(PDF) Wang, H. (2014). An ESL teaching r

(PDF) Wang, H. (2014). An ESL teaching reflection and analysis-Into the shoes of learners. Unpublished master's thesis. UPenn
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Wang, H. (2014). An ESL teaching reflection and analysis-Into the shoes of learners. Unpublished master's thesis. UPenn
Huabing Wang
January 31, 2025
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Abstract
Since last semester, the specially designed session called "Triumphant Thursday" opened up a whole new chapter for my ESL classroom, and also brought forth some new challenges for me as a teacher. The exclusive session was primarily focused on Video 1 (Brad) 1. Which university does Brad go to? Is he a first--year student or second--year student? Key: University of Tennessee; first year 2. What sports does Brad like to play? Key: Football, basketball, running track 3. What's Brad's favorite book? How many times has he read the book series? Key: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; about 10 times 4. What major is Brad hoping to get into? Key: Architecture Video 2 (AT) 1. How old is the speaker? Key: 22 2. Does the speaker have any siblings? How old is he? What's his brother's dream?
Figures (34)
Table1: Intermediate ESL, Winter 2014, Class Demographics
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 — 3:00 pm
Site: Nationalities Service Center Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 — 3:00 pm
Goal: To improve interactive and communicative skills in English
Work in pairs. Compare these items. Write your comparisons down in your workbook or on a separate piece of paper. (Teachers, lengthen it: A longer more in-depth activity is available from the eacher’s manual).
10. Someone who cooks food. 11. A person who paints pictures.
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AN ESL TEACHING REFLECTION AND
ANALYSIS: INTO THE SHOES OF LEARNERS

Thesis by

Huabing Wang

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Master of Science in Education

Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania

2014
(Submitted April 12, 2014)

Introduction

I’ve been teaching for ten years, making assumptions about how my students
felt, which ones were nervous and which ones weren’t, and it’s really rather
frightening for me to realize how much was going on, important things that
were happening to people in the class, that I really didn't know about (Lowe,
1987, 93, as cited in Bailey, Curtis, & Nunan, 2001, p.96)

The strategic and directional principles in language teaching that I currently

equipped with have been formed in a dynamic process throughout my past

educational, academic, and work experiences. Based on the observation and reflection

on the English education I received from primary school to university, my language

teaching experience from intern teachers in China to ESL instructor at NSC in the U.S,

as well as the two-year academic studies in TESOL program, I have come to realize

that how essential it is to put myself to the shoes of students to feel what they feel, for

the purpose of improving my teaching skills.

Subsequently, there are three language-teaching principles that I hold on to in my

ESL classrooms. Firstly, I believe the prerequisite for successful language learning is

the confidence that one can and will be able to improve greatly, which requires

constant and applicable encouraging approaches to counteract the negative factors

such as anxiety and stress. Many teachers tend to overlook the detriment of anxiety

because they are not troubled by it, but it is perfectly normal for language learners to

feel anxious, as Guiora (1983) depicts second language learning process as “a

profoundly unsettling psychological proposition.” Such psychological pressure may

hinder the interest and motivation of language learning, which I believe are the

pivotal facilitative factors in the language learning process. Thus it is a teacher’s

responsibility to create a low-anxiety learning environment and use various strategies

(attentive listening, appreciative comments, self-assurance instruction etc.) to boost

students’ confidence.

Secondly, although I dislike grammar-based ESL classes in which the aspect of

forms is emphasized too much, I do consider grammar to be a fundamental part of

language education. Again, I try to view this issue from the students’ perspective:

they need to learn grammar, because otherwise they are not able to produce correct

linguistic forms; but meanwhile they don’t like memorizing the rigid rules, they need

to learn to use them within communicative interactions. Unlike many teachers who

have a clear preference on either implicit or explicit grammar instruction, I have

always been searching for a balance between the two extremes according to my

specific group of students. Some scholarly discussions have given me inspirations,

Ellis (2006), after weighing the pros and cons, suggests that grammar teaching is

facilitating, provided the method is consistent with the natural language acquisition

process. Thus, for me, a focus-on-form approach with sufficient communicative

practice is the key.

Thirdly, the incorporation of multi-media technology would be a huge support to

language teaching, especially with listening and speaking. Ever since I started

learning English at the age of 7, multi-media devices have accompanied me, serving

as sources of authentic materials. Thinking in a role-reversal way, learners love and

need technological assistance. Scholars like Kaur Khalsa, Maloney-Krichmar &

Kreeft Payton (2007) have pointed out the benefits of computer assisted interaction of

the language classroom, which include authenticity, engagement, collaboration, and

accessibility. My teaching experience also testified such advantages. What I need to

further explore is how to maximize the effect of classroom technology with

differentiated learners.

This paper is presented as an exploration to scholarly literatures concerning my

teaching philosophies, and reflection on how the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and

pedagogical implications can be practically applied to my current and future teaching

context.

Teaching Context

I taught the Intermediate ESL Class at Nationalities Service Center (NSC)

during the Winter 2014 Session. NSC is a non-profit organization dedicated to offer

social, educational, and legal services to immigrants and refuges in the Greater

Philadelphia area, hence the broader objective of the comprehensive ESL courses is to

help students improve their linguistic, social, and cultural skills in order to adapt to

the life in U.S as soon as possible. Our ten-week course began at January 10, 2014,

and was scheduled to meet every Friday morning (from 9:30 am to 12:00pm) and

afternoon (from 1:00 pm to 3:30pm) at NSC Room 4, which is located at Floor 4,

1216 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA.

I had a co-teacher, Shuying Liu (Victoria), who is also fellow classmate of mine

at TESOL major of Penn GSE. Together we created the syllabus (see Appendix II)

and detailed pedagogical designs. For the sake of student learning experience, we also

decided to teach separately (one person in the morning and the other in the afternoon),

but the one with no lectures would also be present and serve as a facilitator. We also

had a TA, Mark Weiczorek, who is an undergraduate student majoring in English at

Temple University. Each of us would give our TA half an hour every class to teach on

topics related to the knowledge of that week. The textbooks we used as sources of

materials were Future 3: English for Results Multilevel Communicative Activities

Book and Speech Communication Made Simple 2. I also adopted multi-media

technologies such as laptops, CDs and DVDs, and online videos as my pedagogical

tools. Apart from teaching, our responsibilities also included maintaining records of

student attendance and conducting informal and formal final assessments for the

students.

The students who enrolled in this intermediate course were presumably to have

achieved certain linguistic competence in English. Yet there were still differences

with students’ levels with regard to different aspects of language skills. Table 1 below

shows the demographic information of the students who attended our class.

Table1: Intermediate ESL, Winter 2014, Class Demographics
Country of Listening &
Pseudonym Gender Age L1
Origin Speaking Level a
Dv-Q M 36 Mexico Spanish 4
Hs-K F 48 South Korea Korean 3
Nl-C M 19 Colombia Spanish 4
Il-B F 42 Russia Russian 3
Xm-Mb F 31 China Chinese 2
Mh-Ac M 22 Sudan Arabic 4
Tk-P F 27 Nepal Nepalese 3
Tm-K M 25 Kenya Bantu 2
Tr-Fd F 24 Mexico Spanish 1
Dominican
Mr-Wd F 53 Spanish 1
Republic
Listening & Speaking Levels: low beginning (1), high beginning (2), low
intermediate (3), and high intermediate (4).
Dropped out after Week 4.
Transferred to Advanced Class after Week 3.
Only joined in the last meeting because their teachers were absent.

Theme 1- Encouraging Students in the Context of Speaking

Development: Strategies to Decrease Anxiety and Increase Confidence

Since last semester, the specially designed session called “Triumphant Thursday”

opened up a whole new chapter for my ESL classroom, and also brought forth some

new challenges for me as a teacher. The exclusive session was primarily focused on

the development of speaking and speech delivery skills, and therefore included

various oral activities/tasks like oral presentation/speeches, classroom debates etc.

Consequently, the issue of English speaking anxiety came up, which seriously

impeded my objective of boosting student self-confidence when speaking English,

and since the positive sense and belief of one’s ability is a key element in the

speaking development process, I assume their high speaking anxiety has been

detrimental. Turning to the scholarly literature to testify my assumption, I discover

that back in the 1980s, Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) proposed that a type of

anxiety defined as Foreign Language Anxiety was responsible for the negative

emotional reactions to language studying, and such anxiety stems from the inherent

inauthenticity related to immature second language communicative abilities. They

also collaboratively created an examining instrument called Foreign Language

Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), and studies using the FLCAS mostly showed

significant negative correlation between foreign language anxiety and language

achievement including grades (Horwitz, 1986; Aida, 1994; Saito and Samimy, 1996;

etc.), task performance (MacIntyre and Gardner, 1989), teacher ratings of

achievement (Trylong, 1987), self-ratings of language proficiency (MacIntyre, Noels,

and Clément, 1997). I will further examine the issue of anxiety from three dimensions

and try to explore certain pedagogical strategies for increasing confidence in speaking

classrooms.

From an L2 Pedagogy Perspective

Researchers in the field of ESL, EFL and ELL have been working for years

trying to determine what pedagogical decisions teachers could make in order to

decrease anxiety and increase confidence.

As a chief steersman for the classroom, teacher will naturally play a crucial role

in the feelings of the students. How teachers manage the classroom atmosphere and

treat the students can make a great difference. Horwitz (2001) elaborated the idea that

classroom atmosphere surpasses specific instructional activities in decreasing anxiety

levels. Sincere support from teachers (including demonstrated help and friendship,

proportion of openness and trust etc.), is also a decisive factor in reducing anxiety of

language learners. Teachers may also help students view possible threatening/anxious

situations from a positive perspective to circumvent the negative appraisals

(Pappamihiel, 2002). Such implications would inspire me to work harder on

establishing a more harmonious relationship with students and opening up with more

trust during teacher-student interactions.

Student preparedness is another factor that could affect the level of classroom

anxiety to a great extent. The better students are prepared for the tasks, the more

likely they would feel confident about finishing the tasks successfully. Boonkit (2010)

conducted a qualitative action research which aims at exploring into the issue of

increasing speaking competence and confidence for a group of Thai EFL

undergraduate students with effective pedagogical methods. The findings of the

research not only explicitly indicate the profitable role of the factor of confidence in

the development of students’ speaking skills, but also offered to use the task-based

learning approach that focused on speaking for special communication with various

situations. The learners in the study reported that they were sufficiently prepared so

that their anxiety was minimized and the speaking confidence is maximized. Such

learning design is suggested to be applied to particular skill-promotion in EFL/ESL

contexts. Similarly yet more specifically, Nation (2007) argued about the importance

of experience tasks to fluency development because such experience tasks may assist

students make adjustments about their negative beliefs and attitudes towards mistakes.

When meaning-focused oral activities are used with the task goal explicitly explained

on a regular basis, it makes the students more prepared for the outcomes and easier to

feel rewarded for successfully delivering a message, and therefore it will

progressively change their perceptions about mistakes and language use. Within the

experience tasks, the techniques of pre-teaching vocabulary and stimulating previous

knowledge are also useful options to familiarize students with the speaking context

set for the tasks, so that they would not panic when trying to extract linguistic

resources to express themselves.

One reason for students’ reticence may be the discrepancy between teachers’

and students’ perception of learner role. Liu and Littlewood (1997) worked on the

issues of students’ reluctance to adopt active speech roles in East Asian classrooms.

According to their study result, learners often do not regard actions like “raising

comments and questions” as important for academic success, and thus feel less

motivated to speak up in the class. The author proposes that explicit expectations and

perceptions of learner role can be made clear to the students, and once students are

clear about what is expected and why, teachers could encourage them to take on more

active role so that participation quality can be improved. Even though such reticence

has little to do with anxiety, the strategy provided certainly is constructive for my

future encouragement for students when they act passively during a speaking task.

The handling with classroom topics during the speaking session is also relevant

to students’ psychological reactions. It is suggested by Boonkit (2010) that a relative

freedom of topic selection will encourage participants to feel comfortable and

motivated to speak, and is likely to maximize speaking confidence. Besides, the wide

range of topic-relevant vocabulary naturally activate learners’ lexicon. This provides

me with the idea that in my future speaking development sessions, the topic of the

class need not to be confined to the one written on the syllabus and carried out

strictly, a flexible divergence of topic can be encouraged depending on the situation,

the opportunity can be seized to expand vocabulary for topics that students feel more

interested about.

One more issue that deserves attention is that language anxiety is not always

caused by the same reason. Woodrow (2006) presents a research project on a group of

Australian EAP students concerning the conceptualization of second language

speaking anxiety and some major reported causes. The results show two causes of

anxiety: skills deficit and retrieval interference. It requires different strategies when

coping with these two types of anxiety. A skills deficit anxious student would need

extra instruction in learning strategies and scaffolding of skills, while a retrieval

interference anxious student deserve more de-sensitization and relaxation techniques.

This reminds me to be more sensitive about the categories of my students’ anxiety

and treat them differently.

From a Linguistics Perspective

Liu and Littlewood (1997) suggested that the anxiety problems can be dealt

with at the linguistic level. For example, many students feel stressed because they are

afraid of the communication breakdown when speaking with other students during

pair or group discussions, so teaching students the methods for successful

communication, which include turn-taking and giving verbal/non-verbal feedback and

“repair” strategies such as asking for repetition and clarification, serves as a

roundabout technique to de-stress the students in a speaking task. In addition, it also

helps to frequently provide students with appropriate and accurate linguistic models

during the class, so that they can retrieve from their memory to get these linguistic

resources when they perform a task. For instance, when teaching structures of

question formation, the teacher may deliberately ask students many accurate questions

before giving the task. Yet I would emphasize that directing students’ attention to

notice the forms during the information providing process is also necessary, like using

voice and tone differently when giving these models.

Language speaking anxiety can also be related to the use of learners’ first/native

language in the classroom. Although in the field of applied linguistics, using L1 has

been widely despised by many teachers and researchers as a teaching method, some

researchers recently tried to examine this issue from a different perspective. Both

Brooks-Lewis (2009) and Macaro (2005) argue that their research results show that

allowing for L1 reduces speaking-in-class anxiety because it will help learners’

establish confidence and therefore encourage the speaking output. However, such a

strategy is always a double-edged sword, because at the same time it might trigger

other problems. From my teaching experience last semester, I did allow the use of

certain proportion of L1 for several enthusiastic Italian students, and they were indeed

the most confident and talkative students (whether it was caused by the using of L1 or

not), but some other students appeared to be annoyed about their constant talking in

Italian, which alerted me to be cautious about such a way to alleviate stress and

anxiety.

Interestingly, in the field of second language acquisition, opinions about the

valuable function exist. Some students might be extremely passionate about native-

like accent, and that anxiety from the high expectations for themselves might become

positive motivation. The notable students whose excellent pronunciation that made

them mistaken for native speakers of English in Bongaerts (1999) reported that they

were highly motivated to sound like native speakers. Such findings may broaden our

scope and call for a re-examination of anxiety from time to time, “some degree of

tension, called facilitating anxiety, can help people invest extra effort and push

themselves to perform better.” (Ortega, 2009, pp. 202) This is particularly useful for

me as I always consider anxiety as a destructive existence and hardly ever thought of

taking advantage of it with some diligent learners. However, even if this strategy to

utilize anxiety as motivation is theoretical possible, it requires subtle handling and

may only applicable to a very limited number of students.

From a Sociolinguistics Perspective

Social and cultural distinctions among students always stand out as far-reaching

elements in shaping their psychological perceptions about external environment.

Horwitz (2001) pointed out that cultural factors can be possible explanations for

different anxiety levels among a group/groups of language learners. It is entirely

plausible that certain arrangements recognized as comfortable by learners from a

certain cultural background may be awkward and stressful to another cultural group

who are accustomed to different classroom organizations. In Woodrow (2006), the

findings support the culturally related theory about anxiety, stating that learners from

Confucian Heritage Cultures (CHCs), China, Korea, and Japan were more anxious

language learners than other ethnic groups. This is true for me experientially, because

some fellow students of mine, who had experienced many years of teacher-centered

classrooms in China, described that they felt more stressful when they first got to

know the US classrooms because they could not sit in silence anymore and had to talk

a lot more to teachers and other students.

One study related to Chinese student anxiety was described in Mak (2011),

which investigated factors that contribute to the speaking-in-class anxiety of a group

of Chinese ESL university students in Hong Kong. It was revealed that, compared

with European counterparts, Chinese students explicitly express that they generally

require longer wait-time, and such demand is due to the ‘group unity’ and ‘face’

elements valued in their culture, and therefore, one effective strategy can be setting

appropriate wait-time for Chinese students. Since Chinese students almost always

occupy a certain proportion of student number in a ESL context, this culturally-

associated demand for wait-time need to be taken into consideration when trying to

take care of the anxiety problem and build up their self-confidence. There is one

Chinese student in my class at the moment, and I noticed that she always

demonstrates uneasiness when being called to make a speech or presentation, so I

would then ask other students to perform first and save her for the last, hoping that in

this way her anxiety level could be lightened.

Apart from the cultural factor, gender certainly is a factor that should not be

neglected. Would gender have influence on student language speaking anxiety?

According to Pappamihiel (2002), the answer is affirmative. The study discusses the

issues of English language anxiety of a group of Mexican immigrant students within

two settings: ESL and mainstream classrooms. One part of the ANOVA results turned

out to be that in mainstream ELL settings, girls demonstrated higher level of stress

and anxiety than boys; while in ESL settings, where girls often engage in a closer

interpersonal relationships with teachers, gender difference does not seem to play a

very influential role, instead, the tension is more related to academic performance. It

is explained that when it comes to performance types of anxiety, girls appeared to

possess less effective coping strategies to help them save face in front of their native

English-speaking peers; plus, mainstream classrooms require more cultural and

linguistic boundary crossings, making it more difficult for girls to form safe peer

interactions.

Annotated Bibliography 1

Speaking skills development (particularly public speech) has always been a

primary focus in my ESL classroom. Many speaking tasks, such as individual

presentation, speech-delivery practice, and role-plays, require learners to talk in front

of other people, which may very easily trigger a high language speaking anxiety.

Students troubled by language anxiety often fail to perform as well as what they are

actually capable of, and such unsuccessful experience may lead to a loss of

confidence, which is extremely detrimental to speaking development. How to use

effective encouraging strategies to decrease the anxiety level and increase student

confidence therefore came up as a serious issue to be dealt with. Below are the

scholarly articles I will examine for my theme paper on this issue.

Boonkit, K. (2010). Enhancing the development of speaking skills for non-native

speakers of English. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 1305-1309.

The qualitative action research conducted in this article aims at exploring into

the issue of increasing speaking competence and confidence for a group of Thai EFL

undergraduate students with effective pedagogical methods. The findings of the

research explicitly indicate the profitable role of the factor of confidence in the

development of students’ speaking skills. The task-based pedagogy which focuses on

speaking for special communication within various situations provides students with

sufficient preparedness so that their anxiety is minimized and the speaking confidence

is maximized. Such learning design can be applied to particular skill-promotion in

EFL/ESL contexts. What I find pedagogically suggestive is, by identifying one cause

of anxiety- insufficient time, the role of preparedness in the task design process

should be emphasized. More scaffolding pre-task activities about vocabulary,

grammar, and pronunciation can be made [L2 Pedagogy]

Horwitz, E. (2001). Language anxiety and achievement. Annual review of applied

linguistics, 21, 112-126.

This chapter of journal issue does a comprehensive literature review on the

relationship between language learning anxiety and second language learning. It is

reported that after measuring with the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale

(FLCAS), the findings revealed that anxiety and language achievement are negatively

associated. Literatures regarding classroom management that might alleviate students’

level of anxiety are also examined. The idea that classroom atmosphere surpasses

specific instructional activities in decreasing anxiety levels was elaborated in detail.

Sincere support from teachers (including demonstrated help and friendship,

proportion of openness and trust etc.), is also a decisive factor in reducing anxiety of

language learners. Additionally, different focuses of instruction also affect the anxiety

that students may experience, tasks and activities involving conversation and oral

expressions generally triggers more stressful feelings, the key, however, is to create a

supportive and constructive classroom environment. Therefore, spending more time in

establishing closer relationship with students might serve as a useful strategy in

decreasing their anxiety level. Since oral activities would more easily trigger anxiety,

it might be more important to keep an eye on the classroom atmosphere during these

activities. [L2 Pedagogy]

Liu, N. F., & Littlewood, W. (1997). Why do many students appear reluctant to

participate in classroom learning discourse?. System, 25(3), 371-384.

This article examines the issues of students’ reluctance to adopt active speech

roles in East Asian classrooms, and the survey suggests that it is most likely the

“teacher-centered” teaching style, insufficient scaffolding, and improper error

treatment techniques that breeds speaking anxiety among students. Some practical

strategies for encouraging students to assume active learning roles were discussed in

the paper. The strategies include: having clearer communication about the importance

attached to active roles in class, creating space for student participation (e.g. buzz

groups), clarifying interaction procedures and providing models or examples etc. The

author also suggests ways to promote student participation at the linguistic level. E.g.

teaching students the methods for successful communication, which include turn-

taking and giving verbal/non-verbal feedback and “repair” strategies such as asking

for repetition and clarification. It is also helpful to provide students with appropriate

and accurate linguistic models, like making students regularly hear accurate questions

when teaching question formation. The linguistic resources and communication

strategies are what students have to rely on when they are engaged in a speaking

interaction, the more they are equipped with these resources, the less likely they

would feel anxious because they cannot keep the communication going. [Linguistics]

Mak, B. (2011). An exploration of speaking-in-class anxiety with Chinese ESL

learners. System, 39(2), 202-214.

Using FLCAS, the study investigating factors that contribute to the speaking-in-

class anxiety of a group of Chinese ESL university students in Hong Kong reveals

five factors responsible for English speaking anxiety, which include fear of negative

evaluation; uncomfortableness with native speakers; negative attitudes towards the

English classroom; negative self-evaluation; and consequence of personal failure.

Based on the findings, the article also provided with some pedagogical implications.

One of the implications which is culturally-associated with Chinese-speaking students

turns out to be setting appropriate wait-time, because, compared with European

counterparts, Chinese students explicitly express that they generally require longer

wait-time, and such demand is due to the ‘group unity’ and ‘face’ elements valued in

their culture. This is certainly what I have witnessed during my educational and

teaching experience. For the advanced class I taught last semester, the students from

Asian countries like Vietnam were more embarrassed to speak in front than European

countries, even though the language competence of them were better than students

from other cultures. [Sociolinguistics]

Nation, P. (2009). Vocabulary learning through experience tasks. Teaching

English As A Second Language: A New Pedagogy For A New Century, 275.

This chapter of the pedagogy-oriented book illustrates the importance of

experience tasks as well as how they can be applied to vocabulary learning.

