Getting Hired

I learned a lot in the article " Getting Hired. 5 Tip to Being the Candidate of Choice". There are 5 tips to help me understand how to get hired. 1. Be crisp. 2. Be confident. 3. Have vision. 4. Find separation. 5. Leave it on the table.  When I have an interview, I need to think about myself to be more comfortable and confident.  To sell myself I need to talk about my strength and goals.  To think about what my professors and mentor teacher told me before.  It is necessary to have a portfolio with lesson plans, resume, some pictures, teaching ideas, and classroom management plan. However, the author mentioned that it is important to bring video and PPT to show how you can do a real-life, technology-driven example. I think I would like to prepare a video to show my lessons were taught in student teaching period and how to manage my future classroom.  At last, I wish I can get the position I want in the future.

On Repetition and Unglamorous Teaching

During my student teaching, I changed my mind in teaching.  It is different with what I think in the special education classroom.  I have many stories can be taught to explain what I think in teaching.  This is the first time I teach a student with autism.  Before I came to the classroom, I thought a child with autism may be quiet and have own room in her or his mind so nobody can touch it.  I remember the first time I met with J.  She looked at another place and did not want to talk.  From that time I knew it is important to get J's attention so that I can help her to learn.  She hit me in the first week, but my mentor teacher said that meant she likes me.  It is not correct so teachers need to tell her how to say sorry and stop.  In the rest of my student teaching, I was patient and did some research about a child with autism.  I want to help her to grow and to learn.  It is my special experience in my student teaching.

Blog 4

Reflection

Understanding English Language Learners:
Since English is my second language, I can understand how ELLs think when they learn English in a classroom environment.  According to Brown and Lee (2015) the knowledge I learned from this course, I learned there are the differences between teaching young ELLs and adult ELLs. For the adult, according to these scholars “they have superior cognitive abilities that can make them more successful in certain classroom endeavors (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.117).”  When teachers teach children in English, they need to think about their intellectual development, attention span, sensory input, affective factors, and authentic, meaningful language (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.110-113).
Strategies and Techniques to instruct and assess ELLs:
From this course, I learned many methods and strategies for teaching English. I think about the ESL courses that I have taken before; I can identify what methods my ESL teachers used right now.  My English teachers in my country would like to choose translation methods to teach English.  It is an effective way of teaching language, but it is a teacher-centered classroom focused around memorization of grammatical rules and exercises.  However, students will have a lack of expereince speaking in English and feel bored in the classes.  After taking this course, I learned that teaching English based on proficiency levels, should care about students’ background, introduce culture and sociopolitical contexts, use different instructions for different levels, and so on.  Before ESL teachers teach a lesson to students, they need to choose instructions according to different levels in their classroom.  Next, it is important to prepare materials that are related to ELL’s background and age.  For example, teachers can know about students’ home language and prepare information that your students may understand in the class. In ESL teachers’ lesson plan, they always need to modify different instructions and have modifications for ELLs.
Teaching philosophy:
At the beginning of this course, I said my teaching philosophy is to practice.  After I learned about ELLs and how to teach ELLs, I think practice is not the only way to teach.  It is also important for teachers to teach individually, or individualize the experience for each student.  Everyone has different needs, so they need different methods for them to learn.  This course forces me to think about research articles.  When teachers require students to learn new knowledge, they should know it is important for them, as teachers to learn more new methods as well.  On the other hand, I learned that sometimes it is not easy for teachers to plan lessons alone, so they can have peer coaching, team teaching, collaborative curriculum development and revision, presenting at a professional conference, joining a professional association of teachers, and informal local teacher support groups (Brown & Lee, 2015, P.560-563).  I like the ESL teacher interview assignment, because it allows us to know about ESL students.  After we watched everyone’s interview, we can understand what kinds of methods ESL teachers would like to use right now.  We know about different ESL programs they have.  In the future classroom, I may not become an ESL teacher, but I think I know how to help ELLs to learn knowledge.  I would like to become an bilingual certificated teacher in the future.  I think this course helped me understand how to learn another language.
Brown, H. D., & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to 
language pedagogy (4th ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman. 

Blog3

Interview

Reflection

Before I did this interview, I found that it is not easy to write the ten questions.  I needed to review what we learned before about ESL.  Since I used to study in adult ESL classrooms, I wanted to interview an ESL teacher who teaches adult ESL.  Mr. Wang is an ESL teacher in the University of St. Thomas Literacy ESL Program.  When we recorded the video, he said the wrong school he worked at.  Concerned students and friends of the University of St. Thomas created literacy Initiative For Today in February of 1991.  It is one of the few English as a Second Language (ESL) programs available on weekends.  They force on teaching students in how to communicate with other English speakers.  During our interview, I learned that to teach adults is different with children.  Adults need for sensory input can rely a little more on their imaginations (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.117).  Mr. Wang mentioned that he prepared lots of pictures and videos for them understanding English meaning.  In his lesson plan, I learned that to bring own life experiences could help students to communicate more in English.  According to our textbook, adults bring life experiences to the classroom, which gives them background schemata as a backdrop for the situations introduced in a curriculum (Brown & Lee, 2015, p.117).

Cited

Brown, H. D., & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to 
language pedagogy (4th ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman. 

CUIN4363 Blog Entry 2

In SLA 4303 course, it shows the research in the second language acquisition impacts ELLs and teaching practices today.  “An understanding of what ELL students can do with oral and written English at different stages of second language acquisition is crucial if teachers are to provide effective language and content area instruction” (Wright, 2010, p. 10).  When I studied in UH Language Culture Center, I had different English language instruction and environment.  The academic program at LCC provides twenty hours of classroom instruction per week for students who need to significantly improve their English to study in an American college or university, whose professions require a mastery of the English language or who simply desire to improve their English language skills. The program includes instruction in reading, writing, listening, speaking, as well as grammar.  “This genre of L2 instruction is commonly associated with higher education and has offshoots in English for academic purposes” (Brown & Lee, 2015, pg. 61).  In that program, teachers would like to use grammar-translation method to teach students.  We focused on explaining rules, memorizing vocabulary, and reading passages.  However, teachers still encouraged students to practice oral communication.  For speaking and writing teachers, sometimes they would like to use theme-based instruction.  According to the different themes, we have classroom reading, discussion, and research.  After that, we had writing projects.  Before I came to here, I never spoke English because I always felt that I was not good enough to talk in English.  The most important part of learning a second language is to practice. At LCC, I improved a lot in learning English.

In my opinion, I think bilingualism good for cognition.  With the development of the social economy, more and more people can speak more than two languages because they know it can help them to open their eyes to know more difference than their our country.  As a bilingual, language learning impacts my life.  To learn a second language can practice brain and improving learning ability.  There are some bilingual education models, such as immersion and sheltered models.  “Immersion programs have been highly successful, with children performing on a par with their monolingual counterparts and becoming functional bilinguals by the end of elementary school”(Brown & Lee, 2015, pg. 58).  In the immersion program, I think children start to learn a second language when they are young.  They start to learn knowledge in their first and second language at the same time.   It will help students to succeed in different subjects with both first and second language.  I think it is important for the profession of SLA to have research and researchers who investigate how a second language is best learned.  The research was collecting data to show the effective teaching or not so that teachers do not need to waste time.  According to research and researchers, teachers can have more different methods, which is successful in teaching the second language.  At last, I believe that research impact our education teaching practice today.  Through research, new teachers can learn how to teach improve teaching ability.  

Wright, W. E. (2010). Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing.

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

CUIN4361 Blog Entry 1

Hello, everyone. My name is Wei Hua. I am a senior at University of Houston. This is the link to learn more about me.