.

The happy learning approach calls to light the idea that when students recognize the usefulness and helpfulness of what they are learning in the classroom to their everyday lives they are motivated, eager to learn and happy to learn. This feeling can be destroyed by the environment set up by the teacher, or it can quickly improve and enhance. By providing authentic and real-life learning in their classroom teachers can utilize this learning approach to springboard their students to higher learning.

A way that teachers can facilitate a happy learning environment is to teach subjects that the students can identify with. For example, if students in the classroom are newcomers to Canada, teaching them how to get a driver’s license can be extremely gratifying. However, the same lesson plan is pointless if you are teaching a group of students in Japan who never plan on coming to Canada. The article “4 Creative Ways to Use Authentic Materials for Teaching English” says this, “when teachers use authentic materials, they are in fact helping ESL students to make a comfortable transition into the L2 culture.” As teachers, it important to connect with your students so you know what they want to know and where their interests lie.

Bibliography

Chou, E. (2018, August 05). 4 Creative Ways to Use Authentic Materials for Teaching English. Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/authentic-materials-for-teaching-english/

Mcdaniel, R. (2018, May 07). Motivating Students. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/motivating-students/

Yagcioglu, O. (2015, August 19). New Approaches on Learner Autonomy in Language Learning. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815045401

Reading: Oral or Silent

Oral or silent reading, should this even be a question? When reading in a class, there can be a choice by the teacher (unless offered to the students) whether to read out loud (orally) or in their head (silently). These are types of reading performances that the teacher chooses from. There are advantages and disadvantages to both oral and silent reading. Notably, however, most ESL classrooms use silent reading. How come? What are the disadvantages of oral reading? Are there no advantages to reading out loud?

One advantage of oral reading is that it allows teachers to hear how well their students read. Oral reading can be run as an informal (or formal) assessment for students. “Oral reading is an instructional strategy that can help students improve a variety of reading skills” ("What Is Guided Oral Reading?", 2017), and therefore provides opportunity for these skills to be observed and assessed. The teacher listens to how they are processing what they read. A teacher can decipher what the student is good at and where they are struggling.

Another advantage of oral reading is that it provides teachers with the opportunity to give a pronunciation check to their students. Just because a student might read in their head does not mean they are not pronouncing a word. When it comes time for them to read a text, their comprehension of pronunciation can be clearly seen and observed by the teacher.

The last advantage I want to mention is that oral reading can help highlight a particular passage in a text. Especially if the passage is short, by reading it out loud, students have the words repeated and fresh in their mind. Discussion around a specific text can flow easier and with greater focus.

Some disadvantages to reading orally are that it is not a very realistic activity. The majority of a student’s reading life will be silent reading. Rarely is a person called upon to read a text orally. Because of the lack of reality in oral reading, it is often avoided by teachers.

When oral reading students easily lose their attention and can become distracted by just about anything. I think we have all experienced this at one point or another. I find this true in a situation as simple as when a teacher begins reading off their notes word for word I lose interest. It seems fake to me and I think I can just return later and read whatever they just quoted (which I usually never do).

Oral reading is recitation more than any sort of interaction and participation. It is a rather unhelpful activity for a group of students to hear a fellow student struggle through a text that they can all read in front of them.

There are many advantages and disadvantages to reading orally. Each teacher must decide on their own accord whether to incorporate it into their lessons. Personally, I would encourage the majority of reading to be done silently. However, highlighting text or having students focus on a specific passage by orally reading it, is helpful and should be used at times. It takes a wise teacher to know when to integrate oral reading, when is too much oral reading and when to just stick with silent reading. The key to remember when thinking about oral reading is that “engaging oral reading is about both reading powerfully and listening attentively” ("Six Tips for Successful Oral Reading", 2000).