Experience tasks are considered to be utterly necessary for fluency development, as

well as meaning-focused input and output. Such experience tasks can be adopted to

assist students make adjustments about their negative beliefs and attitudes towards

mistakes. When meaning-focused oral activities (Nation, 2007) are used with the task

goal explicitly explained on a regular basis, it makes the students easier to feel

rewarded for successfully delivering a message, and therefore it will progressively

change their perceptions about mistakes and language use. The techniques of pre-

teaching vocabulary and stimulating previous knowledge are also useful options to

familiarize students with the speaking context set for the tasks, so that they would not

panic when trying to extract linguistic resources to express themselves. Taking

advantage of students’ prior experience to design tasks that are socially and culturally

familiar to them can certainly be a strategy to be adopted in my pedagogical planning.

Helping students understand the purpose meaning-focused activities by telling them

they do not need to worry too much about the forms as long as the meaning is

expressed can decrease their anxiety level. [L2 Pedagogy]

Pappamihiel, N. E. (2002). English as a second language students and English

language anxiety: Issues in the mainstream classroom. Research in the Teaching

of English, 36(3), 327-355.

The study in this article discusses the issues of English language anxiety of a

group of Mexican immigrant students within two settings: ESL and mainstream

classrooms. Data collected from the study were analyzed with statistical tests to

identify correlations between anxiety and some specific factors. One particular

finding regarding the gender factor was that in mainstream ELL settings, girls

demonstrated higher level of stress and anxiety than boys, which may be related to the

change of social relationships during adolescent period; while in ESL settings, where

girls often engage in a closer interpersonal relationships with teachers, gender

difference does not seem to play a very influential role, instead, the tension is more

related to academic performance. This reminds me to pay attention to the gender

differences in the issue of language anxiety when I have a bigger classroom with

sufficient amount of male and female students. [Sociolinguistics]

Woodrow, L. (2006). Anxiety and speaking English as a second language. RELC

journal, 37(3), 308-328.

This article presents a research project on a group of Australian EAP students

concerning the conceptualization of second language speaking anxiety, the

relationship between anxiety and performance, and some major reported causes. The

results demonstrate two types of anxiety caused by skills deficit and retrieval

interference. It requires different strategies when coping with these two types of

anxiety. A skills deficit anxious student would need extra instruction in learning

strategies and scaffolding of skills, while a retrieval interference anxious student

deserve more de-sensitization and relaxation techniques. This offers the pedagogical

implication that attention has to be paid to the types of anxiety resulted from different

reasons. However, sometimes it can also be difficult to assess whether the linguistic

skills are truly mastered, even if you ask the students themselves. [L2 Pedagogy]

One culturally related indication from the study was that learners from

Confucian Heritage Cultures (CHCs), China, Korea, and Japan were more anxious

language learners than other ethnic groups. This again confirms the research findings

by many other scholars about the cultural factors in shaping students’ psychological

experience in a language classroom. [Sociolinguistics]

Theme 2- Exploring Explicit and Implicit Corrective Feedback:

Which One Is More Effective for Grammar Learning?

Giving corrective feedback has been one of the most common strategies in

grammar instructions. Generally corrective feedback is demonstrated as the comments

or replies given specifically to the errors in learners’ utterances, and can appear in two

types: explicit feedback and implicit feedback. In terms of implicit feedback, there

will be no obvious signal that the error is made, while explicit feedback would openly

suggest that what has been uttered was incorrect. Throughout my past experience of

grammar teaching, the issue of whether I should use more explicit or implicit

corrective feedback stood out as a primary conflict in my personal teaching ideologies.

I have tried to give implicit feedback (mostly recasts) from time to time, assuming

that it might facilitate the implicit learning process, as Long (2006) explained that the

repeated target forms could direct the focus of the interlocutors on meaning instead of

language as an object. However, I noticed, and also mentioned in articles like Ellis

and Sheen (2006), it is uncertain if implicit feedback provide negative evidence,

because it happens a lot that learners fail to have conscious awareness about the

corrective function of the recasts. Explicit feedback, on the other hand, could draw

students’ attention directly to the problematic linguistic forms, and thus provide both

positive and negative evidence. Knowing that both the two feedback-giving options

exist for good reasons, I will venture to draw evidence from literatures and researches

to form better understandings about the efficacy of explicit and implicit feedback,

once again from three dimensions.

From a Linguistics Perspective

A great deal of attention has already been drawn to the study of corrective

feedback in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) over the past decade.

Plentiful data-based descriptive studies were conducted in classroom and laboratory

settings, they have probed into the different types of corrective feedback that were

given to the students and how well they were noticed or uptaken.

Due to the significant varieties in the purposes, settings, and designs of all the

studies, we have to be cautious about generalizing any conclusive statements about

the effectiveness. Nonetheless, the overall results present a tendency of advantage for

explicit over implicit corrective feedback in the research where the treatment involved

output production. Caroll (2001) illustrated in the book that the group of learners who

were offered with direct metalinguistic feedback performed better than all the rest of

the groups with regard to the producing of sentences with dative verbs and noun

structure formation; in addition, metalinguistic feedback facilitates generalization to

novel items. Muranoi (2001) discovered in his study that the group which received

formal debriefing (including metalinguistic knowledge) exhibited better performance

than the other group which received debriefing focusing only on meaning, despite

such preponderance was limited on immediate post-test.

Findings from the research of Havranek and Cesnik (2003) suggest even

stronger support for the credit of explicit feedback and harsher criticism to implicit

feedback. They argued that the most successful form of correction, not only for the

learners to which the feedback is directed but also for their peer classmates, is

feedback that could successfully provoke self-correction in oral practice situations.

Recasts without further comments or repetition by the corrected learner are proved to

be the most disappointing formats of corrections. The study results coincide with the

study done by Panova and Lyster (2002), which intended to experiment on the range

and types of feedback used by the teacher in an adult ESL classroom and the

corresponding effects of the feedback on uptake behaviors of students and immediate

repair of error. The results show a noticeable preference for implicit types of

reformulative feedback, which include recasts and translation, however, the

consequence of such pedagogical decision was low rates of learner uptake and low

immediate repair of error in the classroom. The same idea is suggested that the key is

to make students truly process the new target forms or retrieve learnt ones from their

memory, instead merely hearing the forms or mechanically repeating them.

However, the unsatisfactory results of implicit feedback do not automatically

serve as evidence for the effectiveness for explicit corrective feedback. Many

researches, in fact, find explicit feedback fail to accelerate grammar learning. Kim

and Mathes (2001), carried out a project that investigate how explicit and implicit

feedback benefit two groups of Korean speakers’ use of dative alternation. Group A,

which received feedback forms of metalinguistic information whenever an error of

dative alternation is made, was compared to Group B, which received implicit

correction form of recast, and the post-test performance result indicated no significant

differences between the groups. Some researches even suggest that implicit feedback

can be more effective under certain teaching circumstances. Sheen (2004) challenged

the viewpoint of researchers that recasts are less effective, after a study examining

how teachers’ CF and learners’ uptake may vary across different instructional settings.

Findings reveal that some forms of recast in certain instructional settings may serve as

facilitative for student uptake and self-repair. For example, in a context in which both

teachers and students are in agreement to treat linguistic form, instead of focusing on

meaning, as the learning objective, recasts may provide greater opportunities for

language acquisition.

From a Sociolinguistics Perspective

Apart from the linguistic factors, how do cultural factors affect students’ and

teachers’ beliefs about corrective feedback? Schulz (2001) implemented a

questionnaire research on a group of Colombian foreign language students and their

teachers, and on another group of U.S. foreign language students and their teachers,

inquiring them about their perceptions about the role of explicit grammar instruction

and corrective feedback. After comparing the data, it is found that there is not much

disagreement among groups of students within each culture. However, unparalleled

ideas exist between students and teachers within each culture, and also between

students across cultures typically regarding the role of formal grammar instruction in

language learning. Colombian students, as well as their teachers, compared with the

U.S. group, generally prefer traditional language teaching more, which shows their

stronger faith in explicit grammar instruction and correction.

Similarly, Lennane (2007) conducted a study with an attempt to measure

whether cultural background shape the preferences of Taiwanese and Quebecois

language learners differently regarding corrective feedback, and attitudes with the use

of error correction from peer students and teachers. The results showed that students

in Quebec mostly heavily supported the use of error correction in the classroom,

whereas almost a third of Taiwanese students prefer not to be frequently corrected.

The majority of Taiwanese teachers also chose to give less frequent error corrections

in the classroom. Such a result was explained with the possible influence of

Confucius culture in Asian countries. These cultural differences with the attitudes

about feedback suggest that ESL teachers need to consider students’ cultural

backgrounds when trying to adopt certain feedback strategies in order to prevent

negative responses from the students.

Social dynamics may also cause unexpected situations in a teaching context

involving feedback. Morris and Tarone (2003) examined the role of social factors

played in the classroom interaction where corrective feedback occur, by proposing

that interpersonal conflict and negative social interactions taken place in pair work

would interfere with the second language acquisition process of participants.

Experiment results showed that even though errors had been corrected with recasts,

some learners continued to produce nontarget-like forms in posttests. Stimulated

recall revealed that negative attitudes about their conversation partners have possibly

caused the corrected students consider recasts as criticism and even mockery, rather

than assistive feedback. It is pointed out that the social dynamics of the language

classroom may greatly change how cognitive processes of attention, or noticing, are

displayed in cooperative learning activities involving feedback. Needless to say, such

a finding sounds an alarm for teachers who are devoted to student interactive

activities, the job of pairing up serve as a delicate mission which needs careful

observation and knowledge about potential negative feelings about error correction

among students.

From an L2 Pedagogy Perspective

As noted in the section of Linguistics dimension, when viewing the teaching

contexts where explicit and implicit feedback take place from a more situational

perspective, both the two types can take forms of various specific forms, and different

forms applied in different situations may entail inconsistent results of grammar

acquisition. For the most common type of implicit feedback, recast, Sheen (2004)

discovered that when recasts are presented in a more explicit manner in the Korea

EFL settings, they can provide more uptake opportunities. The “form-focused” recast,

while in its nature is still implicit type of feedback, already possesses illocutionary

force that is basically close to an explicit correction, and thus draw students’ attention

to the grammar forms. Such a viewpoint is supported by Doughty (2001) who

contends that recasts are more effective when they consist of “isolated interrogative

recasts”. Besides recast, researchers like Havranek and Cesnik (2003) have identified

a number of implicit forms of feedback, including rejection + recast and recast +

repetition, whose explicitness fluctuates, some of them can be very useful as long as

they can draw attention.

Explicit feedback is also realized in myriads of different forms. The basic

form o explicit feedback mostly appear as pointing out the existence of an error, as

Leeman (2003) emphasizes the role of attention and salience in SLA, as the group

exposed to corrective input with enhanced salience exhibited clear advantage over the

control group which received unenhanced input. The concept of “prompt” in Lyster’s

(2004) article is comprised of clarification of requests, repetitions (with the mistake

highlighted suprasegmentally), metalinguistic clues and elicitation of the correct form.

The results of oral production tasks in the study proved that feedback in the form of

prompts has effectively improved the outcome of FFI (Form-focused Instruction).

Since the specific forms of implicit and explicit feedback can both vary with

regard to their implicitness and explicitness, it is reasonable to assume they can be

mutually complementary in functions. The study of Sanz (2004) confirms such

hypothesis. Participants in this study of PI (Processing Instruction) were divided into

three experimental groups, in which the first group (PI) received both grammatical

explanation (explicit feedback) and structured input (implicit feedback, e.g. “sorry, try

again”), the second (EO) and the third (SIO) group only received grammatical

explanation and structured input respectively. The outcome revealed that both the PI

and SIO groups performed better than the EO group in the interpretation task, and

although all three groups improved in the production task, the PIs and SIOs improved

more. It suggests that implicit feedback can be accompanied with explicit

grammatical instruction to achieve a better outcome for grammar acquisition.

These research findings about implicit feedback offer me several pedagogical

suggestions: making recast more salient is a way to increase student uptake and

successful repair, using a combination of implicit feedback forms, and incorporating

implicit request for repetition with explicit grammar explanations. Simply adopting

only explicit or implicit type of feedback would hardly suffice as the best strategy to

treat the grammar errors. As teachers, knowing how to use the different forms of

corrective feedback according to different teaching contexts to ensure the “noticing”

and “self-correction” may be a better solution.

Annotated Bibliography 2

Havranek, G. & Cesnik, H. (2003). Factors affecting the success of corrective

feedback. In S Foster-Cohen, A. Nizegorodzew, EUROSLA Yearbook, Volume 1.

Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Findings from the research of Havranek and Cesnik (2003) suggest even

stronger support for the credit of explicit feedback and harsher criticism to implicit

feedback. They argued that the most successful form of correction, not only for the

learners to which the feedback is directed but also for their peer classmates, is

feedback that could successfully provoke self-correction in oral practice situations.

Recasts without further comments or repetition by the corrected learner are proved to

be the most disappointing formats of corrections. The type of error corrected was also

an influencing factor in the post-correction performance, corrected students learn

most from the grammar related error corrections and least from the pronunciation

related ones. [Linguistics]

Panova, I., & Lyster, R. (2002). Patterns of corrective feedback and uptake in an

adult ESL classroom. Tesol Quarterly, 36(4), 573-595.

This study intends to experiment on the range and types of feedback used by the

teacher in an adult ESL classroom and the corresponding effects of the feedback on

uptake behaviors of students and immediate repair of error. The results show a

noticeable preference for implicit types of reformulative feedback, which include

recasts and translation, and the consequence of such pedagogical decision was low

rates of learner uptake and low immediate repair of error in the classroom. By contrast,

explicit feedback (e.g. elicitation, clarification requests, metalinguistic feedback)

reached high levels of uptake because the feedback moves tend to be noticed by

students. Yet neither explicit nor implicit feedback which offers target forms was

effective to push students modify their nontarget output. It is suggested the key is to

make students truly process the new target forms or retrieve learnt ones from their

memory, instead merely hearing the forms or mechanically repeating them.

[Linguistics]

Sheen, Y. (2004). Corrective feedback and learner uptake in communicative

classrooms across instructional settings. Language Teaching Research, 8(3), 263-

300.

Aimed at examining how teachers’ CF and learners’ uptake may vary across

different instructional settings, the study investigated four communicative classrooms

(French Immersion, Canada ESL, New Zealand ESL, and Korean EFL). The results

again verified the dominant popularity of recasts, which is non-threatening, mitigated,

and implicit, and challenged the viewpoint of researchers that recasts are less effective.

Some forms of recast in certain instructional settings may serve as facilitative for

student uptake and self-repair. In a context in which both teachers and students are in

agreement to treat linguistic form, instead of focusing on meaning, as the learning

objective, recasts may provide greater opportunities for language acquisition.

[Linguistics]

Morris, F. A., & Tarone, E. E. (2003). Impact of classroom dynamics on the

effectiveness of recasts in second language acquisition. Language Learning, 53(2),

325-368.

The article intends to examine the role of social factors played in the classroom

interaction where corrective feedback occur, by proposing that interpersonal conflict

and negative social interactions taken place in pair work would interfere with the

second language acquisition process of participants. Experiment results showed that

even though errors had been corrected with recasts, some learners continued to

produce nontarget-like forms in posttests. Stimulated recall revealed that negative

attitudes about their conversation partners have possibly caused the corrected students

consider recasts as criticism and even mockery, rather than assistive feedback. It is

pointed out that the social dynamics of the language classroom may greatly change

how cognitive processes of attention, or noticing, are displayed in cooperative

learning activities involving feedback.[Sociolinguistics]

Leeman, J. (2003). Recasts and second language development. Studies in Second

Language Acquisition, 25(01), 37-63.

This paper probes into the prominent part of recast in the field of SLA, and

offers the argument that recast can not only generate positive evidence but also

negative evidence, and the nature of recasts makes the positive evidence more salient.

The role of attention and salience in SLA is also emphasized, as the group exposed to

corrective input with enhanced salience exhibited clear advantage over the control

group which received unenhanced input, because enhancing the salience of those

forms will make learners take the form correction more seriously. It is also suggested

that some interactional features with recasts among them may result in better

development by highlighting specific forms. [L2 Pedagogy]

Sanz, C. (2004). Computer delivered implicit vs. explicit feedback in processing

instruction. Processing instruction: Theory, research, and commentary, 241-255.

In order to study the contributions of implicit and explicit feedback to PI

(Processing Instruction, participants were divided into three experimental groups, in

which the first group (PI) received both grammatical explanation (explicit feedback)

and structured input (implicit feedback, e.g. “sorry, try again”), the second (EO) and

the third (SIO) group only received grammatical explanation and structured input

respectively. What the outcome revealed was: both the PI and SIO groups performed

better than the EO group in the interpretation task; though all three groups improved

in the production task, the PIs and SIOs improved more. Therefore, the author

concludes that the implicit input plays a more decisive role in PI. The pedagogical

implication from this article is that implicit feedback can be accompanied with

explicit grammatical instruction to achieve a better outcome for grammar acquisition.

[L2 Pedagogy]

Theme 3- Embracing the Digital Age: How would Multi-media

Technology Contribute to English Learning?

Being an English language learner myself for 17 years, I have developed a

personal learning preference for the integration of multi-media technologies and

found that the assistance of technologies can be a necessary part of language

education in the modern digital ages. This is the reason I intend to introduce more

pedagogical materials and teaching methods based on multi-media sources, and

explore effective ways that technologies can be adopted to facilitate different aspects

of ESL learning by offering relaxing and stress-free environment and authentic tasks

and interactions.

The concept of Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) was defined as

“the search for and study of application on the computer in language teaching and

learning” (Levy, 1997, p.1). After years of technological evolutions, the field of

CALL has marched through the first and second phases, which are referred to as

behavioristic CALL and communicative CALL (Kern & Warschauer, 2000), and

developed into the present stage known as integrative CALL, which opens up for

more possibilities for multi-media resources to create highly interactive and

individualized learning tasks focusing specific content skills. The education

technology has proven itself to be a powerful tool in language teaching not only for

teachers who wish to empower students to find suitable learning styles and

preferences, but also for students themselves to foster higher interest in learning and

take initiative to be in charge of their own learning. I shall review the literatures and

studies from three dimensions and explore the effectiveness and applications of multi-

media technology to English learning.

From a Linguistics Perspective

Over the years, CALL technologies have proved to be significantly facilitative

to the development of linguistic competence. By employing technological tools,

teachers have been able to assist learners improve various language areas and skills

such as grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, speaking, and pronunciation.

Grammar teaching has always been a major area where the application of

technology demonstrates its advantage. Unlike the early days when sentence-based,

grammar-oriented tasks were valued, nowadays the grammar tutorial using CALL

software is more closely enclosed in a communicative context (Chan & Kim, 2004).

In their paper, Chan & Kim (2004) introduced a virtual self-access software for

German learning called “e-daf”, which served as a source of interactive exercises.

One of the designed exercise was aimed at helping students determine the case of a

noun and its article, and to apply the correct endings in German. The technological

tool, the “Kasus-Computer”, would ask and guide learners to determine and input the

grammar information in manageable, sequential steps, and therefore make them more

conscious of the cognitive processes necessary for solving the tasks and also provide

repetitive practice in the execution of these processes. Such a computer-based tool

could not only make grammar structures explicitly noticeable to the learners, but also

empower them to voluntarily practice the structures communicatively. Hubbard and

Bradin Siskin (2004) also expressed their viewpoint that multi-media involved

grammar tutorial involves conscious reflection on more than mere form but also

meaning and usage. Yet, the current activities dependent on computer programs are

still rudimentary due to the limitations of IT technology in analysis of learner error

and providing feedback, which is why researchers are working hard trying to develop

software that generate better analysis and feedback (Heift & Schulze, 2007).

Like grammar, vocabulary has also been regarded as one of the traditional areas

where multi-media technologies exhibit superiority. Computers possess the memory

capacities to store huge amount of linguistic data and offer access to students

whenever they need it. There is a broad range of technologies that can address

different aspects of vocabulary learning, which includes courseware, online activities,

dictionaries (online and electronic), corpora and concordancing, and computer-

mediated communication (CMC) technologies (Stockwell, 2007). Apart from

providing hyperlinks to resources and initiating mechanical practice, current

vocabulary learning software require functions to systematically recycle new items at

optimal intervals. Nakata (2006) developed a computer program for L2 vocabulary

learning based on the Low-First Method, and he was also trying to improve it by

incorporating structural elaboration as corrective feedback. The ultimate purpose was

to provide learners with optimal scheduling of feedback and rehearsal opportunities to

enhance the efficiency of vocabulary learning.

For reading and writing, technology serves as mostly facilitative equipment for

more accessible resources and better performing platforms. In terms of reading skills,

multi-media technologies are applied to help readers to obtain further information or

examples or read extended texts. When Al-Seghayer (2007) studied the impact of

organizational devices in readers’ formation of mental representation of hypertext

content, he discovered that well-structured hypertext played a quite beneficial role in

getting less proficient readers improve their reading speed. Microcomputer

technologies also brought word processor, which made writing and editing text

become much more convenient. Other tools like the interactive iWRITE system, a

multimodal, corpus-based online grammar resource (Hegelheimer, 2006) can address

the central problems in the development of the writing skill, including need for

accuracy, production, multiple drafts, context-sentitive feedback and correction etc.

Besides, learner corpora, email for collaborative writing, and other technological tools

have also been employed in L2 writing.

Multi-media technologies have made great contributions in areas of listening,

speaking, and pronunciation. Streaming audio and video on the Internet enable

students to access numerous audio materials. Computer assisted listening technologies

are able to make learning goals achievable so that segmentation, repetition, speed

regulation, and links to further information can be facilitated (Jones, 2003). A new

technology known as podcast has also drawing language educator’s attention as a

favorable means of improving listening skills, which can not only have sound files

“pushed” to subscribers on a regular basis, but also allow learners to create their own

podcasts (Rosell-Aguilar, 2007). A variety of CALL technologies can be applied to

oral skill improvement. Online applications that have functions to mediate

communication via voice have been applied to facilitate participation and interaction

in speaking activities. Learners can also use software like Skype to send sound files or

have conversations online. For pronunciation, computer-aided pronunciation training

(CAPT) pedagogy was discussed by Neri (2007), its advantages are the ability to

motivate and to raise awareness of individual problems using technologies, and also

provide more detailed learner feedback on pronunciation. Tsubota, Dantsuji, and

Kawahara (2004) examined the software that could identify the aspects of English

pronunciation that cause trouble for Japanese learners, and then automatically provide

feedback and practice in the corresponding areas.

From a Sociolinguistics Perspective

Applications of education technologies have never been restricted to the

linguistics dimension, they are also making huge differences with the cultural aspects

of language learning. Countless websites can be utilized for learners to get in touch

with the target culture, and the authentic materials are extremely valuable since they

are prepared by native speakers for native speakers.

Darhower (2007) presented a scenario where the learning environments for

culture based on technology guided students to reexamine and reevaluate their own

culture as well as the foreign culture. In this study where participation and community

metaphors took place in a community-based bilingual chat telecollaboration, the

discursive construction of interpersonal relationships in the chat groups was captured.

Some learners proved to be able to form a community and integrate themselves as

official members to the community through verbal communications in a

telecollaborative context. Through the participation in discursive practice by means of

technology, knowledge about culture are exchanged and reshaped.

There are also alternative ways to experience another culture by joining online

websites designed to be virtual worlds such as Active Worlds

(http://www.activeworlds.com/) and Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/).

