From Theory to Practice in TESOL
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The document summarizes a teaching practicum for an adult ESL class. It describes applying constructivist learning theory and socio-constructivist principles through lesson plans incorporating recipes, cooking verbs, and group work. The instructor overcame initial doubts and found that reflective practice helped connect theory to lessons and address student needs through meaningful activities that lowered anxiety.
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From Theory to Practice in TESOL
- 1. From Theory to Practice & Back in TESOL Marie Takai, M.A. Rebekah Sidman-Taveau, PhD
- 5. Recipe Book
- 6. The final day of my practicum Potluck Party Recipe Presentations
- 8. Practicum Schedule February March 2009 Breakthrough Observations Instructor observation Teaching Pot luck & Presentation Recipe Writing Recipe Items
- 9. Transformation Observations Teaching Post Lesson Reflection Self-transformation Imposter Syndrome Post observations I was not so bad after all. I’m not qualified to teach… Let’s see what I can do. Collaborative Review
- 16. My Lesson Plan Procedure : 60 min. 5 min. 11:40- The Cooking Verb Crossword HW & Summary 30 min. 11:10- Divide SS into 6 ethic groups <3 min> Decide on a dish (pick up a simple one!) <5min> List ingredients <5 min> Write instructions <15 min> Collect the recipes Recipe Writing 15 min. 10:55- How can we memorize verbs? – Body Language & Gesture Group Activity: Guess the Verb! Review: the cooking verbs 10 min. 10:45- Confirm a Goal : To Publish a recipe book for Gilberto Correct HW – Cooking Verb Quiz Introduction
- 17. Video of the opening
- 20. Gesture Game
- 23. Work Sheet for writing project
Editor's Notes
- Rebekah: This is Marie Takai. She has an M.A. in TESOL from SJSU and is currently teaching three levels of Japanese at Sunnyvale-Cupertino adult education. Marie: This is Rebekah Sidman-Taveau. She taught in my M.A. TESOL program at SJSU and was my practicum teacher last spring. Rebekah’s PhD is in Foreign Language Education with a focus on TESL. She is currently ESL Coordinator and Lecturer at San Francisco Art Institute and part time faculty at SJSU. Rebekah: As Marie mentioned, we had the good fortune to meet while she was my student in the TESOL practicum course at SJSU. The students in that class were in the last semester of their M.A. program and were required to engage 10 hours of practice teaching. In the class, we talked about issues and problems the student teachers were having. One day, a student said, “We got so much theory in our MA program, I need more practice!” I knew the issue of how to put theory into practice was a common one for graduate students, so when I came to observe Marie’s classroom teaching I was impressed. What I saw was an outstanding and innovative application of current learning theory and second language acquisition theory. I was so excited that I decided to write out for Marie all of the connections I saw. But as Marie tells you her story today, she was actually quite surprised to see all of the connections, and I was surprised that she was surprised, and so began this very interesting and enlightening dialogue between us. Today, we would like to share some of the results of our collaboration.
- Rebekah: To start, Marie will share some of her innovative and successful lessons. Then we will both talk about specific theoretical connections we see to her practice. Marie managed to engage her beginning class in the collaborative publication of an international recipe book, to have her beginning students give presentations of their recipes and share them with the class. As I witnessed Marie’s lesson and learned about her cook book unit, I saw connections to different theories including: Constructivist/socio-constructivist learning theory Comprehensible Output Hypothesis Multiple Intelligences Motivation Theory and the Affective Filter Hypothesis I will talk about each of these theoretical connections as Marie explains her lessons but first lets here a bit about the transformation Marie went through to be able to implement these lessons. A key point we would like to make today is that it is not a one way trip from reading about theories to consciously implementing them. Theory can be utilized pre-during-post lesson and in conscious and unconscious or even inadvertent ways. Marie’s story is testament to this.