Bibliography

Brown, H. D., & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (Fourth ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

Sebesta, S. (2000, November 04). Six Tips for Successful Oral Reading. Retrieved from https://www.teachervision.com/six-tips-successful-oral-reading

What Is Guided Oral Reading? (2017, August 23). Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-guided-oral-reading

Adapting a Text

This reading text and activity is quite simple and probably equated to a CLB 3 or 4 level or close to a LINC 4 level. At this point, I do not teach in a classroom but I believe this text would be used well for mid-high beginners. LINC level 4 students should be able to understand the gist of a letter and find the main ideas in it. This level of student can make some predictions and they can conquer a 2-3 paragraphed text. Perhaps to make this text slightly more LINC level 4 appropriate, I would cut down on maybe one or two of the paragraphs in the email. The sentences are for the most part short and the vocabulary is basic without hidden meanings or idioms which makes it straightforward to interpret.

Because the theorized group of students are mature and are apart of an international EAP setting, the topic of the email could be adapted to be more realistic to them. However, the idea of emailing a friend or relative in another country could be quite authentic to them as well. Perhaps using a letter text in regards to employment, such as correspondence with a co-worker or boss, could be more appropriate.

If the class was of a higher level in learning English, I would add further correspondence to the emails. I would also add in larger, more complex vocabulary and sentence structure. Following these changes, I would enhance the activities following by involving questions on vocabulary and perhaps reconstructing or constructing some sentences in a short answer section rather than just matching, fill in the blank and true or false.

If this text was too difficult for my learners and the text was a mandatory reading, I would make sure to introduce the topic of letters/emails/text messages in a greater way. I would start smaller, discuss the parts of personal letters and common questions and vocabulary used in correspondence. Perhaps opening with shorter texts would be wise before introducing this longer reading text.

If the school I was working at used an LMS I would share this reading by providing a link to it or hopefully would print and hand it out to them in order to delve into it more thoroughly. The Copyright Act in Canada for educational use make using internet resources quite easy. When using another person’s material from the internet in your class firstly you must give recognition to the person. Include the reference to the material so it is clearly portrayed that you did not come up with this information by yourself. Secondly, if the material is not published by the owner of the material and/or is requiring subscription or payment for its use you must abide by the rules in order to use it. Do not break through passwords and other technologies to gain the resource for free.

Letter reading and writing can springboard you to all sorts of topics and language learning. Reading and writing letters (whether online or on paper) is still a very common practice in culture today and is one that language learners should become quite familiar with, especially if they are living in an English-speaking culture.

Bibliography

Reading skills practice: Foreign exchange emails - exercises [PDF]. (n.d.). British Council.

FAQ's on Copyright Law [PDF]. (n.d.). CMEC Copyright Consortium.

Can You Understand?

What is it like to read something you do not understand? When you cannot understand 20% of the words on a page can you follow what is happening? I found this article extremely eye-opening, I would encourage you to go and read what the author has put together.

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/155043761501/what-80-comprehension-feels-like

I have never fully learned a second language, only a few German and French classes when I was little. Because of this, I cannot pretend to know what it feels like to learn a new language in its entirety. Reading these examples of what it is like to read a text without understanding the many of the words surprised me how difficult it was to follow the flow of the text. Although sometimes when I read my textbook I feel like I understand only 80% of the words, I can often figure out the meaning of words based on my other knowledge of English. When first learning English (or any other second language for that matter) the task of learning vocabulary is endless, truly endless.

Reading strategies begin to become very important when learning a second language and you are trying to comprehend a text in that other language. Even if you can sound out a word and speak it ten times over, the meaning of that word is not actually learned until you hear a definition or see the meaning within a context. In the article “Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners,” it talks about teaching vocabulary explicitly. Clear definitions need to be provided when learning new vocabulary, pictures and using the word in different scenarios help with this.

Sometimes, instead of looking up every single unfamiliar word it is more beneficial to look up the most common unfamiliar word. When we gain an understanding of most words we can infer and predict the meaning of some of the smaller or less significant unfamiliar words. Learning how to follow a text according to the rhythm of the words that the student does know is also key to understanding and inferring the unfamiliar words. Punctuation, sentence lengths, etc. clue a reader into what is going on purely based on the format.