Second Life has been actively discussed as a successful case for virtual world

websites that facilitate the sociolinguistic aspect of language learning. Steven’s (2006)

online paper described the cases of how educators may have learners undertake a

variety of tasks through target language interaction, and also employ transactional

communication and interactional strategies. Users are represented by avatars so as to

interact with one another in a wide variety of situations, including purposeful spaces

for learning different speech acts and pragmatic knowledge.

Besides the two mentioned above, another virtual world website called

Croquelandia was constructed by Julie Sykes (Sykes, 2009) especially for language

learning. The specialty of her design was a syntactic immersive environment (SIE)

(http://site.google.com/site/croquelandia/), which represents a variety of online

immersive space that is meticulously designed to work as a social space that integrate

a number of features of online gaming to generate explicit and educationally related

outcomes in simulated, relevant interactional context. In this case, it is significant to

pragmatic acquisition because the website provides opportunities for meaningful

interactions that involve interpersonal engagement. Through more meaningful

interactions, learners would have the chances to practice with various

pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic skills in their repertoire, so that they could be

able to enhance relationships with people in the target language environment by

expressing the correct meanings.

Despite the favorable spaces for rehearsal provided by virtual worlds

technology, its limitations remains as being quite time-consuming, and there is also

the risk of getting pragmatics knowledge of the virtual space but not inevitably the L2

language skills. Therefore, it is necessary to search for a balance when using

technology for cultural and pragmatic acquisition purposes.

From an L2 Pedagogy Perspective

It is one thing to understand and accept the potential betterment that computer

and multi-media technology can bring about to language education, but another to

succeed in pedagogically implementing them inside and outside the classroom with a

specific group of students. In fact, discussions about the complicated relationship

between technology and pedagogy have been going on since the initiation of CALL.

Some scholars strongly advocate the necessity of pedagogical focus instead of

the role of technology. Felix (2003) expressed her opinion about the negotiation

between pedagogy and technology, and argued that good pedagogy is not dependent

upon technology. Technology should not be the dominance in the learning experience,

but ought to remain as one of many tools at the disposal of both teachers and students.

Similar voices are also stated by scholars like Colpaert (2006), who believed that the

choosing of technology is an automatic outcome from solid pedagogical design, and

that teachers should become designers of what is required as a “peruse evaluation

mechanism”.

However, it would be too narrow-minded to deny the importance of technology

when considering the relationship between technology and pedagogy, which can be

compared to the paradox of “the chicken or the egg”. The invention of better

technologies brings forth new achievabilities of language teaching pedagogy, and

novice pedagogical objectives and conceptions can lead to further development in

technology. As Smith, Alvarez-Torres, and Zhao (2003) have illustrated in their

article, it is problematic to treat technologies as passive, obedient tools that are

entirely subject to the user, even the existence of a computer in a classroom can

actively reshape the pedagogical environment. It is the Internet-based communication

technologies that made it possible for the designing of new pedagogies using

computer-mediated communication (CMC), which are non-existent before these

technologies because students can get instant access to a text-based “script” of the

chat conversation with thousands-mile-away native speakers for inspection and

correction. Apparently, it was no pedagogical requirements that lead to the invention

of technologies like online-chatting, but the technology that made contributions to the

new pedagogies.

Additionally, it is also suggested by Smith, Alvarez-Torres, and Zhao (2003)

that practitioners of technology must take cautions when choosing the specific type of

technology (like which CMC programs) based on their situational pedagogical goals.

According to their study, even though many of the potentially confounding factors

such as individual learner differences, task type, language level etc. are controlled,

notable differences still exist in students’ social, linguistic, and psychological

expressions. Certain modality and spatially “reduced” CMC programs function with

more efficiency with computer-based pedagogical approaches than others. This

reminds us as ESL educators to tailor the applications of multi-media and computer

technologies as well as our pedagogical plans so that they can mutually fit into each

other as a facilitative unity. Such enlightenment guided me to give up the request of a

projector from NSC because of the limitation of classroom area and student number,

and changed my task designs to include more activities with portable electronic

devices (laptops and cellphones). The introduction of technologies into my classroom

certainly opened up broader pedagogical possibilities.

Annotated Bibliography 3

Bahrani, T. (2011). Speaking Fluency: Technology in EFL Context or Social

Interaction in ESL Context?. Studies in Literature & Language, 2(2).

The article identifies the problem with speaking fluency development in EFL

context, where language learners have limited opportunities to interact with native

speakers and learn language unconsciously. An alternative remedy for such a

disadvantage would be exposure to authentic language input through technology. A

study was conducted in hope to determine to what extent the exposure to audio/visual

mass media input in EFL context and social interaction input in ESL context would

positively affect speaking fluency. Post-test result for the participants reveals that the

EFL group that received audio/visual mass media outperformed the ESL group that

was exposed to social interaction, and therefore proved that exposure to authentic

source of language through technology is beneficial to speaking fluency development.

While social interaction may slow down fluency development because learners would

pause and repeat for the sake of communication, multimedia technologies helps EFL

learners to focus on adapting themselves with the linguistic level of the authentic

input. [Linguistics]

Chan, W. M., & Kim, D. H. (2004). Towards greater individualization and

process-oriented learning through electronic self-access: Project “e-daf”.

Computer Assisted Language Learning, 17(1), 83-108.

In the paper, the researchers confirm that the advances in information and

communication technology (ICT) open up the possibility to provide myriads of

interactive language exercises and self-access grammar learning materials.They

introduced a virtual self-access software for German learning called “e-daf”, which

served as a source of interactive exercises. One of the designed exercise was aimed at

helping students determine the case of a noun and its article, and to apply the correct

endings in German. The technological tool, the “Kasus-Computer”, would ask and

guide learners to determine and input the grammar information in manageable,

sequential steps, and therefore make them more conscious of the cognitive processes

necessary for solving the tasks and also provide repetitive practice in the execution of

these processes. Such a computer-based tool could not only make grammar structures

explicitly noticeable to the learners, but also empower them to voluntarily practice the

structures communicatively. [Linguistics]

Darhower, M. (2007). A tale of two communities: Group dynamics and

community building in a Spanish-English telecollaboration. CALICO Journal,

24(3), 561-589.

The author presented a scenario where the learning environments for culture

based on technology guided students to reexamine and reevaluate their own culture as

well as the foreign culture. In this study where participation and community

metaphors took place in a community-based bilingual chat telecollaboration, the

discursive construction of interpersonal relationships in the chat groups was captured.

Some learners proved to be able to form a community and integrate themselves as

official members to the community through verbal communications in a

telecollaborative context. Through the participation in discursive practice by means of

technology, knowledge about culture are exchanged and reshaped. This holds

practical meaning for L2 teaching professionals to create optimal conditions for

participation promotion and conduct more research into specific mechanisms of

community building. [Sociolinguistics]

Smith, B., Alvarez-Torres, M. J., & Zhao, Y. (2003). Features of CMC

technologies and their impact on language learners’ online interaction.

Computers in Human Behavior, 19(6), 703-729.

The authors illustrated in their article that it is problematic to treat technologies

as passive, obedient tools that are entirely subject to the user, even the existence of a

computer in a classroom can actively reshape the pedagogical environment. It is the

Internet-based communication technologies that made it possible for the designing of

new pedagogies using computer-mediated communication (CMC), which are non-

existent before these technologies because students can get instant access to a text-

based “script” of the chat conversation with thousands-mile-away native speakers for

inspection and correction. Additionally, it is also suggested that practitioners of

technology must take cautions when choosing the specific type of technology (like

which CMC programs) based on their situational pedagogical goals. [L2 Pedagogy]

Yang, S. C., & Chen, Y. J. (2007). Technology-enhanced language learning: A

case study. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(1), 860-879.

This case study is aimed at exploring the opinions and perceptions of a group of

senior high school students about the application of web-based Internet tools in

language learning activities. After participating in six Internet-based teaching

activities (including group e-mailing, a Web-based course, English homepage design

etc.), the students demonstrated a preference for the opportunity to experience new

technologies. However, even though most students approved of the learning style

using Internet, they held different perspectives about the specific benefits to English

learning. It is therefore, a responsibility of teachers to assist students in understanding

the distinction between technology-based learning and traditional lectures and

promote amicable dynamics and support to ease up the transition process. One

suggested tip for teachers is to become sufficiently familiar with the computing

infrastructure and technological equipment so that the effectiveness of activities can

be maximized. [L2 Pedagogy]

Classroom Activity

ACTIVITY: [Beginning French] – Expressing Gratitude in Different Ways

(Exprimant la Gratitude de Différentes Façons)

OBJECTIVES :

• SWBAT express gratitude using four different expressions in French.

• SWBAT respond to gratitude with four different expressions in French, and

understand the pragmatic usages of formal and informal expressions.

• SWBAT complete a simple conversation of gratitude expressing and response

using the expressions taught.

• SWBAT understand and remember basic French instructions through

teacher’s verbal and non-verbal demonstrations.

RATIONALE:

This activity is to be carried out in a beginning level French immersion class, in

which the target students are native or highly proficient English speakers. The teacher

will mostly using French for giving explanations and instructions.

Since most students are expected to be complete novice learners of French, strategies

such as offering scaffolding explanations, using group chorus, and avoiding

individual performance were adopted, in order to reduce student anxiety levels

(Theme 1); corrective feedback will mostly take form of recast, without explicit

verbal indication. But certain non-verbal methods like prolonged stress, multiple

repetitions will be used to draw students’ attention to the incorrect pronunciations

(Theme 2); Multi-media technologies (computer, projector, Powerpoint software,

USB flash drive) are utilized throughout the teaching process, to provide learners with

better visual presentation of the spellings and English translations (Theme 3).

MATERIALS & EQUIPMENT:

• Expressing Gratitude in Different Ways handout, 19 copies [attached]

• USB flash drive with Powerpoint presentation file inside [screenshots attached]

• Computer in the classroom with Windows 7 system

• Video projector equipment (projector machine, curtain screen)

• Macbook laptop and connection cord (in case the computer doesn’t work)

PROCEDURE:

1. Greetings and brief introduction of the activity in French. (Bonsoir à tous.

Dans cette activité, je vais vous apprendre à exprimer la gratitude de

différentes manières…)

2. Play Powerpoint slide. Give overview about “simple ways to say thank you”

in French.

3. Give separate presentations on the four ways of “thank you” in French (merci,

merci beaucoup, merci bien, merci mille fois). Use instructional expressions

like “répétez après moi”, “plus fort”, “tout le monde”, “un après l'autre” to ask

students to repeat after the teacher, speak louder, read all together or one at a

time. Use praising expressions like “très bien”, “super”, “bon travail” with

non-verbal gestures (e.g. thumbing up) to encourage students.

4. Give separate presentations on the four ways of “response to thank you” in

French (de rien, je t`en prie, je vous en prie, pas de problème). Continue to

use instructional expressions to request “chorus reading” and “quick-relay

reading”.

5. Play the slide for pair conversation practice instruction. Explain in French

while pointing to the English translations on the screen. Give a modeling with

a random student (par exemple, je dis «merci», vous dites «pas de problème»).

Make sure everyone understand and start the conversation activity.

6. Circulate around among the groups and provide necessary corrective

feedback.

7. Stop the activity, ask one group to volunteer for a presentation.

Powerpoint Screenshots

Expressing Gratitude in Different Ways
Exprimant la Gratitude de Différentes Façons

[Ways to say thank you/ Les façons de dire merci]

Merci. Thank you.

Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much.

Merci bien. Thanks a lot.

Merci mille fois. Thanks a million.

[Ways to respond to thank you/ Les façons de répondre à
remercier]

De rien. It’s nothing.

Je t`en prie. You’re welcome. (informal)

Je vous en prie. You’re welcome. (formal)

Pas de problème. No problem.

Conclusion

Throughout the reflective literature reviews of the scholar themes generated

from my teaching experience, I am more mindful and attentive when examining the

language teaching issues from different professional dimensions. The student anxiety

problems that show up in my future classrooms will be evaluated from socio-cultural

angle, taking into account factors such as culture, gender, and socio-economic status,

and dealt with multiple strategies like building up more agreeable teacher-student

relationships and offering more prior knowledge to increase learner preparedness; I

have acquired deeper understanding about the delicate art of giving corrective

feedback. In order to strive for a balance between the seemingly two extreme ways of

correction alternatives, the key resides in the realization of uptaking the target

linguistic forms. There exist no clear advantages or disadvantages with the two

choices, and a purposeful and well-coordinated admixture of the two might achieve

unexpectedly positive outcomes; I am also more confident with the application of

multi-media and computer technologies. The existence of technological equipment

and information sources should not be simply treated as tools passively manipulated

by pedagogical designs, but it should also be an active catalyzer for innovative

pedagogical development.

The reexaminations of these practical issues from an academic point of view, as

well as the practice of keeping field journals, also taught me how to pay close

attention to each and every details taken place inside the teaching context, and

constantly posing questions about the decisions I made: why I did that, how did the

students react or respond, and what I can do in the future to improve the result. Such

reflections also touch back to what I mentioned in the introduction part of this paper,

that is, try to view every issue from the perspective of a student, to think like a student,

and feel like a student, and only in this way can I make pertinent adjustments to create

a real student-centered classroom.

Unannotated Bibliography

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Al-Seghayer, K. (2007). The role of organizational devices in ESL readers'

construction of mental representations of hypertext content. CALICO

journal, 24(3), 531-559.

Bongaerts, T. (1999). Ultimate attainment in L2 pronunciation: The case of very

advanced late L2 learners. Second language acquisition and the critical

period hypothesis, 133-159.

Boonkit, K. (2010). Enhancing the development of speaking skills for non-native

speakers of English. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 1305-

1309.

Brooks-Lewis, K. A. (2009). Adult learners’ perceptions of the incorporation of their

L1 in foreign language teaching and learning. Applied Linguistics, 30(2),

216-235.

Carroll, S. E. (2001). Input and evidence: The raw material of second language

acquisition (Vol. 25). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Chan, W. M., & Kim, D. H. (2004). Towards greater individualization and process-

oriented learning through electronic self-access: Project “e-daf”. Computer

Assisted Language Learning, 17(1), 83-108.

Colpaert, J. (2006). Pedagogy-driven design for online language teaching and

learning. CALICO journal, 23(3), 477-497.

Darhower, M. (2007). A tale of two communities: Group dynamics and community

building in a Spanish-English telecollaboration. CALICO Journal, 24(3),

561-589.

Doughty, C. (2001). Cognitive underpinnings of focus on form. Cognition and second

language instruction, 206-257.

Ellis, R. (2006). Current issues in the teaching of grammar: An SLA perspective.

Tesol Quarterly, 40(1), 83-107.

Ellis, R., & Sheen, Y. (2006). Reexamining the role of recasts in second language

acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28(04), 575-600.

Felix, U. (2003). Pedagogy on the line: Identifying and closing the missing links.

Language learning online: Towards best practice, 147-171.

Guiora, A. Z. (1983). The dialectic of language acquisition. Language Learning, 33,

3-12.

Havranek, G. & Cesnik, H. (2003). Factors affecting the success of corrective

feedback. In S Foster-Cohen, A. Nizegorodzew, EUROSLA Yearbook,

Volume 1. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Hegelheimer, V. (2006). Helping ESL writers through a multimodal, corpus-based,

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Heift, T., & Schulze, M. (2007). Errors and intelligence in computer-assisted

language learning: Parsers and pedagogues. Routledge.

Hubbard, P., & Siskin, C. B. (2004). Another look at tutorial CALL. ReCALL, 16(2),

448-461.

Jones, L. C. (2003). Supporting listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition

with multimedia annotations: The students' voice. CALICO journal, 21(1),

41-65.

Kaur Khalsa, D., Maloney-Krichmar, D., & Kreeft Peyton, J. (2007). Theory and

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Appendix I: Fieldwork Journals

See attached. Arranged chronologically (except Journal #10).

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #1
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, January 17, 2014 (Mtg 2)
Class objectives:   Ss: Although we were ‐ I intentionally over‐
1). SWBAT understand and informed by our TA that last prepared for the first class,
remember the necessary week 5 students showed up as a tryout, because I was
information about NSC, the in the morning, only 3 not sure about the timing
course, the syllabus, and the
students came this week. 2 and actual learning ability
text book. students arrived on time at of my students; (L2
2). SWBAT use correct the beginning of the class, 1 Pedagogy)
structures to introduce was slightly late, but all
personal information before 10:40 am.   ‐ Try to start the class on
3). Ask about others’ They all come from different time in the future, even if
information using correct countries, namely China, there might be more
‘wh‐‘ and ‘Be‐verb Yes/No’ Russia, and Mexico people coming. (L2
questions Pedagogy)
4). Describe people’s *Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu
physical appearance using    TA: Mark Weiczorek ‐ The different origins and
correct adjectives, nouns,    Students: XM (China), DV            native languages showed
and phrases (Mexico), IL (Russia) great diversity, and
ensured they wouldn’t chat
Problem came up as the in their native languages,
students were too few (a which is good!
very common problem at (Sociolinguistics)
NSC), and might increase
difficulty in planning Note: To clarify, this is the
activities. Hopefully more second meeting (week 2) of
will come in the coming this Winter 2014 ten‐week
weeks. session class. However,
because both my co‐teacher
and I were not at
Philadelphia for week 1, this
Is our first time to meet the
Ss. (But our TA Mark was
here last week)

9:30 – 9:45 Greetings & • All the students seemed ‐ I followed my co‐teacher’s
Teacher Introduction gregarious and comfortable advice and stopped waiting
about the our presence for more students, which
• Teachers’ names on the was a wise move because
board • I decided to have students no more came later. (L2
• Apology for not being call me Huabing even Pedagogy)
able to come last week though it might be a little
• Teachers: Huabing & hard for some to ‐ I purposefully used the
Victoria pronounce. I quit using the normal speaking speed
• Students make name tags name ‘Achilles’ because it’s during this session, which
kind of weird, and also served as an informal
hard to pronounce for assessment for their
most students. listening skills. I could not
speak for sure if they had

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #1
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• Not much response for the understood most of my
apology about our absence apology part. Sometimes
though (talking too fast?) students won’t say ‘yes’
when you ask them ‘do you
• Seemed interested when I understand what I’m
pointed at the map for the saying?’, although they
location of my hometown might have understood
Dalian. IL initiated most of them. (How to
questions about the encourage active
climate there. response?) (Linguistics)

• Though a native speaker, ‐ What to be called as a
Mark was a little awkward teacher is a frequent topic
when speaking in class, and in an ESL classroom. Titles
had a discernable like “teacher” or “Mr.
Philadelphia accent Wang” seem too teacher‐
centered. Using a common
• The name tags seems a bit American name like
unnecessary since there “Victoria” is certainly a
were only three students good choice, but I had a
hard time finding a suitable
common English name, so
I’ve been trying to use the
Chinese name instead, this
worked for some students
in the past, they would
learn and remember it and
use it to call me; others
constantly avoided using it
and sometimes simply
waved at me when they
wanted to draw my
attention. I don’t want to
make a big deal about this
matter, but feel
uncomfortable when being
summoned without a name
or title. (Sociolinguistics)

‐ Pointing at a location on a
map can be a magical way
to draw attention, students
like to visually explore an
exotic place on a map. (L2
Pedagogy)

9:45 – 10:00 Course, • The general introduction ‐ I feel like it is important for
Syllabus, & Textbook of NSC and the emphasis students to have a general
Introduction of the course didn’t idea about the organization
arouse much response where they are having
• About NSC: education, from the students, I could classes, as well as what the

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #1
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

social & legal service see they were listening focus is with regard to this
• This course: improving but was uncertain course. (L2 Pedagogy)
comprehensive language whether they found the
skills, but focusing on information helpful or ‐ Is it necessary or not to
listening and speaking not. point out the nature of
• This classroom: student‐ • The introduction of the student‐centered
centered classroom classroom and syllabus classroom to the students?
• Syllabus: schedules, took a much longer time My co‐teacher suggested I
teaching contents & rules than I originally should skip this in the
• Textbook: Future 2 anticipated. future since they seemed
to have a hard time
• Ss expressed agreement understanding it (I tend to
by nodding (finally) when agree) (L2 Pedagogy)
I stated the classroom
rules & tips (punctuality, ‐ Going over the syllabus
no cell phones, asking often serves as a routine
questions freely etc.) session for most
classrooms. Yet this one
• Ss (esp. IL) felt happy that took an excessive long
they could have the new time, because I kept feeling
textbook (with DVD) and there were more that
keep it as their own. needs explanation. Need to
chop it up next time. (L2
• DV asked a very good Pedagogy)
question: why use “hunt”
for jobs? (topic of one ‐ The Victory Afternoon: this
week in the syllabus) is a specially designed
session every other week in
the afternoon aiming at
improving the speech
delivering & conversation
skills. It is based on the
same idea from the
“Triumphant Thursday” my
previous co‐teacher
created. Multimedia
method (projector) is
needed for showing the
exemplary speeches (from
TED or other Youtube
resources). However,
problem remained because
NSC does not offer
projectors for teachers, this
need to be worked out. (L2
Pedagogy)

‐ We decided not to use the
contents in the textbook
for in‐class activities
directly, only the topics. So

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #1
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

the book was only given to
the Ss as a take‐home
exercise resource. (L2
Pedagogy)

10:00 – 10:30 Self‐ • The brainstorming ‐ The Ss in this class were
introduction Practice session had always been recognized as intermediate
• Key elements in a self‐ helpful, all of them level because they all can
introduction (brainstorm) started contributing produce lexically and
• Teacher modeling: name, ideas. Yet some said structurally simple output
country, native language, “address” and “phone without much anxiety. One
work, why here, personal number”, which can be of the aspects they need to
interests & hobbies… too private for a self‐ further develop for better
• Pair introduction introduction in most proficiency is vocabulary.
• Individual introduction cases. Such keyword‐semantic
strategy (like key‐word
• After each necessary brainstorming) proved to
element of self‐ be effective in facilitating
introduction (name, vocabulary acquisition
native language, country (Brown & Perry, 1991).
etc.), several examples of (Linguistics)
syntactic structures were
offered (e.g. I speak …/ ‐ One of the improvements
my native language is …), about the modeling of self‐
and Ss were encouraged introduction that can be
to memorize and use made is an additional
them during the task. slower demonstration
(with clear emphasis on
• Ss seemed engaged when some keywords or
we teachers gave the sentence structures) to
modeling self‐ implicitly draw students’
introduction, they attention to those linguistic
listened attentively and structures. In this way, Ss
took notes (meaning they can concentrate on the
were processing the content of our speeches for
information) the first time, and pay
attention to the forms for
• The individual self‐ the second time.
introduction task went on (Linguistics)
pretty well, owing to the
previous explicit ‐ Although they all had
instruction. Ss used the finished the task well
guiding structures on the enough, I still feel we can
board and basically do better to improve their
covered all the necessary fluency. Maybe giving
elements. home assignments of
writing the introduction
down and present it again
next week will serve as a
useful task for fluency. (L2
Pedagogy)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #1
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Note: In the afternoon
session taught by my co‐
teacher, a listening practice
was given to test how much
they can remember after
listening to a family‐tree
introduction. I was
impressed by the listening
proficiency and memory of IL
and DV. Both of them could
answer questions about the
number of siblings, names of
cousins and living locations
of a relative – great job! But
XM needed more help with
listening. (Linguistics)

10: 30 – 10: 45 Ice‐breaker • We agreed to write the ‐ This is the part where the
Game: Snow Ball Fight two questions on two assessment for their
• Two questions on a piece pieces of papers (so that question‐forming abilities
of paper we could have more was informally carried out.
• Class into two groups in snow balls!). It turned out that all of
line, facing each other them needs more
• Fold the paper into balls, • This ice‐breaker has been instructions and practice. IL
throw at the other team used before with my had difficulty distinguishing
• Stop, pick up, read and previous students, and it the functions of “do” and
answer helps lighten up the “be verbs”; DV had
atmosphere very well. problems with the choosing
of auxiliary verbs; and XM
• Most of the questions had some minor issues with
were not grammatically tense and aspect.
formed very well, but Question‐forming should
comprehensible. So I did be an emphasis in the
not stop them when they future. (Linguistics)
were reading. Yet I
pointed out the mistakes ‐ It was a good thing that
right after they answered they kept asking questions
the questions, and about how to form
explicitly (but briefly) questions with “do” or
explained the structures “is/are”, yet it was not easy
of “be verb yes/no for them to understand
questions” and “wh‐ some differences after such
questions”. brief explanations. I
assured them that we
would get back to this topic
later. (Linguistics)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #1
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

10: 45 – 10: 50 Classroom • This part was presented
Language Introduction by my co‐teacher. She
basically explained some
simple classroom
instructional expressions
such as “open the book”,
“turn to page 17” etc.,
and asked students to
follow her instructions.
Simple action repetitions.

