Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Continuation

I handed in my teaching journal today, but would like to keep this blog up and running. It was really useful to review and look over the entries again, as I was compiling and editing them. It's just useful to keep a record of my reflections: what challenges I've faced, what questions I've had, and how those questions, how my perceptions of those challenges, have changed over time.

Saw a film the other day that talked about what it means to be a "student-athlete" as opposed to an "athlete." In the same spirit, I'm not simply a teacher. I'm a student-teacher. It will be useful, in this space, to reflect not only on my development as an educator, but also as an educatee.

In TESL class today we discussed and reflected upon the observations we'd done this semester. The teacher commented that, in retrospect she can see that some of the teachers that were observed simply are not good teachers. In particular, she complained that a few of the observed teachers didn't follow the lesson plan or the syllabus; they were relaxed and basically winged it.

There is absolutely such a thing as an underprepared teacher, and there is absolutely such a thing as winging it in order to fill out class-time, rather than to progress towards a goal. However, I'm not convinced that a structured lesson plan is always the best way to teach a class.

Lessons do need to be planned. The instructor absolutely needs to have a solid understanding of what the students can do, and what they need to learn. Classroom activities should always be structured with this in mind: we're going somewhere, not just passing time.

It's popular these days to think of information being organized in a non-linear manner. Instead of categorizing information on the internet, we do Google searches. Contemporary linguistics research suggests that, rather than processing information in order to create intelligible sound, we cluster it. And I'm tempted to think of lesson plans in a similar way.

There is definitely a linear progression of time throughout a semester, and from the beginning to the end of a class. And there is a linear structure to much education: first you learn the foundation, then you learn the details. While there's constant negotiation among levels (the "zone of proximal development"), it seems useful to teach first one thing and then the next.

Nevertheless, there needs to be room for spontenaity and flexibility. Let's say that the students need to work on linking & reduction. I can structure a lesson plan that first shows an example of the way native speakers link & reduce sounds, then ask students for examples from their L1s, get them to come up with examples from English, provide some more examples, give some time for practice, and so on...

Or I can brainstorm ways to make them conscious of linking & reduction, materials that will teach the English method of linking & reduction, stress-identification activities, pronunciation practice, fluency practice, and the like. I can prepare these materials, and have them with me all week, and insert them as I find the opportunity. The "topic" of class that week might be something totally unrelated, perhaps something having to do with vocabulary. But I might spend ten minutes on Monday introducting linking & reduction, and then as we work on other things throughout the week, throw in practice on linking and on reduction. If I observe the students becoming very conscious of the way their speech flows, I might interrupt whatever else is going on and spend half an hour working on fluency.

In a real sense, this is a way to intelligently "wing it." Rather than structuring every second of class time, I keep an eye on the students, keep an eye on their needs, and constantly adapt activities to suit their immediate problems, without forgetting long-term goals. While any given day of class might depart wildly from the lesson plan, I would still be teaching effectively.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Issues?

I've become convinced that time management is the biggest issue facing effective teaching. I don't mean this as a generalization about all pedagogy, but rather as the way I ought to approach teaching, for the time being at least. If I'm to manage class time effectively, I must be well-prepared. I must understand my students' needs and abilities. I must be able to think on my feet, and to adapt the lesson plan according to the students' pace and progress.

A good rule of thumb is to have more planned than can be accomplished in one class period, and then to prioritize. "Today we're going to work on linking and reduction." So I plan to spend some time discussing what "linking & reduction" is, demonstrate it in my own speech, elicit examples from the students, give them some mechanics as well as handouts, and then time for practice. But what if they've all already got it down pretty well? I need to be ready to fine-tune their speech. What if, on the other hand, they can't even get the concept? I need to figure out where the gap is, and spend class time teaching to that. What if some have got it down well, and others are struggling with the concept itself? I need to find a way to diversify class activities so that everyone's doing something meaningful. And always with an eye on the clock. Those fifty minutes need to build on the previous class, and lay the groundwork for the following class. To do this, I can't get bogged down in minutae, but neither can I plan to little and spend ten or more minutes just trying to make the time stretch.

If I have five activities planned, and realize that we'll only get through two, which two are the most important? In order to assess this on the spot, I need to be well-prepared, and constantly conscious of the clock.

Don't want to be overt, though, don't want to cut students off and say "sorry, there's just not enough time." Sometimes there's no choice, but if it's possible to watch every second while maintaining the illusion that everybody is having their say and saying as much as they want to-- that, of course, is ideal.

Discussion

This coming Wednesday will be the last day of ASE 2, the course that has essentially been my apprenticeship as an instructor in the Academic Spoken English program. I've been reflecting on it over the past few days, especially on how it's shaped my understanding of good teaching.

ASE 2 is a very interactive class, and is in some senses devoid of content. That is to say, its goal is to nurture a skill or set of skills, rather than to impart information. Whether the class does or does not cover any given topic is relatively unimportant: what matters is that the students get consistent feedback on their spoken English and communication skills, and that they have a forum where they can discuss issues with us and with their peers. Our job is to guide and to fill in the gaps. This said, even our "lectures" more closely resemble teacher-guided discussion than they do the one-way imparting of information.

This semester I've come to really value that interactive aspect of teaching; what you might call guiding a student towards self-discovery. The teacher is, in a sense, more like an enthusiastic coach, pushing the students towards their goals, making sure they practice, teaching them skills as the need arises, but not imparting information in a formal way. This is the method we've been modeling for the students who are themselves teachers.

And in a teacher-training course it's probably the best model. You really only learn this sort of thing through practice, so the teacher's job is to multiply the opportunities for practice and to guide the practice.

But other classes have different goals. Even ASE 1 and ASE 3 will be different. There is a right and a wrong way to pronounce certain segments, and learning correct pronunciation does not involve negotiation. To make a "th," you put your tongue between your teeth. No exceptions. And in the sciences, especially introductory level, it will be similar. The students need to know how to take measurements correctly. They need to know how to correctly analyze data. There are clear-cut situations in which a room has one expert and many novices, and it's the expert's job to impart knowledge to the novices.

And this is something I haven't practiced or concentrated on much (at all!) this semester. Maybe that's OK. Academic Spoken English certainly involves far more coaching than it does lecturing, and it's probably safe to say that most ITA's are pretty good at being authorities in their field; their weaknesses relate to interactive communication, so this is the area that needs to be developed. Fair enough. But it's not all there is.

Video

I was taped last Wednesday, teaching part of the ASE 2 lecture for the day, on "group discussion." I watched the video right after class.

It was the first time I've seen myself teach. Every week in ASE 1 the students see themselves on video, and often freak out. "I didn't know I sounded like that." "Is that what I really look like?" Because of this, I was a little nervous about watching myself on tape.

The surprising thing is that I was impressed: I liked my voice, and I liked my presence, in generaly. Did notice a few nervous tics, and a habit to lean forward with my hands on the chair, when I could have been moving more.

Class was structured so that I first introduced a brief discussion: the students broke into groups and had to discuss a topic chosen from a variety written on the blackboard. We then talked for a few minutes about what ideas about discussion had come up in the course of the short discussion, using that to transition into a talk about what makes up a successful discussion, as well as the benefits of using discussion as a teaching technique. Finally, they took half an hour to actually have a discussion, moderated by one of the students; Gordon and I sat back to watch.