- Marie: Hello, so let me start by telling you a bit about my teaching context. My practicum teaching took place in an Adult School in the South Bay. The class was Beginner High – the third lowest of nine levels. They only knew basic grammar and vocabulary and seldom spoke out in class. The size of the class was about 25 – 30. As other adult school classes, this class was also transient: students came in and went out. It was a multi-ethnic class with students from nine countries – Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Mexicans, Indians & an Iranian, a Peruvian, a Vietnamese, and a Japanese. It was a morning class which included a lot of female home makers especially middle aged Asian women.
- Marie: In this photo, I may look cheerful but, at the beginning of my practicum, I was very nervous. The tremendous pressure felt by a typical student teacher frustrated me. I felt I was not qualified to teach and my self-esteem was very low. In short, I was suffering from classic imposter syndrome. The woman sitting next to me is my mentor teacher. She is an experienced professional teacher. Her students admired her for her great teaching skills and kindness. She was an American and a native English speaker. Yes, she seemed to represent the main stream of the American culture. As an Asian non-native speaker, I felt intimidated by the presence of the perfect ESL teacher. What made me feel worse was that I had been traumatized in my former language learning experiences. Though I had lived in the U.S for five years, my English was nothing but a stumbling awkward production. In Japan, where most of the classes I took where behaviorist based approaches, my English grades were always terrible. The mean teachers corrected every single mistake and I didn’t enjoy learning at all. Having been an unsuccessful learner, how dare I teach English to others ?
- Marie: However with the support of my mentor teacher and practicum instructor, I overcame my fears and completed my practicum. Please look at this, here is what I enabled the beginner students to achieve: the production, editing, and final publication of an International Recipe Book. It is a recipe book of 15 pages. Dishes from nine countries are introduced with students’ drawings.
- Marie: On the final day of my teaching, we had a potluck party. Students brought the food for which they had written the recipe. After this fun pot luck party, they presented their recipes. 6 groups and 5 individuals made their recipe presentation. That means almost all of the students participated. Beginners who seldom spoke out in class orally presented how to cook their country’s food. Everyone seemed motivated and actively involved.
- Marie: Here’s a sample of one presentation. A Mexican group showed us how to make enchiladas. This Video has three parts. In the first one, a young Mexican woman started their presentation in a humorous way. The second parts shows a good example of using kitchen utensils and gestures. There is an interesting interaction in the third part. When the young woman wants to know a cooking verb, she uses a gesture in asking a question.
- Marie: How did these remarkable student achievements develop? What happened to the nervous student teacher? Let’s look at the schedule of the practicum teaching. After 5 hour observation, I taught 10 hours in 8 classes. I thought I had to know everything to be a good teacher and shouldn’t make any single mistake. Then I had a breakthrough here - just before the instructor observation day. With a strong determination to teach better, I banished my useless thoughts and decided to embrace my own teaching resources.
- Marie: As I experienced successful teaching, I fled from past experiences as an English learner which had imposed meaningless perfectionism on me. There were many exciting lessons which led up to this transformation. I am going to introduce the lesson I prepared for the instructor observation day, when Rebekah came to my classroom to observe my teaching. But first a bit more theory from Rebekah
- Rebekah: Marie’s transformation is remarkable. Not only did she overcome the fears most of us face as new teachers and the challenge of being a non-native speaker of the language she was teaching but I think she was also struggling in her mind between two very different theoretical bents. This slide which Marie created represents her struggle between her previous conceptions of language learning which were closer to a behaviorist conception of learning and her developing conception of language learning which reflected more of a constructivist leaning. Let me explain a bit about these theoretical bents and then I will return to this slide to explain the central points of her shift.
- Rebekah: For starters, when Marie told me a bit about the experiences that haunted her- the authoritarian professors, memories of constant and humiliating error correction, and long boring meaningless study of discreet points- I thought it sounded a lot like behaviorist based instructional methods. To put it simply, behaviorists believe that learning is the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning. Some principles associated with behaviorist learning theory include the ideas that concepts need to be broken down into discreet measurable points, that learners need to imitate and repeat, and that they need reinforcement including clear negative reinforcement for errors. This conception of learning is very different from Marie’s developing conception of learning. During her practicum, she began to apply more progressive methods reflecting a constructivist concept of learning.
