A Multimodal Case Study of an ESL Student
EDCI 352
October 18, 2017
A Multimodal Case Study of an ESL Student
As I reflected on my “Who Am I? Video” I was aware that I am a privileged Canadian. I do not have any physical or mental disabilities. English is my mother tongue. I was raised middle class, and I had extensive emotional support and school support throughout my kindergarten to grade 12 years from my parents and extended family. Without my mom’s tutoring in science and math, I would not have succeeded in these courses in high school. Since my parents completed BA’s in Science at UVIC, it was expected that I would complete a degree there as well. I know that I am a self-motivated learner and have tendencies to be a perfectionist. I also know that as a Christian, with liberal/conservative views this brings a certain bias to my teaching, although I hope to ensure that my own views stay out of the classroom. I greatly value the right to freedom of thought and freedom of speech, thus I am able to respect opinions in the classroom, which differ from my own. Perhaps my greatest assumption is that, “with effort and a positive attitude all students can have success in school.” I possess this attitude because I only found a few subjects to be difficult in school: Physics, Mathematics 11/12, and Chemistry 12. With a lot of effort, I did well in these courses. Honestly, before I was in the Education Department at UVIC, I viewed school as a competitive atmosphere, in which individuals were responsible for their own learning. However, being in the Education Program has radically changed my view on education. I firmly believe that teachers should teach their students the UVIC Education Program’s mandate, that “student’s success in learning is determined by the success of other’s learning,” so that students have empathy toward one another and help each other learn. I think that when students have this belief, it fosters a non-competitive classroom community. Therefore, I am aware that I come to the classroom with a studious and conservative mindset; however, I also bring a mindset that is empathetic to my student’s interests and needs, so that I may empower them.
During a Wednesday observation in an Intercultural Studies class at Vic High, I had the opportunity to participate in a one-on-one session with a Grade 11 Vietnamese ESL student. The most significant thing I learned about this student is that she has come to Canada, to eventually go to college here. Secondly, I learned that her family is very important to her. In this class, the ESL students were working on a paragraph, describing a significant “place” in their lives. She wrote about her grandma’s home, how it was a place in the countryside where her family would go and visit to escape the busyness of Hanoi, where she is from. She said that she had not been to her grandma’s house in a few years because her parents were too busy with work, and it was a long drive away. Obviously, there was a cultural gap between her and I, since she was raised in Vietnam and I in Canada. Since, English is her second language and she is still learning grammar, there were some grammatical errors in her writing and speech. I noticed in the classroom, that ESL students sometimes were confused by a word because culturally they knew something as another word. One example is the word “essay,” which many ESL students know as “composition.” I have been raised in Canadian culture so I have a greater understanding of Canadian language and slang. I felt empathy for her. I could not imagine having to learn a language and culture, while trying to maintain good grades for college, without the emotional support of your parents. I went to a college only 50 km away from my parents, just because my parents wanted me to get an education. I still had emotional support if I needed it, unlike her. She carries a lot more stress because her parents have invested a lot of money into her education, with the hope that she will have a good career to support her family.
To bridge the gap between my ESL students and myself, I will need to teach with clarity, incorporate “situated practice” into my lessons, and foster an inclusive and empowering classroom environment. I noticed in the Intercultural Studies classroom that lessons were broken down, sentence by sentence and taught slowly. As mentioned earlier, the students had been required to write one paragraph. The format of a paragraph was written on a chalkboard for the students to see. Another task the students were required to do was match a topic sentence to its supporting sentences. I noticed that when one of the sentences had the word “instability” in it, which was a word that the students were unfamiliar with, the teacher practiced “multimodal teaching” by placing a physical object, a hole puncher, on the edge of a desk to model the word. I believe that in my own classroom, using physical objects or visuals to teach ESL students would be a very valuable tool because visuals will help them remember concepts. Personally, I would like to take a course on how to teach ESL students, before I teach an ESL class because I found it difficult to try to remember the basics of writing a sentence and paragraph because it has become so instinctive.
In Shampa Biswas’ (2014) article “How to Teach Multiliteracies?” she explains that one of the components of teaching multiliteracies is “situated practice.” Biswas states that “situated practice suggests using student’s life experiences to create meaningful classroom activities within a community of learners.” In the classroom I observed, the teacher followed the “situated practice” teaching strategy because the students were required to write about a significant place in their life. I liked the personalized paragraph idea because then students could write about their own interests and the classroom activity was more meaningful to them. I think that in my own classroom to foster an inclusive community, I would have made the students publish their paragraphs about their “significant places” to a classroom blog, Google Drive or Google Classroom. Biswas argues that the “multiple literacies [teaching strategies] imply multimodal ways of communication, which include communications between other languages, using language within different cultures, and an ability to understand technology and multimedia.” Furthermore, Biswas states that “an online writing space helps both students and teachers promote online and offline collaboration.” I think that by giving students the opportunity to contribute to their online classroom and read about their peer’s interests, this would encourage a classroom community that respected one another’s cultural background. In addition, as Biswas states, the students by using an online resource would be able to learn a different “mode” of communication, relevant to living in the 21st century.
