Language Assessment

                Language Assessment is an ongoing process throughout the year that includes informal and formal assessments.  There are many different types of assessments that are done.  Informal assessment is one of the most important because it shows the process in which a student is learning.  This can encompass everything that happens in a classroom on a day to day basis.  It’s understanding where every student is based on their comments, questions, and the activities they participate in during class.  Written work may be assessed by the student, classmates, and the teacher.  Informal assessment can be as simple as an incidental, unplanned comment about how a student is doing (Brown 446).  Formal assessments such as portfolios, permanent products, and tests are also great ways to keep track of a student’s progress.  Tests can help a teacher get a general understanding of what concepts students understand and which ones need more practice.  However, it’s not as authentic as informal assessments and should not be the only form of assessment that is being done in the classroom.  Tests should always be practical, valid, and reliable.  Language assessment has become much more communicative, learner-centered, and performance based however there are still some challenges to face (Brown 457).  Standardized exams are only a snapshot of what the student knows at that specific time.  Tests should be a tool to help students learn.  The students should know exactly what the test will cover and which portions are more important than others.  The students should also receive feedback on how they did well and how they can improve. 

Lesson Planning

Lesson planning is a very important part of being a teacher.  It’s important to think about everything that will happen throughout the lesson.  Writing out a script for my lessons has been beneficial to me because it helps me to clearly teach each concept.  The only part that can be difficult is when the student’s knowledge or understanding doesn’t line up with my own predictions.  Then it can be better to have a detailed outline of what has to be covered and then be flexible in the middle when it comes to the students needs.  I definitely think it’s easy to fall into too much teacher-talk and not enough student-talk.  Students need to talk and discuss with each other in order to understand concepts and enhance their communicative competence.  They need to be able to ask meaningful questions.  Kumar brings up a really great point about the three perspectives in a classroom.  It takes the perspective of the teacher, the learners, and an observer to assess a teacher’s effectiveness.  Each person may see a different weakness or strength and once it’s put all together you can see a big picture of what’s happening and how to make it better. 

Social Responsibility

            I really enjoyed Brown Ch. 26 because it talks about one of the reasons I want to be a teacher.  In my soul there is a deep desire to make a difference in someone else’s life.  As a teacher, we have the opportunity to make a difference in the next generation.  We have a social responsibility to mobilize change.  Teachers are responsible for giving students opportunities to learn about important social, moral, and ethical issues and to analyze each side of an issue.  It’s also extremely important for teachers to create a classroom environment where everyone respects and learns from each other’s values and opinions.  Teachers are also responsible to have moral principles that establish the atmosphere in the classroom.  Brown definitely brings up some great points when it comes to how challenging this can be when we’re in the reality of our own classroom.  However, it’s important to remember that it’s always better to be active agents of change than to be passive bystanders of something that’s in need of change. 

            Kumar talks about “ensuring social relevance” in chapter 11 of Beyond Methods.  He talks about the benefits of using the L1 to help students make connections between their home language and the TL.  It’s a resource that far too often is not used in the classrooms.  In chapter 12 Kumar gives some microstrategies that are great to look at when it comes to raising cultural awareness.  I liked the example with thanksgiving, because it helped the students to use critical thinking to see which holiday they have that is similar.  It helps them to think about their different identities within their languages and see how they connect and make them who they are. 

            I’m researching on simultaneously maintaining L1 and L2 literacy skills.  I’m looking further into research by Lilly Fillmore. Ofelia Garcia, and Nancy Hornberger. 

“Educating Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Programs, and Practices for English Language Learners. Language & Literacy Series”written by Ofelia Garcia and Jo Anne Kleifgen.  This offers alternative practices that will help improve the futures of ESL students.  It talks about building on students’ home languages and literacy practices in school as well as alternative assessment tools and curricular innovations. 

“Reading-Writing Connections from Theory to Practice” by Mary Heller.  I plan on using this to research how reading and writing are interconnected.  Each skill builds off of the other and this book will help me to see how I can integrate these skills together within my teaching.  It will also help me analyze how I can best help English language learners become literate in both languages. 

“Literacy and Bilingualism:  A Handbook for All Teachers” by Maria Brisk is a book that I am using in my research.  It really connects literacy to bilingual students and gives techniques that are proven to work.  Its goal is to help teachers learn more about bilingual students in order for us to maximize our instruction to fit their needs.

Integrating Language Skills

              The four skills that are the most important in English language teaching are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.  These skills are important to integrate together instead of addressing them separately.  They are all interconnected and each reinforces the others.  Brown Ch. 17 talks about different approaches that teachers use to integrate these skills.  Experiential language learning uses both sides of the brain and offers concrete experiences for learners.  Instead of telling students how language works they are given opportunities to use language.  This approach is one that I would consider using as an Early Childhood major.  Children learn best through hands-on experiences.

                Kumar talks about contextualizing linguistic input in Chapter 9 of Beyond Methods.  He emphasizes the importance of semantics and pragmatics within specific contexts.  It’s important to know a person’s cultural background.  Every culture has different norms and different phrases that are considered appropriate or inappropriate.  If this isn’t known then it can be easy to take something that’s said out of context and become offended.  For this reason, it’s beneficial to talk about each language represented in the classroom and come up with examples of how something being said could come across the wrong way when it’s translated into a different language/culture. 

                Kumar talks about the integration of language skills in Ch. 10.  The four language skills have a history of being separated.  It was seen that children learn to listen before they learn to speak and they learn to read before they learn to write.  This progression was suggested because it is the general order in which children learn their first language.  However, this does not prove to be true with learning a second language.  All of these skills build off of each other and when integrated they have the potential to offer different opportunities for different types of learners.  Everyone brings different learning strategies and styles into the classroom and it’s important for the teacher to provide multiple opportunities for students to use their skills.  Integrating skills also helps the student’s communicative competence.  The goal is not for a student to only learn how to write or only learn how to speak.  The goal is for the student to be proficient in all four skills in order to communicate at their highest potential.

Grammar & Language Awareness

              Grammar is an extremely important part of learning a L2.  Brown chapter 22 talks about how there are three dimensions of language that are all interconnected.  These three parts of language are grammar, semantics, and pragmatics.  Not one of these dimensions is sufficient on its own.  It’s important to be careful not to overwhelm students with linguistic terminology, but to embed it in meaningful, communicative contexts.  There is debate as to whether or not grammar teaching should even be an isolated class.  There are ways to teach grammar that are more meaningful to students.  Learners need to have the opportunity to use the language in communicative tasks.  It’s important to focus on forms that are problematic for specific learners.  Explicit grammar teaching is more effective for more advanced levels.  What does appropriate grammar teaching look like for beginning levels?  Do beginners need more than recasting, incidental focus on form, and corrective feedback? 

            Kumar chapters 7 and 8 talk about language awareness and activating intuitive heuristics.  Language awareness is a crucial part of language and content education.  The English language has so many rules and exceptions that it can be difficult to use correctly.  It’s helpful to have an awareness of why the language is formed the way that it is in order to understand it and use it correctly.  A person’s intuitive judgment can also help them learn the structures of the L2.  We have a natural tendency to know when something is wrong, even if we don’t know how to fix it.  In order to help learners with their discovery of themselves and their new language, it is beneficial to show them that structures are characterized by form, meaning, and use.