- Rebekah: Constructivists believe that “learners actively construct their own knowledge” Some principles derived from this theory are that relevant to Marie’s work are: Student interests and needs should drive learning Students learn through participation and doing Dialogue, reflection, and activities engender learning Marie’s recipe writing project is an example of a way to actively engage students in the process of learning. Rather than teach the food and cooking vocabulary through lecture, drill, or repetition of dialogue, Marie had students learn the language through the real world practice of writing and sharing recipes. She choose the tasks of recipe writing because she knew it would be interesting to students and she allowed them to choose their recipe. She engaged them in dialogue and a variety of tasks associated with the recipe writing. Another constructivist notion is the idea that new knowledge is built from prior knowledge. A principle based on this theory is that learning can be facilitated by connecting new knowledge to what learner’s already know. One way to do this is to use authentic materials and situations that the learners may already be familiar with and to give them choices about topics of interest. Marie placed the cooking vocabulary students needed to learn in the context of recipes, something that her students would be familiar with and she allowed them to choose their recipes. As you’ll find out later she also used authentic materials like cooking utensils. Marie’s lesson was nothing like traditional “banking” instruction Paulo Freire spoke of. Instead students were actively involved in learning through doing. Another way to help student access their background knowledge and make connections to new knowledge is to start by asking student what they already know. Marie did this by centering the lesson around what student already knew about food and cooking. At the same time, she honored each student’s cultural knowledge by having them write about recipes from their country. This was not only an opportunity to connect the new language to what they knew but also a chance to share their culture with their classmates. Now let’s talk a bit more about how Marie got to this point in her teaching.
- Rebekah: Another important constructivist notion is that of disequilibrium. According to Piaget, disequilibrium occurs when “ When learners encounter new knowledge that does not fit within their pre-existing framework it causes disequilibrium. This condition leads to deeper learning because the learner schema must be expanded or reorganized in order to alleviate it”.
- Rebekah: Some constructivist notions of errors that build on this theory include the ideas that errors: Should not be avoided entirely They are learning opportunities that need to be explored and discussed They are also a natural part of the learning process. Many second language acquisition researchers have theorized that there are stages of acquisition during which learners are not ready to understand certain types of error correction. Learners also go through a stage of having an “interlanguage” their own grammar system which often reveals transfer from their L1, overgeneralization and simplification Given this line of thought, errors are seen as informative events that show us students’ working conceptions and process towards acquiring a language A related principle is the ideas that teachers can model how to learn from errors. When they make errors or have gaps in their knowledge they can use these as a opportunities to model problem solving and error correction strategies. This last idea seems to be a core part of Marie’s transformation.
- Rebekah: As I mentioned earlier, Marie seemed to be fighting btw previous behaviorist conceptions of learning which were based on her own experiences as an English language learner in Japan. She was fighting between these notions and her own developing conception of language learning. In talking with Marie it seemed that her philosophical shift centered mainly around different teacher and student roles, styles of teaching, and these differing conceptions of error One the one hand, as she mentioned earlier, she was caught up the imposter syndrome that was made worse by her traditional conception of the teacher as the all knowing authoritarian figure whose job was to provide answers and correct passive students . Within this more traditional conception, errors are seen as something to be avoided and which should be corrected immediately with clear negative reinforcement. The approaches she experienced as a learner in Japan also focused on imitation and repetition through mechanical drills . On the other hand, Marie as a teacher and M.A. student was beginning to develop a more constructivist conception of learning. Within this conception, the teacher’s role was more that of a facilitator, one who models coaches, and guides student learning. Thus, Marie began to explore teaching methods with more focus on meaningful communication and student centered activity. Most importantly, she began to see errors differently. Instead of being caught up in the fear of not speaking perfectly, she began to see errors as source of learning. I think this is how her breakthrough occurred. She realized that she did not have to be perfect but that she could model risk taking, problem solving and learning strategies using errors or gaps in her knowledge as opportunities for learning and modeling good learning strategies. So now let’s hear more about what Marie did following this breakthrough.
