Now you have made your first experiences with mini lessons, and most of you have done it very well. There were lots of possibilities to explain this grammatical structure to students. Room to be creative!! Kudos to the people with cool attention getters.
This was our initial practice, so don't worry if it wasn't perfect yet. I will email out the best solutions from both my grammar courses, so you have an example of what it should have been like.
Some have missed the topic - the topic was not the difference between Me and My as in "this is me dress, this is my dress" - we were not teaching pronouns to beginning learners of English. We were teaching how to construct pronouns coupled with -ing forms (gerunds), such as "Do you like him driving? Do you like his driving?"
Our topic was GERUND PHRASE with POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVE. The main difference between using either ME or MY is that in one case, the verb with the -ing form acts as an object with an attributive adjective (HIM), and in the other case, it is a GERUND with a possessive adjective (HIS).
Let's go back to our example, "Do you like him driving?" It has a different sense than the other sentence, it means you actually dislike HIM driving, e.g. when he's drunk. It places disdain on the driver rather than on the action, the driving. HIM becomes the object, and DRIVING is the attributive adjective.
The second example means in general; "do you like his driving," i.e., his driving (style) in general, or does it frighten you. You don't like HIS driving because he always drives too fast. It places the disdain on the ACTION, the driving, not on the subject, the driver. DRIVING here is a gerund, serving as the (accusative) object of the sentence. (What do you like? His driving.) HIS is the possessive adjective.
So be careful -- sometimes, it does not work to give the kids a handout with "wrong sentences" and "right sentences" -- here, both were right, they just had different meanings.
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Today, we are constructing another mini lesson; this time for an Asian student who has English as a second language (ESL).
In order to deal with diversity in our students, we need to understand the background of their native languages. We do this by reading research, by observing our students, and by simply asking them.
Task 1: Proofread the sample text below. It is an original text written by an SIU TESOL student last year. (And she was a good student!) Then, take a piece of paper, and repair as many mistakes as you can find. Rewrite the sentences correctly, with regard to good grammar AND style.
The Beijing is a modern city and there are a lot of places to visit. First, there are many new building was build. One of the new buildings, it looks like a bird’s nest. Then, it have a big history. You can visit a lot of old buildings to know the history, just like “the summer Palace”. Finally, many people come from different country, there are kinds of restaurant. You can eat which you want to taste. Beijing is a nice place.
Task 2: In class, we will discuss a list of specific errors that occurred, and we will group these errors into categories.
Here is an example for a category: modifiers
In Chinese, modifiers always precede the noun, whereas in English they can follow the noun, especially for attributive clauses. Therefore, Chinese students often have problems constructing an attributive clause. For example:
· Their owners may want to come to the store knows the pets better.
· These are all good strategies should be used.
· There are some people want to live in the countryside.
· The Plan provides lots of good statistic numbers which very helpful.
· My grandfather is the only person who influenced by his actions.
Another category: pronouns
One salient error is the leaving out of the relative pronouns, because they don’t exist in Chinese. For instance, the first sentence, if written in Chinese, would be like: “Their owners may want to come to knows the pets better the store.”
To find more categories, take the following ERIC document for help. (Look only on pp. 47-62 for specific error types.)
Task 3: Pick one of your categories, or one category mentioned on pp. 47-62, and write a short passage how you as a teacher/tutor/editor would explain to the Asian writer above WHY this can’t be said in English. Use her sentences as samples, and give her some other examples, too. Please write with quotation marks (how you would actually say it to the student). Give plausible examples of right/wrong sentences, and explain to the ESL student how to use the grammatical form you picked correctly. (Don't just explain, "we do it this way in English.")Email this assignment to me. If you can't finish in class, this will be homework for next Monday, August 25th.
Here is an example of how a teacher explained article use to an ESL student:
In a case study, a Costa Rican boy used the “the” too often, for example, “the nature has a lot of secrets.” The teacher replies: “Let me ask you, if you are walking in the woods, where is nature?” – “It’s in the trees. It’s kind of … everywhere,” the student replies. “Right. It’s everywhere. So nature is a very general noun. We talk about nature but we are not talking about a specific place or specific trees…” (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman 1983, 9-10).
