Anda di halaman 1dari 5

Harding

Katie Harding
Dr. Manuela Gonzlez-Bueno
C&T 491
17 June 2016
Instructional Narrative for the TESOL Practicum in South Korea
Teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) has its own particular rewards and
difficulties different from teaching an English class to native speakers. Over the years,
the pedagogical approaches to EFL teaching have varied to reflect different theories on
how to effectively teach EFL. A central concept today is English as an international
language and the fact that there are multiple World Englishes, not just one correct
version of English. While participating in this practicum, the various readings covering
English as a second language teaching, content-based instruction, listening
comprehension, writing, speaking, and teaching grammar assisted me in developing my
own unit and lesson plan for English as an international language (EIL).
Suresh Canagarajah wrote about concepts, theories, and practices pertaining to
EIL in his article In Search of a New Paradigm for Teaching English as an International
Language. Canagarajah emphasizes English as a mixture of many different varieties of
English, World Englishes. He also discusses how students need to have procedural
knowledge, or the ability to adapt, respond, and adjust to the multiple situations, different
contexts, and interlocutors. Canagarajah measures proficiency more as speakers ability
to utilize and adapt the language, procedural knowledge. In Teaching English as a
Second or Foreign Language by Celce-Murcia et al., the chapter on content-based
language teaching helps define how to develop these skills for the speakers and with what

Harding 2

materials and practices. Content-based language teaching is the use of content matter for
teaching a second language or teaching content through the second language. It
intertwines language teaching with material to contextualize the language. However, in
order for students to speak or write in the language, they need to have input first to create
output. Input is made comprehensible when the second language is utilized to convey or
clarify. A student needs to learn how to become active listeners for listening
comprehension, active readers, critical-thinking writers, and adaptable speakers of the
second language. The concepts and teaching methods behind developing the students
skills in these areas taught me about teaching and my own foreign language learning
experience. My high school language courses for Spanish did not contextualize a lot of
the grammar and vocabulary while my college Korean courses contextualized the
material more. My motivation a key concept in the textbookto learn played a key role
in how much I learned. Fortunately, I was motivated in both cases to pursue learning
beyond the classroom. But not all students share the same amount of motivation. In
Korean class, the material pertained more to our lives and personal interests, providing
more motivation to study the material.
At Kyunghwa Girls High School, there are three gradesfirst, second, and
thirdand we teach the first and second graders once each week. The class we teach is
the English conversation course; the students have a separate class for grammar taught by
Korean teachers. English education is extremely important in Korea and students feel
pressure to learn to speak English well. There are many places to learn English and the
students have access to movies and other popular culture items for listening. The skill
levels of the students range from the few who have studied abroad and speak English

Harding 3

well to those who can only articulate simple phrases. Many of the students come and
practice English with us, and through this interaction, we learned a lot about the students
interests and hobbies. Many loved talking about the new superhero movies. Mandeep and
I will teach a unit on superheroes. In one lesson, the students will create their own
superhero and the next utilizes what they created to play a speaking and pronunciation
game. Our activity offers practice in listening, reading, and speaking skills. We aim for
the students to be able to discuss superheroes and American popular culture, articulate
their own ideas in English, and learn about popular culture and specific vocabulary for
superheroes. We start out the class with speaking input from the teachers and watching a
superhero movie trailer. Then, we go step by step through creating a superhero with
video, picture, and written input examples for the students. At the end, the groups present
their superheroes to each other. The following lesson uses the superheroes they created to
practice speaking in a listening and pronunciation game. The students will utilize future,
present, and imperative forms to create and describe the different aspects of their
superhero. We assess their progress during the activity by talking to each group,
correcting their forms, helping with vocabulary and we also assess their completion and
thoroughness when the groups present to each other. For the speaking game, the students
speaking, listening, and grammar will be evaluated by how many phrases they articulate
and correctly relay as a group. This will also be a review of the previous lesson because
we utilize the superheroes and phrases the students created in the previous lesson for the
speaking game.
Contextualizing material is essential for developing EFL learners into adaptable,
fluent speakers. Incorporating language-learning into material provides context, but the

Harding 4

material, teachers, and the students also need to provide motivation for learning. We
utilized writing, speaking, listening, and grammar instruction into our superhero lessons
to contextualize the language and teach about American popular culture, something that
the students are already motivated to learn and has a lot of input examples for teaching.

Harding 5
Works Cited

Canagarajah, Suresh. "In Search of a New Paradigm for Teaching English as an


International Language." TESOL J TESOL Journal 5.4 (2014): 767-85. Web.
Celce-Murcia, Marianne. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Boston:
Heinle & Heinle, 2001. Print.

Anda mungkin juga menyukai