Portfolio by Anna Krinitsyna - Design Reflection

In language teaching, “design” refers to intentional, purposeful, and research-based decisions made when creating materials, lesson plans, and curricula. I have chosen some artifacts that reflect my ability to make these decisions based on principles and concepts we have studied in the LTS program.

In our Curriculum Design (LT 548) class we learned that after completing an initial needs analysis, it is important to create clear course goals and student learning outcomes (SLOs). This must be done prior to deciding on the topics of the units and before planning lessons. The end goal of this seminar was to develop a curriculum of choice. I decided to reimagine the first term of a First-Year Russian course for adults (RUS 101) according to my observations, beliefs, and what I have learned about language teaching and learning. I wanted the Russian course to be organized by communicative functions as the guiding principle. This includes situations of language use (such as at the store) and topics or themes (such as greetings, apologies, and school life). Ortega (2013) states that language is best learned through communication, where students are provided opportunities for interaction.

I also wanted all four language skills to be targeted (listening, speaking, reading, writing). I support the informed eclectic approach to language instruction (Brown & Lee, 2015), which recommends incorporating effective elements from various language teaching methods. In my application of this approach, I wanted not only linguistics skills to be taught, such as vocabulary and grammar, but also sociocultural skills, such as the study of communities of Russian speakers. Knowing that heritage students often take language courses with foreign language students, I attempted to incorporate structure, topics, and activities that would meet the needs of both foreign language (FL) learners and heritage learners (HLs). Additionally, I studied novice-proficiency standards from The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). All of these concepts guided my decisions in writing the course goal statement and student learning outcomes, which I am sharing as the artifact. It also includes a detailed rationale for the decisions I made and a plan for how I will be assessing student progress of each outcome.

In our Teaching Pronunciation class (LT 539), we learned that many language teachers do not focus enough on pronunciation. Often, teachers who understand the importance of providing ample opportunity to practice linguistic skills in communicative activities hesitate to focus too much attention on accuracy because it can take learners’ attention away from achieving fluency. While fluency should be the goal, some attention to accuracy through pronunciation instruction is actually vital to learners becoming comprehensible. Pronunciation instruction can be done in a communicative way as well, as the Communicative Framework for Teaching Pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010) demonstrates. Under this framework, there are five types of activities that pronunciation lessons must include, starting from more controlled and ending with more open-ended. These are Description and Analysis, Listening Discrimination, Controlled Practice, Guided Practice, and Communicative Practice. My artifact titled “Integrated Pronunciation Lessons” demonstrates how to incorporate short pronunciation instruction into Russian grammar and spelling lessons for young learners. In these mini-lessons, I created activities according to the different steps of the Communicative Framework. Furthermore, the artifact I share is an example of how a regular language textbook can be adapted to teach both segmentals (vowels and consonants) and suprasegmentals (stress, intonation, linking, etc).

Integrated Pronunciation Lessons.pdf

In our Culture and Literature course (LT 528), we studied how to incorporate language instruction into a culture and/or literature curriculum. Similarly, the study of literature and/or culture can be incorporated into a language course. My final project in LT 528 was “An Analysis of an Authentic Russian Poem for Young Heritage Learners”. In it, I imagined a context where literacy in the heritage language is the main goal of the course, but improving speaking skills and exploring writing and culture are the natural sub-goals. I chose to teach a unit on friendship and use a specific poem as the authentic literary text. I am hoping the theme would be an interesting one for these learners and that the text would be appropriate. In the analysis, I discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the poem in terms of literary, cultural, and language learning aspects. Lastly, I designed possible classroom activities for teaching the poem. In this course, we learned the importance of including pre-reading activities, while-reading activities, and post-interaction activities (Lazar, 1993; Bell, 2013), which I did in my analysis. Through this project, I found that finding authentic novice-level reading material in Russian is a challenge. However, with scaffolding of carefully chosen texts, it is possible to incorporate authentic material in a reading course for young heritage learners.

¡Lo veo! Spanish direct object pronouns using the PACE model

In our Design for Learning Language Systems course (LT 536), we learned about the eight criteria of lesson design: 1.) objectives, 2.) target language & culture(s), 3.) active learning, 4.) materials, 5.) inclusive community, 6.) clear Instructions, 7.) discovery learning, 8.) feedback. We also learned about various approaches to designing lessons, one of which was the PACE model, standing for Presentation, Attention, Co-Construct, and Extension Activities. PACE is a story-based framework for a unit of study that is carried out in multiple lessons over several days and is a collaboration between learners and the teacher (Shrum & Glisan, 2016). The artifact I present is a lesson plan incorporating both the eight criteria and the PACE model. This time, the lesson was for a bilingual English-Spanish 6th grade context. In this lesson, I use a short comic story to teach Spanish direct object pronouns. First, I situate the story in Venezuela through a Venezuelan song and other activities. I include activities where students work together on discovering the grammatical rule themselves, from the story. Lastly, I include an exit ticket at the end of the lesson to assess student progress, which will help to structure the next lesson.

Creating this group of artifacts has helped me practice adapting language teaching principles to learners of various languages, ages, and teaching contexts. It has also given me the opportunity to try various lesson-planning models.

REFERENCES

Bell, T. (2013). Innovative approaches to teaching literature in the world language classroom. MultiTasks, MultiSkills, MultiConnections, 127-139.

Brown, H. D., & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles. Pearson Ed Australia.

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (2010). Teaching pronunciation hardback with audio CDs (2): A course book and reference guide. Cambridge University Press.

Donato, R., & Adair-Hauck, B. (2016). PACE: A story-based approach for dialogic inquiry about form and meaning. Teacher’s handbook: Contextualized language instruction, 5, 206-230.

Lazar, G. (1993). Literature and Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Ortega, L. (2014). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.

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