Reflection

Before I enrolled in the MAFLT program at the Michigan State University. I was an associate teacher teaching Chinese at the Lansing School District. I kept looking for a program that can help me not only teach but critical thinking in any other modern ways. In one occasion, I ran into Dr. Felice while teaching Chinese program at the Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) on MSU campus. He told me there is a MAFLT program in the College of Arts and Letters that uses innovative, interactive and international ways to teach students to be a great teacher. Since I am teaching foreign language to Americans, this MAFLT program fits my purpose of pursuing an advanced degree perfectly. Before continuing writing my reflection, I want to thank Dr. Felice, director of English Language Center, and Dr. Lanier, program director of Center for Lauguage Teaching Advancement, and other instructors. Both of them have passions in teaching and keep encouraging and supporting me inside and outside of the classroom. They always challenge me to push further to learn more. I would like to express my thankfulness to them to bring me into MAFLT program to elevate my knowledge of technology, principles, second language acquisition, and current approaches, methods and materials in teaching.

During my two and half years in the program, I took the following courses:

• FLT807: Foreign Language Teaching Methods
• FLT808: Assessment for Foreign Language Teaching
• FLT815: Teaching Culture in Foreign Language Courses
• FLT817: Foreign Language Program Development and Administration
• FLT841: Topics in Foreign Language Teaching
• FLT845: Language Concepts for Foreign Language Teaching
• FLT860: Second Language Acquisition
• FLT881: Teaching Foreign Language with Technology
• FLT885: Experiential Module in Foreign Language Teaching
• FLT898: MA Comprehensive Exam

Each of these courses helps me a lot in my career especially the online courses are good alternative for a full time teacher. Before I got the degree, I got another job offer in California. I am a Chinese Pre-K teacher at the International School of the Peninsula at Palo Alto in California. I cannot believe that I finished the entire course. I am so proud of myself.

I went back to read syllabi of each course, and checked all the work done on D2L before writing the reflection. The first course I took was the FLT 815 in spring 2017 which was the first online course taken in my life. I felt so nervous in the beginning. However, at the end, I felt so joyful. From this course, I have learned so much such as maintain student interest in the class, utilize language to be a good education experiences, compare cultures, chosen authentic materials, activity designs, and so on. Now, I totally believe that language and culture are flip sides of the same coin.

For the FLT 841, I was the guest lecturer invited by Dr. Sang to her CHS 366, Chinese Culture: Tradition & Modernity, at MSU on November 15, 2017. I designed a lesson plan named "How the traditional Chinese literacy transform to the Chinese Opera". This class is focus on discussing the traditional Chinese literature and play "Injustice to Tou O" which conducted from Kuan Han-ch’ing (c.1220 - c.1307). My main objectives would be in terms of communicative competence, sociolinguistic competence, and pragmatic skills. Students will have a chance to learn some of the particular Chinese movements reflecting on the lines of the corpus. Dr. Felice and Dr. Lanier were invited to the lecture. Both of them observed and participated the lecture all the way to the end. They saw how I utilized FLT 841 elements and applied them to the class right in front of them. They gave me wonderful feedback of the teaching flow, material, audio, video, and techniques. They cannot believe that a language class can be taught in this way. I've taught Chinese language and culture classes the same way for so long. I just realized that some of the theories were from FLT 841.

For the FLT 885, since I was the instructor of the 2018 Chinese Summer camp held by CeLTA (The Center for Language Teaching Advancement) at the Michigan State University, I used the camp as the experiential module. I got a Bachelor of Arts in Dance Education. Based on my background, all my teaching involved sensory such as sight, sound, touch, movement, or smell that were applied to the experiential module as well. This is one the most exciting course that I have been experienced. For this one-week summer camp, I prepared all materials from scratch by my own including activity design, daily routine, assessment, motivation, songs, videos, theme, and project milestone. Please refer to my experiential module under preparation on the portfolio Website. While working on it, I needed to not only achieve all the objectives required by the course, but acquire the necessary skills to execute every aspect of the elements successfully. Overall, I gained so much extremely valuable knowledge and leadership experiences from it.

The other course I like is the FLT 881. I really learned a lot from this course. I am an old student. Google Drive may be your daily tool, but not mine. I am good at Google Drive, Office 365, Zoom meeting, audio and video recording, and creating PowerPoint Presentation after completing this course. I am also good at finding technology-teaching tools. I have a long list of bookmarks of the tool I learned. I also learned so many up to date technology such as AR, VR, BYOD, Smart kapp board, Google Voice, Google Translation, Voice Memos, Popplet Lite, and so on. Besides this technology course, I went to MSU Confucius Institute “Online Chinese Teaching Forum & Workshop” in 2018 to compare the tools I learned in the class and how they really have been used currently. I even felt so comfortable to create this portfolio Website.

From the FLT 807 course, I learned the importance of teaching methods is to give students motivation, recognize their talents, care students with different needs, provide a support and natural learning environment, conduct a student driven curriculum, and provide authentic materials. I think about these every day before I enter the classroom.

FLT 860 is the course I struggled the most. Soon I realized that I really needed to have a solid foundation of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). In the middle of the course, I really learned how important the knowledge of it can make me become a better teacher. The more I learn, the better I can understand the principles of acquisition of a foreign language. Some of the theories are not easy for me, but I still learned them well through the group project. This course helped me learn the SLA theories to support my pedagogical skills that I used to adjust my teaching techniques.

FLT 845 is one of my favor courses, which is about the language concepts. Chinese is my native language. I just spoke and learned Chinese since I was little. I do not really study the concepts of my mother language because they are natural to me. I am a Chinese teacher, which makes me realized language concepts are very important after taking this course. This course made me pay more attention on phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, as well as semantics and pragmatics. I learned many tools including Voyant, AntConc, Corpus BYU, TagAnt, and AntWordProfiler to use for the corpus. These tools help me not only get the frequency words from the text for the target language teaching, but also with a good understanding of how to choose effective content for learners.

As a teacher, I design activities and setup objectives, but how to assess the data. FLT 808 is the essential course that teaches me how to do the assessment. I learned to better interpret, analyze, construct, and manage the language assessments. While taking this course, I took The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and passed with a Superior level. I used what I learned from this course to do an analysis on Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) of ACTFL with standards including construct validity, content validity, face validity, washback, reliability, authenticity, and practicality. I also designed an assessment to assess my students' language skill in Chinese at the Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA). After completing this practice, I have a strong confidence to construct a valid assessment for my students’ language learning. As a language teacher, we all know how to teach the second language to students. However, the most important thing is that we are responsible to know what are the standard frames that will guide us to be more specific on language teaching. The challenge for the language tester is to set tasks, which will not only cause the candidate to exercise reading (or listening) skills but will also result in behavior that will demonstrate the successful use of those skills. This assessment design experience has brought me a clear view to see many benefits in my teaching. I have fulfilled an enthusiasm to make more assessments that are formative to my language class.

In summary, the MAFLT program brings my teaching career to another level and makes me a greater teacher. The content of each course is dynamic. The professors do their best to help you with projects, plans, methods, theories, and objectives that can be applied immediately to the fields. Entire course does not only benefit me, but also my students. I would strongly recommend for whom is looking for an advanced degree in foreign language teaching to enroll to MAFLT program.