Expanding Literacy and Creativity in Lower-Intermediate English Language Learner - Case Study Example

 Expanding Literacy and Creativity in Lower-Intermediate English Language Learner Background Teaching ELL can be challenging for a TOEFL situation. This class will be taught on-site at a language school, in a large room with a 20 student capacity. The class size, however, is more like 10-15 students of various ages between 18-45, of a lower intermediate level. The main thing to remember in terms of background is conditioning. Classical conditioning states that a certain kind of stimulus acquires value when it is repeated and it is also paired with a sort of positive response. From this view, students learn by sorting out their responses to different stimuli in general ways and in specific ways. Operant conditioning states that individuals will determine their own actions and then learn from the response that comes from these actions, whether it is positive or negative. Reinforcement is about keeping that action viable while punishment is about stopping the action or behavior. Making a cue for a student or prompting them involves getting them to respond in the right way to a situation. A smaller class, such as the one planned, accounts for more individual attention that can be given to each student on a one-on-one basis. Students in this size class can also form integrative groups and work on exercises in small teams. Many students have short attention spans, especially these days, and there are also common problems of lack of organization, poor sociality, and poor skills. To address these concerns, TOEFL teachers need to think more and more about how they can make applied behavior analysis to see what works best in a given situation in a way that is creative and kinetic rather than rigid and unmoving. For example, teaching English skills to a student who lacks them should not be used as an end of itself: it should be accompanied with an explanation of what the student is doing creatively so that they learn from the experience and it becomes useful. Students who have problems such as those mentioned above can also be encouraged by a group system. This understanding of what works in the TOEFL classroom environment must also include creativity awareness in the students, and also must make the teacher think about how to be more creative as a teacher in their expression within the classroom. The focus of the proposed lesson in this report is on teaching ELL a lesson on reading skills, focusing on phonemes, rhyming sounds, and a creative literacy project which also includes elements of essay formation through outlines. Rationale Students should also be free to apply the material learned in class using effective methods of their own; effective teaching both sets and follows the standard, and different students learn at different rates according to ability. This is why the role of meta cognition is so important to understand. “Students who experience difficulties decoding exert most of their efforts on trying to identify the symbols and words on the page, and demonstrate limited cognitive capacity to process meaning from the text” (Houchins, 2008). Students like these will understand the progression of ideas through using the outline model in exercises that will show the mastery of underlying structure to be far-reaching. Students should also spend more time on presenting effectively structured, coherent presentations than drilling extensively on the perhaps more polished aspects of construction, such as varied transitional phrases and the effective integration of turned phrases. After mastering the basics, the students would follow the same pattern of presenting effective narrative and descriptive passages, with more time spent on a creative story which involves the core concepts presented, and the outline and essay which are integrative academic concepts. Many critics state that the current classroom environment in many ELL schools lacks the training available to inspire students to be creative and work to solve problems in an original manner, but by integrating different elements of literature into ELL courses, teachers can be more creative as well as more encouraging and challenging of students in terms of creativity. Generally by operating without secrecy and with a high level of accountability, the classroom will be looked upon as possessing integrity and fairness in its operations, and will gain the trust of the student and increase the level of responsibility required of its own employees and society as a whole. Theoretically, it all seems rather simple for codes of ethics to promote this sort of behavior through problem centered learning. “Problem centered learning moves us even further from teacher control to learner control lesion models. Now students become more involve4d in the planning and implementation of lessons. Following the development of an initial question, students continue their investigation until the problem is solved” (Peters, 2008). In reality, the situation is much more complex, since a classroom is by nature made up of many different individuals. A classroom is a small organizational structure, and within this structure, there may be individuals, both teachers and students, who are inspired to behave in different manners. Many of these reasons have to do with the goals of the individual. If a teacher has high expectations for all students, this will cause them to reach for the next level of achievement. Overview TOEFL teachers need to challenge students to be creative in ways that express fluency flexibility originality and elaboration—learning to a higher level. After reading literature related to core concepts of phonemics, I would have students write a story, and then get in groups and trade their story to other students to continue, working on the same template. This could be done by simply folding paper and wouldn’t require a lot of effort out of the teacher because they obviously don’t want to expend much effort on doing things themselves. Naturally in brainstorming ideas, there is going to be a more unrealistic and speculative perspective compared to actual classroom tested strategies. One also has to ask how much is creative and how much cyclical in terms of integrating different subjects. This lesson plan includes strategy formation such as SQ3R and other forms. I chose to use rhyming, acronyms, outlining and note taking as exercises to use in class, before the story-making assignment. In dealing with different types of students, all English language learners, specific learning activities must be made for each group, taking into account the group’s ability to master the basics of strategy and communication. Adaptable and willing to work differently in different situations, an effective teacher would be able to meet the different needs of different students while still maintaining an allegiance to the content standards of writing strategies and applications. It is key that ELL students learn how to effectively present their ideas, both analytical and creative, on paper. In this planned lesson, an effective teacher would both follow the blueprint set by the content standard and also set their own standard of excellence in dealing with these differing groups of students. “Listen (say the answer). Your turn (repeat the question and students answer). Starting over (back up in the exercise and present the steps in order). Listen (give the correct statement). Say it with me. (signal) Your turn. (signal)” (Ebey, 2000). Students who have literacy problems will face significant limitations. “Illiteracy has been associated with increase