10:50 – 11:00 Break Chatted with DV, asking ‐ Casual talk always helps
about where in Mexico he because, firstly, we can
was from, how he liked know more about the
Philadelphia’s weather etc. experiences and
He was responsive when backgrounds of the
being asked questions. students; and secondly, it
eases up the relationship
Note: the break was moved and thus indirectly
forward before the Snow Ball improves teacher‐student
activity because the previous communication quality.
activities went on slower (Sociolinguistics)
than anticipated
‐ It can sometimes be
embarrassing for certain
student to talk about
occupations because they
may not have a job or have
a relatively low‐class job.
(Sociolinguistics)

11: 00 – 11:30 Describe • There were only ten ‐ Some of the vocabulary
Physical Appearance minutes left for this part, may be too hard for them
• Distribute Handout 1, read so I just distributed the (obese, sideburns,
and explain the vocabulary handouts and explained complexion etc.) But I
• Picture Match: What do simply about the purpose assume it’s no harm for
they look like? Use Future of this activity. Ss need to them to look it up, even
2 Activity Book “Activity learn the words about though they could not
Master 1” describing physical remember all of them.
appearance and then (Linguistics)
describe the pictures of
some people on the
handouts.

11: 30 – 11: 50 Board Game:
Personal Information
Questions
• Distribute the copy of N/A N/A
Activity Master 5
• Explain the rules of the
game (2 students a team, 2

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #1
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

teams to play)
• Monitor and offer
necessary help and
feedback
11:50 – 12:00 Summary & • I re‐stated about the ‐ I need to make some
Closing‐ups   importance of practicing adjustments with my
• Summarize the necessary about speaking in front of pedagogical strategies for
points in self‐introduction.   people as they might the first class in the future,
• Summarize key points in (actually definitely would) wasting time on the some
describing people and one day be a necessary skill irrelevant introduction
asking questions for required.   should be prevented. (L2
personal information Pedagogy)
• Home assignments • I also reminded them
about the “Victory ‐ Leave the homework when
Afternoon” next week and Ss are sitting, instead of
left them the home when they are packing up
assignment of writing bags and pretending to be
another self‐introductory listening. Most will forget
speech with more personal about the homework in the
stories or ideas.   second situation. (L2
Pedagogy)
• Unlike my previous Ss, they
all seemed okay with the ‐ Overall, it’s a good class
assignment (not feeling with good students, plus an
stressed or frustrated). assistive co‐teacher and a
native‐speaking TA. Great
start! Praying for more
students.

References

Brown, T. S., & Perry, F. L. (1991). A comparison of three learning strategies for ESL vocabulary
acquisition. Tesol Quarterly, 25(4), 655‐670.

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #2
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, January 24, 2014 (Mtg 3)
Ss: Good news we have two ‐ It can be a challenging task
more students this time in to teach a group with
the morning session. One heterogeneous cultural
female student (HS) from background, but it is also a
South Korea, and one male fantastic experience to
student (MH) from Sudan. witness the interweaving
Yet the male student asked and exchanging of different
for a leave in the afternoon. stories, opinions, and
So 4 students in total during linguistic features during
my session. the teaching process.
(Socilinguistics)
Class objectives: *Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu
1). SWBAT use the    TA: Mark Weiczorek ‐ Another fact that made me
“Negative‐thought‐control”    Students: XM (China), DV            like this class was that, in
technique to prevent anxiety (Mexico), IL (Russia), HS the past classes, every
before speeches (South Korea) student had given enough
2).  SWBAT use the respect, friendliness, and
“breathing” technique to One encouraging fact about encouragement to each
prevent anxiety before the Ss in our class is that all other’s performance. A
speeches of them are within the same supportive and reassuring
3). SWBAT plan, prepare, age group: adults aging from learning environment,
and present a self‐ 22‐35 (approximately). I which facilitates learning
introduction speech have a personal preference motivation and classroom
for this age group because: participation, is exactly
1) basically no disciplinary what we are trying to
problem create. (Socilinguistics)
2) mostly goal‐oriented and
hard‐working ‐ The main purpose of this
class is helping the Ss
conquer the pre‐speech
anxiety and gain
confidence to speak up in
front of people.
(Linguistics)

1:00 – 1:10 Greetings, • I had been worried that Ss ‐ Getting Ss focused and
Reviewing & Warming‐up would feel tired and bored motivated before class is a
(10 mins) after a 2.5‐hour morning theme deserving
session, yet it turned out discussion. A seemingly
• Ask each student what that they all adjusted casual Q&A with each
they had for lunch themselves well and student (supposedly the
• Ask if they have brought listened attentively class is not that big) can be
the homework (self‐intro adopted to ease up the
speech) • Students’ responses to the atmosphere and also
• Review about key inquiry about the lunch practice oral expressions.
elements in self‐ were pretty satisfying. (L2 Pedagogy)
introduction Most tried to use a

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #2
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• What are the sentence to answer instead ‐ Using follow‐up and open‐
corresponding structures of just one or two words. ended questions when Ss
only respond with very
• I drew a chart of the “key short sentences is one of
elements” and “sentence the strategies I use to
structures” on the board, improve teacher‐student
and asked each student to interactions. After DV
offer ideas about how to fill responded “it’s okay” for
in the blanks my question, I pursued
asking “Do you think the
• Each student was asked to sandwich is more delicious
take turn to make a than Mexican Tacos?”, then
sentence with the structure DV produced more about
on board his opinions on Mexican
food, because the
comparison was
meaningful to him
experientially and
culturally, which aroused
his interests to address this
issue. (Linguistics)

• I gave a brief
1:10 – 1:25 How to Control presentation on why it is ‐ The basis rationale of this
Presentation Anxiety Pt.1 important to use this strategy origins from the
(15 mins) method to control psychological studies of
presentation anxiety. self‐suggestion approaches,
Controlling Negative which include affirmation,
Thoughts • I always stopped and ask imagery, and relaxation.
‐ Think of five fears students whether they The process of substituting
(examples) knew the meaning of negative thoughts with
‐ Rank the fears from 1 to 5 certain words (e.g. positive ones, and speaking
‐ Change fears to positive “anxiety”, “negative”) them loudly is how self‐
thoughts affirmation is achieved.
‐ Every students will add this • I had to explain the (Linguistics)
sentence as one of their sentence structure “I am
positive thought: “I can afraid of sth./ to do sth./ ‐ I was still not sure of the
speak perfect English!” that…” to IL. She was vocabulary level of the Ss,
‐ Each student stands up brave to speak but was so I felt safer to explain
and speak out their still trapped by some some words, and it turned
positive thoughts to the grammar rules out that some of them
whole class as loudly as indeed needed such help. I
possible (encouragement • Some very original should’ve reminded them
needed) “negative thoughts” and that they are welcome to
“positive thoughts” came ask questions about any
up. IL wrote she feared unfamiliar words. (L2
Materials: textbook that she would not Pedagogy)
handouts from SCMS understand questions
(Speech Communication from the audience. HS ‐ IL possesses many fine
Made Simple 2) P. 2 said she felt okay to characteristics for an
speak English with non‐ English learner. She does

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #2
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

native speakers, but very not feel embarrassed or
nervous with native pretend to understand
speakers. My co‐teacher, when she does not
TA and I assisted them to understand certain
come up with some grammar points. She is
constructive positive eager to explore more
substitutes. structures that she is
having problems with. So I
• Most Ss felt a little bit tend to address to her
awkward and more often when there’s a
unconfident when they pair‐work or individual
were asked to speak out work. (L2 Pedagogy)

their positive thoughts.
‐ I could literally observe the
Thus I encourage them to
visible improvement in
try for a second or third
each student’s self‐
time, and use voice from
confidence, and when I
the chest and stomach so
followed up with them
that their voice could
after class, they admitted
become louder. Everyone
did a lot better that they did feel better
and braver as they.
eventually, and applauses
(Linguistics)
from other students

made the atmosphere
‐ One problem of studying
more welcoming and
the effects of the methods
supportive. Best award
adopted to help students
went to HS, her firm
overcome anxiety and build
statement “native
up confidence is the
speakers are the same as
difficulty in assessment. It
I am” actually moved me.
is certainly plausible to use
questionnaires at the end
of the semester to get the
information from students
directly. But I think the
more practical (and maybe
more valid) way is to
informally assess them
during the teaching
process. (L2 Pedagogy)

1:25 – 1:35 How to Control • Introduced the principles ‐ The rationale of this
Presentation Anxiety Pt.2 of why breathing technique also comes out
(10 mins) correctly would help a of one of the self‐
person make a speech. reassuring approaches,
Breathing Correctly which is called “relaxation”
• Introduce why breathing • Explained the words and it is often paired with
is important “inhale” and “exhale”, self‐suggestion to create
• Inhale (breathe in) & because I considered that association between
exhale (breathe out) these two words might be particular phrases or
• Breathing Practice (1 too “academic” for them, affirmations, and a feeling
minute, close eyes, follow I used “breathe in” and of calmness. (Linguistics)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #2
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

T instructions) “breathe out” as their
substituting words later. ‐ The reason I asked for
Materials: Textbook visualizing the successful
handouts from SCMS • Instruct Ss to visualize scene and remembering
(Speech Communication themselves making a the positive thoughts is to
Made Simple 2) P. 3 speech successfully in create the association
front of people or think between the images or
about their positive phrases with the relaxing
thoughts as they practice feelings. Of course, such
the breathing technique. linking process requires a
lot of practice. (L2
Pedagogy)

• The students liked the ‐ The using of technological
videos because I had devices and multimedia
spent some time to materials certainly
search for the speech facilitates the teaching
materials that are quality, especially with
authentic (not made for listening and speaking.
pedagogical purposes, (Linguistics)
1: 35 – 1:55 Youtube Videos but those posted by
Watching: Self Introduction Internet users), and ‐ I am trying to communicate
Speech suitable for their current with NSC to buy a projector
(20 mins) levels (right tempo of for the Education
speech, neither to fast Department, and the
• Play Video 1 (Self‐Intro of nor too slow; clear coordinator had been quite
Brad Windle) for two articulation). All were supportive about my
times: first time only listening carefully and proposal, because after all,
listen; second time take taking notes. the education plays a
notes crucial role in this
• Ask questions about • I did not gave them a organization, and a lot of
Video 1, if no one gets handout with the teachings, presentations,
the answer, play one questions I was going to and workshops require
more time ask, which made it more such devices.
• Play Video (AT’s Self‐ challenging for them.
Intro) for two times ‐ I am not sure if it would
• Ask questions about • We ended up playing the have been better to work
Video 2, if no one gets videos more than twice, out a testing quiz for Ss to
the answer, play one because some of the Ss write down the answers.
more time required to listen again But I considered that their
for some details, which I writing abilities were
Materials: Laptop, flash made me feel delighted probably not sufficient for
drive, stereo (depends) because they clearly complete grammatical
showed more passion sentences at this moment,
about developing their and that the primary goal is
listening skills. to improve the listening
and speaking skills. (Well,
anyway, they were already
taking notes by themselves,
though it might only be

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #2
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

words or phrases)
(Linguistics)
• I decided to add some ‐ The supplementary tasks I
additional requirements added for Ss were
to the presentation: considered as a great
everyone has to tell their practice for students to
positive thoughts with realize how the self‐
confidence, and then reassuring strategies can
practice the breathing be applied in reality. They
technique before their were not just classroom
speeches. knowledge, but real
1:55 – 2:15 Student Self‐
effective techniques. (L2
intro Presentation
• After their speeches, Pedagogy)
(20 mins)
some students wanted to

get back to their seats ‐ Keeping Ss on the stage
• Ask students to come to
immediately, I seems to be a cruel
the front one by one and
encouraged them to stay decision to some teachers,
give the speech, other
and ask the audience because they don’t like to
students listen carefully
whether they have any see Ss suffer from the
and prepare questions
questions. embarrassment and
• Give feedback and
nervousness. Yet I think it
comments
takes some sufferings to
(encouragement!)
overcome certain

obstacles, but in the

meantime teachers need to
offer sufficient verbal and
non‐verbal (smiling,
nodding, showing thumb,
applauding etc.)
encouragements, ask open‐
ended questions, and
inspire other Ss to ask
questions. (Sociolinguistics)
N/A The break was moved to
2: 15 – 2:25 Break the time before the self‐
(10 mins) introduction presentation.

2: 25 – 2:50 Audio Speech: N/A The missing of this part was
Juan’s Presentation in fact a bit regrettable
(25 mins) because it was designed
not only as a listening task
• Distribute handouts, give but also it included a brief
instructions: listen and presentation about the
read the presentation of structure of writing a
Juan, circle new words or relatively formal self‐
phrases, pay attention to introductory speech.
the content and structure (Linguistics)
• Play the audio, stop at
each paragraph to address
immediate questions
• Discuss questions on P. 6

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #2
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

in groups
• Organization of a speech P.
• Ask students to take turns
to read each paragraph (if
there’s time)

Materials: Laptop; Textbook
handouts from SCMS
(Speech Communication
Made Simple 2) P. 4, 5, 6 &
9; SCMS DVD

There were no fancy
activities in this part, only
the pronunciation
explanation and practice. Yet
‐ What Mark prepared was a
the improvement of the
“pronunciation
students was significant.
improvement” session that
Almost none of them could
help the students
pronounce the /ð/ and /θ/
distinguish the sounds of
sound correctly before the
“th”: the voiced dental
activity; but after the
fricative /ð/ (as in this) and
session, though still with
the voiceless dental
some imperfection, all of
fricative /θ/ (thing)
them could distinguish the

two sounds and managed to
‐ Mark listed the words with
pronounce as best as they
two different
could. (Linguistics)
pronunciation categories,
2:50 – 3:20 Mark’s
and had all the students
Presentation & Activities One thing that worth
read after him; then invited
(30 mins) noticing was that Mark
each student to read aloud
explained to the Ss the
to check their
necessity of ‘standard
performance. Instant
pronunciation’ by using the
explicit corrective feedback
theory of language ideology.
was given when errors
He pointed out the people in
occurred.
the U.S might associate

pronouncing ‘th’ as /d/ with
‐ It was hard for Spanish,
poverty and lack of
Korean, Russian, as well as
education. I was certain that
Chinese speakers to
his intention were good, yet I
pronounce these two
am not sure whether it was
sounds.
appropriate to explicitly say

this to Ss who were mostly

immigrants and refugees.
However, the Ss did not
seem to be embarrassed or
uncomfortable.
(Sociolinguistics)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #2
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• I re‐stated the two ‐ I forgot to leave the home
strategies to control assignment, which was a
presentation anxiety big mistake. But sometimes
the homework seemed to
3:20 – 3:30 Closing‐up &
• Expressed my excitement be a huge burden for
Homework
to see their great students at NSC, because
(10 mins)
improvements in most of them have to work

overcoming their anxiety very hard and also spend
• Review the methods to
control anxiety and building up confidence, much time taking care of
as we as wishing them a children. So I tend not to
• Review the structures of
great weekend push them too hard
preparing a speech
(though I know without
• Home assignment (TBD)
constant after‐class
practicing, the progress can
be slow for language
learning) (L2 Pedagogy)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #3
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, January 31, 2014 (Mtg 3)
Ss: XM (China) didn’t show ‐ The shopping theme serves
up for the class, probably as a good opportunity to
because of the Chinese New bring in the structures of
Year. Mahir (Sudan) “comparatives”. I noticed
transferred to the Advanced earlier that some students
Class, though it was a bad made errors when they
news for our class, I believe tried to use the
it would be better for him to comparative forms, e.g.:
do so because he was indeed more good (better), more
quite fluent in speaking. pretty (prettier), more
Class objectives:
bigger (bigger). (Linguistics)
1). SWBAT use comparative
*Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu
forms to describe the
TA: Mark Weiczorek ‐ Usually the “comparatives”
difference between two
Students: XM (China), DV are introduced together
things.
(Mexico), IL (Russia), HS with “superlatives”, but I
2). SWBAT engage in a
(South Korea) felt that it might be too
shopping conversation using
much for my Ss to digest
correct questions and
The theme for this week’s for a single class, especially
answers.
classes was “going when the focus this time

shopping”. Victoria assisted was communicative

Ss to learn vocabulary about conversations used in a
purchasing items and daily shopping context.
supplies, she also taught (Linguistics)
question‐forming structures
“where do you like to shop
for…?” and “why do you like
to shop for…”; the future
tenses was also taught in the
morning session.

1:00 – 1:15 Greetings, • I adopted the same warm‐ ‐ My Ss had no trouble
Reviewing & Warming‐up up strategy to start the understanding such simple
(15 mins) afternoon class as last questions about lunch, and
week, but explicitly certainly could answer
• Ask about what the emphasized the use of them with the correct
students had for lunch. certain forms of past tense. content. I also knew that
Emphasize the past tense they could state the
(I had…, it was…, I did not • The Ss had a good grammar rules of past
like…) command of the irregular tense. Yet when such rules
• Review irregular past past forms, they could give had not been internalized,
forms correct answers of past they often produced
• Review the structures of forms of most verbs in the incorrect response in a
future tense taught in the reviewing session. conversation. My intention
morning session. (What was to draw their
are you going to do after • I had Ss take turns to make “attention” to the linguistic
the class?) sentences with the verb forms, in order to ensure
• Give corrective or positive base forms and past forms. conscious “noticing” or

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #3
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

feedback when necessary But it seemed to be “awareness” (Schmidt,
difficult for Ss to think of 1990) (Linguistics)
Equipment: Board, markers original sentences, esp. DV,
he is able to express ‐ The decision for Ss to make
himself pretty well when sentences was to orally
there is a topic, but he practice the present and
finds it demanding to make past tense structures.
sentences or come up with Perhaps next time I will
new ideas. prepare some modeling
sentences for students if
the aim was practicing
pronunciation or grammar
structures instead of
original output. (L2
Pedagogy)

• I did not get directly to ‐ I wanted to assess Ss’ initial
1:15 – 1:45 Grammar
the presentation of knowledge about this
Builder: Comparative Forms
grammar rules, instead I grammar point, and I
(30 mins)
put several items (two discovered that they

bottles with different already had encountered
A. Presentation of
height and thickness, two the forms “more…than”
“Comparatives”
pieces of papers with and “‐er than…” before,
• “‐er .. than forms”: big
different sizes etc) on the but no form of “as…as” was
! bigger; small !
desk and invited Ss to used in the responses. So I
smaller; easy ! easier
compare them. Most of knew that the “as…as”
• “more… than” forms:
them had certain structure needed to be
words with 2 or more
previous knowledge treated with more
syllables. E.g. careful,
about comparative attention. (Linguistics)
difficult, beautiful
structures, but not
• “as…as” forms: ‐ I drew a picture of two
systematic and accurate
adjectives does not apples on the board, a
enough.
change. This shirt is not green one which is $5 and a

as pretty as that one. red one which is $10, to
• The “not as…as…”
My hair is not as long as explain the comparatives,
structure proved to be
IL’s. they could produce
the most difficult to
B. Work individually to sentences like “The green
comprehend, some of the
compare the two product apple is cheaper than the
Ss often mix up the order
“Cool Walkers” and “Slim red apple.” and “The red
the two things to be
Jimms”, write down the apple is more expensive
compared.
answers. than the green apple.” Yet

Get into pairs, and compare when it came to the “not
• DV raised an excellent
the other products on page as… as” structure, it took
question which I forgot to
1. Teachers join the groups them a long time to figure
mention during the
to monitor and facilitate. out the placement of
presentation: “Can I say it
subject and object. (L2
is more bigger…?”. So I
Materials: Board, markers, Pedagogy)
immediately addressed
Handout “Comparative”&
this critical issue:” Never
Handout P.1:“Comparatives”
use ‘more’ and ‘‐er’ forms ‐ Explicit grammar
instruction was used for
at the same time, they

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #3
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

should not come out this part, because I think it
together!” was necessary for the
communicative task later,
• The pair‐work practice which would require such
about the different clarification. (Linguistics)

advantages of products
‐ DV’s question reminded me
on the handout took a
that it is my duty to give a
long time, but if was
fruitful. red flag of certain
“potential mistakes” to Ss,
to take precautions, though
they might still made the
same mistake after the
reminding (I heard DV
made the “more… bigger”
mistake later). (Linguistics)

‐ The pair‐work part serves
as a very effective
controlled activity for Ss.
With the assistance of
three teachers, all the
students were able to
produce grammatically
correct sentences using
“comparatives”. (L2
Pedagogy)

1:45 – 2:00 Conversation in • I decided to reduce the ‐ This part was already
the Shoe Store time for this part because designed to be a warm‐up
(15 mins) the previous practice activity for the role‐play
went slower than activity later. The necessary
Distribute Handout P.2 expected. vocabulary, sentence
• Teachers do the modeling structures and expressions
by reading the • We did the modeling were practiced, and
conversation. Ss listen and twice (me & Mark, me & students could use this
pay attention to the Victoria). I asked them to page of handout as a
comparatives. pay attention to the reference when they do
• Explain new words and comparatives forms and the role‐play task later. (L2
expressions some routine expressions Pedagogy)
• Students get into pairs and for shopping when they
practice the conversation listen. ‐ My understanding of the
with each other two times, methods to improve
one time as the clerk, the • They still need more fluency still remains in
other as the shopper. practice to improve their repetition and practice, I
• Ask students from fluency in speaking, but am not sure if I should ask
different pairs to read the we simply did not have so Ss to spend more time at
conversation much time to do the home to practice by
repetition in the themselves (but then no
Materials: Handout P.2 classroom. one to correct them), or
“Conversation: Shopping for use more classroom time

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #3
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

New Shoes” to do some fluency
training. (L2 Pedagogy)

2:00 – 2:15 Role‐play • The rules of this task ‐ Maybe next time the rule
Preparation were pretty complicated, explaining part could be
(15 mins) I was glad they could designed as a mini info‐gap
comprehend all of them. task for students. Each one
• Distribute Handout P.3 and Maybe it was because it’s get one part of the entire
Product Details, explain related to shopping and rules, and they need to talk
the rules: each student everyone was familiar with each other to
(teachers can join them) with it. complete the whole puzzle
gets a store, two products and get all the information.
and the product details. • Guiding Ss write down (L2 Pedagogy)
Sell their own products the product details took
and buy products from some time. Many had
other stores trouble to construct a
• Guide the Ss to come up complete sentence when
with store names, fill in the they write and they also
product comparison needed improvements at
charts, shopping list spellings.
blanks, and budget blanks.

