Teacher Research

I chose to focus on the effects of implicit versus explicit instruction in terms of high frequency tokens. Students in four separate groups would be taught the same 25 tokens of language (20 adjectives and 5 imperfect verbs), but two groups would be taught explicitly through isolated vocabulary practice and activities, but one will see each item 5-6 times per class and the other only 2-3 times. The next two groups would be taught implicitly, one using input flooding and the other input enhancement. Both groups would then have activities that use the tokens in a contextualized manner. At the end of the two week instruction period, students would be given a written prompt and encouraged to use the words they had been learning the previous 2 weeks. The results would show which groups of students used the tokens in a correct context, and which group used them in the highest frequency. I never had the chance to actually complete this research project due to taking the course during the summer of 2020 when schools were still shut down.

During the culture course I completed an ethnographic research project, in which I had extensive interviews with a colleague of mine who has a diverse past and amazing stories. Through these interviews, I drew from the topics discussed to identify themes and analyzed them through the software Atas.ti. This project was meaningful to me because I could look at a conversation in a completely different way to understand the deeper meaning behind the words. It gave me a chance to deepen my savoirs (discussed in more depth in Scarino, 2013).