Self-reflection II

Teacher: Wenwei Li
Class: Advanced conversation, 4 students (3 Japanese, 1 Chinese)
Date/Time: Tuesday, Apr 11
Theme: Recommendation letter

The goal of this lesson is to familiarize ESL learners with the regular procedures of

applying for a school (in this context, a college) in U.S. In particular, the basic know-how of

asking for a recommendation letter is the focus of this lesson. The goal and objectives of the

lesson was based on the classs background and needs: 1. All four students are either visiting

scholars or current student living in NYC, while also planning for applying for higher

education in the States; 2. L2 objectives of this lesson can be built up on their existing L2

resources gained from previous application experience, including practice and consolidate

associated terms, learn unfamiliar words, pragmatics and language in requesting for a

recommendation letter; 3. Besides goals and objectives made before class, students are also

encouraged to open-endedly describe personal experiences with applying for schools in their

own country, and then compare and contrast with that in U.S. Cultural and language

differences should carry out students interest on the topic, and thereby facilitate their

spontaneous speech.

The lesson starts with students sharing personal experiences of applying for college.

Students are expected to accurately use past and/or perfective tense and aspect. This then is

transited to college application in U.S. by a set of question: Have you applied for any school

in U.S.? How is it different from your country? Students were asked to come up with terms

associated with the topic. It is also a pre-listening warm-up. Later, a video of a college senior

reporting her college application experience would be played, where students were asked to

make a college application check-list.

 The check-list serves as a transition to the second activity- asking for recommendation

letter. As expected, the class found ask for a recommendation letter the most painful item

on the check-list. Students reported that most of them wrote their own letter and only asked

for a signature from professors, as there is a language gap in recommending a person for a

degree abroad. The teacher added that there might also be some cultural differences, where

then students shared experiences and feelings of confusion and embarrassment in asking for a

letter. Later, a reading of tips for asking for a recommendation letter was given to students,

which should prepare them for a role-play activity. In the role play, one student assumes the

role of a professor, and the other a student asking for recommendation letter. The student

should decide what material(s) he/she would bring to the professor (e.g., transcripts, course

project, admission plan, etc.).

After the class, for future use, I summarized few points students found worthy for

discussion: 1. Language gap; 2. Why ask for recommendation letter (as in some Asian

countries, there is no such thing as asking for personal recommendation); 3. How to ask for

recommendation letter? (The reading effectively addresses most of the issues: who to ask;

people skills; communication skills; sufficient time frame; a fact sheet; give space to a

professor).

Although this is a conversation class, materials used here can be adapted to either a

reading/listening/writing activity. One problem here is how much and well students can learn

from the listening and reading material. During this lesson, students listened to the video 3

times and filled in the blanks of the listening text. In reading, tips for recommendation letter

were broken into pieces and students have to match them with categories of advice. Due to

the time limit, students did not have time to revisit listening and reading content. But if the

topic could expand to several 1.5-hour lessons, teacher can call on students to recall the

materials. Also, recycle the role play would also help students consolidate knowledge.
 Another possible improvement is to generalize and sequence teaching points from the

role-play activity, which seem to be a lot based on student performance. It can be specific

language points like how to open up a conversation may I borrow one minute?, is it a bad

time?, how may I help you today?. On the other hand, it can be pragmatics in making

requests, negotiate a request and deny a request. Since this lesson is scheduled towards the

end of a semester, when students have had practices on some of these aspects, they reported

this role play had helped them a lot in synthesizing learning. Whereas, I should have still

asked them explicitly about the take-aways from this activity.