Materials: Handout P.3:
“Role‐play Shopping”,
Information Sheets: Product
Details
I wish I could be more
approachable to the
students, so I always try to
make some small talks with
them during the break. But
2: 15 – 2:25 Break
sometimes it can be hard
(10 mins) N/A
to find a right topic, and

commons small talks about
weather, dinner, work just
seem boring.
(Sociolinguistics)

2: 25 – 2:50 Role‐play: • This is a very interesting ‐ This was in fact not a
Shopping Time! task for a shopping‐theme traditional role‐play activity
(25 mins) class. There were 6 in which only one group
participants (including the goes to the front and
• Ss take their shopping list teachers), each one opens present their performance.
and start looking for up a shop and has two This was more like a “flea‐
different stores, talk with products with different market” task where
the shop owner about prices and advantages, everyone has to move
which item they want to each one also has to around and get what they
buy. purchase a list of items need on the shopping list
• I will circulate and help from a shopping list (a from different shoppers.
students in case they have camera, a pair of They also had to consider

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #3
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

trouble expressing sunglasses, a tent, a jacket, their budget limits and
anything a pair of pants, a bag). Each what payment method
• The task will stop until one has a budget of $625 they have to use. So it was
every student has bought (cash: 300; check: 200; relatively realistic, like what
all the items they need on credit card: $125). the have to do in real lives.
their shopping list (L2 Pedagogy)
Each student will report • The activity went well,
what they have bought, how most were able to practice ‐ One problem I discovered
much money they have the shopping conversations was that they indeed
spent and left, and what and use comparative remembered to use
payment method they used. forms. comparative forms to
compare their products
Materials: Handout P.3: when they sell as the clerk,
“Role‐play Shopping”, but they all used the easier
Product Details Cards forms like “more… than”,
almost no one used the
“as… as” form. Maybe next
time it’s better to give
requirements about the
structures that they have
to use. (Linguistics)

‐ Despite a teaching assistant
with limited experience
(well I admit my experience
‐ Again Mark prepared for a is also limited), Mark had
presentation related to offered some very practical
pronunciation. He showed pronunciation training for
the Ss a list of homonyms the Ss. He would also
(e.g. aisle‐I’ll‐isle; buy‐by‐ carefully monitor Ss’
2:50 – 3:20 Mark’s bye; whether‐weather etc) performance, if certain
Presentation & Activities pronunciation went wrong
(30 mins) ‐ The explanation was very he would immediately and
clear and comprehensible, explicitly correct it and
it helped Ss resolve some have Ss repeat several
confusions about the same times. (L2 Pedagogy)
pronunciation for different
words. ‐ Since he is a native
speaker, he sometimes
(unconsciously) speaks very
fast

3:20 – 3:30 Closing‐up & • Re‐stated the different ‐ I felt that the closing‐up
Homework forms that can be used for session could be done in a
(10 mins) comparison. more creative way so that
Ss can actively review the
• Review different forms of • At first I wanted to give learnt knowledge instead
comparatives them a topic for their next of passively listening to my
• Home assignment: write a week’s speech, but then I recapitulation. I may design
short (or long if they want) thought it might be too some mini‐contest in the

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #3
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

paragraph using restrictive and hard for future for this. (L2
comparatives, to describe them to write a themed Pedagogy)
the difference between speech at this moment. So I
two things at home just told them they could ‐ It can be a struggling task
write whatever they felt for me to give homework
comfortable to talk about. to my Ss, on one hand I
don’t want to add too
much burden to their
already troubled lives, but
one the other hand I
wanted to give them more
chance to practice. (L2
Pedagogy)

References

Schmidt, R. W. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning, Applied
Linguistics, 11, 129‐58

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #4
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, Feburary 7, 2014 (Mtg 4) “Victory Afternoon”#2
Ss: After the two‐and‐half‐ ‐ This is the second Victory
an‐hour morning session, Ss Afternoon of this semester.
today seemed to be in a Since the first one turned
rather weary status in the out to be rather successful
afternoon. (positive performance &
responses from Ss), so I
Class objectives: *Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu decided to continue with
1). SWBAT use appropriate    TA: Mark Weiczorek the similar pattern this
body language and effective      time. (L2 Pedagogy)
vocal characteristics
2).  SWBAT plan, prepare, Students: IL did not show up ‐ Following what we have
and present a speech about this time. We had a new practiced with negative‐
a memorable personal student: NL (Colombia). thoughts‐control and
experience HS (Korea); XM (China); DV breathing, the primary
(Mexico) focuses of this class are
helping Ss understand and
use proper body languages
and effective voice to
improve the quality of their
speech delivery.
(Linguistics)

• I skipped the first warm‐up ‐ The warm‐up was originally
Q&A part and went on designed for reviewing the
directly to asking if they past tense, but since
1:00 – 1:10 Greetings, had remembered to write Victoria had already
Reviewing & Warming‐up something for their speech reviewed that in the
(10 mins) today. Surprisingly, HS morning, so I skipped it. (L2
actually wrote a speech on Pedagogy)
• Ask each student what her own, and DV brought a
they did for the past week passage to read. XM hadn’t ‐ I told them they could bring
• Ask if they have brought come last time so she anything to talk about,
the homework didn’t bring anything. even reading a short
• Distribute the handout paragraph written by other
• Review the structure of a • Because there was a new people is welcomed. My
speech (introduction‐body‐ student, I had to do a aim at this stage is to help
conclusion) review of the “negative‐ them overcome the
• Useful language: beginning thought‐control” & difficulty to come to the
& summary of your speech “breathing” methods. front and speak up. (L2
(if time permits) Pedagogy)
• Since HS and DV said they
Materials/Equipment: brought something to ‐ Although there were many
Board, markers; handout1: share with us, I invited flaws in the speeches of HS
copies of SCMS P.9 them to make their first and DV, I consider it a
speech. HS generally did a success because having the
great job, she wrote her courage to stand up in
own speech, which was a front of people and finish
their speech was already a

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #4
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

story about her trip to challenge for them, and
several European countries they did it. I also
and contained a lot of past encouraged them to use
tense structures. DV read a the two techniques learned
paragraph from a textbook to reduce anxiety before
he brought, his still needed they came to the front.
practice with pronunciation (Linguistics)
and he was not fluent
(apparently because he
hadn’t prepared at all).

• We didn’t have enough
time for the useful
sentence structures.

1:10 – 1:25  How to Use • I felt I hadn’t prepared ‐ Next time maybe it’s better
Body Language Pt.1 well for this part. I firstly to ask students to
(15 mins) wrote the four types of brainstorm first about the
body languages on the possible body languages,
Posture & Walking   board, and then felt and then list them on the
‐ Introduce the types of compelled to talk about board. Then talk about
body language: posture, each one briefly. Then I each one of them. (L2
eye contact, facial realized I should Pedagogy)
expression, and gestures introduce them one by
‐ Distribute handout 1 one in detail. It was ‐ Perhaps it takes time for
(Posture & Walking) awkward. them to get used to all the
‐ P.16 Introduce the several techniques in making a
common mistakes in • I talked a lot during this speech besides the
posture session, and most of the linguistic aspects. Yet the
‐ Tips for confident posture time Ss were sitting there failure of this session is
‐ Individual practice, each and listen, I could feel mostly on me. Next time
one stands up and let they felt bored.   don’t forget to give clear
other students be the instructions before starting
judge whether it qualifies a • The individual practice an activity. Sometimes it
confident posture. with postures was not helps to write the
‐ P.17 Introduce the tips for that successful, because I procedures (1, 2, 3…) (L2
walking forgot the “favorite Pedagogy)
‐ Modeling (favorite quote, quote” part (I admit I was
walking in, present, and a bit out of condition ‐ Some people simply have
leave) today). The missing of the the talent to show an
‐ Each student practice it in quote directly lead to the elegant and gentle posture
front of the class awkwardness of the when standing or walking;
‐ Mention other body practicing activity. Ss others will need more
languages briefly: eye stood in the front, not instructions to draw their
contact, facial expressions, knowing what to say, so I attention to their motions
movement, and gestures. just told them to say that they themselves don’t
whatever they want to seem to notice. It is difficult
Materials/Equipment: Board, say. But I think they got to encourage those who
markers, textbook handouts the idea of having a good seem to have trouble with
from SCMS (Speech posture. postures, because you
Communication Made Simple cannot simply praise them

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #4
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

2) P. 16 & 17 • The walking practice when they are not doing
mostly went on as correctly, yet pointing out
planned. HS was the best repeatedly will inevitably
at postures and walking, hurt their self‐esteem and
there was much applause no one likes to lose face in
given to her. front of others. Right now
my strategy is to ask them
• I felt there was already to practice in front of the
much for them to notice mirror at home, but I am
with posture and walking, not sure if they will follow
so I just briefly mentioned my advice. (L2 Pedagogy)
other body languages.
‐ It will be too overwhelming
for them to pay attention
to facial expressions,
movements, and gestures
in addition to posture and
walking. (L2 Pedagogy)

• I asked each students to ‐ This VOICE issue was
read the introduction certainly a very difficult
about the using of voice barrier for English learners.
on the handout, they People even have trouble
were not fluent with voice when they are
sometimes because there using their own native
1:25 – 1:35 How to Use
were too many new languages. So maybe my
Voice Effectively
words. demand for my Ss is too
(10 mins)
high at this moment. What
• Introduce why using voice
• I stood in one corner of I want to achieve is leaving
correctly is important
the classroom and ask these correct notions in
• Distribute handout 2
them to use their loudest their minds, and even if
• Volume Practice (practice
voice to speak to me, and they cannot currently do
with partners, increase
none of them were very everything perfectly, they
voice from level 1 to level
successful. will have a long‐term
4), use voice from chest
positive influence on them.
and stomach
• Although I could see that (Linguistics)
• Rate Practice (practice
everyone was trying very
with partners, one minute,
hard, I called an end to ‐ They still don’t know how
read 150‐word paragraph)
the activity once I noticed to use the voice from

the effect was less than stomach properly. But I
Materials/Equipment:
satisfactory, to prevent think I understand because
Textbook handouts from
further discouragement. the ability is closely
SCMS (Speech
associated with confidence,
Communication Made
• I closed the session by which also positively
Simple 2) P. 22 & 23
heartening them, saying correlates with one’s

that they need to practice language abilities. So it is
more at home. perfectly normal for them
to feel timid when they are
still struggling with the
language. (Linguistics)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #4
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• Both of the videos were ‐ The Youtube Video session
speeches about “a was probably the biggest
personal experience” failure of this time. I made
1: 35 – 1:55 Youtube Videos given by two native some questionable
Watching: Memorable speakers. The speech rate decisions when I chose the
Personal Experience was a little fast. I played video clips on Youtube. I
(20 mins) the first video given by a noticed they were fast, but
soldier named Jones, I thought at least they
which was also a bit long. could understand the basic
• Play Video 1 (Personal
When the first time was stories. But I was wrong, at
Experience Speech by
finished, only Mark and least judging from the
Soldier Jones) for two
Victoria were laughing, response of Ss. (L2
times: first time only listen;
and the Ss looked Pedagogy)
second time take notes
completely puzzled.
• Ask questions about Video
‐ Upon reflection, I believe
1, if no one gets the
• I decided to play the videos were actually
answer, play one more
paragraph by paragraph, usable, yet perhaps I need
time
stopped at interval to ask to provide enough
• Play Video 2 (KC’s speech)
whether they had scaffolding for Ss such as
for two times
questions, and explained transcripts or a vocabulary
• Ask questions about Video
the meaning to them preview, so that they won’t
2, if no one gets the
when they didn’t feel too overwhelmed by
answer, play one more
understand. Finally, they both the speech rate and
time
understood, but seemed new words. (L2 Pedagogy)
• Invite students to
obviously frustrated.
comment on the ‐ This is one problem I’m

performance of the two having with authentic
• I played again
speakers (posture, voice, materials. The videos
discontinuously for them
gestures etc.) definitely reflects the
to pay attention to the
authentic speaking of
body language and voice
Materials/Equipment: American native speakers,
of the speakers.
Laptop, flash drive, stereo yet the authentic oral

(depends), Youtube videos English contains a lot of
(links see below) liaison and slurring, so it is
hard for Ss at this stage to
understand. (L2 Pedagogy)

1:55 – 2:15 Audio Speech: • I promised them that this ‐ I don’t think there’s a
Leila’s Presentation: A audio speech would be problem with the design of
Stinging Experience easier since it was much this task. But the classroom
(20 mins) slower and there were atmosphere was already in
handouts with written a fairly depressive
• Distribute handouts, transcripts for them. condition before the
explain possible new activity. (L2 Pedagogy)
words first; give • I learnt from the previous
instructions: listen and activity and explained the ‐ What I need to study is
read the presentation of new words for them. how to reverse the
Leila, circle new words or negative atmosphere to a
phrases, pay attention to • However, the students positive one if such

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #4
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

the content and structure. simply seemed extremely situation turns up again in
• Play for the first time, only down. We didn’t even the future (hopefully
listen for information come to the part to fill in never). More standing‐up
• Play for the second time, information to the charts. and moving‐around tasks
start fill in the chart on should be implemented in
P.30 the afternoon classes. (L2
• Check answers together Pedagogy)

Materials/Equipment:
Laptop; Textbook handouts
from SCMS (Speech
Communication Made Simple
2) P. 4, 28 & 30; SCMS DVD

• There was no time for ‐ Classroom time‐
break today, or rather, I management has always
forgot about the time. been a problem with me. I
don’t have clear sense
2: 15 – 2:25 Break
about time when talking in
(10 mins)
a classroom, maybe I need

to check the watch more
often in the future. (L2
Pedagogy)

2: 25 – 2:50 Developing a In the future, I would
Speech & Presentation rather abort one of the
(25 mins) listening sessions to ensure
• Have students think of the the carrying out of this one.
key elements of their I believe helping them
stories: when, where, who, write something of their
what happened, why own and have the present
unforgettable the speech will be much
• Teachers help students more helpful for the
with their writing process, building up of their
make sure the past tenses confidence. (L2 Pedagogy)
are properly used N/A
• Each students come to the
front, keep in mind about
the posture and voice
techniques, present the
speech
Comments and positive
feedback

Materials/Equipment: Paper,
pens

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #4
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• Mark was again talking
too fast and unclearly, we
had to remind them
‐ The depressing spirit
about that. The repeating
passed along to Mark’s
content about homonyms
session as well. Again
2:50 – 3:20 Mark’s made the already bored
Mark’s presentation was
Presentation & Activities Ss more sleepy. He still do
about homonyms.
(30 mins) not have effective
Sometimes his explanation
strategies when
was not easy for Ss to
explaining words to Ss,
understand.
many times he just

paraphrases (but with
more difficult
expressions), so Ss feel
confused. (L2 Pedagogy)
• I reviewed the two ‐ Overall this was a
3:20 – 3:30 Closing‐up &
techniques of body discouraging class, and I
Homework
languages and voices held full responsibility for
(10 mins)
the failure. I too felt

• I apologized for choosing extremely depressed when
• Review the techniques of
the videos that were too encountering such
good body languages and
difficult. situation, and my negative
voices
emotions also had negative
• Home assignment: perfect
• The homework was to effects on the Ss. Need to
their personal experience
prepare something to keep the “role reversal”
speech, more details, next
present for the next Victory philosophy in mind: think
time present again
Afternoon. as a student. (L2 Pedagogy)

Youtube video links:

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #5
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, February 21, 2014 (Mtg 5)
Mark had sent us emails
saying that he had had a car ‐ Always prepare some more
accident the day before and materials in case your TA or
was not feeling well in the co‐teacher cannot make it
Class objectives: morning, so he went to see a to the class someday (L2
1). SWBAT understand and doctor. Pedagogy)
use a variety of vocabulary Good news: we had a new
with restaurants. student TK from Nepal, and ‐ If a student stops showing
2). SWBAT understand the she said another friend of up for more than two
courteous function of the hers would also come next classes, follow‐up phone
model verbs “would and week. calls should be made to get
could” and use structures Bad news (sort of): XM found the current information
like “would you do…?” or a job (which is great) and about them in time (L2
“could you do…?”. would not continue the class Pedagogy)
3). SWBAT use appropriate here.
expressions to order foods in
a restaurant. *Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu
Students: DV(Mexico), IL
(Russia), HS (South Korea),
TK (Nepal), NL (Columbia)

• Writing on the board took ‐ Providing written forms of
9:30 – 9:45 Greetings, some time, but students’ questions resulted in a
Reviewing & Warming‐up answers were more better output performance
(15 mins) accurate than what they than mere oral questions
• Write several questions on produced when being because students can rely
the board and ask them to asked orally. on the correct forms to
the Ss: trigger memories about
1. How often do you go • Correct answering learnt structures more
to the restaurant to structures were written easily. (Linguistics)
eat? under each question on
2. Which restaurant is board (Once/twice a week ‐ The correct structures were
you favorite one? etc.) not given before the
3. Why do you like that students started
restaurant? • When some students did answering, but after a
• Draw Ss’ attention to the not use the correct forms correct output was given
structures when answering to answer, I would point at by a student. This way not
it (frequency phrases, my the example structures to only the assessment can be
favorite restaurant is…, I offer them “silent” made but also scaffolding
like it because…) corrective feedback can be offered. (L2
• Brainstorm: any word you Pedagogy)
can think of about • Before brainstorming I
restaurant (people, provided them with some ‐ Corrective feedback do not
tableware, food etc.) scaffolding ideas: what kind always have to take form
of people are there in a verbally, pointing at a
restaurant? What do you target form of linguistic

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #5
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

eat or drink? What are the feature also works as an
things you can see in a explicit feedback, and can
restaurant? surely draw students’
attention directly to the
forms. (L2 Pedagogy)
9:45 – 10:15  Restaurant • Listed two columns of ‐ It is important to teach Ss
Languages sentences, one column to understand the
(30 mins) about making offers (e.g. difference between the use
A. Presentation of the Use Can I …?; Would you like of “can and will” and
of “Would & Could” to …?), the other column “could and would”.
• Example sentences on about making request Explaining the role of
the board power relationships
• Making offers: “Would • Ss generated some very between speakers is
you like…?” or “Can good questions about the necessary to foster their
I…?” use of “could” and sense of pragmatics in
• Making requests: “would”. E.g. Is it okay for language use
“Could you…?” or “I’d me to say “can you give (Sociolinguistics)
like to …?” me a glass of water”?
B. Vocabulary   ‐ Immediate chorus
Each student gets one • DV and IL felt a little repetitions with the
page of the vocabulary, confused about the example sentences were
read it first and then purpose and practiced as a controlled
present their words to requirements of the activity. Some routine
the rest of the vocabulary task after my instructions like “okay,
classmates. Teacher explanation, even after repeat after me” keeps the
models first. my modeling. My co‐ chorus going smoothly
teacher and I had to (Linguistics)
Materials: Board, markers,   address to them
Handout “Restaurant Vocab individually.
and Expressions”
10:15 – 10:30  Vocabulary • The instructions were ‐ This word‐order task was
Word Order received quickly without designed based on the
(15 mins)   any problems. Ss seem to vocabulary activity done in
be familiar with such a the previous session, all the
• Distribute Handout word order exercise. sentences were related to
“Vocabulary Word Order the restaurant topic, thus
Worksheet”. • I expected that this task even if Ss could not get all
• Give instructions: would be a bit difficult for the sentence right
complete the sentence by students as many of them grammatically, they could
putting the words into had not systematically at least get familiar with
right orders, do the learnt grammar rules. some words or phrases (L2
modeling on the board. Pedagogy)
• Have students finish the • I attended to each one of
worksheet individually, them when they were ‐ The position of certain
teachers and TA provide writing, answering adverbs like “always” can
necessary assistance. questions they had about be flexible, which could
• Have Ss report their the placement of words. cause confusion to some Ss
answers, give corrective TK came up with two at this stage. Instead of
feedback and correct answers for one offering them too much
explanations. sentence. metalinguistic knowledge
about the adverb

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #5
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Materials: Handout • For the difficult ones, placement, I decided to
“Vocabulary Word Order instead of asking each simply tell them that “you
Worksheet” student to give a should always leave a good
complete answer, I had tip” is the same as “you
them work collaboratively should leave a good tip,
to come up with an always.” (Linguistics)
answer. I finally gave the
correct answer of one or
two sentences.

• I asked Ss to read each
sentence together
10‐: 30 – 10:45 Pre‐task • After the teacher ‐ Reading together/ group
Activity: Reading modeling I asked them chant reduces the pressure
Conversation whether they had any students feel when doing a
(15 mins) questions about the speaking task. Working
conversation. There was collaboratively makes
• Distribute the handout, none. students feel they have a
explain the situation of partner/partners to rely on.
the conversation • The chorus reading (Sociolinguistics)
• Teachers modeling first exercise went as planned,
• Ask students to repeat in every student was ‐ Higher standards can be
chorus after the teacher reading loudly. Reading made as students’
• Half the Ss read after the together can sometimes competence and
teacher as “waiter”, the help them to speak confidence develop.
other half as “Kitty” louder than they do Helping Ss get rid of the
• Have Ss get into pairs and individually. printed assistance may be a
practice the conversation, future objective for the
ask Ss to pay attention to • All the students were speaking activities. (L2
the structures “would you holding on to their Pedagogy)
like…?” and “I’d like to handouts when
have …” performing the
• Each pair of Ss stand up conversation as a pair.
and perform the
conversation

Materials: Handout
“Ordering Food in a
Restaurant”
The break was skipped Although Ss didn’t “seem
because of the time to” mind about this, I might
limitation. Ss didn't seem to want to mention this when
mind about not having the chatting with them next
10: 45 – 10:55 Break
break, which was a good time, just to make sure that
(10 mins)
thing. In my previous classes, they really feel okay and
many students requested for want to have longer class
longer break time. time.

