Design

         Successful language education is heavily dependent upon the successful creation and implementation of lesson plans and curricula with an added focus on addressing student needs. Therefore, it is imperative that language educators possess an adequate understanding of the design process and how it directly contributes to student success. To demonstrate this knowledge, I am including four artifacts from the Language Teaching Studies program as I believe they holistically represent my knowledge of the subject through the products of my own design process. These artifacts include the following: the materials and processes used in a curriculum design project, a segmental lesson plan, a suprasegmental lesson plan, and a final lesson design focused on a grammar point. Through the brainstorming, design, and revision of these artifacts, I was exposed to a multitude of concepts, such as setting student learning objectives, incorporating needs analysis, and the importance of scaffolding. While these concepts do not fully encapsulate my knowledge of the subject, I believe they are important to reflect on as they are fundamental and are widely applicable to a variety of contexts.

In the Design for Learning Language Pronunciation course (LT 539), I designed two lesson plans, each focused on a segmental and suprasegmental feature, in order to address the perceived needs of Spanish-speaking learners of business English. While we did not have the individual opportunity to conduct an actual needs analysis, designing lesson plans with an imagined context in mind also allowed me to practice my abilities in designing lessons tailored towards certain needs. The first of these two lesson plans focused on distinguishing between two similar vowel sounds in North American English that would be rather difficult for learners to produce based on L1 influence. This lesson would serve to meet the perceived needs of Spanish-speaking learners of English as it focuses on a feature that is not present in the learners’ L1 (vowel tense/laxness). The second of these lesson plans focused on improving student consonant cluster pronunciation, a common issue also based on L1 interference. During the design process of these lesson plans, the importance of conducting a thorough needs analysis was apparent to me and is something that I will strongly consider implementing in the future, when appropriate. Additionally, these lesson plans serve as examples of my understanding of needs analysis and the meeting of student needs through their integration with Celce-Murcia et al.’s (2010) Communicative Framework for Teaching Pronunciation in order to create well-developed materials that ultimately serve the student and their language learning goals. One considerable advantage of including this framework throughout this lesson plan, as well as others designed for the course, is the structure it offers. Through the use of Celce-Murcia et al.’s (2010) framework, I was able to considerably grow in ensuring that lesson plans are carefully created to be accessible to all students.

While an adequate understanding of needs analysis is beneficial in the design process, it is only one fundamental piece. An additional idea that became increasingly prevalent and important throughout my time in the LTS program was the concept of student learning objectives (SLOs), how to set them and how to lead students towards achieving them. One unique aspect of SLOs that I found particularly beneficial was the flexibility they afford (Michigan DOE, 2016). SLOs can be modified and adapted to reflect the changing needs and/or abilities of students in the classroom and therefore allow for a more tailored approach to student progress. This concept’s saliency was apparent in the Curriculum and Materials Development course (LT 548) while developing a unit’s sample materials and processes. Since many of the materials developed for that course address a specific imagined context and subject, determining what materials to include and how to implement them constructively became a task I thought of frequently during this project and in subsequent courses. For example, structuring the lesson plan around a larger set of SLOs helped to maintain focus of the content and ensure that the activities included ultimately guided students towards the achievement of the skills originally dictated in the SLO(s). This artifact gives a small sample of my knowledge of SLOs, their purpose, and their integration as materials and processes included in this model unit are structured in a way that bolster students’ reading and writing skills, while further growing their sociocultural skills through exposure to the target language’s literature and culture.

Finally, within the third lesson plan that I had created for the Design for Learning Language systems course (LT 536), I demonstrated my knowledge and usage of a key concept in language education and pedagogical design: scaffolding. Scaffolding, or the support given to students throughout the learning process (Brown & Lee, 2015), has proven itself to be a pervasive yet important concept as it is critical that students are not merely introduced to new information, but can begin to integrate it in a meaningful way. One way that helped me further conceptualize scaffolding and work to integrate it more seamlessly into my own lesson plans was by reflecting on my own time as a language student. I believe that by first considering the perspective of the student and how they may be consumers of information is a vital starting point for creating lessons that are well-formed and structure student abilities toward a targeted skill. This lesson plan demonstrated my ability to carry out this very skill as it focused on introducing beginner-lower intermediate L2 students to the subjunctive mood, its purpose, formation and usage, a concept that is not as easily recognizable in English. Moreover, it was apparent to me during this design process that student knowledge cannot and should not necessarily be assumed without reasoning. For example, it would be unreasonable to start beginner students with exercises using the subjunctive if they have no knowledge of its form and function. During my own design process, this mismatch between student skill level and level of difficulty was frequently considered. Throughout the lesson plan itself, examples of my knowledge of scaffolding and how to properly lead into and sequence activities so that they concretely support student success is well documented. This can be observed at the beginning of the lesson plan, as students are first introduced to the subjective mood through discovery learning and are then briefed on the key concept and its function before using the forms themselves.

As a final thought, the design process forms an inherently fundamental part of my role as a language educator, not only in the creation of new materials, but also in the redesign of previously used ones. The knowledge garnered through meticulously designing a range of lessons, activities, and courses highlights this role as the artifacts presented in this section seek to demonstrate that knowledge. Ultimately, this knowledge will serve me in the future as my understanding of the relationship between design and student success has grown and the responsibility to design, create, and implement various activities that support student learning and goals remain of the utmost importance.

Brown, H.D. & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An integrative approach to language pedagogy (4th edition). Pearson Education, Inc.

Celce-Murcia, Brinton, D., Goodwin, J. M., & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching pronunciation : a course book and reference guide (Second edition.). Cambridge University Press.

Michigan Department of Education. (2016). The Implementation of Student Learning Objectives Recommendations for Decision Makers. Michigan Department of Education. https://www.michigan.gov/mde/-/media/Project/Websites/mde/educator_services/eval/implementation_of_slo_guidance.pdf?rev=8efd95e98c71412ea0c9c58b5e215c5e