My goal was basically to present a few ideas on useful skills and behaviors both for moderators and participants in a discussion, and I wanted it to be as interactive as possible, ideally eliciting most or all of the ideas from the class. In a sense, it was similar to the PowerPoint presentation from the previous week-- I had an outline in mind, and my job was to elicit that outline from the students. Not having PowerPoint, however, did give me more flexibility.

I decided to write down ideas on the board, as students mentioned them. There were two reasons for this: 1) for me to make sure all important issues had been covered 2) as a reference for the students during their moderated discussion. Writing the issues & skills down also encouraged participation, I hoped-- by writing down what they said, I showed the students that their words mattered. They were creating the material, in a sense.

I'm a visual learner and need this reference. A thing can be explained to me a thousand times, but I won't get it until I have a brief outline of it written down. I realized, upon watching the video, that perhaps noting down the issues the students brought up was more important for me than it was for them. This tactic tied me to one spot, and it made it harder to listen to the students: they were less willing to speak while I wrote, despite my assurances that I was still listening. It's also awkward, though not impossible, to maintain eye contact while writing on the blackboard. Writing their ideas also created an implicit hierarchy: it was obvious that if I didn't write something down, then no matter how important I said it was, I didn't consider it very relevant.

It was a pretty interactive lecture: I asked questions, but they provided the content. They had good things to say, and my only job was to synthesize and organize what they were saying, and to keep them on task. Not very tough. Next time I teach a similar lesson, I'd like to think about different ways of presenting the material. The blackboard was definitely better than PowerPoint-- it gave me more flexibility and the students more control-- but it has its drawbacks as well.

Some other ways of keeping track of a lecture:
- nothing. Talk, ask questions, take my own notes and summarize/ repeat information based on those notes. It's the students' responsibility, as the discussion progresses, to take their own notes based not on any written material but on what we talk about, and what I emphasize.
- handouts. Write up an outline of the presentation, print out a copy for each student, and distribute the copies. The students can take additional notes on the handouts.
- nothing, but make my notes accessible on the Internet after class.
- assign each student to keep track of a different aspect of the presentation. Give them 5 - 10 min towards the end of class to "compare notes": to re-hash, in their own words, what in the lecture was important, and how best to remember it.
- handouts of details: provide handouts, not of the outline of the presentation, but of quotes, examples, photographs, and the like. The handouts are not designed to replace or even augment the notes, but rather to serve as visual aids that the teacher can reference and give illustrations from.
- PowerPoint on a similar model: not the skeleton of the lecture, but rather maps/ pictures/ charts to go along with the lecture.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Power Point

I've never been a fan of Power Point presentations; as an undergraduate in English I never had a professor make use of the program. A number of my video/ feedback students in ASE 1 are giving almost all of their presentations in Power Point. In general, I'm unimpressed. It's too easy to put a bunch of text up on the board and then just read it. Some students have made use of the program to put up visual aids; some of these have been successful. But there are dozens of other ways of using visual aids without plugging them into expensive slideshow software.

Today Gordon had me deliver a short talk on the effective use of Power Point in a lecture. He provided me with a very good, well-organized PowerPoint slideshow which was a useful tool for what I think was a pretty good lecture. However, it was still very limiting.

There was a great deal of interaction with the students, but that interaction was pretty much limited to prompting them to say whatever was next on the slideshow. I was eliciting information-- not any relevant information, but rather the precise information that had already been prepared, in the exact order it had been prepared in. One of the students, in our earlier discussion about PowerPoint, had compared the program to a movie. It's already scripted, nothing about it is flexible, the student's job is simply to sit back and watch the show. There's no room for variation, no room for response to questions.

The best thing about the PowerPoint slideshow is that it had a structure and an outline. My talk today was one of the best things I've taught, mostly because it was well-planned and organized (and I'm not the one who put it together). Once I had the outline and the structure, though, the actual slideshow wasn't that much of a boon. I could have written my outline on the blackboard just as easily, with the advantage of being able to adapt the outline to what was elicited from the students.

I'm torn. On the one hand, I don't like PowerPoint and don't ever want to use it. I believe I could have given a better, more flexible talk, without being tied to the slideshow. On the other hand, my students are using PowerPoint in their lectures and will be expected to use it hin future academic presentations. It's my responsibility to help them use it well.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Lesson Plans


These are lesson plans for the first week of an ASE 1 class. As I’ve never taught ASE 1 and am not familiar with its exact syllabus and requirement, the actual plans may be somewhat different. This is a starting point.

Students: graduate students at the University of Florida; advanced English speakers with a variety of L1s. They will all have scored similarly on the SPEAK test, but may have diverse levels of proficiency. An important part of the first few lessons will be determining where the students are & what their needs are.

Goals: score of 50 or higher on the SPEAK test. Ss are in this class because of low SPEAK scores, so T needs to recognize that they will participate more readily if they see how the class will address their goals of better test performance. T needs to emphasize that effective English communication = high test score. T's goals are for students to be able to communicate effectively in American academia. As most Ss will be TAs, this encompasses all areas of effective spoken English.

The classroom should have a computer with Internet access connected to an overhead projector.

Objectives for the week:
- Ss & T will have shared understanding of the motivations & objectives for the course
- Ss, by gaining basic fluency in the IPA, will acquire tools for independent pronunciation work
- Ss will be acquainted w/ one another, & comfortable & relaxed interacting w/ one another.
- Ss will be encouraged to bring up issues related to their English communication skills

Day 1: Course Goals

Objectives:
- Ss & T begin negotiating objectives of class
- Ss get acquainted & comfortable
- T acquires ethnographic data on Ss, as well as general idea of their strengths & weaknesses

Chit-chat (10 min)
- T introduces self to Ss as they enter, makes small talk and endeavors to get Ss chatting. This establishes a relaxed classroom atmosphere and lowers the affective filter by showing Ss that T is interested in them as people. It should also give T a sense of what the classroom dynamic will be like
Roll call (5 min)
- T intro's roll call as a way for the students to remember one another's names. T ensures that name pronunciation is accurate, makes sure that Ss are being called by their preferred names. T asks each S to briefly introduce self-- national origin, field of study. T takes note of ethnographic data, as well as getting a general sense of S confidence & ability.
Discussion (10 min)
- T asks Ss to think about their goals for the class, and briefly intro's T's goals for the course: effective academic English communication. T prompts Ss to consider what is involved in effective communication
Coffee Break (10 min)
- Before breaking, T encourages Ss to consider their goals for the course. Ss are then released to spend a few minutes getting coffee or tea and chatting with one another. The hope is that they will get better acquainted with one another in a relaxed atmosphere, so as to be comfortable interacting in the future. This is also a chance for the T to observe S interaction so as to better understand their individual strengths & weaknesses.
Discussion (10 min)
- Ss discuss their goals for the course. T ensures that each S gets a chance to speak, and encourages reticent Ss to elaborate on their ideas. Some Ss may simply be shy or frightened, and it will take a few more classes for them to open up, so T should be careful not to push too hard. However, Ss should be made aware that T is interested in everybody's input-- nobody can hide out in the back.
- T writes S goals on the board, asks other Ss for input on each goal
- time permitting, T talks about own goals for the class (and why)

for next class:
T looks over the variety of L1s in the class in order to get a sense of what cultural and pronunciation issues to expect.