school suspension, overall academic failure, and reduced employment opportunities (Brunner, 1993; Katsiyannis & Archwamety, 1999). It is estimated that reading failure is annually associated with $224 billion in welfare payments, crime enforcement, employment ineptitude, and lost tax revenues” (Houchins, 2008). The content standard of interest involves the successful promulgation of reading strategies and applications, both creative and analytical, for ELL students in a mixed lower-intermediate classroom. An effective TOEFL teacher would meet the needs of different students while following the standardized goals of, in my opinion, one of the more vital fields of study for learning students: successful written communication. By tailoring specific learning activities to engage the varied interests of different types of students, the effective teacher would first present and then determine the students’ mastery of the integral basics of reading and writing class presentations. While the relationships between structure and analysis can still be stressed, there would be less effective multi-tasking or multi-presenting of the various materials to be covered. In dealing with organization and essay mechanics students should be effectively introduced to the more structural concerns of essay-writing through extensive drilling regarding the presentation of outlines before actual essays are attempted. Hands-on activities are ones in which students actively demonstrate concepts and learning by handling materials and using them directly rather than theoretically. For example, the above lesson on different types of phonemes and outlines for essays is a hands-on lesson, because instead of just looking at pictures, the students are actually handling the real situation of the lesson through talking and generating examples. Cooperative learning can facilitate progress in English language learning because it focuses on regulating the type of learning style that the student will have and relating it to their self-esteem and self-concept, or their self-efficacy within a social group, or how much they feel they are going to succeed at a given task or at solving a given problem. Students may use different strategies such as taking notes or using flash-cards before finding the one that is right for them, so the teacher needs to realize that cooperative learning is not just about their directives, but also about listening to the students’ innovative input. Students often have valuable things to add to the classroom, and it should not simply focus on the teacher. An integrative, collaborative approach is often the best approach. The effective TOEFL teacher will have a master plan going, but at the same time, they will not be so absolutely dedicated to this plan that they will not consider straying from it when the opportunity presents itself, which it often does, and they will not be afraid of changing the plan to fit the situation, and giving more responsibility to the students for problem-solving as well as cooperative learning. Teachers can plan in many different ways and can provide their students with many different types of work, and these should be based on creating a warm and supportive atmosphere in which students can feel that their work is valued, cumulating in an in-class creative essay where the students demonstrate their skills. Materials Whiteboard and markers Worksheets on phonemes Worksheets on creating essay outlines Extra paper, pencils, pens Overhead projector or computer projector for core concept explanations Assessment It is sometimes difficult to see real change when one is relying on assessment as something that happens every day, and while it is important to keep tabs on students on a daily basis, it is also important to have a sort of fall-back assessment that occurs over periods of time that are spaced more widely apart. The day-to-day assessments operate in one way because they make sure that none of the students are struggling or are feeling overwhelmed by the work level or subject matter. But it is perhaps more important to take the more spaced-out intervals of time into consideration as an assessment base, because here is where the true progress of the student is seen in terms of what they have learned and assimilated over a period of time. In other words, these are the visible results of progress, while day-to-day assessment measures are more of a safety valve to make sure that students are progressing according to overall academic plans. Overall, the TOEFL teacher needs to base assessment on overall goals and objectives regarding the foundation of fluency. “Fluency is defined as the ability "to read a text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression’ and has been identified as a critical component in the transition from 'learning to read" to 'reading to learn.' A nonfluent reader has difficulty with word recognition, thereby contributing to the slow, laborious reading resulting in minimal comprehension” (Houchins, 2008). The TOEFL teacher could use this idea with an ELL in the classroom by respecting their individual needs and also encouraging other students to act as helpers and intermediaries for key concept retention. Establishing key ideas is important because it focuses on key assessment and key or basic requirements. There is often challenge in the classroom. “Project READ, one of the first studies to examine reading performance of incarcerated youth with a nationally representative sample indicated that the average reading level of incarcerated students in ninth grade was fourth grade reading level. This study also found that more than one third of these students were illiterate” (Houchins, 2008). Effective reciprocal teaching requires a fair degree of adaptability. The standards are set in an effective blueprint for establishing and activating prior knowledge, but this should not be taken to mean that teaching methods should be likewise set in stone- different students learn in different ways, and even teaching a classroom of mainstream students requires the teacher to reserve a certain degree of adaptability in presenting the material effectively, even when using graphic organizers and other A/V tricks. A final way to assess the students’ learning at the end of class would be to collect and mark their essays and stories. The stories would simply be lightly edited for grammar and returned so that the students can spend the remaining class time reading them together. The short essays, however, would be graded on a standard A-F format and marked for revision and correction, according to how long the teacher has to view corrections. In a two hour class, this time frame may be temporally limited. REFERENCE Dudley-Evans, A. and St John, M.J., 1998, Developments in English for Special Purposes: a multi-disciplinary approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Edwards, C. and J. Willis (eds.), 1995, Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Ebey, T (2000). Corrective Reading. http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:1B7EfKNvuHUJ:www.k12.wa.us/conferences/summerinstitute2004/materials/readingFirst/TaraEbey-Corrective%2520ReadingOSPIpacket.doc+corrective+reading+instruction&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us Gillet, J C Temple, and A Crawford (2008). Understanding Reading Problems. New York: Allyn and Bacon. Houchins, D (2008). A Multi-State Study Examining the Impact of Explicit Reading Instruction. Journal of Correctional Education. Direct Instruction Results in Measurable Evidence of Reading Success; Progress Attributed to Corrective Reading Program (2003). PR NEWS. Read More