Kumar and Brown

Brown chapter four is about twelve principles of L2 learning. One of interesting principle was principle four. Principle four is intrinsic motivation. The ELL students need intrinsic motivation to learn. The author further talked about how we need to motivate our students. Before I went into Bilingual education, I thought most of ELL students are motivated. However, I realized that some of the students are not motivated because of their personal problems or lack of their parents involvement. In one of bilingual classes, we watched this clip about Hispanic students. I was very surprised to see this clip because I thought all ELL students are motivated . I thought that it is important for teacher to be motivated order to make students to be motivated. My ESL teacher was so motivated to help me when I wasn’t interested in school work. However, because of her motivation, I became motivated. When I was reading these principles, I realized importance of these principles. However, I also thought that it is important for the teachers to constantly think about these principles and work hard to create good learning opportunities for ELL students. Chapter sixteen of Brown’s book is similar with chapter four. It talked about various principles and strategies to help ELI students. In Brown’s book, it talked about different ways to develop the self-awareness for students. It was really interesting because I did not think about how to self awareness for the students. In English 345 class, we learned about variety methods to teach ELL students. However, I wasn’t sure how to figure the methods that would work for each student. I realized that I can use these ways to figure out what kind of methods that I can use in the classroom. I think it is really important to teach strategies in the classroom. When I was an ESL student in high school, many teachers didn’t teach me how to do note-taking. When I went to college, I had hard time how to write notes during lectures. I think many ELL students need to learn 

Kumar chapter three is about maximizing opportunities for ELL learners. This chapter talked about how the teachers can create opportunities for students inside and outside of the classroom. Most of the examples that the author showed are something that I remember learning when I was in ESL. I liked this chapter because it showed the importance of creating learning opportunities for students. However, what if these opportunities aren’t available for some teachers? Some teachers are harder to connect community together outside of school. Some teachers don’t have enough opportunities. . 

Three articles of different method

            The article of Stephen Bax is about how CLT method has led to failure. The author said that the main reason why CLT failed is that because CLT emphasized only on communicative skills but not emphasized on context. Then, author offered different approach which is lexical approach. The author said that “the Lexical Approach is the approach to follow no matter what the context—it will work, and it will work everywhere.” However, I disagree because I don’t think there is a perfect approach that will work on everyone. Also, the reason why CLT failed is that the teacher implemented CLT in a wrong way. How can people make sure that people aren’t going to implemented Lexical Approach differently than it suppose to be when it happened to CLT approach? How can we make sure that the teachers will be well- educated enough to teach Lexical Approach in a right way?

The second article is written by Guangwei Hu. The article is about the failure of CLT in China. The reason why CLT failed in China is that China’s culture and some main principles of CLT clashed against each other. Even though I thought that CLT would work great for the students, I knew that it wouldn’t work for many Asian students. Many Asian countries share similar cultural perspective. I understood why CLT isn’t going to work in China, and CLT might not work in Korea also. However, I think it is too soon to decide if CLT didn’t work in China. I thought CLT would be beneficial for Asian countries because of many Asian education lack communicative skills. However, in my opinion, instead of believing that CLT isn’t working and not using it, the educators can change the method of CLT a little bit, so that it can fit into Chinese cultures.  It will be hard to change cultural perspective in few years. At first, I thought, it will be great for teachers to learn about students. Then, CLT can work. However, I realized that people are used to live their cultural norms. It will take years, maybe decade, to change what they are used to believed in. When I came to United States, I was used to how Korean teachers taught, and it was hard for me to adapt how American teachers taught. After few years, I got used to how American teachers taught. The method that American teachers used to teach me few years ago didn’t work. However, after few years, it worked on me.  As teacher, just because I think it will be right for the students, it doesn’t mean that it is right for the students. However, it will be very difficult to implement CLT into Chinese culture.

The third article that is written by Peter Skehan is about different task of instruction. When I was reading his article, I realized that there are many different approaches that involved task-based. More varieties of different tasks are better for different students. Every student has different needs and learns differently. Every year, the students learn differently. And it is essential for educators to learn that we have to learn and study different methods that fit each student’s needs. 

Brown Chapter 3 and article

First thing that Brown talks about in chapter three is differences between practice and theory. According to Brown, practitioner and theorist are very similar. Then, this chapter talks about different approaches and instructions. The first approach is communicative language teaching (CLT). According to Brown, CLT has three issues; “authenticity, acceptability and adaptability.” CLT is way of teaching to teach all components of communicative competence. In my opinion, CLT is a good approach for students who struggle with communicative language. Many ELL students know grammatical rule. However, they struggle when they have to talk in their target language. During CLT approach, the students can learn BICS and CALP. The next approach is Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT). TBLT teaches the students how to solve communication problems. I believe TBLT is more focused on CALP than BICS. Third approach is Learner-Centered Instruction. Learner-Centered Instruction focuses on the students’ needs and goals of targeted language. Then, there are cooperative learning and interactive learning. Cooperative learning involved Learner-Centered Instruction characteristics. Instead of individuals who achieve goals, cooperative learning is the students need to work with groups to achieve goal. Interactive learning is approach that when the learners interact with each other through orally and written, their communicative abilities will developed. Next approach is whole language education. Whole language education is to teach four skills which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Also, whole language education believe that teachers need to teach students not only language but teach social, political or economic problem. Last approach is content based instruction (CBI). CBI is when the teacher teaches the targeted language based on the content. When I read this chapter, there are good approaches/instructions. However, there was one thought came into my mind. Is there any good instruction or bad instruction? Is there a perfect instruction to teach students? I believe that all instructions have disadvantages and advantages.

The article talks about disadvantages and advantages of CLT and TBLT. When I was reading this article, I kept thinking which approach is better. However, this worry just gave me a headache. When I was in ESL, I don’t think my teacher used only CLT or TBLT. I think she used mixture of these two approaches. I think as future teacher, we need to use different approaches to adapt for the students. However, if we use too much methods, I feel like it will confuse the students. 

Chapter one and two of Kumar

Chapter one of Kumar talks about the roles of the teachers. The author said the teacher needs to be passive technicians, reflective practitioners, and trans-formative intellectuals. The authors stated that teacher as passive technicians are when the teachers are using content knowledge rather than teaching. The author stated that “viewing teachers as passive technicians is traditional and is still in vogue in many parts of the world" (pg 9). I agreed with this statement. I believe that many countries especially in Asia, view teachers as passive technicians. In Korea, many people view teacher as passive technicians. Many teachers are so used to pass on the knowledge rather than teaching, I feel like many students are used to learn by passive technicians. In the chapter, the author talked about reflective practitioners. The teachers who are reflective practitioners are more problem-solving teachers to try to help students to learn. The teachers as trans-formative intellectuals are when the teachers need to teach the content and also teach social problems. When I was reading the roles of the teacher, I had a question in my head. Which role of the teacher would be the best? If a student is used to learn by passive technicians, and suddenly the teachers role changed as reflective practitioner, would the student learn better? Then how come many people learned by passive technicians cannot keep up with the reflective practitioners or trans-formative intellectuals?
         Chapter two is about all different types of methods of teaching. Chapter two talked about there are no perfect way of methods that works for every teacher and student. Some of the methods were the same or similar method as the one we talked about in the class. Some of the methods were interesting. However, how do i know as teacher which method works the best for the classroom? There are so many different types of methods. I don’t think I would know which one would be right for the classroom. However, if I try every method, it will take too much long.