Day 2: IPA

Objectives: Students will have a sense of the relationship of pronunciation to other aspects of spoken English, and will have a basic understanding of what the IPA is and how phonetic transcription can aid them in independent pronunciation work.

Materials: IPA chart for English

Chit-chat, coffee & issues (10 min)
- class begins informally, Ss have chance to get coffee or tea, T gets them to talk about how the semester is going, what classes are like, what issues/ problems they anticipate or are already confronting. Anything that cannot be addressed immediately should be taken note of, to be addressed in future classes and used in future plans. T wraps up with roll-call, again emphasizing its purpose in helping Ss learn one another's names. T should continue starting classes with roll-call until observing all Ss comfortable with all names.
Discussion (15 min)
- T prompts S's to generate list of skills involved in academic communication, then fills out important areas they've missed:
- asking & fielding Q's
- cultural differences
- pronunciation
- enunciation
- fluent speech
- vocabulary
- grammar
- emphasize that effective communication is possible without perfect pronunciation
Introducing IPA (25 min)
-T discusses discrepancies b/w written & spoken English. When an S has difficulty pronouncing a word, there are 2 problems @ work.
1. knowing how word ought to be pronounced
2. pronouncing word correctly.
Because English spelling is deceptive, a pronunciation problem-- even for native speakers!-- can often be the result of the reader not knowing correct pronunciation. Can we figure out how to pronounce a word just by reading it?
-examples of deceptive spelling: tip, tiger, creation, through, tough, bough, bought . Ask students to come up with disambiguating ways to spell these words. Hopefully there will be some disagreement, and the difficulty of a phonetically reliable spelling will be apparent. Ask Ss how these issues are resolved in the orthography of their L1s.
-intro idea of IPA-- standardized phonetic transcription, so that problem #1 becomes a non-issue and problem #2 may be addressed directly.
- write out the above words phonetically
- hand out IPA chart, give URL of interactive IPA online
- highlight segments relevant to American English. Some Ss may have learned a different dialect/ accent of English, or may believe that other dialects (British English, for example) are superior. Emphasize that diversity of dialects is desirable, and that American English (even Southern English) is not inferior. American (Southern?) English will be most often used in this class, because that's what we speak here!
-homework-- look over IPA chart, listen to segments relevant to American English online.

Day 3: Syllabus & IPA

Objectives: Students should have good understanding of the course syllabus and of course resources available online. They should have a basic familiarity with the IPA.

Materials:
syllabus
IPA flashcards
handouts of mouth diagram
handouts of Alligator article about homelessness in Gainesville.

Issues, coffee, chit-chat (10 min)
-continue roll-call if needed
segue into syllabus discussion (10 min)
- discuss projects, goals, make sure Ss know URL of ASE1 site . Intro them to resources there. (why wait until Day 3? - to make sure that class population is stabilized; we've got all the Ss that we'll have for the rest of the semester) Let Ss know what on syllabus is flexible; encourage them to reflect on issues or concerns they may have with it, let them know they're welcome to approach T at any time in person, phone, or email w/ issues.
IPA (25 min)
- intro problematic pairs & segments
- flashcards. @ first, T shows flashcard to group, prompts Ss to guess what the sound is, affirms correct answer & has them repeat in chorus. Depending on how well they seem to grasp this, T should intro b/w 5 & 15 flash cards, starting w/ the most problematic segments (vowels?) Encourage Ss to come up with words that contain these sounds.
- distribute flashcards to Ss and have them quiz each other
- emphasize that purpose here is literacy in IPA-- NOT perfect pronunciation. correct pronunciation can be developed later in the language lab. here we're simply learning to recognize segmental differences. Ss should be able to see a word written out phonetically & all interpret it the same way-- whether they can reproduce it accurately is of secondary importance.
- if they seem ready for it, hand out mouth diagram and bring up interactive mouth diagram on computer , talk briefly about places of articulation, frics vs. stops, voiced vs. unvoiced. Make sure Ss understand they're not expected to know all this perfectly-- the goal is to give them a very basic familiarity with the terminology and the idea of this way of looking at speech. If it seems helpful, this should be enough to allow them to work/ consider more on their own time.
Homework (5 min)
- hand out copies of Alligator articles. Ask students to look at headlines, photos & captions, but not to worry too much about the text. At home, spend a little time thinking about what they've seen of homelessness / poverty here in Gainesville. Do students know how Americans address these issues? How are they addressed in home country?

Day 4: Wrap-up & Discussion

Objectives: Conclude students' introduction to the IPA. Heighten students' awareness of local issues and of local media (Alligator). Observe how comfortable students are with group discussion-- gather data on what will need to be worked on in future lessons.

Materials:
additional copies of Alligator articles
mouth diagram (if not covered last time)

Coffee, chit-chat, issues (10 min)

Follow-up from day 3 (5 - 20 min)
- if we got through diagram of mouth on day 3, then briefly review this, concentrating not on accurate terminology but rather on ability to distinguish what makes s different from th, for example, or f vs. p, or t vs. d. Re-emphasize that what matters is not knowing the terminology, nor even (at this point) accurately reproducing the sounds-- but rather identifying segments and understanding what makes them unique.
- if we were unable to finish everything on day 3, then go over everything that was left unfinished. Take as much time as is needed.
- with flashcards, introduce the rest of the IPA, emphasizing symbols that are not part of standard English orthography.
Group discussion (15 - 30 min)
- purpose of 1st discussion is mostly to see how they handle it. Who's willing to speak up? Who's shy? What issues need to be addressed in order for all students to participate freely? T will use this info to prepare future lessons.
- make sure students still have copies of the Alligator article. If not, hand out duplicates.
- give students a chance to bring up issues. If they don't, prompt them:
- what do you know about poverty here in Gainesville?
- are homeless people responsible for their situation?
- should you give money to panhandlers?
- are homeless people mostly the same race as the rest of Americans?
- do you think that race plays a role in poverty?
- would you see an article like this in a local newspaper in your home country?
- how are poverty and homelessness addressed in your home country?
conclusion (5 min)
- get feedback on discussion topic. What would Ss like to discuss in the future?
- bring up IPA again: this is a resource, not a requirement. If it helps Ss get beyond issues with English spelling, great; if they can do fine without it, no problem. They can deal w/ pronunciation in greater depth in Language Lab; hopefully getting them thinking about segmental diffs & the shape of the mouth will make this LL time more effective.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Combined observation report

