Blog Entry 4

Blog Entry 4

My learning from this course has grown tremendously from the start of the semester to this point now. My knowledge of ELL learners and how they learn, speak, and write along with strategies for teaching ELL students has grown exponentially. When I first started this class, I didn’t know what to expect, because I didn’t know much about ELL students and the way to instruct these students. But I quickly learned that teaching ELL and ESL students are somewhat the same and I found a connection between the two. These connections from the text to classroom really let me see how I would implement the strategies and procedures in my classroom.

            Some strategies and methods I have learned throughout this course is the audiolingual method. I referred to this method from the book Teaching by Principles, “this audiolingual method used a great deal of oral activity- pronunciation drills, pattern practice, and authentic conversations with peers.” (Brown, H. D., & Lee, H., p. 21). This strategy stuck with me because it appealed to me as a student and teacher because the only language learning method I knew of was the grammar method, that I was taught in school. So, when I discovered the audiolingual method it seemed like it was a lot more beneficial to students with oral speaking development and comfortability speaking within another language. This method also stuck with me because the teacher I interviewed also used this method this method of teaching, and she really explained to me how great this method was with students.

            This class will affect my professional practice in ways I didn’t even think of before I started taking this course. The knowledge I learned about ELL students can be transferred to everyday teaching like the knowledge I learned about language skills, and teaching reading, writing and grammar. This information from this course expanded my knowledge on how I should teach students for the better. this knowledge from this course can transfer because all students are ELL learners of some sort. Especially in the primary level of education. As far addressing the topics we went over in class, I think that every topic we went over was beneficial. But the topics I think were most important where when we started the to go into teaching of the language skills like listening, speaking, reading and writing. I feel like these topics were beneficial to me because the book went into detail about strategies we can use and the startegies connected to my learning in my placement for student teaching. So, I think these topics that delve into the teaching of language skills should receive a bit more attention in my opinion.

             The use of instructional technology like blogs have really impacted my teaching philosophy. Before taking this course, I had never used a blog before, and really struggled to set one up in the beginning of class. Although I have used instructional technology like digital storytelling and videos, blogs were never a part of that technological instruction. When I started using the blog I was a little hesitant because it was first time using it. But as I kept getting on the blog throughout the course I really had grown to like it, because the interaction between students was very easy to keep up with and all the discussions were all on one page. From such a positive experience using the blogs, I would like to try to incorporate this into my classroom.

References

Brown, H. D., & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.