10: 55 – 11:20 Role‐play: A • I did not take time to ‐ Explaining all the
Dinner at Restaurant! explain some of the vocabulary on a worksheet
(25 mins) vocabulary and expressions may be too time‐

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #5
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• Distribute the “Menu” on the “menu” after consuming as classroom
handout. distributing them, which time is limited. It is
• Have Ss read each item on was a negligence. probably better to ask Ss to
the menu after the ask questions about
teacher, remind them to • I was working with HS as unfamiliar words. Yet
ask questions if they don’t she was left alone without sometimes Ss might not
know the meaning of the a partner. She performed like to ask questions all the
words pretty well as a customer, time as because of
• Give instructions about the still needed to rely on the embarrassment. (L2
role‐play: get into pairs, handout which included Pedagogy)
each one plays one time as the key sentence structures
“waiter” and the other to ask questions as a ‐ This task was based upon
time as “customer”; when waitress. the exercise of the previous
playing as waiter/waitress, session, the conversation
take down the dishes that • The purpose was for each reading was served to be a
are ordered, and calculate student to play one time as preparation for Ss to be
the price; use the sentence a customer and the other familiar with the sentence
structures learned before time as a waiter/waitress, structures. However, most
to do the conversation. but there wasn’t enough students still needed to rely
• Teacher modeling first. time for each pair to play on the worksheet.
• Have Ss get into pairs, two times. Overcoming the
practice the conversation; dependence on written
then switch roles. • Ss still need more practice materials sometimes
• Each pair come to the for fluency and requires reciting and
front and present the role‐ pronunciation. memorizing, which I will try
play to push them to achieve in
the future. (Linguistics)
Materials: Handout “Menu”

‐ Since Mark was absent for
11:20 – 11:50 Mark’s the class, my time was very
Presentation & Activities sufficient this time, the
(30 mins) role‐play activity continued N/A
naturally in this session.

• Emphasized the ‐ It is usually me as the
importance of using teacher who gave the
11:50 – 12:00 Closing‐up & “could” and “would” in summary of the class, and
Homework making offers and request Ss could only listen
(10 mins) in order to show passively. Next time it
politeness. might be better to ask Ss to
• Review vocabs and “would • Reviewed the procedures recall what has been learnt
& could” structures of ordering food in a in the class. (L2 Pedagogy)
• Home assignment (TBD) restaurant.

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #6
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, February 28, 2014 (Mtg 5)
Ss remained in a pretty good ‐ It is a common occasion
spirit due to the Global when a teacher tries to
Brunch activity in the start a lesson and finds that
Class objectives: morning.   one or two students are
1). SWBAT understand and DV did not show up in the not back in their seat. This
use present and past morning class, and was late is a not easy to handle if
progressive tense. for the class in the you have a small class with
2).  SWBAT use the afternoon. I noticed he has a less than 10 students. I
preparation questions to list habit of showing up late. But would usually start the
out the main points of a I would always kindly ask class because I hate letting
speech. him to sit down. other students wait, but I
3). SWBAT construct a body also feel that the belated
of a speech by using *Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu students will miss
descriptions with past tense    TA: Mark Weiczorek something. Maybe in the
and past progressive tense.    Students: DV(Mexico), IL future it’s better to make a
(Russia), HS (South Korea), announcement in the first
NL (Columbia) class that I will not be
waiting for late students.
( L2 Pedagogy)
• Ss tended to use shorter ‐ The act of choosing shorter
forms to respond a forms most of the time
1:00 – 1:10 Greetings, question, I encouraged reveals the lack of
Reviewing & Warming‐up them to use complete confidence with one’s
(10 mins) sentences. linguistic competence, in
• Ask the question: what did order to decrease the
you do yesterday in the • The provided example stress of producing more
morning, in the afternoon, answers were helpful as Ss complicated forms, Ss use
and at night? Write on could use it as a reference this strategy to avoid
board. for the structures, but they making mistakes
• Provide example answers: also put a limit to their use (Sociolinguistics)
in the morning, I studied at of verbs, most Ss simply
home; in the afternoon, I chose the past forms of ‐ Providing example
went to the gym; at night, I verbs in the examples like sentence structures would
watched a movie. “went” and “watched” be a way to offer more
• Have each student answer scaffolding and have Ss
the question, draw • IL had trouble with the past better prepared. Yet their
attention to the past tense form of “have”, she choice of using the given
of verbs. mistakenly used “has”, I past forms again revealed
• Introduce the topic of the reinforced this point by their problem with verb
day: write about your most explaining: since normally past forms. Verb past forms
unforgettable experience we add –ed to, so ‘had’ is exercises still need to be
(simple past tense, past more similar to a ‘ed’ form incorporated in the tasks in
progressive tense) than ‘has’, right? the future. (Linguisitics)

1:10 – 1:25 Past Progressive • I used the present ‐ I find comparing a tense

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #6
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Tense (15 mins) progressive tense as an which is familiar to the
‐ List out example sentences introducing strategy to students to another new
on the board: I am start the explanation of tense serves as an effective
standing. He/she/it is past progressive tense. strategy to teach English
standing ! I/he/she/it tenses. The known
was standing. • Ss felt it easier to structures serves as a base
You/they are standing ! understand the concept to start, and relatively
You/they were standing. of the progressive tense decrease the difficulty to
‐ Distribute “Past when the event is understand. (L2 Pedagogy)
Progressive Handout” happening at the
‐ Draw timelines to explain moment. I told them, ‐ It is hard for some students
the meanings of the tenses past progressive to understand English
and aspects describes “now” in the tenses because in their
‐ Question forms: What was past. native languages there
I/he/she/it doing? What might be no such concept
were you/they doing? • I drew a timeline for Ss to as past progressive. So
‐ Instruct students to finish better understand the language learning is never
the exercise on the meaning. I emphasized about language itself, but
handout, report answers the “time point” where habituate oneself to a new
and read the sentences past progressive actions way of thinking.
together occur. (Sociolinguistics)

Materials: Board, markers, • The forms of PPro were ‐ Helping Ss understand the
Past Progressive Handout not hard to remember, nuances in the meaning
most Ss could give correct potentials of tense and
answers to the exercise aspect is still extremely
about constructing a past hard, especially if Ss
progressive sentence demands a clarification
about the meaning and
• Added some words about usage differences between
the question‐forming of tenses like past progressive
past progressive and simple past.
(Linguistics)

1:25 – 1:35How to Develop • Ss still remembered the ‐ This was a first step of
the Body of a Speech taught structures of preparing Ss with the
(10 mins) speech in the previous preparation of their own
• Introduce the structure of classes. speeches. The finished
the body of a speech: worksheet was an
Beginning (reason or cause • Adult Ss with certain attachment of a speech in
of the story) – Middle part degree of literacy levels the textbook. The given
(describe what happened) would generally learn the linguistic resources (e.g.
– Closing (how did the regulations in writing questions of when, where,
story end) quickly. who, what, why, how…)
• Introduce the Speech were reinforcement of the
Preparation Worksheet • I went over the speech past tenses. (Linguistics)
• Distribute the Handout preparation worksheet by
“Francisco’s Speech having Ss answer the ‐ Again, I encouraged them
Preparation Worksheet” questions in the to answer the questions
• Go over the questions worksheet with the given with complete and
words and phrases in the grammatically‐correct

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #6
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Materials: Textbook answer blanks. Some still sentences, hoping this will
handouts from SCMS made mistakes with subconsciously change
(Speech Communication sentence structures their habit of language
Made Simple 2) P. 29 without enough speaking. (L2 Pedagogy)
scaffolding information.

• I reminded them to pay ‐ Encouraging Ss to ask
attention (and underline, questions is certainly not
if possible) the past forms easily achieved by simply
1: 35 – 1:55 Audio Speech by
and past progressive telling them “you can ask
Francisco
forms. anything you don’t
(20 mins)
understand?”. I need to
• Distribute the Handout
• Ss clearly had better think more from the
“Francisco’s Presentation:
spirits when listening to viewpoint of Ss, and
My Journey to Freedom”
the audio materials this sometimes try to ask the
• Play the audio file, ask the
time. However, they were questions for them. I can
students to underline the
not that into asking firstly cast the questions to
past tense and past
questions about the them (e.g. what’s the
progressive tense
transcripts as the Ss I meaning of “splash”?), if no
• Stop at each paragraph to one can answer it, I would
taught before. Victoria
ensure no one has know that they need
raised several questions
questions explanation. (L2 Pedagogy)
about vocabulary for
• Teacher lead students read
them, and it turned out
the paragraphs of the body
that they didn’t know the ‐ Ss felt better about
together listening to this speech
words.
because they got more

Materials: Laptop, DVD disk, supportive resources in the
• I analyzed briefly about
Textbook handouts from previous session, which
the structures of the
SCMS (Speech proved the importance of
speech for the Ss, and
Communication Made Simple “preparedness” in a task‐
told them that was their
2) P. 27 based classroom. (L2
template for their own
speech Pedagogy)

1:55 – 2:15 Filling out Your • Some Ss already started ‐ It is necessary to guide Ss
Own Speech Preparation to write on the worksheet to form a good habit about
Worksheet after I told them to just writing. Have them think
(20 mins) think first about their about the theme and
• Distribute handouts. Give story. outline of the story, then
students 5 minutes to help them list out the
think of one unforgettable • My co‐teachers and I information relevant to the
experience or a story of attended to each student article. (L2 Pedagogy)
someone else when they were filling the
• Guide students through blanks, offering them ‐ Individual assistance may
the eleven questions, have help with words and new be a strategy to help
them write down the key ideas students decrease the
words or phrases. Give anxiety and fear about
necessary scaffolding • The scaffolding about writing. It can be
resources (descriptive adjective verbs served as intimidating to write a
adjectives of feelings, time a very helpful process in paragraph alone when the
expressions, verbs etc.) guiding them find a topic linguistic competence is
• Teachers offer assistance for their story. limited, and exercises

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #6
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

to Ss with their writing without help may result in
(vocabulary, grammar etc.) • I asked the different a psychological conflict
• Ask several students to questions on the about writing. (Linguistics)
report their answers, if worksheet to each
time allows student to see how well
they were doing.
Materials: Handout “Your
Own Speech Preparation
Worksheet”
The break was skipped once
2: 15 – 2:25 Break
again.
(10 mins)

• We didn’t follow the ‐ It may be too much of an
instructions on the lesson expectation to ask Ss to
plan by having them write write the entire body of a
according to the first, speech by themselves. The
2: 25 – 2:50 Developing the
second 5 questions. I individual assistance would
Story & Presentation
decided it was best if the improve the accuracy with
(25 mins)
teachers accompany each spellings and grammar. (L2
• Instruct students to write
student to write. Pedagogy)
the beginning of the story

with first 5 questions on
• I was helping IL. She had ‐ Teaching writing is, at
their worksheet
trouble with the spelling many times, teaching the
• Instruct students to write
of words from time to thinking process, and
the middle part of the
time. I also guided her teaching how to recall the
story with next 5 questions
through the thinking details of an event and
on their worksheet
process. Sometimes she describe them using simple
• Instruct students to write
would feel she had words. (Linguistics)
the closing part of the
nothing to say. I would
story with last question on
ask “How were you ‐ The outcome of this task
their worksheet
feeling at that moment? was very satisfying, and
• Have each student come made me believe my
Did you feel the pain,
to the front and present designed session about
were you hurt?”.
their story speech delivery was

• Give positive feedback actually working. Although
• IL wrote a very good story
they still need to read
and her presentation
Materials: Paper, pens, according to their drafts,
demonstrated a great
finished Speech Preparation but I could see their
improvement with
Worksheet increasing confidence,
confidence, fluency, and
better pronunciation and
pronunciation. All the
other Ss (HS, DV, and NL) fluency, and better body
did an amazing job with languages. (L2 Pedagogy)
the speech delivery.
2:50 – 3:20 Mark’s ‐ Mark’s time was again
Presentation & Activities occupied by my session.
(30 mins) Felt sorry about that.

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #6
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• The forms and meanings of ‐ I intended to ask them to
3:20 – 3:30 Closing‐up & past progressive tenses recite the speech and
Homework were reviewed. present it without a
(10 mins) • The homework was to add manuscript. But it might be
• Review the past more details to their story too hard for them at this
progressive tense and read the speech until stage, so I gave up this
• Home assignment: practice they can speak very requirement. (L2 Pedagogy)
the story they have fluently.
written, try to recite it

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #7
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

fLesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, March 7, 2014 (Mtg6)
My co‐teacher was absent ‐ Substitution for other
Class objectives: because she had a dentist teachers’ classes is not as
1). SWBAT describe common appointment. The topic of easy as it sounds. Reading
illness/symptom names   the morning session was the lesson plan designed by
“Keeping Healthy”. The other teachers is a task that
2). SWBAT make an lesson plan was designed by requires careful attention
appointment with doctors on Victoria.   because the substitute has
the phone in role play to explore and understand
activity the intention and purpose
of each activity. (L2
3). SWBAT write at least Pedagogy)
three healthy life styles and
three unhealthy life styles ‐ The purpose of designing
this health‐related lesson is
4). SWBAT ask for advice *Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu that it is very practical in
from friends and give advice (Absent) daily lives. Many
to friends    TA: Mark Weiczorek immigrants reported
Students: DV(Mexico), HS difficulty when
(South Korea), NL (Columbia) communicating with
doctors

• I wrote the sentence ‐ Once more, the attention
“Victoria has a toothache focus has to be included
1:00 – 1:15 Greetings,
and she needs to see a when presenting a
Reviewing & Warming‐up
dentist (doctor) today” on structure to Ss, so that they
(15 mins)
the board, and circled the would be constantly

“‐s” and “has” to draw reminded of such structural
• Use “Victoria has a
attention to the third characteristics. (L2
toothache and she needs
person singular forms. Pedagogy)
to see a dentist (doctor)

today” as a lead‐in.
• The question “have you got ‐ The type of questions cast
• Ask students whether they to Ss requires careful
sick before?” were not
got sick before and what decision, especially when
understood by the students
kind of illness they had certain grammatical
because the present
before. They can describe knowledge has not yet
perfect tense has not yet
their symptoms too, if they been taught, otherwise Ss
been introduced. I changed
want. Then teach the may find it difficult to
the question to “were you
common illness/symptom understand. Simplify the
sick before?”
names. (coughing, questions to a similar

sneezing, sore throat, itchy structure that is familiar to
• Ss knew many vocabs
skin, headache, toothache, Ss is necessary. (Linguistics)
about illness symptoms,
stomachache, bleeding,
most of them could identify
have a fever, catch a
and give the word when I
cold/sick)
showed them the pictures

or acted out.
Materials: symptom pictures

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #7
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• I fear that oral modeling ‐ Ss has yet to reach the level
of conversation might be where they can listen to
too demanding for Ss, so I the modeling conversation
1:15 – 1:30 Conversation:
printed out the and then produce a similar
Describing Symptoms
conversation and one based on their
(15 mins)
distributed them to the linguistic repertoire.

Ss. Written scaffolding
• Model a conversation with
materials are still necessary
Mark:
• I explained certain words at this stage. (Linguistics)
‐ How are you doing today?
and phrases like “throw
‐ I don’t feel well.
up” and “leftover”. Some ‐ It takes a lot of time and
‐ What’s wrong? Tell me
students still failed to effort for non‐native
how you feel.
recognize a word when it speakers to remember the
‐ I have a stomachache. I
was presented in past past forms of verbs.
threw up twice this
forms. Classroom time is certainly
morning.
not enough for them to go
‐ Did you take any
• When I asked the Ss over the past forms again
medicine?
whether they would like and again until they
‐ No.
to listen again, most of remember them.
‐ What did you eat this
the time they felt (Linguistics)
morning?
indecisive about it, many
‐ I had my leftover beef
of them would just shrug ‐ Teachers sometimes need
from last night.
their shoulders or say to make the decision for
‐ Ok. We need to do some
okay, which made me feel the students, when it
examinations first. Follow
uncertain whether they comes to “whether they
me, please.
really need another time. need another time of
‐ Thank you!
listening”. It is the

necessary judgment
• Ask students whether they • They needed to read
according to the teachers have to make
want to listen to it again.
handouts when doing the according to their
Make sure they understand
conversation. observation with students’
the meaning of the
reactions. (L2 Pedagogy)
dialogue.

• Ask them to work in pairs
‐ Role‐play pair works helps
(one as a doctor, the other
Ss to experience not only
as a patient) to do a similar
the linguistic
conversation.
communication process but
• Ask them to go to the front also the social relationship
to present.
where the conversations

take place.
(Sociolinguistics)

1: 30 – 1:50 Conversation: • I did not go entirely ‐ Part of the jobs of a
Making an Appointment according to the lesson substitute teacher is to
(20 mins) plan, because I didn’t adapt the received lesson
think it was necessary for plan to what he/she
Information‐gap task: them to sit back‐to‐back. considers to be more
Student A gets a schedule effective to the actual
worksheet showing his/her • There was ambiguity with teaching context. The
plans for this week. Student the designing of the space in the classroom was
B gets another schedule timesheet, we did not limited, which is why I

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #7
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

worksheet showing the know whether the blanks decide to discard the
vacant appointment the where time intervals “back‐to‐back” option. (L2
doctor has. They sit back to were given were time Pedagogy)
back with each other. Their available or time
goal is to work out a ‐ Because there were only
unavailable. I just told Ss
schedule that A can go to the to treat them as available three students in the
hospital to see the doctor.   time. classroom, both Mark and I
were sitting around the
1. Review reading time • I switched role with Mark desk when modeling and
(10:30, 11:45, 2:15, 3:00), to do the modeling so giving instructions. The
and days in a week. that Ss could listen to it intention was to create a
2. Give students different twice. more equal power relations
handout and explain the rule between T&S and give
of this activity. • Emphasized some students more agency to
3. Do a modeling (You sit conventional structures express their opinions
back to back with each of telephone (Sociolinguistics)
other) appointment such as
‐ Hi, Philadelphia Hospital. “hold on one second”, “I ‐ I truly wish to help Ss
Can I help you? am free on…” improve their fluency of
‐ I’d like to make an English speaking, but I find
appointment with Doctor • When the actual pair it very hard. It takes a
Tom. work report was carried painful process for non‐
‐ Ok. Hold on one second. out, some students still native language learners to
‐ Sure. needed a lot of time achieve fluency. My past
‐ Which day works best for finding the time available, experience was to practice,
you? the questions and practice, and practice.
‐ I am free on Tuesday, responses were not quite However, I fear if I require
Wednesday, Thursday and fluent.   Ss to do that repeatedly in
Saturday. the class, they would feel
‐ Ok. On Tuesday can you • I did not try to correct stressful and frustrated by
come at 10:00am or their errors during their their poor performance.
12:00pm? conversation, fearing that (Linguistics)
‐ No, I can’t. it might interrupt their
‐ What about Wednesday performance. ‐ Constant correction during
10:30 am or 1:00 pm? speaking activities is
‐ Wednesday 10:30 works. certainly unfavorable.
‐ Ok, great! So Wednesday Sometimes when the errors
10:30 am. I’ll put you in the are not serious or not too
system. relevant to the objective of
‐ Thank you. See you then. the tasks, they can be
‐ See you. Have a great day.   temporarily ignored. (L2
Pedagogy)
4. Pair students up and ask
them to sit back to back with
each other. They need to
figure out the time to see
the doctor.

5. Each pair reports their
time they can see the doctor.

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #7
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

6. Do a mini lesson about the
mistakes they have during
the activity if necessary.

Materials: Two schedule
worksheet, one for the
doctor and one for the
patient.
1:50 – 2:10  Vocabulary • The pictures were too ‐ If teachers wish to have
“Healthy” and “Unhealthy”; simple for students to students speak more about
Use of “Because” produce a lot of linguistic a picture, sometimes it is
(20 mins) structures. Most of the necessary to guide them by
time they just use one asking the correct
• Show students pictures of word or phrase to questions like “what can
healthy lifestyle and describe the pictures.   you see in the picture?”,
unhealthy lifestyle. Ask “what is this woman
them what they can see in • Instead of having doing?” etc. (L2 Pedagogy)
the picture first. Then ask students get into pairs,
them which are healthy we simply sit around the ‐ When the student number
and which are not. table and have each is too small, pair‐work may
• Give students 5 min to talk student describe his/her not work better than
with each other their life lifestyle, and then invite having all the students and
style (time getting up, other students to make teachers talk together, the
going to bed, exercise) and comments about the strategy generates more
eating habits (time for each presenter’s lifestyle. intimacy inside the
meal, how much they eat, community.
what they usually have) to • I distributed the paper (Sociolinguistics)
think whether they live and asked them to write
healthily or not. Give down their lifestyle, but ‐ Writing tasks are difficult to
examples as modeling. after several minutes I carry out among Ss at this
• Each student reports their found that was too time‐ level, because it takes a lot
life style and eating habits consuming, so I asked of time for them to write in
and whether they think it’s them to finish the writing class and the writings often
healthy. task after class and bring contains many grammatical
• Give them pieces of paper it back next time. mistakes which requires
to write what they    teachers’ correction.
presented and collect it for Making writing tasks as
me homework might be better
in the future. (L2 Pedagogy)
Materials: pictures of
healthy (cut the big picture
into four small ones) and
unhealthy lifestyle
2: 10 – 2:20  Break
(10 mins)
2: 20 – 2:50  Giving Advice • The word “bother” ‐ Paraphrasing is a strategy
(30 mins) seemed to hard for them to help Ss understand some
to comprehend, I words in the instructions
• Ask students to listen changed a way of saying that they are unfamiliar
carefully. Tell them an it as “something that with, it is necessary to use
example of what bothers made you very unhappy”, easier and familiar words

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #7
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

you a lot recently (a lot of I followed by giving them to explain, instead of using
assignments in school, an example about my a more difficult word or
toothache, relationships…). self: having to many phrase. (L2 Pedagogy)
Write your problem on the school assignments.
board and leave it there. ‐ Such experience task may
• Some original ideas came intrigue students to
• Ask students to think what up from students, NL felt participate better because
bothers them a lot that he had few friends the topics involve their
recently. Share our here in the US, HS had personal experience. (L2
problems in class. Write been upset about the Pedagogy)
them down on the board. renovation of her kitchen,
DV said he wanted to find ‐ A chart is always helpful
• Every one try to think of a better job. because it makes
one solution for all the everything simple and
problems together and • I drew a chart on the clear. Next time maybe it’s
teacher writes them down board, putting everyone’s better to ask students to
on the board. name and problems in it. come to the front and write
Then I asked Ss to come the answers by themselves.
• Do a modeling: up with solutions or (L2 Pedagogy)
‐ How are you, Huabing? advice about each one’s
‐ Oh, well. I… problem. ‐ I kept emphasizing the
‐ Yeah, that’s annoying. function of “could” in a
Maybe you could try…/What • I did the modeling with sentence of showing
about… Mark and wrote the politeness and making the
‐ That’s a good idea. Thank structures of giving advice sentence less like an order.
you! on the board, e.g., you (Linguistics)
‐ You are welcome. Have a should…/ I think it’s
good day. better for you to…
• Ask students to talk to each
other in pairs and help
each other solve their
problems.
• Present

• The intonation of English
‐ Mark did a presentation
language reading is
about “stress and
represented by a sine
2:50 – 3:20 Mark’s intonation” of reading
waveform, languages like
Presentation & Activities sentences
Chinese is shown as a
(30 mins) ‐ He compared the different
triangle waveform, while
intonation characteristics
language like Spanish look
of different languages
like a straight line.