UF's Academic Spoken English program (ASE) provides teacher training for the university's international graduate students. Some courses are pre-service, teaching prospective teaching assistants (TAs) how to effectively teach English-language undergraduate courses, and others are in-service, mentoring current TAs and providing them with a forum where they can share insights and discuss problems related to teaching American students.
While ASE is, strictly speaking, a kind of ESL class, the program's philosophy is that the best way to teach effective English-language communication is simply to teach effective communication. Therefore the program is essentially one of teacher-training, concentrating on those areas where international teachers might find the greatest difficulty.
ASE 1-- an intensive pre-service training course-- is divided into three team-taught components: Language Lab, Video / Feedback, and Lecture. In Language Lab the students, assisted by a professor and by TAs, concentrate on individual areas of weakness-- lots of pronunciation practice. In Video / Feedback, they give presentations which are recorded and then workshopped. All three of my observations were of this lecture component of one of the ASE 2 classes. The first observation occurred early in the semester, giving me a sense of where the class was at the beginning. I did my last two observations back-to-back in the second half of the semester, in order to see what progress had been made. Observing consecutive classes gave me a picture of the continuity from one class to the other.
The lecture component has little in common with a traditional “lecture” course, but gets its name because it is the only portion of ASE 2 that is teacher-fronted in any regular sense. Lecture focuses on communication issues, mostly in the context of small-group discussion, debate and opinion-sharing. The goal is to get students comfortable with real-time academic English. For the first observation, I met with the teacher briefly before class. The lesson plan, which she said was fairly typical, was split into two major sections. The first was a warm-up where students presented news articles, and the second was a small-group discussion activity about an article on a controversial topic, chosen by the teacher. My focus in this observation was student interaction-- how does the teacher encourage and elicit participation among all students? Because successful completion of this course implies ability to interact effectively with American undergraduates, peer interaction is an essential component.
All nine students were male. Seven were from east Asia, one from France, and one from Turkey. As they entered the classroom, two Chinese students immediately engaged the teacher, telling an anecdote that related to the previous week's assignment. It was a funny story, and they were eager to communicate its humor. Then one of the students-- the butt of the joke-- continued to talk about the previous class's assignment, which involved finding a newspaper article and presenting it. As he read the paper, he said, he "had trouble breaking it up into thought groups." He was relating real-life experience-- reading the paper-- to course material (the previous week had concentrated on phrasal stress and thought groups).
Other students entered more quietly. One (we'll call him Sean) took out an electronic dictionary. The teacher opened with what was probably a review of a previous exercise, asking Sean "how do I get from your house from here?" When he struggled with this (he said the word "bus" and left it at that), she simplified it to "how do I get from here to the Reitz Union?" and eventually invited the whole class to come up with directions. She did, however, pay special attention to Sean, getting him as much as possible to repeat the directions and keep trying to come up with them on his own. Most student interaction was between the teacher and individual students-- the teacher would mediate their dialogue by repeating a student's comment and asking others for feedback. While the class as a whole quickly came up with clear directions to the Reitz Union, I’m not sure Sean was any farther along in being able to give instructions independently. The lesson then transitioned to housekeeping. The teacher assigned topics for the video / feedback component, and asked the students to think of ways that they would present the material. She then reviewed the V / F website, repeating instructions at least once. Few (no?) students took any notes, but one had a question. The teacher asked another student if he could answer. After he did, she affirmed and clarified his response. Once again, student interaction (one student asks a question, another answers) was mediated by the instructor.
Next was a warm-up exercise: the students presented a short summary of the news article they'd selected. When nobody volunteered to start, the teacher picked Sean. He was hesitant, but she encouraged him, repeating the information he gave, clarifying it, and asking follow-up questions. Some students presented their articles simply and concisely, and the teacher quickly passed on to others. With those who had trouble, she spent more time asking questions and clarifying information. With some, however, the teacher asked questions designed not to clarify the article's content but to elicit discussion. For example, one student had an article about gangs in Korea, and instead of talking about the information in the article, the instructor began a conversation about Korean gang culture-- asking whether it was similar more to a mafia or to street gangs, what sort of illegal activity gangs engaged in, how influential they were. The conversation wasn't very successful: the Korean students (Sean among them) seemed to have difficulty understanding the purpose of the questions.
When a student had special difficulty answering a specific question, the instructor would try asking it a few different ways, but would eventually back off, sometimes going on to another student without resolving the communication gap. This discussion was also mediated by the instructor ("George says X. Edward, what do you think?"), with one notable exception. One student presented an article on Gov. Schwarzenegger's veto of the California gay marriage bill, and the teacher opened the issue up to the class for discussion. One student defended the veto, and another jumped in immediately saying "I disagree!" and articulating an argument for his position. The two had a brief debate, made lively by the fact that each was fairly concerned about accurately describing his viewpoint. The student in favor of gay marriage stated his argument with great clarity; his opponent had more difficulty finding the vocabulary to describe his position. The instructor filled in gaps to such a degree that, while this student readily assented to what she said ("Yes, that's right") I'm not confident that any of us were able to determine to what extent the teacher's summary of his argument was the same as his actual argument.
In preparation for a discussion time, the students were given a brief list of vocabulary that would appear in their discussion reading. The teacher asked the class to guess the meaning of each word. About three participated readily, while the others passively observed and took notes.
After reading the article, the students broke into groups for discussion. Each began conversation readily, but the content differed from group to group. In one group, the three members were actively debating the article (it was a brief piece about a court case; they had to decide how they would rule if they were the judge); but in another group the students were clarifying the article's actual contents amongst themselves. It seemed that in some groups, one student would dominate the discussion while another might remain mostly silent.
The teacher observed one group, then spent the bulk of her time facilitating discussion with a second-- clarifying, asking questions, trying to generate opinions. One student-- Sean-- seemed to change his position based on her argument. Though her purpose in making the argument was to give him a chance to refute it, he took the easy way out by simply agreeing with her. She ran out of time before getting a chance to observe the third group.
A few days after observing, I met briefly with the teacher to discuss what I'd seen. We talked mostly about classroom management-- how to interact effectively with all the students, and how to keep them active and engaged. She said that she made a point to pay attention to the struggling students, and to give them plenty off opportunity to speak and discuss. If any student brought up a topic that had good potential for discussion, she'd offer it up to the whole class, but in addition to this she made sure that the weak students were pushed.
Each class has a different dynamic, she said, and she wouldn't bring up a controversial topic like gay marriage unless she got a vibe that they'd be able to handle it well. This class, from what she'd already picked up, was interested in debating such things, although one or two students had a tendency to dominate. There's a point, she said, when you gently ask a particularly talkative student to give another person a chance to speak.
Sometimes a teacher manages time poorly, and isn't able to give equal attention to all the students. For example, the instructor was unable to meet with the third discussion group. However, in the next class the students did a follow-up discussion, and that time round she made sure to give the third group plenty of attention.
Then there are difficult students, like Sean, who are reluctant to speak and pay more attention to their electronic dictionaries than to what's going on in class. The teacher said that she tries a different strategy every time. For example, in the class I observed, she tried to engage him in debate by arguing against his position-- but he merely switched sides and assented with her. Earlier, she said she had tried defending a position he took, hoping to get him interested enough to come up with more ideas on his own. She knows that he wants to open a bar in Korea, so she tried to relate the topic of Korean mafia to how it might affect his bar. So far, no strategy has been effective. Soon, she was thinking about telling him that he can't bring the electronic dictionary to class anymore. One-on-one evaluations were coming up shortly, and that would give her an opportunity to emphasize to Sean that if he wants to pass the course, he'll need to be more involved in class.
It is valuable for students in a communicative ESL classroom to engage in unmediated interaction. After all, such spontaneous interaction is the goal of the course. It's impossible, however, to expect that students will do this unprovoked. In part, their cultural expectation of what a classroom should be will likely involve an instructor-mediated approach. Also, most students-- even very good students-- rarely do more work than they have to. An effective teacher will push the students to interact with her-- this is better than nothing-- and frequently will be able to act as mediator or catalyst in peer-to-peer interaction. Eventually, she should be able to remove herself from the interaction, allowing the students to address one another directly. In the likely event that this breaks down, the instructor must continue to engage students-- especially those weak or reluctant-- in such a way that they have no choice but to participate.
During my first observation, time management seemed to be an issue. The teacher had to negotiate how to give attention and feedback to each student, when a few of them demanded more than others. For my second observation, I decided to focus on the strategies she used to maximize student interaction without cutting into the time spent on other students. I was also interested to see what progress had been made in classroom interaction.
As students entered the classroom, they chatted amongst themselves and with the teacher. Those who had been talkative in my previous visit remained talkative, but this time the other students were talking and laughing as well. They seemed to have a very friendly, natural relationship with the teacher; there were few inhibitions. The class came more or less to order when a student asked the teacher about the topic for the following week's presentation. She turned the question back over to the class, and asked if they could agree on a topic. They negotiated eagerly but failed to reach a conclusion, so after about a minute the teacher ended the discussion by telling them that the topic was open. Once again, I observed the entire class participating.
The class then concluded the previous day's activity, in which the students had played different roles in a mock trial: it was time for the judge to give the verdict. The student appointed to be the "judge" was nervous, saying "I don't know judge's style," so the teacher gave him a phrase: "I rule in favor of X," as well as briefly explaining the words "defendant" and "plaintiff." As students continued having problems with word choice or vocabulary gaps, the teacher would offer suggestions.