Task 4:
Post a short comment to this blog about your own experience with Asian students, if you are observing/student teaching and have made any experiences so far. You can also write about what you observed outside of class with regard to Asian ESL persons. Or, post your personal thoughts about teaching children of diverse cultures. What would you do to make it easier for them? Any accommodations? Or would you treat them like the rest of your students? If you had an Asian student in your class who wrote great essays but placed the articles wrongly each time, would you take points off or give her the good grade her content deserves? If you give her the good grade, would it be fair to your American students who get points off for mechanics??? Let your conscience speak.
HOMEWORK: Read the complete article (the ERIC document above).
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25 comments:
When I was growing up I actually had to help and student from Vietnam. His name was Tam and he was just getting the hang of English and it was a process where we had to put words together for him to understand how a sentence was structured. He slowly got the hang of it. So my primary notion towards an Asian ESL student would be to work slowly with smaller sentences and break them apart word by word. I believe this will give confidence and structure to a young students ability to speak and write the English language.
Since I have not had any personal contact with an Asian student I would have to make my choice based on whether I have multicultural students in my classroom (if I taught). I would have to grade accordingly based on mechanics. The whole purpose of teaching English is to teach it properly. This would include any child of another culture.
This may seem intensely callous of me, but I don't believe in offering students breaks because English is not their native language. The student is in an English class for a reason, to learn English, not to be coddled and shown how to understand English without any grasp of the basic mechanics. The first few written assignments written by the student will be graded on the same level of expectancy as native-speakers of the language. I will make it my top priority that all of my students receive the same education on mechanics and structure of sentences, as those are things that are very important to me in my writing, as as such should be held important by my students. If the ESL student is having difficulty grasping these mechanics, I will offer to meet with them privately for a more in-depth approach to the topic, but I will not erase any bad grade that preceded these meetings. I am a terrible math student, and had to receive outside help from my instructors on many occasions. Did my inability to understand these math formulas erase the grades I had received on previous assignments? No. Those assignments were learning experiences, and, I'm sad to say, I've found very little things as effective as learning by attrition.
I think that if I ever have Asian students in my class, I will try to give them the extra help they need to speak and write correctly. At first, if their content is excellent, but their mechanics need some work, I will probably not take too many points off. However, as the school year goes on, I expect that all of my students will make progress. If my Asian students are still struggling a lot with their mechanics, I will gradually start taking more points off, just as I will for my other students.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a foreign exchange student. Her name was Ying Ying, but we called her Amy. She was just learning the English language, and I had to help her quite frequently with homework and social situations. She began to understand how to speak the language quite fast, but she had trouble expressing herself through writing. Because I had the opportunity to work with Amy, I really understand just how difficult it is for others to grasp the English language.
If I were teaching an Asian ESL student I would feel obligated to take things slow, and help him/her. While I would still try not to play favorites.
When teaching a student who is learning English as a second language , I think it is important to give them extra help. For the American students, it would come more natural because it is all they know. For a ESL student it would be much more difficult. I would try to make a special time for the ESL students to get extra help. After school or before, I would make time for them to come see me to get the extra help they need to put them on the same level as the American students. When it comes to grading, I would have to grade them all the same. It would not be fair to either of the students to be graded differently. Because the ESL student it getting extra time with me learning, the student should be graded the same as all the others. I think that would be the best way to make it fair for everyone.
I begin observing in Mt. Vernon next week so I am unaware if there will be any Asian ESL students in my class. I have never worked with an Asian ESL student although I have been around other students whose first language is not English. Trying to learn the English language is difficult even for English speaking students. I would suggest taking small steps and breaking down sentences to ease the stress of learning such a complex language. Knowing how the student's own language works will also help the teacher to better understand the student's difficulties.
