The more I read on second language acquisition, the more I understand my ELLs.
I am finding myself less adamant on oral responses and less frustrated about little to no verbal communication between ESL students and me. I am accepting body language and simple gestures they make when I pose a question in class. I am using a lot more informal assessments during daily lessons.
It has also affected my use of collaborative groupings, and seating arrangements. The decision to seat my extremely quiet ELLs next to students who I can not get to be quiet was probably the best move I made for them. Just today I found myself telling my English learner to "stop talking and pay attention."
I am looking forward to learning more strategies that I could implement from this class. Taking course on TESOL is turning out to be very beneficial.
Introducing the ED673 Team!
ED673 Class Photo
Learning in action!
Learning in action!
I am glad that you are enjoying this class Jodi! I am always fascinated reading everyone's posts and experiences in the classroom. I thought U made a big mistake by getting in to this TESOL program because I thought that in order for someone to teach English he/her has to be proficient in the language as well as be an expert when it comes to the English language. I am none of the above. English is my second language and I acquired the language when I was in middle school and it was difficult for me. I never thought that I will become an ESL teacher. Right now, I am so excited and I can't wait to finish this program and get in to the classroom.
ReplyDeleteBut the more classes I am taking the more I found myself understanding the concept of English Language Learners. I am learning a lot by reading everyone's post and comments. I am glad that this course turn out to be beneficial for you. Your second paragraph to the last cracked me up. I was exactly like that when I first acquired the English language. I remembered my classmates telling me that when I first started school I never said a word but now they couldn't stop me from talking.
That is great, Jodi! It's great that as we're learning, we get the chance of applying them with our students and see immediate feedback from them on whether the information we've learned actually works! The results are amazing because they are real and we get to witness that :)
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