The transition into the main activity was brief: "You guys like acting. Let's do a little acting." The instructor passed out slips of paper, each which defined a character and described how that character would act in the role-play, and then wrote the names of the characters on the board, explaining who was assigned to whom. This caused momentary confusion, as of the nine students only eight seemed to know what their roles were. So the teacher had to backtrack and have each student say, in turn, what his role was until the confused participant was identified.
Several other things slowed the instructor down. For example, when she asked for volunteers, nobody offered, so after badgering them for a few seconds ("you guys sleepy today?") the teacher gave them two minutes to prepare for the role-play. As they prepared, several students asked basic vocabulary questions that pertained to their roles. There were so many of these questions that I wondered whether it would have been worthwhile to do a little vocab prep beforehand.
The role-plays were all amusing scenarios-- a reluctant kid at a doctor's office, someone trying to persuade a friend to join a whale-watching cult, an obnoxious waiter, and a paranoiac warning a passerby that the local bank had been overtaken by aliens. The fact that they were really funny situations helped to loosen the students up, being allowed to say absurd things probably made them more willing to experiment with their language. The teacher took notes as they did their dialogues, and intervened when they worked themselves into a corner.In the roleplay where a believer-- who I'll call Bert-- was trying to convince a skeptic to join a whale-watching cult, the student who played the skeptic acquiesced very easily. The teacher intervened more than once ("Do you really believe in telepathy with whales? Isn't there anything you want to say?"), and the "skeptic" attempted to argue, but when it was apparent that this would be a prolonged conversation, the teacher cut them off: "OK, Bert, you win!"
The banking roleplay involved a student, "Sean," who in my previous observation had been very reticent. While he was still one of the more quiet students, he participated readily, coming up with quirky responses to keep the dialogue going. He did have some vocabulary gaps, but because he was talkative it was possible to determine what areas he needed work on-- before, he'd been so silent that it would be pure guesswork just to decide what was appropriate to teach him. As the roleplay drew to a close, his partner-- who was warning not to invest in a certain bank because it had been taken over by aliens-- seemed to dominate. But when the teacher pushed Sean a little ("You're not going to take his advice, are you?"), he got back into the argument and successfully negotiated an escape from the situation.
The teacher concluded the roleplays by speaking about them for a few minutes, pointing out what they had illustrated: "What do you do if you're in an awkward situation and you want to get out without being rude?" Because there was little time left, she wasn't really able to get the class into a prolonged discussion about the usefulness of the exercises in the real world-- but hopefully enough was said that they'll think about it on their own time.
Time management was still a problem here. It's tough-- when you want to get students talking, you don't want to have to cut them off. But it's equally important that each gets a chance to have his say, and that time remains for the teacher to wrap up. Often a few moments of teacher-fronted class time will frame the entire period in a way where students are able to reflect upon whatever activity their time has been occupied with. None of the role-plays reached a clear conclusion; it seemed that the students would have been willing simply to not stop talking. So the instructor had to find appropriate places, where they had progressed far enough to get something out of it, but not so long as to steal time from others.
After the teacher left, the students stayed in the classroom for the next component of their class, Language Lab. As they were waiting for their instructor, Bert drew a few others to the blackboard and wrote out a logic puzzle. It was a series of dots, and the goal is to connect them all with four straight lines. I was impressed at his ability to explain the concept, and successfully negotiate questions: another student wanted to know if it was OK to draw diagonals, and although neither of them knew the word diagonal, they quickly communicate the concept and reached the appropriate answer (diagonals are fine). This was a small example of what I'd been wondering about earlier, whether the class could reach the point where students would interact without instructor mediation.
As a trainee in ASE, I’ve been regularly observing classes and team-teaching certain components. Having gained this experience since my last conference with this teacher, I felt comfortable making a few comments that are more in line with Freeman’s model of the “alternatives approach.” Nevertheless, I still see myself primarily as an apprentice and so my comments largely took the familiar non-directive approach. As I continue to develop experience in ASE, I may eventually be in a position where I can confidently and wisely act as a supervisor, but this will occur no time soon.
The teacher commented on the improvement in class participation, saying that while she’s seen students like Sean getting gradually better, there was a noticeable leap right after the midterm evaluations. Two weeks earlier, she’d had a chance to meet one-on-one with each student, and she made a point to encourage Sean to be more assertive in class. She believes this reassured him, because while he’s unconfident about his English skills, he now knows that she recognizes this and wants his participation nonetheless.
Time management actually wasn’t something she was too worried about. This class was on a Friday, and was intended to be loosely structured and fun. Nevertheless it was important to give adequate time to each student. The teacher said that sometimes she sets strict time limits, announcing the students that they have ten minutes, for example, to prepare before an activity, and then warning them during the activity about how much time they have remaining. When there’s a lot to cover in a day this is necessary, but on a Friday doing something that’s essentially review and reinforcement, she was willing to be more lax.
I commented that the role-plays, while being terribly fun, had a purpose (from the teacher’s point of view) that the students probably didn’t get. They needed to practice the negotiation involved in extracting themselves from difficult situations, but in the role-plays most of them were happy to continue with the dialogue for as long as they could. They didn’t really work on this, the teacher agreed, and this is the second time that she’s brought the topic up. Next time she plans to introduce the purpose before-hand, and to remind the students during the role-plays that they should be talking with exit strategies in mind.
I was also able to observe the following lesson, on Monday afternoon, with an eye on speaking. While the Friday class had been a loosely organized activity, Monday’s consisted almost entirely of housekeeping. The teacher told me that she had to introduce the final project and convince the students to start thinking about it, as well as prepping them for a short debate in the next day’s class. They’ve been doing a lot of debates in class, and the teacher said that initially she’d planned for the end-of-semester project to be something different. Traditionally, however, the two ASE 2 classes do a final project together, holding a debate against one another. Because of this external constraint, the rest of the semester will continue to focus very heavily on debate, so the students should have very good debate skills by the end. While they’ve had a lot of practice, the teacher assured me that there are still some areas they’re weak on, particularly organization and use of key language. I recalled that in the previous class a student assigned to be “judge” had expressed concern that he didn’t have a good grasp of the sort of language traditionally used in court decisions.
Class began more formally than it had the day before, with the teacher introducing the end-of-semester debate and asking for topic suggestions. When the students were reluctant to volunteer ideas, she offered one: should professionals be allowed in the Olympic games? This wasn't very productive: she could elicit student reactions only with a lot of tooth-pulling. Eventually she gave up, and made it a homework assignment for the next class, with each student required to bring one debate idea. As she gave this assignment, the teacher noticed several students writing furiously, finishing a homework due that day. She got them to stop by extending the deadline for an additional day.
With an eye on the clock, the teacher quickly moved on with instructions for the debate. As she passed out an instruction packet, she pointed out a typo and explained the format. She then reminded the students of their weaknesses: organization and key language. The last few pages of the handouts had lists of key phrases useful in debate. In order to draw their attention to it, she had them repeat each phrase after her in chorus. While this probably didn't do much to teach them the phrases, I suspect it reinforced their awareness of those pages as a resource.
The teacher then moved on to the final task of the class-time: preparing the students for the next day's activity, in which they'd have to argue a position. She began passing out slips of paper describing the position they would have to argue.
At this point, the student who had arrived late asked his neighbor what had happened at the beginning of class. His neighbor discreetly and quietly explained the homework assignment, as another student pointed out anerror on the debate packet: it had been recycled from the previous semester, so all the dates were wrong. The teacher apologized and discussed due dates with them. I was impressed at the complexity of her students' questions as they confirmed the dates for the project.
The students were then given five minutes to read their assignments and begin thinking out arguments in support of them. Some objected to the positions they'd been assigned, jokingly attempting to trade papers. The teacher firmly forbade this, but laughed as she said "no, no no no no no no," keeping the tone of the interaction light-hearted.
The teacher had warned the class that she would have to leave early, so after half an hour she wrapped up and left. As she walked out the door, Bert suggested that they remain to discuss possibly debate topics. To my surprise, they all readily agreed. So Bert went up to the blackboard and began writing down his colleagues' brainstorms. When one suggested gay marriage, the others quickly shot it down, as well as anything else political: "No more abortion or gay marriage! Let's talk about something positive!" Bert affirmed this, saying "Let's try to find something very small, where it doesn't matter too much whether you're against or for." He cited cheese import laws as an example, and the others quickly began coming up with ideas ranging from the UF international student fee and traffic light orientation, to whether ASE 2 was a worthwhile course. This continued until the end of the hour, when Bert announced in a mock-authoritarian voice that class was done. The other students chuckled and applauded, several telling him sincerely that he had done a great job.
"Thanks," he laughed. "I want to be a teacher."
The class I observed earlier in the semester definitely wouldn't have discussed and debated anything together without pressure from the teacher. But now they can. Part of this may simply be due to the fact that they're more comfortable around one another, but a lot of it is from what their instructor has done. By consistently pushing the reluctant students to speak, and by individually communicating that their participation really is important, she's brought them to the point where they can actually manage without her. It was particularly interesting being an observer because occasionally the students would draw on me as a resource. The first time Bert called on me to explain a vocab word, I was startled, but warmed to it pretty quickly. While I didn't interrupt the discussion, I figured it would be prudent to answer questions put to me and provide feedback when asked for it. Overall, however, they would have done fine without me. Several students made various speaking errors, or revealed gaps in their vocabulary, but more often than not the rest of the class filled the gaps in or corrected the errors-- for any given problem, it seemed that at least one student had the answer, and was willing to share.

