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.

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.