(Linguistics)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #7
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• I led the activity of ‐ Acting out the word for
reviewing names of students to guess is a trick
3:20 – 3:30 Closing‐up &
different illness by acting from the silent approach,
Homework
silently with body the actions give students a
(10 mins)
languages. E.g. cover my vivid visual description so

head with my hands and that they can understand
• Review common illnesses
show a painful expression the meaning of the word.
and symptoms
(headache) (L2 Pedagogy)
• Review healthy and
• One of the home
unhealthy lifestyles
assignment was to finish
• Review structures of giving
the writing task of personal
advice
lifestyle; the other was to
• Home assignment
prepare for the last Victory
Afternoon next week

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #8
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, March 7, 2014 (Mtg6)

Ss: Knowing that the topic of
occupations might be ‐ In NSC, some students are
Class objectives: sensitive to discuss among suffering from
immigrants and refugees, I unemployment, some have
1). SWBAT understand and would have to monitor jobs that they feel
use a variety of vocabulary carefully about the reactions embarrassed to talk about.
of occupations. of students. It is essential to be careful
not to hurt their self‐
2). SWBAT use past tense esteem. (L2 Pedagogy)
and present perfect tense to
describe their education and ‐ The purpose of this lesson
work experience. is to broaden their
*Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu knowledge about different
3). SWBAT introduce (Absent) occupations, and to help
themselves about education    TA: Mark Weiczorek them learn how to
background and past work    Students: DV(Mexico), HS introduce themselves in a
experience in a job (South Korea), NL (Columbia   job interview. (L2
interview. Pedagogy)

• Since I have already known ‐ DV is always a little
the background of my embarrassed when
students, I was expecting mentioning his job as a
their answers. DV is busboy. I would have to
1:00 – 1:15 Greetings,
working as a busboy in a use certain encouraging
Reviewing & Warming‐up
restaurant; HS is a comments (e.g., awesome,
(15 mins)
housewife and doesn’t that’s very good) to
• Ask each student about
have a job at this moment; address his response, but
their current jobs, write
NL is a student trying to go not too much so that it
the question on the board:
to business school. might sound like mocking.
what do you do for a job
(Sociolinguistics)
now?
• The brainstorm activity is
• Anticipate that some
welcomed as always. Every ‐ Brainstorming helps
students do not currently
student contributed a lot students to remember
have a job
with the building of the words by category. Usually
• Brainstorm: any word they when a word is offered by
vocab map.
can think of about one student, other

jobs/occupations (e.g. students may offered
• I explained the word
employer, employee, words in the same
“vacancy” by pointing at a
resume, vacancy, salary, category. Teachers can also
empty chair and comparing
duty/responsibility etc.)
it to the empty position in a expand the vocabulary in
company. this way. For instance, I
added “employee” and
“interviewee” when the

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #8
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

words “employer” and
“interviewer” are
mentioned. (Linguistics)

1:15 – 1:25 Occupation • I spent some time ‐ Even with the pictures and
Vocabulary searching the internet for description, sometimes it
(10 mins) corresponding pictures was still ambiguous to
• Distribute the “Occupation with the job description, decide what the exact word
Handout” to Ss hoping they could help is. Making the answers
• Give instructions: each students visually to flexible makes the students
students get one piece of understand what the jobs feel easier to do the tasks.
handout which contains are. (L2 Pedagogy)
several descriptions and
pictures about • Some occupation names ‐ Overgeneralization is very
occupations, read it and like “janitor” are beyond common among ESL
write the name of the students’ vocabulary students when learning
occupation on the paper level. I just told them how new words, HS thought the
• Each student presents to to spell them. person who cooks is called
the other students about a “cooker”. I reminded
his handout. Teacher • I did a modeling for them them that although adding
model first. E.g. He/she is a about presenting the “‐er” to the end of a verb is
doctor, he/she is someone words, they had to use a way to remember
who helps sick people. the structure, “he is occupation words, but it is
• Remind students to someone who …”. not always true.
remember these words (Linguistics)
because the next task will • It might be too
require them to use the overwhelming for them ‐ Allowing written notes in
words. to remember all the tasks helps reducing
words, I allowed them to students’ anxiety level. (L2
Materials: Board, markers, take them down. Pedagogy)
Handout “Occupation”
1:25 – 1:50 Vocabulary Word • Students confirmed they ‐ This activity was aimed at
Order (25 mins) had played crossword having students review the
• Distribute Handout “Job puzzle before, so it saved vocabs learnt before. I
Crossword” me some effort to deliberately designed the
• Introduce the crossword explain. But later I found previous session to offer
game. Guess the words by out that DV did not know scaffolding so that they
the descriptions, find the how to put the words in would not feel too stressful
number and write the the “cross” and “down” about completing the
words in the cross or down blanks. puzzle. (L2 Pedagogy)
blanks.
• Have students finish the • The descriptions and ‐ The game also emphasizes
crossword task. Teachers words were the same as the correct number of
offer helps to each the previous tasks, so it letters of words, which is a
student. was easier for Ss to great tool to train students
• Check the answers by identify the words. to get the spelling of words
asking students to report. correct. (Linguistics)

Materials: Handout “Job
Crossword”

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #8
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• The passages were not ‐ I did not choose one very
1:50 – 2:15 Reading
very long, and there long articles for them to
Comprehension & Present
weren’t many difficult read, instead I chose four
Perfect Tense
words, so Ss didn’t have passages which are
(25 mins)
much trouble reading mutually irrelevant. Each
• Distribute the handout, passage is a single personal
them and answering the
explain the requirements: career description. These
questions.
read the four paragraphs serves not only as a reading

about four people who comprehension task and
• I asked them to read
have different jobs, pay tense introduction, but also
again and try to locate
attention to job title, job as model texts for the next
and highlight the simple
duties, past education and activity. (Linguistics)
past tense and the tense
work experience; then
with “have” (present
think about the questions. ‐ The subtle difference
perfect tense)
• Check answers by asking between the meaning and

each student to give use of present perfect
• I tried to use timeline to
answers. tense and present perfect
explain the concept of
• Draw students’ attention to continuous tense made the
time period that present
the tenses in the explanation very difficult. I
perfect tense conveys,
paragraphs. First past tense tried to avoid mentioning
but some students still
(e.g. I worked there for 4 present perfect continuous
felt a bit confused.
years), draw timeline and in this class, fearing that it

explain the meaning may confuse the students.
• NL kept asking the
potential. Then ask them to Yet student kept asking
difference between
pay attention to the about them forwardly. So I
present perfect
present perfect tenses. Ask had to compare them to
continuous tense and
if anyone knows the cater their desire for
present perfect tense. He
meaning. If not, use the knowledge. (L2 Pedagogy)
enjoyed using “I have
timeline to explain.
been doing…”
Emphasize the form “have

+ past participle”

Materials: Handout
“Readings of People’s Jobs”

2: 15 – 2:25 Break
(10 mins)
2: 25 – 2:50 Role‐play: Job • I ask them to use the ‐ The scaffolding from the
Interview previous passages as previous task with the
(25 mins) references for their writing sentence structures (e.g., I
• Have students use the of their own career worked as a … for … years, I
previous readings as description. have worked as a … for …, I
reference to write a short am now working as a … )
self‐introductory speech • Mark and I attended to decrease the difficulty of
for job interviews. Key each student with their the writing task. (L2
elements: name, current writing, helping them to Pedagogy)
job, education background, use the correct tenses and
past work experience, sentence structures. ‐ Students were much more
what job do you like to fluent when reading the
find. Use simple past tense • Again I discarded my passage they wrote by
and present perfect tense. previous plan of form themselves, which made

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #8
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• Teachers monitor and students into pairs for the me believe writing
offer assistance to role‐play practice, because assignments should be
students’ writing process. there were only three prioritized in the future. (L2
• Have students get into students in total. I played Pedagogy)
pairs, each student get to as the interviewer, and
play as an job interviewer asked them to “tell me ‐ The task has a very
and say “tell me something something about yourself”. practical and realistic
about yourself.” and the purpose for students to
other one answers using • All of them did a good job prepare a job interview by
the introduction; then with the report. They used thinking about their past
switch roles. correct past tense and education and work
• Have one or two groups present perfect tense experience. As they
come to the front to sentences and ordered practiced telling people
present, if time allows their past experience in a about themselves, they
chronological way. were becoming more and
Materials: Blank sheets of more confident. (L2
paper Pedagogy)

‐ Mark wrote several
common job interview
2:50 – 3:20 Mark’s
questions on the board and
Presentation & Activities
went through them with
(30 mins)
the students, teaching

them how to answer them
in a proper way.

• Told the students to think ‐ Having students think back
3:20 – 3:30 Closing‐up &
about what they have about the learnt knowledge
Homework
learnt today, how can we is better than repeating the
(10 mins)
describe a time period knowledge points directly

from the past till now etc. for them. It gives students
• Review the forms and
more initiative and agency
meanings of present
• Reminded them the next to speak up. (L2 Pedagogy)
perfect tense
class would be the last
• Review some vocabulary of
Victory Afternoon, and
jobs
asked them to add more
• Homework: prepare the
details to their story.
speech of the last class

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #9
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, March 14, 2014 (Mtg 10)

‐ I was a bit concerned when
Ss: Since the teachers of Helene whether we want
Beginning Class on Friday to invite the two beginning
were all absent for the last students to our class. I
day, two beginning students certainly welcome them to
Class objectives:
joined our class. join us and I was glad that
1). SWBAT understand and
we have more students,
match different skills with
but I worry they might feel
different jobs in an
too stressful about the
information‐gap activity to
teaching content in the
find out their match.
Intermediate class. (L2

Pedagogy)
2). SWBAT orally describe

the ideal job they want to do
‐ The new comers seemed
in the future.
quite nervous and

*Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu uncomfortable as they
3). SWBAT ask and answer
TA: Mark Weiczorek were sitting there. They
questions about their
Students: XM (China), DV would talk quietly in
previous jobs in their home
(Mexico), IL (Russia), HS Spanish. When I tried to do
county and the job they are
(South Korea), TR (Mexico), small talk with them, only
doing in the US.
MR (Dominican Republic) MR would answer with

very simple words. I
realized patience would be
required a lot for this class.

• Ss said time went by too ‐ Sometimes when
1:00 – 1:10 Greetings,
fast and they did not even emphasizing too much
Reviewing & Warming‐up
realize this was the end of about the fact that the
(10 mins)
the winter session. semester is ending very

soon would wear down
• Announce this is the last
• There were, in fact, only students’ spirit of learning
class of the session and we
intermediate and beginning in the last class. It is better
will have a goodbye party
class students present that to change a way of viewing
in the afternoon.
day. So the final graduating the last class, and tell

party would have to be students this is a new
• Encourage them to join
limited within our class. beginning and that many of
other classes and talk to
them should try to move
others during the party to
on to the more advanced
make friends.
classes. (L2 Pedagogy

1:10 – 1:25 Review Job • We reviewed all the ‐ Vocabulary serves as a
Vocabulary; Reasons for vocabulary learnt last basis for higher level of
Choosing a Job time (musician, nurse, linguistic abilities. Yet
(15 mins) farmer, postmen, vet, explaining vocabulary takes

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #9
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• Ask them what they firefighter, dentist, a lot of time in the
learned last Friday. What waiter, mechanics, chef, classroom. Making vocab
occupations did they learn? cook, police, athletes, learning a after‐class
Did you do a job interview? singer, doctor, pilot, assignment and having Ss
• What is your ideal job? researcher, teacher, report or ask questions
What do you most want to painter, soldiers, would be a more effective
do? Why? astronaut, journalist). Ss and time‐saving strategy.
‐ Take turns to report what remembered most of (L2 Pedagogy).
they want to do most them.
‐ Talk to their partner ‐ Teaching adult students
about the reasons why • I had to explain “ideal” as how to form logical
they want to do the job. the “best and most reasoning in speaking and
‐ Share with the whole wanted”. writing tasks is not entirely
class why they want to do about linguistic features,
the job. • Some great “ideal jobs” but to raise their literacy
came up. DV wanted to competence as well. They
be a good chef; NL need to have strategic and
wanted to be a procedural thinking
businessman or a soccer patterns when being asked
player; TR wanted to be a about questions of “why”.
hairstylist; MR wanted to (Linguistics)
be a fashion designer.

• Ss had trouble answering
questions of “why”, they
had not developed the
systematic ability to
reason an action.

1:25 – 1:35  Skills Vocabulary • The pictures about job ‐ Instructions for lower level
(10 mins) skills this time were less students should be very
• Look at the pictures of direct and obvious to clearly and slowly
different skills for jobs. Go comprehend than the presented, repetition is
through the pictures at occupation pictures needed in many occasions,
least twice. composed of people and written procedures on
• Ask students to think what working in various the board would also help a
skills they need to do their conditions.   lot. (L2 Pedagogy)
ideal job. Write the skills
down and share.   • MR and TR basically could ‐ Generally our students
• What skills or qualities are not understand the could behave very well at
needed for teachers, instructions or controlling themselves
nurses, businessmen, and explanations of the from using L1 (Spanish),
chef?   activity. L1 was allowed but in this special
• Brainstorm together what for DV and NL to explain circumstance the
sills are needed for these the meaning to them. allowance to use L1 might
roles and write them on be facilitative for the
the board. • Ss in our intermediate proceeding of the class. (L2
class could identify most Pedagogy)
Materials: Job Skill Pictures of the qualities that a
certain occupation

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #9
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

requires.

1: 35 – 1:55  Skill Vocabulary ‐ It is important to make sure
Trading Activity • Some students didn’t get that Ss understand the
(20 mins) the purpose of the task instructions before starting
and started showing their an activity, or you will need
• Explain the rule: Each pictures to the others. a lot more effort to stop
student will get three skills We stopped them in time the messy situation and
picture and be assigned a and went over the start all over again. Avoid
role. They need to keep instructions again. I also asking questions like “do
both in secret. They will ask did a modeling with you all understand?”,
each other what skills do Victoria. because some students
you have and decide might not admit even if
whether their role needs • Some scaffolding they didn’t. Go over the
the skills. If so, they will structures were offered instructions and ask
trade skills.   on the board: what job questions like “so what do I
• Hand out the skills and skills do you have?/ which have to do next?” and see
roles to students and do a skills do you need from if they can answer them.
model. me? / I can’t give you that (L2 Pedagogy)
• Students do group work. one, I also need it. Etc.
Facilitate and give ‐ The design of this task was
feedback. • Ss were moving around, not very successful because
• Students show the skills most were able to use the the target skills were
they have. Erase the structures correctly, and neither certain new
writing on the board and trading processes went sentence structures nor
guess together what are well. pragmatic awareness, only
the roles assigned to each some vocabs about skills. It
student. should be improved by
incorporating more
Materials: Skill Pictures, language skill requirements
Roles on a Piece of Paper (Linguistics)
1:55 – 2:25  Survey about • When being asked about ‐ This info‐gap task was
Past, Current, and Future Job the question “what did aimed at combining the use
(30 mins) you do in your home of past, present, and future
• Ask one or two students country”, most students tenses with job‐related
“What did you do in your could answer with the questions. It was a bit
home country?” to elicit structure “I was a…”. challenging for students at
answers. Don’t correct this level, so many
their past tense problems if • We introduced other scaffolding structures were
they didn’t use past tense. alternative structures like provided on the board. (L2
• Point out past tense “my job was…” & “I Pedagogy)
directly and tell them the worked as a…”
correct form should be “I ‐ When several possible
was a …” “My job was…” • Some incorrect structures structures were offered at
• Ask students the same like “I am doing a cook the same time, most of the
questions again. right now” came up, we time Ss would choose the
• Ask students “What are corrected the error easiest one to use, even
you doing now in the US?” explicitly by pointing it though we have
• Write down their answer out and wrote the correct encouraged them to use
on the board to compare forms on the board. different ones. (Linguistics)
past tense and present

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #9
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

tense. • Most students tend to ‐ Repetitions should be used
• Ask students “What are use “I will…” instead of here with the “be going to”
you going to do in the “I’m going to…” when structure. The reason Ss
future?” being asked about future feel reluctant to use it is
• “I’m going to be a …” “I plans. because they are not
want to be a … in the familiar with the linguistic
future.” • Many students need to structure, repetition helps
• Give students the handout rely on the given them to internalize the
and tell them to do a structures on board to structure so that they
survey to find out their ask questions, but their become more familiar with
peers’ previous job, current interviews were pretty it. (Linguistics)
job and future job. successful. The report
• Report their findings session showed that they
following the pattern: … had mastered the three
was a… in …. Now she/he is tenses, at least
a … And she/he wants to temporarily.
be a… in the future.
Materials: Survey Forms

2: 25 – 2:35  Break
(10 mins)
• We were happy to know ‐ The final review of
2: 35 – 3:00  Final Review of that students actually previously learnt
What Has Been Learnt   remembered almost all the knowledge not only help
(25 mins) topics we had learned students to have a clearer
• Everyone come up with through the semester: memory of what has been
three things we learned for grocery shopping, taught, but also helps the
the whole session (self‐ pharmacy shopping, teachers to make up for
introduction, family clothes shopping, free‐time some omitted points in
relationships, appearances, activities, past tense, previous classes. (L2
personality, family present tense, future Pedagogy)
members, etc.) tense, present progressive
• What are your plans after tense, past progressive ‐ Self‐report of personal
this session? (If you want tense, eating, steps of plans encourages Ss to talk
to keep learning, you can making a PB&J, health, job more and also helps to
sign up to get a discount. If decrease their anxiety
not, what do you plan to • HS was preparing to be a level. Generally people feel
do?) grandmother; DV would less stressful to say
learn to be a chef and go something about
back to Mexico to work; HL themselves because that’s
Materials: none would go to a soccer tryout what they are most
in NYC and might become a familiar. (L2 Pedagogy)
soccer player
‐ Again Mark prepared some ‐ There was a purpose of
sentences to train Ss to starting the topic of
3:00 – 3:20  Mark’s speak with better different dialects of
Presentation & Activities intonation and stress. Spanish among the
(20 mins) students, we were trying to
‐ Then all the Ss and Ts stood implicitly inform them
around the table and about the knowledge of
chatted about their own language varieties, regional

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #9
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

languages: Spanish, and social dialects etc.
Korean. We discussed (Sociolinguistics)
about the different kinds of
Spanish people speak in
Mexico, Columbia, and
Dominican.

• The graduation award ‐ We did not end up
session had always been throwing a party with the
very triumphant, every students, which is
3:20 – 3:30 Graduation
student seemed very something I feel a bit guilty
Ceremony
happy when receiving the about. In the past
(10 mins)
NSC certificate. semesters, everyone would

hug each other and feel
• Award the students with
• IL had gone back to sorry they had to leave
their graduation certificate
Chicago several weeks ago, each other. I need to work

but we decided to mail the harder in the future to
• Congratulate them for establish a stronger
certificate to her, as she
their hard‐work and
was one of the most community among
improvement
diligent students. students. (L2 Pedagogy)

• Take group pictures
• NL was very enthusiastic
together
about taking the group
picture, while Victoria felt
anything but enthusiastic.

Note:

Nurse: care, compassion, communication, courage;
Teacher: patient, leadership, ability to learn;
Businessmen: optimism, leadership, teamwork, negotiation skill, ability to communicate;
Chef/cook: Teamwork, passion about cooking

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #10
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

Lesson Plan Observations Reflection & Analysis

Date: Friday, February 28, 2014 (Mtg 5)
Class objectives: ‐ Foods has always been an
1). SWBAT understand and Ss: We were excited to see extremely attractive topic
use linking words (but, and, everyone had brought their for ESL students. The
however, so, because, too, own dishes, and most of advantage of an ESL
either) in sentences in a them are the traditional classroom is that Ss are
work‐choosing activity. dishes from their own from various cultural
culture. backgrounds, which means
2). SWBAT form imperative each of them has a lot to
sentences in the right talk about for their own
sequence in a sentence culture‐specific foods. (L2
reordering activity. Pedagogy)

3). SWBAT use some ‐ We love to host a special
measuring words to describe session called “Global
the amount of sauces based Brunch” every semester. Ss
on the pictures. (a scoop of *Co‐teacher: Victoria Liu may not only able to tastes
candy, a spoonful of sugar, a TA: Mark Weiczorek different yummy foods, but
cup of milk) Students: DV(Mexico), IL can also learn to introduce
(Russia), HS (South Korea), the cooking process of
4). SWBAT introduce one NL (Columbia) different courses using
dish and describe the stages correct linking and
of making the dish to review sequence words.
the vocabulary and language (Linguistics)
features we learned. They
also need to use sequence
words.

1:00 – 1:10 Greetings, ‐ Although it is helpful to
Reviewing & Warming‐up • The question about form a relatively
(10 mins) breakfast had been asked established pattern with
too many times that Ss may the classroom so that Ss
• Ask about their life in the felt a little bored by it. feel secured about the
past week. knowing what comes next,
• I used the bottom‐up it is necessary to execute
• Ask them what they had teaching method when micro changes with specific
for breakfast. (Past tense) introducing the ‘measure details. Asking the same
words’. Offer pictures for question would certainly
• Show them the pictures of students to identify two bore the Ss after many
a spoonful of sugar, a nouns (e.g. scoop and times, try to make the
scoop of candy, and a cup candy), then present the speaking task become a
of milk. Try to encourage structure “a… of…” writing one. (L2 Pedagogy)
them to initiate talking.
• Overgeneralization existed, ‐ Over‐generalization is not
Materials: Pictures, take my after learning “a spoonful always a bad thing, it
measuring cups to class, of…”, some students means students are making
make different boxes thought it is correct tosay an effort to think and make

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #10
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

representing different “a scoopful of candy” reasonable deductions. Yet
sauces since language is not
always reasonable, Ts need
to remind them of the
danger to over generalize.
(Linguistics)

1:10 – 1:25 Measuring • Since a measure word
Words usually consists of two ‐ It is important to ensure Ss
(15 mins) nouns, we had to ensure understand the concept of
• Show them the measuring Ss know both of them. countable and non‐
cups and teach them “tea countable nouns before
spoon, table spoon, and • We also introduced a teaching measure words
cup”. number of vocabulary and quantifiers. Emphasize
• Students work in pairs regarding “measurement only non‐countable nouns
with one student deciding units”. E.g., half a cup of, can be used with
the measuring cup and the a quarter cup of, a third quantifiers (Linguistics)
other deciding the sauce cup of etc.
they want to take. They
need to write down their • We controlled the ‐ Adding “half, a third,
phrase separately. We will quantifiers first, giving quarter” made the task
check whether they get it only “a piece of…” and more difficult, if students
right later. adding different nouns, demonstrate confusions
• List “a piece of paper, a then introducing more with the use of them with
piece of cake, a loaf of quantifiers (e.g., a loaf of, measure words, it is best to
bread, a handful of corn, a a pair of) leave them be at the
pair of glasses, a pair of moment. (L2 Pedagogy)
shoes”. (maybe not a large
quantity of input)

Materials: measuring cups
• It is very easy to mess up ‐ Using envelopes when
1:25 – 1:35 Imperative
when conducting such a planning this activity might
Sentences
“scrambled sentence” be a good choice, keep the
(10 mins)
activity. There are too little pieces of paper inside
• Give students pieces of
many small pieces of a container so that they
parts of a sentence and ask
paper and it is very likely won’t fall off. (L2
them to make it in order.
to drop one or two when Pedagogy)
• Ask them to hand in the
handing them to the Ss,
sentences and write down
and leading to a mission ‐ One limitation of group
the sentence on their
impossible. discussion about the word
notebook based on their
orders is that they couldn’t
memory.
• Sharing their own really convince each other
• Exchange notebook and
answers with other that their own answers
make sure each other’s
students and discussing were correct because they
sentences are correct.
about it made Ss did not have much
• Share the answers metalinguistic knowledge.
remember the sentences
together.
better. Yet the discussion was still

facilitative as there would
Materials: Pieces of words to
be chances for meaning
make sentences
negotiation. (Linguistics)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #10
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• We firstly had to ‐ Some teachers would
introduce the meaning of simply tell Ss that
these linking words, “however” is the same as
which was not easy for “but”, which I feel is
1: 35 – 1:55 Linking Words
certain abstract ones problematic, even for
(20 mins)
(even if, wherever, beginning students. They
• Give them sentences and
whereas) need to have an alert about
ask them to put in “and,
the different uses of them,
but, however, too, either,
• I was stressed about Ss even if they cannot
so, because”
asking why should they remember them at this
• Switch pair member and
arrange the word order in moment, they need to
check the answers.
one way instead of know they are different.
• Check the answer as a
another. (L2 Pedagogy).
whole class.