Observation 3 (notes)

-- intro project, key phrases

Negotiating topic for debate
-- want to debate Olympics? professionals allowed?
"but why do we want to watch the Olympics?"
-- here they pick heart-warming stories

S-- "sports is beautiful. competing is beautiful."

T-- why would you want to have professionals?
"if you know nobody..."

T-- "why do you watch?"
-- do you think it might be an interesting topic to debate?
-- think about it overnight-- tomorrow each must have an idea
-- don't worry about the data now; I'll collect it tomorrow

T passes out "official packet for the main event"
-- points out typo in packet and has them correct it
explains outline
"you'll be here, they'll be there..."
"& we're gonna win this, right?"
points out weaknesses
-- organization, key language
-- points out language on last page

1 S slips in late

T "repeat after me-- 'consider these points,' " etc
has them go through in chorus

all examples are re. abortion debate
S "what's pro-choice?"

S-- "even though" @ end of sentence?
T clarifies "even though X," vs "X, though."

passes out topics to argue, gives them 5 min to write down arguments
-- one S explains hwk to late S

S confused b/c packet date & time inaccurate
T apologizes-- "last week of classes"
"can everyone come 9th period that day?"
Ss negotiate when 9th period is
T "how soon can you find out?"

"OK so you should have @ least 1 argument written already?"
2 Ss try to exchange topics, T "oh nonononono," all laughing
T-- "if you do have kids, will you want them to smoke?"
S reveals that wife is pregnant, baby due next wk

"OK I'm gonna stop you. Keep the material, & tomorrow we'll argue & make sure you're using the language."

"think about debate topic"

Ss negotiate-- we have 1/2 hr, let's talk about the debate topic right now!
S starts writing ideas on the board
-- "we have 1/2 an hr!"
-- "i don't know!" "let's pick an area"
- they all agree, no politics
- food? "it's an idea, @ least it starts s/th"

"what did we see in the GRE?"
"debate whether this course is helpful?"

-- "s/th about UF?"
-joke-- good school or not?
- policy-- int'l student fee?

-- tipping? - or other thing where home country differs from FL

- "let's look for s/th where it's easy to find arguments"
- "gay marriage?"
- "no that's politics"

- "try to find s/th very small, where it doesn't matter too much whether you're against or for"

- traffic light example
- in England, orange both ways

- "think about small stuff like that -- HIV was too difficult"
- types of sausages
- cheese pasteurized?
- "light stuff that's funny"
- "let's talk about s/th positive"


"Class is done"
students clap
- "I want to be a teacher"

Questions, obs. 2

Class participation seems much better-- what happened?

gradual improvement, but midterm evals helped a lot: reassurance-- T understands & acknowledges S's fears.

How did time management go?

pretty loose; gauge the mood of the class & go with it

Seemed to be many vocab problems: had you thought about introducing vocab beforehand?

role-plays were hilarious. Your purpose was probably to get them to think about negotiating difficult situations-- do you think they got this?

