Artifact 1B: Journal for Recasting

This journal and activity demonstrates  my understanding of the use of recasting and the limits of grammar development, as defined in Standard 1B,  which states that candidates for the degree must “understand and apply theories of research in second language acquisition and development.”  While we touched on theories of second language acquisition throughout our classes in Lehman, this assignment made me reflect on how I was able to “take pertinent findings in…interlanguage and input and interaction” in order to create effective instruction.  Before taking classes at Lehman, I did not consider recasting as a method of teaching so consciously, as it was something that commonly occurs in many classrooms. We touched on the method and research in depth in Professor Bermudez-Rodriguez’s class ESC 766, Teaching English Across the Content Areas.

In order to make this activity more useful, I would have committed more time to the vocabulary by completing more of Marzano’s steps. Students did parts of Step 1 (see the term in context in the text), restate it in their own words, which was Step 2 (very little of this), did not create a non-linguistic representation which was step 3, did step 4 (manipulating the terms by using them to compare the two native American tribes), and reviewed and monitored use of the terms by later taking a test and writing an essay (step 6). 

I felt that I effectively used recasting to bring the academic vocabulary into use, showing an awareness of theories of second language acquisition and findings based upon what we read in class about recasting and vocabulary learning as literacy learning.  We wrote half of the essay together, with me providing the first half of introductory sentences for each paragraph, and asking students to complete them. When students wrote the details of their paragraphs, they had to use their notes. I divided up my white-paper and their printed sheets into similarities and differences with the sentence starters pre-written. Students had to finish some sentences and write the supporting sentences on their own. When they had trouble, I used recasting, first by asking the question (or giving the statement) in a different way, and then restating what they said using the academic vocabulary.

I would have liked to do more of the earlier steps to better set up students for success. The main issue is that activities with ENL students take longer than for other students, as they often write and read slower and take time to process the information.  To compensate for this, I would have liked to do two things: work more on putting the definitions in their own words, and find a way to incorporate visual descriptions of the vocabulary.  Research in second language acquisition shows this to be efficient and effective. This could have been done by finding illustrations and having the students match them with the words. I believe that in many cases, having students write a non-linguistic representation, while useful, can be very time consuming for unfamiliar and abstract concepts. I would like to experiment more to find ways to make it more effective. It is much easier to have this part of the vocabulary teaching as homework as it has students thinking about the word for a longer time at home, and it also helps to have students have gaps in time between their interactions with the word. Reflecting and describing the process in the class activity made me see ways I could do better and be more conscious of input and interaction via recasting. While I have not yet honed my skills and seen an impact, I believe that with more conscious efforts and time, this is an area of growth that I have not yet accessed sufficiently.

Artifact 1, Standard 1.A.   (a hyperlink)

Artifact 2, Standard 1.A.  (a hyperlink)

Ist Reflection: Breaking Conventions in Translanguaging with De Jong, Cummins, Velasco and Garcia; and “When should we correct a student’s grammar?”

The analysis assignment was created to fulfill requirements for ESC 769-Latinos in US Schools, focusing on current and historical issues facing the largest group of individuals that are likely to be found in the TESOL classes of public schools. This online class read and compared a variety of texts and engaged in online discussions to tease out specific features of the text and connect them with our experiences in the classroom, both real and potential. This was the second class at Lehman I was enrolled in that discussed the use of translanguaging as researched by Velasco and Garcia at CUNY.  The assignment was  a response to chapters ten and eleven of Ester J. De Jong’s Foundations for Multilingualism in Education: from Principles to Practice. This artifact shows that my understanding of discourse varieties, syntax, and conventions assists my teaching and furthers the development of the ELLs I work with by encouraging production of English as the primary means of students’ learning.

 

In the artifact, I focus on how the explicit teaching of grammar is secondary to production, following Krashen’s ideas that we use learned language to monitor the language we are producing and that we learn to monitor language by interacting. In Cummins example of having students of the same language group work together to create a shared work reflecting their identity, using whatever language tools are available to them, they will accomplish the  semantic purpose of an activity, while ideally engaging at a language level that is within their level of comprehensibility but also challenging. I understand that while teachers do not to give targeted corrective feedback, education should not be seen as punitive or corrective, and students need to see their classroom activities as purposeful and they can make progress learning a language and gaining the linguistic tools necessary for content mastery at different points in their academic later, while still taking, as all learners of any language do, years to master the aspects of social and academic language alongside the proper syntax.

 

This artifact demonstrates the centrality of translanguaging and the effective of both official and unofficial bilingual education in the classroom. Students do not need to be restricted by their grasp of formal rhetorical registers but should produce the desired output and will do say at their maximum abilities and hone their production by interacting with other students and reflecting on the work they have created. By speaking, at different times, in both English and Spanish — translanguaging —  I can serve as a good language model for my students.

 

I feel that I translanguage an appropriate amount given that my students have always ranged from transitioning to commanding, and because I have never been in an exclusively English-Spanish classroom, and always had to account for speakers of other languages. I hope that, if given the freedom of curriculum in the future, I can make better use of translanguaging in written and more formal formats by following Cummins’ example of asking students to create identity-centered projects using all linguistic tools they have access to.

 

This second artifact is a PowerPoint demonstration I gave for the ESL Methods Class. In the PowerPoint, I focused on the speech modalities and how we should approach them when working with English Language Learners in both language and content area classes. Slide 11 contains the most important information and has broader applications for teachers through all modalities. The slide asks “When should we correct a student’s grammar?” focusing on the role of errors and targeted corrective feedback on the L2 acquisition process. The answer to this question is “Never.”

 

Learning this was an important discovery for me and the rest of the class, none of whom believed that “never” was the correct answer at the beginning of the term, and continued to have trouble “letting go” of the idea that we should correct student’s grammar at the instant a “mistake” is made. What some may see is a mistake is just a step in a student’s journey to fluency. It is important to note that this does not rule out the teaching of explicit grammar and the incorporation of errors in students work in active classroom reflections on how syntax and writing conventions  are formed and followed. However, it is important to both keep the affective barrier to a minimum, and use limited class time to have students practice new discourse varieties and use newly acquired English phonology, morphology, syntax and other conventions so that it they both hear and produce a new variation at least a dozen times. To correct a student’s grammar is a waste of time both because it is done in isolation and because raising the affective barrier means it is less likely that students will learn the variation. We did learn in readings of Stephen Krashen that it is more important that the teacher serve as a good language model than that students be corrected. In the following slide, it is stated more specifically: when a student answering a question, for example “what part of x passage shows imagery related to the theme of loneliness?” a teacher who corrects the grammar of a student’s answer may cause the student to forget what they were going to say and in the future may cause them to avoid talking at all, reducing language production and learning. Students should be corrected when they give the wrong answer, but teachers need to avoid going off-topic in the futile pursuit of total grammatical purity.

 

In my classes as a “push-in” (a linguistic “mistake” itself) ENL teacher, I have followed this rule, but struggle to find time to fit in explicit grammar instruction when an administration’s diktat is to focus on clarifying and differentiating the content. I find that Newcomers in stand-alone classes — usually students of entering and emerging English language proficiency — do receive explicit instruction in grammar, but that the language development of students who are transitioning and expanding may be held back because no time is allotted for explicit grammar instruction particular to those students. It is really a question best negotiated with administration and I hope to do a better job of carving out a spot for that in the future.

 

 

 

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