I am a firm believer that you "get what you earn" so to speak. However, I do believe it is unfair to punish a student from a different country, such as Asia, if he or she is having a difficult time understanding one or two parts of the English language. The way in which I view this question is simple. I think to myself, what if the roles were reversed. What if I had to travel to an unfamiliar country and try to learn a language let alone compose an essay which is equal to that of someone who has been living there their entire life. I'm sure it would be a hard task to try and conquer. Therefore, if I were a teacher I would be a little more lenient towards that student. The simple fact that he or she is even attempting such a feat to me shows that they want to learn and are willing to learn and perfect the art of writing in a different language. However, the more and more this student starts to become comfortable with the newly learned language the more I would start to grade them on a more difficult scale.
I have never gone to school or taught at a school with an Asian student, therefor I am not aware of the difficulty they have speaking and writing English. If I did have a class with a student whose main language was an Asian language, I would be more lenient in the beginning. I would focus mainly on the content of their papers. To help these students I would offer private time. As the students began to understand more about the English language, I would begin to grade their writing more strict. It would be hard for any student of diverse background to pick up English automatically. It is important that the teacher remember they are there to help every student do their best.
If I was a teacher and I had to grade a paper like the example that was shown, I would explain why certain sentences did not make sense.The next thing I would do is make an exception for every student in my class of mechanical mistakes, in this way everyone would be treated fairly. In addition, I would take the time to give a review of nouns, pronouns, conjunctions etc. Furthermore I would look at the weaknesses of the whole class and asses everyone. If I notice the same problem again from the same students I will ask them to meet with me after class to help the best way I can.
I have never gone to school or taught at a school with an Asian student, therefor I am not aware of the difficulty they have speaking and writing English. If I did have a class with a student whose main language was an Asian language, I would be more lenient in the beginning. I would focus mainly on the content of their papers. To help these students I would offer private time. As the students began to understand more about the English language, I would begin to grade their writing more strict. It would be hard for any student of diverse background to pick up English automatically. It is important that the teacher remember they are there to help every student do their best.
I think that if I have an Asian student in my classroom in the future who is struggling with his/her writing then I would grade their paper the same as all my other students. However as a way to help her practice and encourage her further learning I would provide an extra credit assignment on the specific problem she was having writing. I think I would probably have a couple of different choices because I’m sure other students would be struggling with something different. So students would be encouraged to complete the extra credit exercise that paired up with whatever they were struggling with. Therefore he/she could make up for points she was missing. I would also change my grading rubric for the writing assignments so minimal points would be subtracted. However I do feel that for the student to take it seriously some points need to be deducted. As a future teacher, I feel very strongly about grading fairly. Although this kind of an ambiguous thing, I do not feel that is fair to the American students to grade the Asain student easier but it is also not fair to grade the Asian student equal to the American students because he/she has not had the same background or thinking process developed that the American students have had their entire life. This is a hard choice. I think I would just try to change my grading rubic so that whatever the Asian student was struggling with would be brought to his/her attention by losing like 1 point out of 100 or something along those lines. I would want the student to see their mistake so they would be aware to work on it. I would also provide extra credit so that their practice of the topic would seem “worth” their time. I would also let the Asain student know I was available for help outside class with any questions or just to help practice. I would make sure that my American students knew that I was also available outside of class to help them with anything they are struggling with.
Having a student not fluent in English does present quite a challenge.
It seems like the fairest way to deal with the situation would be to cut her some slack the first time or two, providing in class and after school help as often as necessary. If she doesn't improve at all, I would start marking her down. I can't say that I would do this for English speaking students, though. English is their native tongue -- they are kind of expected to know how to speak it as well as write it.
Teaching requires a person to be flexible and willing to do whatever it takes to help a student to catch on. In this case, this student is in an English class to LEARN English. She shouldn't be punished for not knowing the language already. That would defeat the purpose.
I haven't had the chance as of yet to observe an Asian ESL student while I have been student teaching and observing. If I ever become an English teacher though I would have to change the way I graded for the student who uses English as their second language. I wouldn't say that I would give them a better grade than others who did write correctly. What I would be more prone to do would be grading them at a lower level. For example, if the rest of my students' grammar was at a 12th grade level and the Asian's grammar was only at a 8th grade level,I would simply grade the Asian student's work as if I was grading a 8th grader's work. I think this would be fair to the other students along with the Asian student getting the grade they deserved for being less experienced with English.