• Give more examples using ‐ When certain grammatical
connection words and ask
knowledge has not been
them to filling the blanks.
taught, it can be painful for

both Ts and Ss to explain
Materials: Sentences and
why a sentence structure is
connection words
in one way instead of
another. (Linguistics)

• [MODELING]Time: I ‐ The modeling was in oral
made this dish last night. forms, so I emphasized (by
Steps: First, I scrambled stressing and slowing
the eggs in a bowl and down) the sequence words
1:55 – 2:15 Pre‐Global
added a teaspoonful of particularly to draw Ss’
Brunch: Sequence Words
salt. Second, I cut the attention to the forms. (L2
(20 mins)
tomatoes on the cutting Pedagogy)
• I will introduce my dish as a
board. Third, I put some
model: egg and tomato, oil,
oil in the pan and lit the ‐ Often Ss would have a hard
salt, sugar. Tell me “What
fire. Fourth, I put the time choosing the correct
is your dish? What do you
scrambled egg in the pan verb when describing the
put in the dish?”
and until it held together, cooking process. Possible
• Co‐teacher introduces her
I put them back in the verbs associated with
dish (do a modeling again)
bowl. Fifth, I put a little cooking should be listed on
• Student takes turns to
oil in the pan and put the the board as scaffolding
introduce their dishes.
tomatoes in after the oil information. (L2 Pedagogy)
• Model the steps I cooked
got hot. Sixth, I added
it. Ask students to pay
some salt and cooked the ‐ In order to avoid confusion
attention to the sequence at this stage, I did not
tomatoes for 2 min.
words. mention another way of
Seventh, I put the cooked
expressing sequence:
eggs back in the pan and
cooked them together for firstly, secondly, thirdly etc.
2 min. Eighth; I put them (Linguistics)
in the container.)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #10
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

• We did not have time for
Ss to introduce in this
session, so we decided to
put it off to the global
branch session.

2: 15 – 2:25  Break
(10 mins)
2: 25 – 2:50  Global Brunch • All the Ss agreed that ‐ As we were all too busy
(25 mins) they understood the eating, it was easy to be
• Ask whether students explanation (or was it overwhelmed with the
understand the previous because they couldn’t foods and forget about the
process of introducing wait to taste the foods?) names of their dishes. Next
dishes and if not, do it time, the presentation
again. • It was a spectacular scene should be made in a more
• Students work alone to when everyone take out formal way, the presenter
think about their cooking their dishes and put them needs to come to the front,
process and they can jot on the table. and write down necessary
down key words/write the information (name of
whole sentences down if • Mark brought a foods, ingredients etc.) on
they want to.   traditional Polish snack; IL board. (L2 Pedagogy)
• They take turns to come to brought salad (as always
the front and introduce for her lunch); HS’ Korean ‐ Ss tend to use “then”
their dishes using sequence dissert tasted wonderful. mostly after “first” and
words. After their “second”, it is also a
introduction, peers will ask • Everyone made an common habit for most
questions about the dish. introduction about their native speakers, because
• Provide them with forks dishes. I followed up with often people would lose
and knifes. Share each more questions about count of how many steps
other’s delicious dishes. some details. they have introduced.
(Linguistics)

Materials: REAL FOODS

Everyone enjoyed the
2:50 – 3:20 Mark’s Global Brunch so much that N/A
Presentation & Activities time flied, we did not have
(30 mins) time for Mark’s
presentation.

• We gave Ss some paper ‐ Combining the knowledge
3:20 – 3:30 Closing‐up & strips with sentences and of linking and sequence
Homework asked them to connect words with writing tasks is
(10 mins) them using the correct a good decision, because
linking words and sequence when Ss write
• Review linking words and words. They basically got compositions for exams or
sequence words. everything correct. other writing tasks in the
• Review imperative future, using these
sentences • The home assignment was connecting words correctly
• Home assignments (TBD) to write their cooking and logically is important.
procedures down with (Linguistics)

Teacher: Huabing Wang Fieldwork Journal #10
Class: ESL Intermediate II, Friday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm Site: Nationalities Service Center

correct linking and
sequence words.

Appendix II: Supplementary Materials

• NSC Winter 2014 Intermediate ESL Syllabus
• Week 2_Handout_Describing People_ Physical Appearance
• Week 3_ Handout_ Questions About Videos
• Week 4_Handout1_Comparatives_Shopping
• Week 4_Houdout2_Product Details
• Week 7_Handout_Ordering Food_ Menu
• Week 8_Handout_Past Progressive
• Week 8_Handout_ Speech Preparation Sheet
• Week 9_Handout_Doctor Patient Schedule
• Week 9_Handout_Job Crossword
• Huabing Wang Resume 2014

See attached.

Nationalities Service Center
1216 Arch Street, 4th Floor Teacher: Victoria Liu & Huabing Wang

Philadelphia, PA, 19107 January 10 to March 14, 2014

Winter 2014 Ten‐Week Session
Intermediate ESL

Daring Greatly

Friday 10:30 am to 12:00 pm; 1:00 pm to 3:30pm

Goal: To improve interactive and communicative skills in English

Morning Afternoon Total Hours Completed

Week  1
/ / 5  Hours
1/10
Week 2    Introduction & Connection Family Relations
10 Hours
1/17                     Unit 1 Unit 2
Family Relations
Week 3 Victory Afternoon
(Past Tense) 15  Hours
1/24 (Developing Speeches)
Unit 2
Shopping: Grocery, Shopping: Grocery,
Week 4
Pharmacy & Clothes Pharmacy & Clothes                      20 Hours
1/31
Unit 3 Unit 3
Week 5 Free‐time Activities Victory Afternoon
25 Hours
2/7 Unit 4   (Developing Speeches)
Free‐time Activities Treat Your Stomach: Eating
Week 6
(Restaurant Language) & Drinking 30 Hours
2/14
Unit 4 Unit 10
Week 7 Global Brunch: Talk Like A Victory Afternoon
35 Hours
2/21 Gourmet (Developing Speeches)
Week 8 Keeping Healthy
Vocabulary Builder 40 Hours
2/28 Unit 7
Week 9 Keeping Healthy             Hunting For Jobs
45 Hours
3/7 Unit 7 Unit 8
Job Interview Practice &
Week 10 Hunting For Jobs
Post‐test Assessment 50 Hours
3/14 Unit 8
& Graduation

Nationalities Service Center
1216 Arch Street, 4th Floor Teacher: Victoria Liu & Huabing Wang

Philadelphia, PA, 19107 January 10 to March 14, 2014

Book
Future 2

Triumphant Thursdays
Every other week in the afternoon classes students will present a speech.

Classroom Tips: Contact:
1. Be punctual (arrive on time)
[email protected]
2. No cell‐phones
3. Ask any questions to teachers or TA
[email protected]
Nationalities Service Center: (215) 893-8400

Describing People
There are many ways to describe a person. One common way to
describe somebody is based on appearance. Among other
things, you can describe their build, their height, their hairstyle,
their health, and their complexion.
Appearance: What does he/she/look like?
Build
thin fat
He/she is . . . skinny slim average build stocky overweight obese
slender chubby
Height
He/she is . . . short average height tall
Health
in (good) shape
He/she is . . . out of shape well-built
(physically) fit
General Looks
good looking
handsome ugly
hot
He/she is . . . pretty plain unattractive
sexy
beautiful funny looking
attractive
Hairstyle
blond hair long hair
a ponytail
brown hair shoulder-length hair
straight hair pigtails
red hair short hair
He/she has . . . wavy hair a beard
black hair a shaved head
curly hair a mustache
gray hair long eyelashes
sideburns
dyed hair
He is . . . bald
Complexion:
dark skin
light skin a scar freckles
He/she has . . .
a pale complexion a mole/ a beauty mark wrinkles
a rosy complexion
Other:
He has a tattoo. He has braces.
She has a pierced ear/nose/lip/tongue. He wears glasses/contacts.

Describing People Based on Appearance

Write a few sentence to describe each of the people below.

Woman 1

Woman 2

Woman 3

Man 1

Woman 4

Man 2

Girl 1

Woman 5

Man 3

Questions About Videos

Video 1 (Brad)
1. Which university does Brad go to? Is he a first‐year student or second‐year
student?
Key: University of Tennessee; first year
2. What sports does Brad like to play?
Key: Football, basketball, running track
3. What’s Brad’s favorite book? How many times has he read the book series?
Key: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; about 10 times
4. What major is Brad hoping to get into?
Key: Architecture

Video 2 (AT)
1. How old is the speaker?
Key: 22
2. Does the speaker have any siblings? How old is he? What’s his brother’s
dream?
Key: yes, a brother; 24; Pharmacist
3. How long has his father had the shop?
Key: almost 20 years
4. Which country does he come from? Which countries does Armenia neighbor
with?
Key: Armenia; Turkey & Azerbaijan
5. What does the flag represent?
Key: who he is and what he stands for

Product Details:

The Easy Snap Digital Camera:
Advantages: Light and inexpensive.
Price: $175.00

The Fine Shot 4000 Digital Camera:
Advantages: High quality and easy to use.
Price: $225.00

Product Details:

Banrays:
Advantages: resistant to scratches and
durable.
Price: $65.00

Armante’s:
Advantages: light and fashionable.
Price: $45.00

Product Details:

Mountain Explorers:
Advantages: comfortable and water
resistant.
Price: $110.00

Rain Forest Walkers:
Advantages: lighter and not expensive.
Price: $95.00

Product Details:

Armante’s Leather Jackets
Advantages: stylish and durable.
Price: $120.00

Corombia Jackets:
Advantages: warm and easy to clean.
Price: $85.00

Product Details:

Levios Jean:
Advantages: warm and durable.
Price: $55.00

Cotton Pants:
Advantages: light and easy to clean.
Price: $45.00

Product Details:

The Arctic Sleeper:
Advantages: warm and compact.
Price: $110.00

The Summer Special:
Advantages: not expensive and light.
Price: $95.00

Product Details:

The Cliff Camper:
Advantages: compact and light.
Price: $85.00

The Outdoor Palace:
Advantages: roomy and easy to set up.
Price: $110.00

Product Details:

Black Dog Bus Tours:
Advantages: Comfortable and quick.
Price: $45.00

Island Railways:
Advantages: Scenic and not crowded.
Price: $55.00

There are many ways to compare things. Often, we use an adjective and one of the following
sentences patterns:
Expressions for Comparing Two Objects
cheap, easy to use cheaper (than), easier to use (than)
comfortable, powerful more comfortable (than), more powerful (than)
not cheap, not comfortable not as cheap (as), not as comfortable (as)

As a class: Look at the advertisements below and make comparisons between the products:
Advantages of Cool Walkers
(1) Cool Walkers are not as expensive as Slim Jimms.
(2)
(3)

Advantages of Slim Jimms:
(1) Slim Jimms are more durable than Cool Walkers.
(2)
(3)

Work in pairs. Compare these items. Write your comparisons down in your workbook or on a
separate piece of paper. (Teachers, lengthen it: A longer more in-depth activity is available from the
teacher’s manual).

That’s like comparing apples and oranges.
This means that two things are so different that you can’t compare them.

Look at the conversation below. When you do the shopping role-play, use this
conversation as a guide.

Clerk: Welcome to Kenny’s Shoes. We’re having a sale on dress shoes.

Shopper: That’s great. I need some dress shoes. What do you have on sale?
Clerk: Well, we have Silver Jims and Cool Walkers.

Shopper: What do you recommend?
Clerk: Well, Silver Jimms are more fashionable and
higher quality. Whereas, Cool Walkers are not as expensive
and they’re more comfortable.

Shopper: What’s the difference in price?
Clerk: With tax, the Silver Jims come to $47.00 and the Cool Walkers
come to $39.00.

Shopper: So that’s about an $8.00 difference.
Clerk: That’s right.

Shopper: I’ll take the Cool Walkers.
Clerk: How would you like to pay?

Shopper: I’ll put it on my credit card.
...
Clerk: Alright, here’s your receipt. Have a nice day.
Shopper: Thanks.

You are going on a vacation and you need to do some shopping
before you go.
(1) Open a store: The teacher will give you a store with two
products. Write your product information in the blank spaces.
(2) Make a shopping list: The teacher will give you a shopping list.
(3) Make a budget: The teacher will write down your budget for
cash, checks, and credit cards.
(4) Go shopping: Visit other student stores and decide what you will
buy. Write the other store’s product information in your table.

(1) Write down your product information:
Store Name: _______________________________
Product 1: Product 2: ______________________________
______________________________
Advantages Comparative Advantages Comparative

(2) Write down the items on your shopping list:

(1) ______________________ (5) _______________________
(2) ______________________ (6) _______________________
(3) ______________________ (7) _______________________
(4) ______________________ (8) _______________________

(3) Write down your budget:
Budget: Cash $__________, Checks $___________, Credit Cards $__________

(4) Go shopping:
Store Products Advantages Price Payment

Kenny’s Silver Jimms more fashionable, higher quality $47.00 Credit card
Shoes Cool Walkers not as expensive, more comfortable $39.00 X

Starters Cold Drinks
Soup Orange juice $12
Chicken Soup $12.50 Apple juice $12
Mushroom Soup $12.50 Lemon Tea $11
Vegetable Soup $12.50 Mineral Water $7
Soft Drinks - Coke, 7-up,
Bread and Salad $7
Fanta
Garlic Bread (3 pcs) $13.00 Dessert
Smoked Salmon Salad $18.50 Red Bean Sundae $12.00
Shrimp & Fresh Fruit Salad $20.50 Vanilla/chocolate Ice Cream $10.00
Sesame Chicken Salad $16.50 Banana Pancake $10.00

Main Course
Sandwiches
Ham & cheese sandwiches $15.50
Tuna & egg salad sandwiches $16.00
Pizza (1 pc)
Beef, mushroom & onion Pizza $15.00
Chicken & Pork Pizza $14.50
Vegetarian Pizza $14.00
Ham, cheese & Pineapple Pizza $14.00
Burger
Cheese burger $14.50
Beef burger $16.00
Pasta
Lasagna $28.00
Shrimp & Mushroom Spaghetti $26.00
Super Seafood Spaghetti $26.00
Chicken Spaghetti $25.50
Salmon Spaghetti $25.50

Whenever you use "was" or "were", you're speaking from the past perspective. You
pick a certain moment or time, and tell what was happening at the same time.

Simple examples include:

It was raining.

I was sleeping.

Here's how to think about events happening during the past:

Exercise:

1. What ___________ (you do) when he arrived?

2. She ____________ (watch) TV at two o'clock.

3. They __________ (not sleep) at five o'clock.

4. Peter __________ (work) when I telephoned.

5. Tim ___________ (study) German while they were studying French.

6. I ______________ (not pay attention) during the presentation.

7. ___________ (Brian talk) during the lesson?

8. We ___________ (not cook) when he walked in the door.

9. Jason _______ (play) the piano at three o'clock yesterday afternoon.

10. They ________ (discuss) the issue when she telephoned.

Your Own Speech Preparation Worksheet

1. What type of experience was it?

2. When did the story happen?

3. Where were you?

4. Who was with you?

5. Why were you there?

6. What was your goal?

7. What were you doing?

8. How were you feeling?

9. Why did you feel that way?

10. How did you react?

11. How did the story end?

Doctor Tom’s Free time (1)
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
9:00 am 10:00 am 10:30 am 9:00 am 8:00 11:30 am 11:30
am am
3:15 pm 12:00 pm 1:00 pm 4:45 pm 10:15 3:30 pm 1:30 pm
am

Your schedule (1)
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
/ 9:00 am 10:30 am 11:30 am / 11:30 am /
/ 4:00 pm 3:00 pm 4:45 pm / 3:15 pm /

Doctor Tom’s Free time (2)
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
9:30 am 11:00 am / 9:00 am 8:00 11:30 am 11:30
am am
3:05 pm 2:00 pm / 4:45 pm 10:15 3:30 pm 1:30 pm
am

Your schedule (2)
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
9:00 am 10:30 am 10:30 am / / 11:30 am 11:30
am
4:00 pm 1:00 pm 3:00 pm / / 3:15 pm 4:45 pm

Doctor Tom’s Free time (3)
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
9:30 am 11:00 am 8:20 am 9:00 am 8:00 11:30 am 11:30
am am
3:05 pm 2:00 pm 4:20 pm 4:45 pm 10:15 3:30 pm 1:30 pm
am

Your schedule (3)
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
9:00 am / 10:30 am 9:00 am / / 11:30
am
4:00 pm / 3:00 pm 3:15 pm / / 4:45 pm

1 2 3 4
Jobs Crossword:

Across 5 6 7
1. Somebody who plays
an instrument.
8 9 10 11 12
3. Someone who grows
crops.
7. Somebody who fixes
teeth.
13
8. A person who serves
food.
9. Someone who fixes 14 15 16
cars.
13. Somebody who
catches criminals. 17 18

16. A person who plays 19
sports.
20
17. Someone who stars in
21
a movie.
19. A person who sings
songs.
20. Somebody who helps
22 23
sick people.
21. Somebody who flies
airplanes.
22. A person who does
experiments.
23. Somebody who teaches. Down
2. A person who helps a doctor. 12. A person who protects a
country.
4. Someone who delivers mail.
14. Someone who cleans
5. Somebody who helps sick
buildings.
animals.
15. A person who makes
6. Somebody who puts out fires.
computer games.
9. Someone who digs for metal
16. A person who goes to outer
ore in the ground.
space.
10. Someone who cooks food.
18. A person who tells us the
11. A person who paints pictures. news.

M U S I C I A N F A R M E R
U A
V F R D E N T I S T
E I S L
W A I T E R M E C H A N I C S
E I H R A O
F N E T R L
P O L I C E O F F I C E R D
G R S I I
J P H A T H L E T E
A R T S R R
N O E A C T O R R
S I N G E R R E
T R D O C T O R P
O A N P I L O T
R M A R
M U T
S C I E N T I S T T E A C H E R
R R

HUABING WANG
4036 Walnut Street. Apt 9, Philadelphia, PA 19104 ƹ C: 267-886-3350 ƹ
[email protected]
P ROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Dynamic ESL teacher with cutting-edge knowledge and demonstrated capabilities in language
education. Committed to student-centered classroom and material authenticity.
SKILLS
Managing classroom for diverse populations Audio-visual aid implementation
Expertise in speech skill development International education
Student-centered learning Tutoring
Student affairs Mandarin
Curriculum design Translation & Interpretation
W ORK HISTORY
ESL Instructor, 01/2014 to Current
Nationalities Service Centerͼᶮͼ1216 Arch Street, 4th Floor
Designed the ten-week intermediate-level ESL class syllabus and planned lessons with
communication-based tasks.
Assisted and observed the teaching activities of my co-teacher and TA.
Created the special session called "Victory Afternoon", which aims at developing students'
speech delivering and oral communicative skills.
Linguistic Annotator, 10/2013 to Current
Linguistic Data Consortiumͼᶮͼ3600 Market St., 800 Suite, Philadelphia, PA
Identify and collect Internet video and audio materials.
Annotate and categorize linguistic data using the VScout software.
ESL Instructor, 09/2013 to 12/2013
Nationalities Service Centerͼᶮͼ1216 Arch St., 4th Floor, Philadelphia, PA
Designed and implemented the ten-week advanced-level ESL class.
Successfully
Assessed and
Assessed improved
enhanced student skills and confidence in preparing and delivering speeches by
and enhanced
selecting appropriate multimedia resources including TED.
Organized the "amazing language race" with co-teacher.
ESL Instructor (Volunteer), 01/2013 to 03/2013
Nationalities Service Centerͼᶮͼ1216 Arch St. 4F, Philadelphia
Planned, implemented, monitored, and assessed the intermediate-level ESL class as a volunteer
teacher.
Group Facilitator, 10/2012 to 12/2012
PEDAL@GSEͼᶮͼ3700 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA
Assisted lead facilitators to do lesson planning and organize classroom activities.
Carried out presentations and bettered group discussion quality.
Debriefed on weekly meetings about the "glows and grows" of the realization of pedagogical
objectives.
Volunteer English Teacher, 07/2011 to 08/2011
Tongren Country No. 1 Primary School ᶮͼQinghai Province, China

EDUCATION
Master of Science in Education: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Current
University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, PA
Distinguished coursework performance, GPA: 3.82
Highest score of the class (A+) in 4 courses
Master of Arts: English, 2012
Dalian Maritime University - Dalian, Liaoning, China
Outstanding Graduate of Class 2012 of Dalian City
Outstanding Student Leader of DMU in 2010-2011 Academic Year
The 3rd Class Scholarship for Merit Student of DMU in 2010-2011 Academic Year
Outstanding Student Leader of DMU in 2009-2010 Academic Year
The 2nd Class Scholarship for Merit Student of DMU in 2009-2010 Academic Year
Outstanding Student Leader of DMU in 2008-2009 Academic Year
The 1st Class Guanghua Scholarship of DMU in 2008-2009 Academic Year
Vice Chairman of the 12th Student Union of School of Foreign Languages, DMU
Outstanding Student Leader of Student Union of School of Foreign Languages
LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
English (full professional)
Mandarin Chinese (native)
French (limited working)
Huabing Wang
University of Pennsylvania, Alumnus
Papers
20
Followers
57
View all papers from
Huabing Wang
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