No, they didn't at all. T will keep hammering this in.

Had you thought about explicitly describing the purpose of the activity before-hand?

Might be a good idea.

There wasn't much time to wrap up at the end-- would less role-playing, more discussion have been better? or would it have been better not to cut some of the longer ones off?

go with mood, get them to talk

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Report, Observation #2

My second observation was of the same ASE 1 class that I observed earlier in the semester. It seemed useful, for this observation, to focus on time management.

The bulk of class time was to be spent on a series of role-plays; in addition the class had to conclude an activity from the previous day.

I remember from my previous observation that time-management had been a problem the teacher was concerned about and working on. That day, she had broken the class into small groups each working on their own activity, and then went from group to group in order to clarify and elicit interaction. One group, however, had demanded the bulk of her attention and she’d been unable to work at all with another group because of this. It's a problem she was well aware of; nevertheless there were just certain students that took a lot of time. She'd talked about planning to converse one-on-one with these students and see if she could find ways to encourage them to be participate more readily in class.

As students entered the classroom, they chatted happily amongst themselves and with the teacher. Those who had been talkative in my previous visit remained talkative, but this time the other students were talking and laughing as well. They seemed to have a very friendly, natural relationship with the teacher; there were few inhibitions.

The class came more or less to order when a student asked the teacher about the topic for the following week's presentation. She turned the question back over to the class, and asked if they could agree on a topic. They negotiated eagerly but failed to reach a conclusion, so after about a minute the teacher ended the discussion by telling them that the topic was open.

The class then concluded the previous day's activity, in which the students had played different roles in a mock trial: it was time for the judge to give the verdict. The student appointed to be the "judge" was nervous, saying "I don't know judge's style," so the teacher gave him a phrase: "I rule in favor of X," as well as briefly explaining the words "defendent" and "plaintiff." As students continued having problems with word choice or vocabulary gaps, the teacher would offer suggestions-- but rarely feed a single phrase. The students seemed comfortable with one another and with the teacher, so she had enough presence and influence to keep things moving, to get them to act.

The transition into the main activity was brief: "You guys like acting. Let's do a little acting." She passed out slips of paper, each which defined a character and described how that character would act in the role-play, and then wrote the names of the characters on the board, explaining who was assigned to who. This caused momentary confusion, as of the nine students only eight volunteered what their roles were. So the teacher had to backtrack and have each student say, in turn, what his role was until the confused participant was identified.

When she asked for volunteers, nobody offered, so after badgering them for a few seconds ("you guys sleepy today?") the teacher gave them two minutes to prepare for the role-play.

The role-plays were all amusing scenarios-- a reluctant kid at a doctor's office, someone trying to persuade a friend to join a whale-watching cult, an obnoxious waiter, and a paranoiac warning a passerby that the local bank had been overtaken by aliens.

The fact that they were really funny situations helped to loosen the students up, and the fact that they were allowed to say absurd things probably made them more willing to experiment with their language. The teacher took notes as they did their dialogues, and intervened when they worked themselves into a corner. On occasion, a student wouldn't completely understand his role, and would ask for clarification on vocabulary. In fact, there were so many vocabulary questions that I wondered whether it wouldn't have been better to have spent two or three minutes beforehand going over some of the more difficult words.

In the second roleplay, where a believer was trying to convince a skeptic to join a whale-watching cult, the student who played the skeptic acquiesced very easily. The teacher intervened more than once ("Do you really believe in telepathy with whales? Isn't there anything you want to say?"), and the "skeptic" attempted to argue, but when it was apparent that this would be a prolonged conversation, the teacher cut them off: "OK, [believer], you win!"
The banking roleplay involved a student, "Sean," who in my previous observation had been very reticent. While he was still one of the more quiet students, he participated readily, coming up with quirky responses to keep the dialogue going. He did have some vocabulary gaps, but because he was talkative it was possible to determine what areas he needed work on-- before, he'd been so silent that it would be pure guesswork just to decide what was appropriate to teach him. As the roleplay drew to a close, his partner-- who was warning not to invest by a certain bank because it had been taken over by aliens-- seemed to dominate. But when the teacher pushed Sean a little ("You're not going to take his advice, are you?"), he got back into the argument and succesfully negotiated an escape from the situation.

After the roleplays, the teacher spoke about them for a few minutes, pointing out what they had illustrated: "What do you do if you're in an awkward situation and you want to get out without being rude?" Because there was little time left, she wasn't really able to get the class into a prolonged discussion about the usefulness of the exercises in the real world-- but hopefully enough was said that they'll think about it on their own time.

After the teacher left, the students stayed in the classroom for the next component of their class, Language Lab. As they were waiting for their instructor, one student drew a few others to the blackboard and wrote out a logic puzzle. It was a series of dots, and the goal is to connect them all with four straight lines. I was impressed at how easily he was able to explain the concept, and succesfully negotiate questions: another student wanted to know if it was OK to draw diagonals, and although neither of them knew the word diagonal, they quickly negotiated the concept and reached the appropriate answer (diagonals are fine).

Friday, November 04, 2005

Observation 2 (notes)

talking about court case that must have begun last time.

negotiating next week's presentation topic. "not food; we did enough food."

T-- "topic is open."
--"Are you ready?"

2 students presenting court case
--uncertain-- "I don't know judge's style"
T describes "defendant" & "plaintiff"
S's having difficulty with word-choice, T offers suggestions
good interaction-- students comfortable w/ each other

transition-- "let's do a little acting"
-very comfortable w/ students-- they're comfortable talking spontaneously

"Somebody's not here"
-- had to get ea. student to say his role to determine who was missing

"You guys sleepy today?"- banter

nobody volunteers, so she gives them 2 mins to prep.
-- students ask vocab Qs-- should she have done some vocab prep @ beginning?
interrupted roleplay to explain vocab "reincarnation"
2nd S (skeptic) isn't really doing his part-- not being skeptical-- T encouraging him to resist, but he doesn't. finall, T-- "you win, Dmitri"

2nd roleplay-- waiter-- T takes notes
--T discusses w/ S's afterwards-- "what's wrong w/ saying 'what do you want?'" -- explains pragmatics, setting
--why not have roleplays in open space, instead of @ desks?

4th-- T has to push student in the roleplay-- but he's better than he was!
--students very creative.
-- clarify-- "are you going to take his advice?"

"so what do you do if..."
"you don't want to be rude"

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Greek

I'm taking a Greek class offered by my church. I don't expect to actually learn Greek through the class, but figured it would be good to get a little exposure to the language and maybe pick up the alphabet. The teacher is native Greek; a retired chemistry professor.

Having some experience teaching, and now being in teacher-training both through my job and through this TESL class, I'm finding myself actually annoyed by the course at church: it's not being taught the way I would teach it.

Not that I mind terribly. The class is very diverse in terms of background, language experience, and knowledge of Greek. And attendance from week to week is pretty spotty. So even the best teacher wouldn't really be able to make much progress. But what I'm realizing is that if I knew less about pedagogy, I'd probably actually be a better student-- concentrating on what's being taught rather than the way it's being taught.