- Marie: Thank you Rebekah. It is really good to know theories can explain what happened to me. Let’s go and see more details. Here is my lesson plan I prepared for Instructor Observation Day. We are going to talk about three parts; the opening, a bodily kinesthetic game, and the recipe writing. Rebekah and I will link my lessons to relevant theories.
- Marie: First, I will show a short video of the opening of my lesson. I started the class by connecting the theme to a prior lesson. In the test book students read about a man – Gilberto - who wants start a international restaurant. I mentioned this class is international and encouraged students to write the recipe of their own country’s food to help Gilberto.
- Marie: In order to write a recipe, students have to know cooking verbs. In the presentation of cooking verbs, I used visual aids from a picture dictionary, and explained each action using kitchen utensils. Like in beat & whip (a bowl and a whisker). And then, as a part of reinforcement, I tried a charade like gesture game. A student comes to the front, picks a card and acts out the cooking verb on the card. The other students then guess the meaning of the word based on gestures. I once experienced a similar game when I was an ESL student and found it very helpful and enjoyable.
- Rebekah: I think another influence behind Marie’s innovative lessons was a more socioconstructivist conception of learning influenced by the theories of Vygotsky. Social constructivists believe that learning is a social process that knowledge is first constructed in the social realm and later internalized individually. This theoretical bent is often used to justify a focus on more collaborative learning activities. In brief, learners can learn from one another and develop new language in collaboration with others. One important notion forwarded by Vygotsky is the notion of language as a mediational means . Verbal language, the visual arts, and music are all different examples of mediational means. They are communicative tools which interact with our cognition (or thinking) and they are socioculturally situated (i.e. influenced by social and cultural contexts). One principle derived from the theory of mediational means is the idea that when we use different types of mediational means to represent ideas and concepts, it helps us to reflect upon them and develop new perspectives. Marie applied this principle by bringing in actual objects and using pictures to help students learn new vocabulary. The actual objects were particulary powerful because something as simple as a fry pan is laden with cultural information. For example, a Japanese fry pan is small and square, American fry pans are big and round. Their shape and size reflect their use for different foods, with different portion sizes and for different meal rituals. By bringing in actual objects. A simple verbal translation of the word “fry pan” does not carry all of this meaning. By bringing in the actual objects, Marie enabled her students to reflect on the relationship of the words to the objects and their cultural attributes. I believe this allowed for further processing and understanding. Marie also had students produce an artifact, the cook book, using different mediums: drawings, photos, and written recipes. I believe this also helped to promote more reflection, understanding, and retention of language. Vygotsky is also well know for the concept of ZPD, which I’m sure you are all familiar with. I will talk in more detail about this concept after Marie discusses her lessons.
- Marie: Let’s see the video of the game to see the applications of the theories Rebekah mentioned. This Iranian guy who was actively engaged in a game used imperatives to communicate with other students. Just after that, other students copied the imperative even though they used a less-developed grammatical structure.
- Rebekah: While witnessing this game in Marie’s class, I immediately thought of Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis. This hypothesis states that Language acquisition depends on comprehensible output, communicative opportunities for meaningful negotiated interaction. In other words, learners need to speak and write in meaningful situations where they are interacting with others and have real goals. If they have specific goals to achieve, listeners will need to ask for clarification and speakers will have to reconstruct their understanding and correct their language when communicative breakdown occurs. As you saw in the video, students in Marie’s class were working in teams with the common goal of guessing the words on the cards they were given and keeping the game moving. Many seemed also to have the goals of cooperating with one another, learning the language, and winning the game or at least playing the best they could. As I watched, I saw one elderly Chinese woman go to the front of her table and pull a card. She then began to gesture using a strainer for the word “to strain”. Her teammates repeatedly guessed the word “strain” and she said “no” each time. Finally, two of her Spanish speaking team mates came to the front of the table and looked at her card. “No” they said, “this is not strain, the word here is stir”. Then they carefully gestured the verbs “stir” and “drain” while saying the words, as Marie had done earlier in the class. The Chinese lady repeated the words and gestures showing that she had understood. Then the two women went back to their seats and the Chinese woman correctly demonstrated the word stir to her team, at which point they were all able to guess the correct word “stir”. The Chinese student had not only reconstructed her understanding of these words but also developed visual and kinesthetic associations with the words. It was an excellent example of meaningful negotiated interaction.
