Intrinsic Motivation

After reading the 5th chapter on Intrinsic motivation in H. Douglas Brown book, i immediately think of what i am going through right now. That i have the will power to go through about 3 more years of school to become a certified ESL and German teacher. I feel that helping young adult and children is extremly rewarding and therefore want to do it for the rest of my life. I think that creating a classroom that can motivate students to want to learn is an extremly important quality a teacher must have in order to be sucessful. I hope that i can be so fortunate to be able to accomplish this. I do not want the students to please me by just doing their homework and getting good grades. I want them to take something away from my teaching that is what would be truly rewarding for me. Creating a desire inside the students.

Student Rewards: Good or Bad?

Rewarding a student with verbal praise, a gold star or a simple pat on the back is quite common practice. I think it is good to reward students for doing a good job as long as it does not demotivate other students in the classroom or become a habit with certain students. I think that all students need to be given personal attention from the teacher and that teacher needs to focus on their individual accomplishments.

I personally feel that progress charts should not be allowed in the classroom. I think it has a negative effect on the students that may not be making as good of progress as others or learning as fast. I think that notes can be written on students tests or they can be talked to after class. Hanging up graphs is just not a good way to give a reward.

One of my experiences with verbal praise is from when i studied abroad. My teachers in Germany would tell the entire classroom how a student did on projects or homeworks which is a completely different teaching style than here. Here teachers would not dare share information about how a student did on a test or homework assignment.

Get to know each other.

Taking time to learn about your students is very important. Knowing about a students culture, beliefs, values, government if any government, religion and traditions is a way to personalize and connect with students. Make them feel like they are getting something out of being in your classroom as oppossed to just "i have to be here" Give your students a purpose and motivate them. The examples i wrote above are areas where teachers can connect with their students. Create exercises where students share information with other students. I think that would create a sense of accomplishment for them.

By having some background knowledge about the students it gives teachers a chance to be sensetive to certain students situations. Whatever that may be. For example some student may not celebrate christmas therefore dislike it. So an activity solely based on Christmas might not be a good idea. Instead an alternative could be to focus on a broad range of holidays and give students an opportunity to explain them and present them in a positive and respectful manner.

Another thing i found extremely important for today's teachers is keeping a journal on students. A place to note positive and negative things that happened, noticed, good lessons for the future or changes that should be made in the future. Reflection and change is not a bad thing. It is part of life and teachers should not be afraid but rather embrass it.

Reflection: Pair Presentation

I found that my instructions on the Spongebob game were not very clear to some of the students in the class. I had assumed that everyone in class would understand. In my past experiences there were no problems with how to set up the groups and this time around i took it for granted. This could be very problematic in an ESL setting. Where a teacher needs to look at every aspect for every student to make sure they understand so as not to lose them in the mix. A couple of ways for me to have done this would be to have written the directions down in more detail, maintaining better control of the class and finally making sure that the directions would be understood by all students.
Another aspect our presentation that could use some improvement was the reinforcement to what was already talked about. A summarization of main points of all the perspectives that we discussed instead of ending the presentation abruptly. I do believe that students do learn through repetition so this is an area where I could have improved on and one that i think i am capable of doing.

Perfection at a Cost???

When i studied German in Germany I found myself always correcting ELL's mistakes. Now looking back I see myself as a little insensitive to their efforts to speak English. However some mistakes warranted correction. Now with a grasp of what i am talking about. I will dive into this topic with some reflections about the reading.

After reading L&S and reflecting on my past experiences. I learned that always correcting a students mistakes is not the correct thing to do. I think it needs to be on a student to student basis, longevity of the error or if it drastically changes the meaning of what the student is trying to say. I think correcting mistakes has to be a systematic thoughtout process not just immediately giving feedback. The teacher should reinforce with explanations, examples and exercises to reinforce the correction, so as to better perfect the students proficiency.

