Kumar Chapter seven and eight and Brown

Kumar chapter seven is about language awareness from two countries of United States and Britain. Also, it talked about whole language movement and it was interesting. It is really interesting to learn about language movement. In Korean education, many educators focus on teaching content than teach the language and social aspect and others. For example, Korean students learn statistics when they are 8^th grade and they have to study for 14 hours of the day to study the content.  However, Korean students lack at developing critical thinking and Korean educators do not fulfill individual student’s needs. If Korean education fulfills individuals’ needs, rate of suicide within secondary students will go down or many Korean students don’t have desire to go to different country to learn the language. Also, if educators focus on social development, rates of bullying can decrease.  Kumar quoted, “Language is intricately woven into the fabric of human life. It is closely linked to the relationships between mother and child, between self and society, between thought and action, between war and peace” (pg 156). It is important to think as educator to use language instead of misuse and abuse the language. Many educators are so focus on teaching the content and the grammatical language instead of fulfilling individual’s needs. This makes some ELL students drawn away from the language. How can we constantly test ourselves to assure students needs? How do we know if we are used to some curriculums? How we focus on the students?

Kumar chapter eight and Brown book talk about heuristics. Heuristics is a word that I am unfamiliar with. According to Kumar, he stated that “Heuristics refers to the process of self-discovery on the part of the learner. It also refers to a particular method of teaching--” (176). Kumar chapter eight talks about how the students can learn the language from their own than following direction. However, I was thinking that it can be problematic for some students. Many Asians students are so used to following directions than learning on their own. Therefore, they can be more stressed for the students. Some methods can work for some students. Educators have to think about the method that they are using can fit the students cultural values and their needs. However, should educators change methods because of students cultural values or should educators make students to adapt the methods? What is changing methods can stop students from developing? Sometimes, adapting and changing can be effective for students. Are there negative aspects of Heuristics? Heuristics can be positive but there isn’t any perfect method. I believe that as educator, we constantly need to create new methods.  

Reading and Writing in Brown

             Brown chapter twenty and twenty one is about different strategies between reading and writing to Second language learner. In chapter twenty, it talked about strategies for reading comprehension.  I believe reading comprehension is one of the hardest tasks to achieve as English Language Learners. Including myself, I know many ELLs struggle with reading. When I was in ESL, reading was very easy for me. Many ESL classes that I took focus on reading with short paragraphs. However, they didn't focus different strategies for reading comprehension when the students need to read a long paragraphs or book.  When I took ACT, it was so hard for me to get a good grade on reading. The reason is that I didn't know any strategies to read well. I was so used to read short paragraphs. Therefore, it was difficult for me to understand reading. Through my experiences, many ESL teachers focus on grammar and vocabularies rather than focus in reading and writing. However, there are many tasks to focus on to learn English. It is hard to teach every aspect of language domain. In my opinion, many ELL students don’t have hard time with writing. The reason is that it is easy to teach writing. In brown chapter twenty one had many different strategies to teach writing.  One of interesting strategies is using both top-down and bottom-up strategies. I thought top-down strategies might not helpful for the students.

             When I was reading Brown chapters, I was so happy to see these different strategies of different language domains. When I was reading these chapters, I was thinking, what makes a perfect teaching? Is fulfill all these language domains can be helpful? As time goes on, these different strategies should change and adapt for ELL students. 

Listening and Speaking

 Chapter eighteen of Brown’s book is about how to teach listening. Brown talked about things that make listening difficult and how to teach listening. It was interesting to see different ways of teach listening depends on the student’s proficiency. For a long time, I thought that watching American dramas and comic shows will help ELL’s listening skills. I don’t remember how I learned to develop listening skills. I watched lots of movies and dramas in English without the subtitles. Some of my friends still have problems when some Americans speak very fast. However, for me, that wasn’t a problem. I could understand even though when people were speaking fast.

Chapter nineteen of Brown’s book is about things that make speaking difficult and how to teach speaking skills. One of interesting things that make speaking difficult was performance variables. I see many ELL students use fillers of “you know.” I had a friend who used filler of “You know” for every sentence. One of the problems that I have for a long time is using gender pronouns. In Korean, there are no gender pronouns. Therefore, when I talk in English, I always mix up with using gender pronouns. I still don’t know how to fix it. I tried to fix it and I failed. I had friends who are Native speaker. I thought talking with Native speakers would fix the problem. However, my friends who are Native speaker have problems with gender pronouns because of me. In chapter nineteen, it talked about pronunciation. Many people are eager to not have accents. I believe that having accents isn’t a bad thing as long as people can understand and communicate. However, many people assume that people with accents cannot speak English very well. In chapter nineteen, it talked about how to treat errors when ELL students speak English. I believe that correct errors are better than ignoring it. ELL students might feel embarrassed at that moment. However, if a teacher will make environment of making errors and get corrected errors are not embarrassing, it will be good. My boyfriend started to correct mistakes when I spoke with him. At first, I was embarrassed. However, after a while, I wasn’t and I fixed most of the problems that I had.  When I was reading chapter nineteen, there were some questions that came up in my mind. Is it right or wrong to teach students with accents? What is perfect pronunciation? Is perfect pronunciation with or without accents?

In the article, How do I support a student’s first language when I don’t speak the language, is about a teacher named Dolores who teach English to eight students who speak different languages. I loved how Dolores makes her students to greet each other with their own language. I loved how Dolores emphasizes the importance of their L1 language. It is hard to emphasize and have supportive environment to use L1. However, Dolores gave good examples.