Scanning is one strategy that the article “6 Super Strategies for Improving ESL Reading Comprehension for Beginners” talks about. This allows students to review the text before diving completely in. This way they can gain the gist of the text and can combine the details to the general knowledge later.

Speaking out loud what is being read can also help students to comprehend what is being portrayed in the text. Students who ask questions also gain understanding. Asking questions of the text to peers or teacher cause students to think critically about what is going on and increase their knowledge. The article “Reading Comprehension Skills for English Language Learners” lists a number of comprehension skills such as summarizing, problem-solving, distinguishing between facts and opinions and finding the main ideas in a text.

I recall once trying to read the book “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen. I gave up probably one chapter into reading. The book was wordy, the language difficult and I just could not keep up. Later, I watched the movie with my sister and loved it. I went back to the book and this time because I knew the general gist of what was supposed to be happening I could get past the wordy, difficult language. I could comprehend the language the family used because I had seen them and heard them use it in the movie. At times, when learning to comprehend text, technology and video can aid in getting a point across.

There are many different ways to learn and teach how to read. Something that is important for teachers to remember is that reading can be very overwhelming. Even when you can comprehend 80% of the words of a text there is still so much that the reader misses out on. As teachers, we must be gentle, patient and helpful as we lead our students toward success.

Bibliography

A.(2018, July 20). Reading Comprehension Skills for English Language Learners. Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/reading-comprehension-skills-english-language-learners

Breiseth, L. (n.d.). Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol5/511-breiseth.aspx

Reading Comprehension Skills for English Language Learners. (2018, July 20). Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/reading-comprehension-skills-english-language-learners

S. (2018, August 05). 6 Super Strategies for Improving ESL Reading Comprehension for Beginners. Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-reading-comprehension-for-beginners/

Helpful Resources

http://tealmanitoba.org/

http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/

https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/english/pdf/pub/language-benchmarks.pdf

https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/phonemic-chart.htm

https://www.grammar-monster.com/

https://www.englishclub.com/

https://www.britishcouncil.org/

http://www.teacherplanet.com/taxonomy/term/266

https://www.education.com/resources/el/

Grammar Resources:

http://www.esltower.com/grammar.html

https://blog.tjtaylor.net/method-direct-grammar/

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Pekoz-Grammar.html

https://www.usingenglish.com/handouts/

http://www.pearsonlongman.com/dictionaries/pdfs/speaking-writing-crystal.pdf

http://www.azargrammar.com/index.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/first-lessons-in-writing-1212381

http://www.stickyball.net/esl-writing-exercises-and-activities.html?id=521

https://www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/new-resource-library/task-based-instruction-task-teach-task-lesson-plan-template.pdf?sfvrsn=0&sfvrsn=0

http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/writing/lesson-plans/writing-skills-letter-of-complaint/146332.article

https://how-to-teach-english.ontesol.com/tesol-writing-a-simple-grammar-lesson-plan/

https://agendaweb.org/grammar-exercises

Assessment and Evaluation Resources:

http://teal.global2.vic.edu.au/

http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/Needas.html

https://universityofmanitoba.desire2learn.com/content/enforced3/310314-57626.201910/Content/Readings/CLB_Support_Kit_Website_1.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=2PyMyOYN1KTfbDKXT4OO4BLnr&ou=310314

https://settlement.org/downloads/linc/LCG1to5/p2needsasesmt.pdf

http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/eslAssess.htm

https://classroom.synonym.com/assessment-tools-used-esl-students-8162152.html

https://www.brighthubeducation.com/esl-teaching-tips/102838-english-language-learning-assessment-tools/

http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/using-informal-assessments-english-language-learners

http://www.cal.org/caela/tools/program_development/elltoolkit/Part4-31EnglishLanguageAssessmentInstruments.pdf