- Marie: Another theory implemented more consciously is Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory in this game. As you probably know, Gardner claims eight intelligences interactively play a significant role in successful learning. As a former actor in a student theater, I always think connecting body, feelings, and language is important in language learning. My own learning experience has shown that this is true. In the TESOL program at SJSU, I wrote a few essays about drama techniques for language education. In my research of the literature, I encountered Multiple Intelligence Theory and found that bodily kinesthetic activity has been found to be an effective tool in ESL classroom. Getting this theoretical support, strengthened my own beliefs.
- Marie: After the game, I let the students write recipes. I divided students into five ethnic groups and gave them a worksheet to show the clear guidance of the procedures. I allowed L1 use in the groups. I walked around to check on their progress.
- Rebekah: To me, Maria’s implementation of this recipe unit is reflective of a constructivist conception of learning. Because learners actively construct their own knowledge, we know that individual learner variables play a large role in learning. Some of the key variables in language learning are Motivation, Anxiety, Learning styles. I think Marie’s teaching demonstrates careful attention to each of these factors
- Rebekah: Second Language theorists such as Gardner talk about different types of motivation. Two commonly discussed types are instrumental and intrinsic motivation. Instrumental motivation is when the learner has an external goal such as getting a good grade or winning a game. Intrinsic motivation is when the learner has the internal satisfaction of learning and enjoying a task. Instrumental motivation certainly has a role as you saw with the game Marie implemented. However, intrinsic motivation is said to be the strongest motivation because it can last regardless of an external reward. I think the joy and excitement Maria radiated in teaching and the fun she created through games, jokes, and creative projects were all powerful means of positively affecting students’ intrinsic and instrumental motivations.
- Rebekah: What was also surprising and impressive to me is that Marie enabled this group of beginning language learners to perform in front of the class. Speaking in front of a group in a relatively new foreign language is a situation that is frequently associated with foreign language anxiety. But these students participated widely and enthusiastically. I believe Maria managed to lower her student’s affective filter because she made the lessons fun and social using games, humor, and actual cooking utensils. She also used the familiar context of cooking and recipes. She provided plenty of positive feedback and she honored students’ cultures by allowing them to choose recipes from their own countries. In addition, Marie served as a model, taking risks and perceiving her own errors as learning opportunities. I think the students felt that if the teacher, who was a non-native speaker, could get up in front of the class and speak so enthusiastically so could they. According to Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis (1985) high anxiety, low motivation, and low confidence can work together to increase the affective filter and form a mental block that prevents comprehensible input from being used for acquisition (1985) But students with high motivation, high confidence, and low Anxiety tend to have higher language acquisition These individual variables depend on the student and, from a socioconstructivist perspective, they are also influenced by the classroom setting, teacher, and peer relationships. In terms of the classroom setting and teacher, I believe Marie attended well to these psychological factors having a positive influence on student motivation and confidence, and helping them to reduce their anxiety.
- Rebekah: The other thing that Marie did was tune into the students ZPD. Is everybody familiar with the concept of ZPD? The “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD) is the distance between actual development and potential development with the guidance of another . It is considered the optimal place for instruction and level at which learning can take place.