Another area where the teacher needs to tread lightly is to make sure not to dampen the students motivation to learn which would ultimately be even worse then a few communication errors. One good tip i took away from the reading is that rephrasing is a way to deflect some negativity that might be associated with mistakes and ultimately keep the flow of communication at a peak and allow the student to respond with questions if need be.

Approaches and Reflections

After reading the definitions of early teaching approaches such as the Direct method, series method and the Funtional Syllabus it makes it easier for me as a Language learner to understand the approaches, methods and techniques that my teachers have used. Having learned a second language and now after learning about these language approaches. It makes it easier for me to reflect on my experience of language learning. I believe that teachers need to take parts of each approach and organize them in a balanced cirruculum based on their students need, their own experiences, student goals and levels of proficiency.

The Functional Syllabus's main proponents are introducing self and other people, name spelling, commands, asking information and describing people. These are not all of the main proponents of Funtional Syllabus but a large amount and these main points describe my first years of lanaguage learning i do see positives from learning the basic forms of communication. However i see other positive aspects of other approaches that were not taken advantage such as the Audiolingual method, which in my eyes has the chance to immerse the student in becoming orally efficient. When i examine myself i see my oral skills as lacking the most, compared to reading, writing, and listening. Having a more balance curriculum can decrease these problems.

When i reflect on my time abroad studying German the teaching methods remind me of the Direct Method. The instructers exclusively used the target language in the classroom and correct pronunciation, grammar and pronunciation were emphasized and only everyday vocabulary were taught. As i look back at this experience i feel that this approach was a good choice by the instructors. Considering this was in my 8th year of learning German and my considerable understanding of German grammar and while my pronunciation was understandable to native speakers the correction of errors made it easier to understand native speakers and my speaking clearer.

The series method is not one that i have personally experienced but one that intrigues me. I see the repetition of vocabulary, subject verb agreement and a large amount of speaking opportunity which can create learner confidence. as major pluses for this approach. It has a high amount of exposure to the language. I feel that exposure to a language is a pivotal element of language acquisition.

Learning from others

One thing i have taken away from the reading is that everyone has ideas about how to teach. Taking different aspects, lessons or approaches can only help a teacher grow and become more proficient. The long list of approaches since the late 1880's is evidence of everyone's research and ideas to effectively teach a language. So the example of the classroom session provided in chapter 1 gave me an opportunity to reflect on some of my own ideas.

Particuarly in number 6 of the lesson when the T provides her own definitions verbally and the students seemingly nod in agreement with the T that they understand. However many times i have nodded when a teacher asked a question even though i did not understand either the question or the answer. I think it was a mistake for the teacher to move on so quickly without some verbalization from the students besides a head nod before moving on. I might have asked the students to describe these words or use them in sentences. Just any activity for the students to use these words that most likely they just learned. I believe that repetition is keying to learning vocabulary. This type is characteristic to the audiolingual approach where memorization and repetition are activity types.

One thing in my experiences as a language learner is that repetition gives the sense of confidence using certain sentence structures and word combinations. So i see it as a vital part of the learning process not to move on to the next exercise but see this as an opportunity to engage the students and gain more confidence.

Language, Power and Social standing

I was already aware of the influence that Rome was able to possess for centuries. I was not aware of how much it influenced the langauges of the former territories that Rome controlled. The former Roman Empire has influenced the French, Spanish, Portugese and Romanian languages. It is amazing that political power influences so much in terms of language.

This monopoly on language to say was continued with the Spanish as they conquered and explored many territories in South America and Carribean. With the Spanish influence they were able to leave a part of their culture i.e. language. At the time of this exploring during the middle ages Spain had a huge influence over the world with it's navy and shipping. One interesting note that i found while reading was that the Castilian dialect that was chosen for that became the standard was from Isabelle of Castille and not her husbands. I found this intriguing. I can relate both of these former world powers to todays world.

Today the U.S. has unwaranted reign of marketing U.S. values and cultures. The English langauge is the most influential language of the world. It is the language of business. All of this influence stems from the military power that the U.S. maintains which is exactly like the two former examples.