Design

While I was taking the courses that align with the design area of proficiencies, I began to see language learning and teaching with more of a long-term view and overall feeling of process and adaptation. Through the courses in this area of proficiency (Curriculum Design, Pronunciation, and Second Language Acquisition), I learned first hand what it means to scaffold lessons and introduce aspects of pronunciation and grammar in a lesson so that learners can more intuitively grasp the competencies of a language and the nuances that come along with it. Additionally, I learned the importance of setting learner goals, student learning objectives (SLO’s) (Brown & Lee, 2015) and course outcomes clearly at the beginning of the course and to conduct a thorough and accurate needs analysis in order to clearly identify the needs and desires of my learners. The artifacts that I chose for this area of proficiency include a number of lesson plans from both the LT 539 Pronunciation class and the LT 548 Curriculum Design class as well as a long term scope and sequence chart for a teaching context of my interest, which was an after-school English conversation school in Japan. In my lesson plans, I aimed to include aspects of language teaching methods that were taught to us in the LTS program such as the communicative framework for teaching pronunciation (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, Goodwin, & Griner, 2010) place-based learning, (Smith, 2002), and discovery learning, (Bruner, 1961).  This area of proficiency showed me how to evaluate the context of my teaching in a more accurate manner and to really aim to address the needs of the learners in that context. 

Similar to the first area of proficiency, which focuses on language as a dynamic system, I noticed during the process of designing my lesson plans and choosing the units of my imagined course design that language is indeed complex and multifaceted in a way that there is no one way to teach language or pronunciation. Just as each language learner acquires language in their own unique way and benefits from several various modes of language acquisition, as a teacher I too must incorporate a multifaceted and multimodal approach to my language teaching in order to resonate with my learners more accurately and personally. Each student excels in their own way and not one mode of teaching is universally the best way to teach something. One must teach a lesson from different angles and approaches in order for the students to get the most out of their learning experience. 

One of the artifacts that I chose for this area of proficiency was a resource collection portfolio that I created for the LT 539 Pronunciation class. Not only did this portfolio include multiple pronunciation lesson plans on segmental and suprasegmental features of the English language, but it also included a list of various resources that both teachers and language learners can use in order to access language use from many different types of approaches. These approaches included online resources such as Youglish.com that allows language learners to see how certain vocabulary and grammar are used in context in their target language of study as well as interactive IPA charts that allow learners to practice pronunciation at their own pace. Being able to discover the needs of learners and address them as accurately as possible was one of the main goals in this area of proficiency.

In regards to understanding the needs of language learners, during these classes I learned how to conduct an accurate and useful needs analysis at the beginning of my course and to personalize this needs analysis as much as I can in order to tailor to the desired outcomes of my learners. For example, during the LT 539 Pronunciation course, starting a tutoring session with an open-ended introduction interview and allowing the tutee to perform free speech, allows the tutor to gain access to how the student speaks in a natural setting and if the session is being recorded, the tutor can more closely analyze areas for improvement and design lessons that are based around those needs (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, Goodwin, & Griner, 2010). This was a major technique that I learned during that course and was something that assisted both myself and the people that I was tutoring immensely because it allowed me to focus in more precisely on a certain pronunciation or language feature that was unique to the student as an individual and create a lesson that was personalized just for them. I also learned that when something is personalized and catered to the needs of an individual, the motivation for learning increases and so do the connections that are able to be made which also increases memory retention. 

On a larger scale of designing a whole course, I was able to learn the skills of scaffolding and organizing lessons in a way that most benefited the learner’s experience in the LT 548 Curriculum Design course. Here, one of the most helpful things I learned was how to create a scope and sequence chart that addressed the needs of my learners. During the making of this assignment, I further developed my organization skills and sharpened my understanding of scaffolding by designing a course that included aspects of needs analysis and clear student learning objectives for each unit and the course as a whole. This course allowed me to see more broadly the way in which each class builds onto each other in order to reach the ultimate goal which is the course objective. 

In addition to course design, I also exercised the skill for creating and designing a website and poster that would both educate learners and promote my teaching context to interested students. First, during LING 544 Second Language Acquisition, my fellow cohort member Iris Lai and I created a website that taught learners the aspects of communicative competence and the main points of what communicative competence means and how it relates to language learning. As stated in my teaching philosophy, my aim is to connect learners from several different cultures and to include aspects of both linguistic and cultural lessons into my language teaching, being that the two are so closely connected. Through making a website that informs learners of this particular aspect of language, I found a space for learners to be able to connect which encouraged me to strive to create more online accessible language learning platforms and integrate them into my lessons as a language teacher.

References

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

Bruner, J. (1961). The act of discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31, 21–32.

Byram, M. (1997) Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Byram, M. (2009). Intercultural speaker and the pedagogy of foreign language education. In D. Deardorff (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of intercultural competence (pp. 321–332). SAGE Publications.

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., Goodwin, J., & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A coursebook and reference guide (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press. 

Smith, G. (2002). Place-Based Education: Learning to Be Where We Are. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(8), 584–594. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170208300806