- Rebekah: Bruner extended the concept of ZPD and developed the metaphor of scaffolding, with which you are also probably familiar. Scaffolding occurs when support is given that enables a learner to extend his knowledge or skills. The scaffold (or support) is just enough for the learner to move forward on his or her own and not so much that the problem is solved for the learner. Modeling, coaching, and guiding are three forms of scaffolding. Constructivist teachers value scaffolding as an important tool instruction because it is a means of empowering the student to make progress on their own, learning not just the answer but how to get the answer. Marie scaffolded student work on their recipe book and their presentation in multiple ways. Modeling – she began by modeling with her own example of a sushi recipe Coaching – Marie coached her students offering frequent encouragement and giving them specific positive feedback on their work and writing Guiding – Marie guided her students through the recipe writing project by breaking it down into manageable chunks, by providing a worksheet with step by step instructions for the group work, and by offering individual attention while circulating around the room. She also used the strategy of “Just in time instruction” where instead of simply lecturing on grammatical issues she waited until she saw specific emerging issues in the student’s writing. For example, while carefully listening and observing she saw students were having trouble with count and non-count words. She knew from experience that this was a difficult topic and she had prepared a transparency which she then pulled out and used to do “just in time instruction” on this emerging grammar topic. IN SUMMARY: To me Marie’s recipe unit was a reflection of constructivist and socioconstructivist conceptions of learning. She modified her instruction based on student interests and background knowledge and put them at the center of activity; sharing, making, and presenting rather than practicing drills or being lectured to. She also she paid careful attention to individual learner variables including the affective factors of motivation, confidence, and anxiety. She tuned into specific learner needs and levels, teaching within their Zone of Proximal development, and made learning into a social process using authentic language, real world materials, and collaborative games and projects with the real world goal of writing and sharing recipes. In addition, Marie employed multiple intelligence theory using a variety of strategies and kinesthetic activity to engage students with different learning styles. Overall, I think her recipe unit was innovative and successful and, although not always deliberately intended, it was very much in line with current second language acquisition and learning theory.
- Marie: Wow. I really feel great whenever I hear this part. Anyway, as Rebekah pointed out, the lesson plans I implemented can be connected to many theories, But most of them, I had not intended to practice. Honestly, when Rebekah mentioned some of theories, I could not remember what they meant. After my practicum, I had several discussions with Rebekah and evaluated my practices in reflective writing. Through these interactive reviews, Rebekah and I found that the sources of the implementations could be traced back to various experiences in my life. If you look at this diagram here you’ll see the linkage between practice and theories is not necessarily linear. The sources cover my academic development, language learning/teaching and personal experiences and identity. These resources led to both conscious and unconscious implementation of theories. If you look at the lines here, you’ll see the straight white lines are for conscious connections and the broken lines are unconscious ones. In the MA TESOL program at SJSU, I consciously connected my personal experiences to the academic knowledge I learned. For my practicum, as I seriously wanted to please my students, my own experiences and knowledge provided a map for successful teaching. Sometimes, I consciously implemented theories such as Multiple Intelligence Theory based on my theater experiences and literature review for class assignments. But mostly the practice of theories was intuitive. Only through post-lesson reflections, were the links between practice & theories discovered.
- Rebekah: As you can see from Marie’s story, theory application is not necessarily a linear process . Theoretical influences can come from many different sources: direct study of theories, experiences as a learner, or modeling from expert teachers. I believe that all teachers are driven by their own theories of learning even if they are not conscious of them and new teachers can have very good instincts without knowing the theory. However, the process of exploring and reflecting upon your beliefs and what drives your instructional decisions can be very rewarding. Theory can be useful as a guide not only for planning instruction but also as a tool for reflection post lesson. We recommend taking time for self reflection or this type of collaborative reflection.
- Marie: Before ending this presentation, I have to say that the successful implementation of my own philosophy of teaching was a process of self transformation and that transformation involves pain, facing weaknesses, fears, and anxiety. But I believe the knowledge of theories can provide a map to articulate our beliefs and pursue better teaching. On the final day of my practicum, a student came to me to ask my autograph on the recipe book. She said she didn’t want to forget me. I was very moved by this gesture. I knew at this moment that the quest for better teaching is not an easy task but one that is highly rewarding.