Design

                     In this area, I mainly think of the materials of these four courses: LT536-lesson plan design, LT548-curriculum design, LT539-pronunciation course, and LT538-pragmatics. The first artifact is a two-hour lesson plan for LT 536 with team member Aissa. In this class, we learned eight criteria (Yerian, 2022): objectives, target language and culture, active learning, materials, inclusive community, clear instruction, discovery learning, and feedback. They needed to consider before, during, and after the course design, especially after the design was completed. We could review whether the course plan had considered these points. The first step was to determine our audience and some basic information about the students, such as age, language level, target language, and learning scope. Then it formulated the overall course goal and lesson objectives based on the existing premise. The course was called English Kagai 1, which was translated into English Extracurricular 1. It was the first level of English Kagai students took right after three years of Enrichment Bilingual Classes in kindergarten. The course focused on oral skills. The target learning group was 6 to 7 years old primary school first graders, whose proficiency level varied from novice to low-high. Since they had little or no exposure to English in their everyday off-school life, incorporating their daily routine helped them realize that learning the language could be applied in their day-to-day activities. By realizing its relevance, they were motivated further to use and learn the target language. Also, because students did not get exposure outside school, it was beneficial that the teacher used 100% target language while teaching so students could improve listening and speaking comprehension. 

                     Here we used the backward design to start from the objective and then slowly thought back to what kind of activities and course rhythm could lead students to successfully achieve these lesson objectives and course overall goals. When it came to course goals and lesson objectives, we had to introduce the ABCD objectives we had learned—("A" is for the audience, "B" is for behavior, "C" for conditions, and "D" is for the degree of mastery needed) and SMART objectives—(specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). When deciding on objectives, these two concepts or formulas could help us measure whether an objective was complete, precise/qualified. One of the materials was "My Morning/My Afternoon and Evening Schedule Worksheet," which aligned with the students' real-world experiences. In the beginning, we envisioned two topics, one was asking for a phone number, and the other was asking for the time. Although both were very close to our daily life, considering the age and needs of our target learners, the topic of phone numbers was not particularly suitable for them. Because first-grade elementary school students did not often need to exchange phone numbers, we finally decided to use the theme of talking about daily routine and time. The action words chosen were also related to the student's everyday life. They could also express their commonly used daily routine actions in their homework and then bring them to class to discuss. To build an inclusive community, considering that children of this age group had difficulty concentrating, we also selected several different activities to stimulate their interest and continue practicing by changing activities. 

                      Next, I decided to introduce the artifact I chose for the LT548-curriculum design course. I would like to share the entire curriculum to discuss, but it might be too much. The course I designed was called Modern Application for Classical Chinese, which was to introduce classical Chinese and Chinese idioms. The idioms were mostly four-character phrases called Quadra-syllabic Idiomatic Expressions (QIEs) to students and also tried to build a bridge between classical and modern Chinese. It was a content-based course designed to explore classical Chinese by reading a series of stories from the book called The Garden of Stories, "Shuo Yuan," describing the anecdotes from the Spring and Autumn period to the Han Dynasty, 770 BC-AD 220. There were several parts that I needed to focus on—need analysis, how it demonstrates mastery of language, proficiency vs competence, and mind-maps. 

                     In the design process, I liked the mind-map part. Before outlining the circular, we were asked to draw a mind map of our thinking routine, what related concepts, students learning objectives, how we planned to achieve those goals. In this A4 paper, I could freely express my imagination and briefly describe my design inspiration, concept, and conception process. I drew a big pot and put all kinds of ingredients from old and new Chinese languages into it to make a hodgepodge. This symbolized the integration of classical and modern Chinese and also expressed the purpose of thinking that I hoped students could connect the two through this class. In addition, the need analysis (Nation & Macalister, 2010) was a step that must be addressed, and it was significant for the subsequent course design. By carefully analyzing each possible stakeholder, not only the target learner but also other relevant stakeholders must be considered here. We could improve our course goal formulation by understanding their needs and expectations for this course. A course could not be created just by taking it for granted. It needed to be implemented and considered carefully, and tried its best to meet the needs of all parties before it could be called a good curriculum. Apart from this, I would like to share my opinion on language proficiency vs competence. I always believe that language is a bridge of communication. Proficiency is undoubtedly essential, but competence is more important to enable people to exchange ideas with each other. This point has also been presented in my curriculum design. For example, when translating classical Chinese into modern Chinese, as long as the meaning was appropriately expressed, it was successful. Grammar, writing, or fluency would not affect the score.

                     Another artifact I included was LT538's Activity Creation 2. This activity aimed to deepen students' understanding of solidarity building in Chinese pragmatics through playing two relationship simulation role-playing games and dating apps in class and discussing the findings with their classmates. Contexts matter when learning languages. Interacting with NPC to experience the difference in word choices in different scenarios could introduce pragmatics. For example, SWBAT identified and summarized communicative phrases/patterns in the conversations for building a relationship displayed the level of intimacy in the games, or interpreted the illocutionary and perlocutionary force of typical communicative phrases used between close friends and people one just met. At the same time, we also needed to design an activity that met the needs of the current target learner based on factors such as the student's identity and the language learning environment. For example, this activity needed to use a Chinese game, which involved using issues. As design activities, we needed to think about how to help students overcome this difficulty, such as preparing tutorials on how to use VPNs.

                     The last artifact I chose was LT539-pronunciation segmental lesson plan. In this class, we learned and heard many concepts about pronunciation, and the most impressive ones were segmental and suprasegmental. The language I chose to focus on in this class was Chinese, Mandarin. I also found many exciting differences by comparing the English pronunciation knowledge explained in class with the Chinese one. Different languages always had some pronunciations that did not exist in other languages from the language; now, how to teach learners those new sounds was essential. The segmental part I introduced at the beginning was vowels. I used Total Physical Response (TPR) when designing vowel pronunciation exercises. I like this teaching method of assisting memory through physical activity. When learners move their bodies while saying the phrases, the body movement helps them strengthen their memory (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010). I also used it occasionally in some other lessons. In addition, when it came to suprasegmental, in this class, I designed a small lesson to explain thought groups in Chinese.

All in all, the knowledge points presented above are the most impressive to me in this section, and they are also the most frequently applied in my own teaching design.

References

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

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

Nation, I.S.P. & Macalister, J. (2010). Language Curriculum Design. Routledge.