Design

Language education's rapidly evolving nature allows us to design innovative and effective lessons that foster meaningful student engagement and success. In my journey throughout the Language Teaching Studies (LTS) program, I’ve had the opportunity to design lesson plans among a plethora of other course materials such as designing a curriculum, activities, and much more. In this variety, I’ve incorporated several different techniques and approaches. 

For example, in my first artifact comes from the Curriculum and Materials Development course (LT548). In this course, I developed a curriculum named “English as an Additional Language” (EAL) and will discuss a specific lesson plan within this curriculum. By incorporating insights from Alsawaier (2018) on the motivational benefits of gamification in learning environments, and Gilmore's (2007) exploration of authenticity in language learning materials, EAL’s lesson plan for week one session one integrated gamified social interactions and authentic dialogue analysis. For example, the activity “Two truths one lie” in this lesson plan challenged students to write two truths and one lie about their hobbies. Working in groups, students took turns reading aloud their two truths and a lie. The remaining students in the group then discussed and identified the false statement through interactive conversation. As a group, they revealed beliefs on which statement they believed to be a lie. The student who read the statements confirmed whether their guess was correct. Following this, the group crafted follow-up questions related to the statements, encouraging deeper interaction and language practice. Each student took a turn sharing their two truths and a lie with the same routine. This gamified approach not only enhances language acquisition but also fosters a collaborative classroom environment (Gilmore, 2007). 

I continued to refine my use of game-based activities and real-world scenarios for analysis in language education through my second artifact. From the Pronunciation course (LT539), named “Integrated Mini Lesson Plans,” focuses on the use of Unit 3 from Rubin’s (2009) ‘Inside Reading’ textbook. The context we were assigned was for high intermediate-level students in an intensive English program, and the mini-lesson plans were strategically integrated where the language naturally lent itself to explicit pronunciation instruction. Utilizing the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, 5-step framework (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) methodologies I crafted four mini-lessons. Suprasegmental lessons included activities on sentence stress and prominence using the reading comprehension questions (Rubin, 2009, p. 45), and practicing the silent ‘e’ spelling rule in the writing and discussion topics section (Rubin, 2009, p. 48). Segmental lessons focused on distinguishing and pronouncing sounds such as /z/, /s/, /ɪz/, and /əz/ in the reading section called “Going to the Dogs” (Rubin, 2009, pp. 43-45)(only pp if quote), and identifying and practicing the voiceless dental fricative sound (θ) in the vocabulary activities section (Rubin, 2009, p. 46). The textbook itself served as authentic text, featuring the article “Going to the Dogs” by Thomas Vinciguerra Rubin (2009), which helped enhance the authenticity Gilmore (2007) of language learning in my mini-lesson plans.

Another way I demonstrate my understanding of the diverse approaches to designing in language teaching is through my third artifact which is from the Design for Learning Language Systems course (LT436). This artifact, titled “Lesson Plan 3” focuses on teaching and practicing Japanese vocabulary, particles, and verb endings. For this lesson plan, I utilized a variety of tools to prepare effectively. I demonstrated my understanding of Bloom's Taxonomy by selecting appropriate observable verbs tailored to my teaching context while employing ABCD outcomes through my learning objective (Bloom et al. (1956); Smaldino et al. 2008). The learning objective for this lesson plan was “By the end of this class session, SWBAT to accurately apply their newly learned vocab and grammar points in a real-life based musical flashcard game by arranging their self-created flashcards in the correct grammatical order with 80% accuracy.” Incorporating three different approaches to my lesson plans gives it an innovative touch moving towards a more comprehensive and dynamic learning experience for my future students. The course was set for a Japanese 1 class at a U.S. public high school, targeting 20 freshmen students at the novice-high proficiency level. The lesson is designed for the first day of the unit on “Asking for and giving locations using ~は、~に、あります、います、and ここ、そこ、あそこ.” The lesson includes a game called “Musical Flash Cards,” where students organize their cards to respond to questions posed by the teacher, with cues from music, and earn rewards for correct sorting (Hatasa et al., 2020, pp. 140-141).