The article “Making Space: Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Throughout the K-12 Curriculum” (2008) states that “the achievement of social justice depends very much on citizens having an understanding of and appreciation for … the extent to which all people have common physical and psychological needs (e.g. to be heard, to feel safe, to be treated with respect), regardless of the differences in their attributes, capacities, or backgrounds” (3). I believe that it is valuable for ESL students to be able to write about their own personal experiences and culture so that they “feel heard.” I noticed when I observed the ESL class, that a lot of the students could not interact with me very well when I walked around because they were ashamed of their English language abilities and thus, they did not have a “voice.” This is why I think that a blog or Google Classroom, displaying student’s work is so important, so that ESL students can share their “voice.” I also liked that the teacher had her student’s desks in pairs throughout the classroom, because as ESL students, they could help each other out and feel “safe.” The “Making Space” article also states that “teachers most effectively promote among students a healthy respect and support for social diversity when they – actively teach about social diversity, social justice and the value of developing understanding and respect for all persons” (4) This article argues that the teacher must “model… inclusive examples, language, and resources in the classroom (4).” I think that respect can be promoted by having posters about respect in the classroom, by forcing students to work with students that they normally would not work with and by stopping any forms of racism that appear in the class. I also think that as a teacher you show respect to your students by giving them opportunities for empowerment. In Multiliteracies:” New Literacies, New Learning, Cope and Kalantzis (2009) state that “school was a universe of straightforward right and wrong answers, authoritarian texts and authoritarian teachers” but that now teaching should focus on “promoting self empowerment” and “diversity” (168-169). I saw this philosophy practiced in the ESL classroom, as the paragraph that they were writing was first graded on its flow of “ideas” and not grammar. I thought that this strategy of easing students into writing by marking them on just ideas was a way to build confidence in students in their abilities and “self-empower” them, because pointing out their many grammatical errors would have discouraged them. Furthermore, the teacher made the students go up in pairs, and choose what were the supportive sentences to a topic sentence, which allowed students to gain confidence in their language abilities and still feel safe. Therefore, to bridge the gap between my ESL students and myself, I hope to make my classroom a safe and welcoming place and to give students the opportunity to represent their culture through their learning and share their voice.
Peer Teaching an ESL 10/11 Class
October Reflection: Peer Teaching an ESL 10/11 Class
In October, for the first time I peer taught an English as a Second Language class, and I learned the importance of being prepared as a teacher, and allowing a “gradual release of responsibility” in my classroom. During a grade 10/11 Intercultural Studies class, the teacher asked my partner and myself if we wanted to lead the lesson. The students had completed a homework package on “supportive sentences” and we were now going over the answers together. For approximately 15 minutes, my teaching partner and I took turns reading the topic sentences given on the overhead, and then we had the students come up in pairs to explain which supportive sentences were correct of the ones listed.
Being thrown into my first teaching experience with little notice was exhilarating, and it served as a lesson for the future of the need to always be prepared as a teacher. The first thing I noticed when I stood with my peer at the front of the classroom was the authority and responsibility a teacher carries. I felt responsible for the successful learning of my students, since I had 20 to 30 kids listening to my instructions. I noticed that as a teacher, you had to think on the spot, to explain ideas, to react to students’ comments and to keep the lesson on track. Thus, one of the key things I took away from my first teaching experience was the need to anticipate the learning needs of the students and possible outcomes of a lesson and plan accordingly, to feel more confident and prepared to handle whatever arose during a class.
From my peer teaching experience, I also learned how critical it is as a teacher to “model,” “scaffold,” and allow a “gradual release of responsibility” in a classroom, which are teaching strategies I have learned in EDCI 747. This experience has taught me to always remember that lessons should be broken down into small steps, so that students can clearly understand the material. In this ESL class the teacher had first “modeled” the structure of a paragraph. She had written the structure of a paragraph on a chalkboard, so that students could refer to it. I felt that in my own classroom, after modeling things like sentence, paragraph, and essay structures, I too would have them displayed for students to refer to. My partner and I “scaffolded’ the structure of a paragraph to the students, by building off of concepts they knew like sentences, and teaching them the elements of a paragraph that they did not know, including topic sentence and supportive sentences. We also practiced the “gradual release of responsibility” teaching strategy, which I would employ in my future practice. In the “gradual release of responsibility” strategy, the teacher first instructs, then students teach one another either at the front of the class or through group work, and then students work on projects by themselves. The model is “I do, we do, you do.” In this ESL class, the teacher had first taught the structure of a paragraph, my partner and I then had the students come up in pairs to teach the class supportive sentences, before the students wrote paragraphs about their favorite places. I liked the strategy of making students come up in pairs because they could conquer nerves and practice their English public speaking skills together. I noticed that ESL teenagers were not thrilled to speak in front of the class, but going up in pairs at least meant that they had support. In addition, the lesson was more engaging because the students got to physically interact with the lesson. In my ED-D 401 class, we have learned that a key tactic to enhance students’ memory is to ensure that they are “being active rather than passive” individuals during a lesson. In this lesson as students rehearsed a paragraph’s structure aloud, it helped them remember it. Furthermore, my partner and I as teachers were not the only ones speaking and had less authority over the students’ learning, which was important because I think that is valuable for the classroom community if students believe that they can learn from each other. Therefore, as I peer taught a lesson on paragraph structure, one of the key things I learned was the need to “model” and break down concepts into small steps, so that they are more easily grasped. However, the most valuable thing I learned was the importance of allowing “a gradual release of responsibility,” and letting students teach one another in the classroom, so that students learn to take responsibility for their own learning and thinking, which is every teacher’s goal for their students.