But it makes me think about how students will affect a class. If each student has a very different level of experience with the subject matter, it may be very difficult to teach any of them effectively. If one or two are basically experts, a good teacher can co-opt them into helping the other students, and hopefully mastering the concepts by teaching them. But if a few students are at a very advanced level, their's the potential for, well for rebellion. For advanced students to get impatient, to interrupt, to dominate classroom discussion.

Ideally, you put those students in a more advanced class and the problem is solved. But teachers generally don't get to hand-select their students. You play with the cards dealt to you.

"getting" it

In Phonology class we've been covering the most bewildering topics at a rapid pace. A recent concept, one that was incredibly hard to grasp, was the idea of abstract underlying phonemes: phonemes that exist in the mental lexicon and affect other phonological processes, but then get deleted before they can appear in the surface representation of any utterance.

The professor found an excellent way to introduce the concept of underlying phonemes, though, and I'm confident the only reason that I have some vague grasp now of what they are is because of how she introduced them. She had us look at data from French, a language that most of us have some acquaintance with. There's an underlying word-initial consonant that occurs occasionally in French, interfering with other phonological rules that apply to the determiners "le," "la," and "les." But the consonant, where it occurs, never occurs in the surface representations: its existence can be determined only by its affect on the sounds surrounding it.

This underlying abstract consonant is represented in French orthography as "h" (although "h" is also written in some words where there is no underlying consonant). Having a little background in French, it wasn't too hard for me to guess why some words were behaving differently than other words-- I knew that they were written with this silent "h."

Because I already, in a sense, knew that the "h" was in some sense there, it wasn't too hard to reach the hypothesis that it exists not only in the orthography but also in the mental lexicon. Even though I'd never considered the possibility of something like an abstract underlying phoneme before in my life, my group was basically able to hypothesize that one existed here.

That was great teaching. If the professor had simply started class with, "today I'm going to teach you about underlying abstract phonemes," I think I would have zoned out immediately. It's a really difficult concept to grasp. But by providing a class assignment in a familiar language, she basically tricked us into coming up with the concept of underlying abstraction all on our own. From there we were able to move on to less familiar examples like Andalucian Spanish, and then in the homework assignment, Lardil.

Because I'd been introduced to the concept in a familiar environment (French), I was able to approach the homework with underlying abstraction in mind and then actually use it to develop sophisticated hypotheses for a very tangled set of data.

There were too things the professor did that I'd like to be able to replicate in my own teaching:

1) when introducing a difficult concept, find something the students are familiar with

2) trick the students into figuring it out on their own-- or into realizing that they already know it, just have never expressed it in those terms before.

I imagine that if I were teaching Russian to anglophones, this is how I would introduce the concept of a case system: get the students to reflect on the difference between I and me, we and us and so forth; get them to come up with hypotheses as to what environments cause I to morph into me. Before too long I'd hope that they'd work out, on their own, a basic definition of the accusative case, which would allow me to go on and say "Good, OK, this thing that you've come up with is called the accusative case. And in Russian, it applies not only to pronouns but to all nouns," and use that as a springboard to a more sophisticated discussion of the concept of nominal inflection.

More tough for English teaching. One of the greatest challenges that English teachers face is the fact that our cultural backgrounds are far different from those of our students. This makes it very difficult for us to come up with examples that they're familiar with: we don't know what they're familiar with. But when we do find something, we need to seize and use it.

The second technique is easier: trick the students into figuring it out by themselves. I did this all the time teaching children, modeling the various uses of certain words, and watching them mimick, hypothesize, experiment, and revise their hypotheses based on my reactions. It really didn't take small children too long to figure out when to use you and when to use she, for example, even though Korean doesn't really use pronouns in the way English does. They couldn't tell me a grammatical rule to explain the difference between second- and third-person pronouns, but they had figured out how to use them correctly.

I'll continue to reflect on ways to teach difficult concepts by making them relevant, and by getting the students to work them out on their own.

Interaction, take two

Our micro-teach today went rather well. I think the class enjoyed the activity.

The point, of course, was for the drawing exercise to be difficult; for nobody to do it perfectly. It spoke well, I think, that the only group who did it perfectly-- well, they cheated.

I think, when speaking with the "teachers" and "students" at the beginning, I should have emphasized more that making mistakes was really the purpose of the activity. Because I did feel bad, later on, making groups who had come up with pretty inaccurate drawings stand up in front of the class and explain their mistakes. But once again, the point of the activity was to create breakdowns in communication so that they could be analyzed. This should have been emphasized more.

It was also apparent that my instructions weren't explicit enough-- neither the "teacher" nor the "student" should have seen one another's paper, but one "teacher" kept glancing over at her "student"'s paper. And I certainly don't believe she was intentionally cheating.

The concluding discussion was very open-ended. We would have done well to stop it earlier, and give the class more time to explicitly talk about our teaching strategies, our strengths and weaknesses. The class got lots of feedback on the activity that they did, but my teaching-partner and I got very little feedback on our role in conducting the class.

Cooperation

We and I did our micro-teach today. I'm glad we did it together, if for purely selfish reasons: it's nice to have more time. But it made me think about the advantages and difficulties related to team-teaching.

Cooperation is hard. It has obvious benefits: for example, by pooling our time we both had 40 minutes to work with instead of just 20. And it allows for a more favorable teacher/ student ratio; the students get more attention from the teachers. From the students' point of view, multiple sources of feedback are better than just one.

But I'm not good at cooperating. I like being in control. Even when we were planning the activity, I already had an idea of how I wanted it to go. My partner had some really good ideas, and often after she'd offered an alternative, the ideal plan in my head would switch to conform to her suggestion. But when I disagreed with any suggestion of hers, I wanted to be able to simply reject it outright-- and when you're working in a team, you simply have to concede things that you'd rather not.

This came up again in the group discussion at the end of class: I knew where I wanted the discussion to go, and found myself resisting my partner's attempts to steer it in a different direction. Rather than either sit back and let her lead, or else encourage the direction she was taking the conversation, I found myself once or twice trying to regain control and steer it elsewhere.

It's definitely something I need to work on. As a white male, I'm frankly used to getting my way. I also need to be sensitive to the fact that, depending on cultural background, people in a team with me will acquiesce too easily; I need to find ways to really encourage and give fair weight to their ideas, and to be ready to spend a good part of class-time as the assistant, while my partner controls the direction of the class.

Obviously this depends. In ASE, for example, many of the team-taught classes have some kind of hierarchy: there's a teacher, and there are several assistants. While a good teacher will give the assistants plenty of freedom and allow them to have input in the way the class is managed, that teacher is still in charge: responsible to make sure class goes well, and to blame when it doesn't.

Perhaps it's good to have this hierarchy. If, for example, we had agreed ahead of time that my partner was in charge and I was the assistant, I would have been more willing to agree with ideas that I didn't like: the buck stops with her. By default, I think it turned out to be basically the reverse: when I didn't feel like she was teaching the way I thought appropriate, I kind of wrested control from her, and she ended up with more of an assistant's role. If that hierarchy had been agreed upon ahead of time, I suppose it would have been OK. But as is, I simply didn't treat her as my equal. And this is bad.