My response to this question depends on what the course's outline is. If the course is taught as a foreign language course, I would be lenient at first concerning things such as relative pronouns that don't exist in the speakers' native languages. However, if the student has illustrated enough mastery of the language to be in an actual English class, I probably wouldn't make any exceptions for the student beyond what I do for other students enrolled in the class. I would be willing to allow ESL students a dictionary, since vocabulary can be vast in English, however, rudimentary grammar should be at least at the point of the currently-enrolled students before the ESL student was admitted to the class. In the example of misplaced articles, I probably would take very few points off and make myself available to tutor the entire class in article use. If the student didn't take advantage of that opportunity, then I would begin taking much more off.
I had an experience dealing with an Asian student my sophomore year of college. I was taking up a Spanish course and their was an Asian student in the class who couldn't speak Spanish and very little English. When the teacher would explain to him a word in English, it was very hard for him to understand the meaning or the pronunciation.You can tell that the teacher had no personal experience with a student who really didn't know English. So the teacher just continued to talk, instead of describe or do certain hand motions so that the student could have a better understanding of what the teacher was talking about. So what I would do differently is describe the object or topic at hand the best way that I can, so in the end, the student would have learned at least part of what I was talking about. I think that teachers should do more hands-on activities when it comes to foreign language speakers because although it is a learning task and they will have to learn it on their own, the teachers still should give them time to learn/or get the hang of English so that they could become more comfortable with English.
I have personally never worked with an ESL student. I would think that it would be difficult for me as well as the student to get the hang of things. I would try my hardest to get the student to understand correct grammar. I would work after school or before school, whatever it took. One on one help would benefit the student. I don't think that I would treat this student any differently but it would be hard grading the work when there were just simple errors. Like I said I would try my hardest until the student finally got it.
I have zero experience with ESL students. I am apprehensive to work with these students because I know that they often "slip through the cracks" of public education because teachers are not familiar with the kind of problems they run into. I want to be prepared for these students.
When it comes to grading, I think you have to come down somewhere in the middle of holding them equally accountable with their peers and of accommodation. They can't just be graded equally when they are having consistent trouble with grammar, but you shouldn't start them out with failing grades when they are struggling because of exceptional needs. I think one thing that teachers grade is improvement. I would have to deduct some points even in their early assignments (as long as the quality of the content was good). The grading would have to get stricter as the school year progressed.
When it comes to how to treat ESL students, the situation can become a bit tricky. However, I would have to say that as a teacher I would probably be a little less demanding of an Asian student who is unfamiliar with the English language. However, my lenience would not be unconditional. I feel that it is necessary for foreign students to become familiar with the native language since they are in English speaking classes. Therefore, I would offer the student different sources to help them with their English. As the class progressed I would expect the student to become more adept in their assignments and papers. I do have some personal experience with an Asian ESL student. He came to me for help on essays many times. I found that his content was not bad but his mechanics and grammar were all over the place. I tried to help him understand, but it is difficult. The job of teaching ESL students should be reserved for teachers with plenty of patience and understanding.
I have personally never had any experiences with Asian ESL students. If I were in a position where I was teaching Asian ESL students or struggling students of any other culture, I feel that it would not be fair to give them breaks in grading. Everyone should be held to the same standards despite their situation. That isn't to say that I don't think they need help. I think some kind of after school program that was open to any student but specifically focused on common errors and problem areas for ESL students would be helpful. Especially since natives to the English language have some of the same grammatical difficulties.
In my Spring '07 semester I had a class that had assigned seats, and my seat just so happened to be next to an Asian student. She had come to SIU that semester to join the swim team and didn't speak hardly any English. I noticed her sitting their trying to take notes and translate them on her key pad and she could not keep up. The good thing was that there was a book that we could purchase that had all the powerpoint notes, so I took it upon myself to give my notebook and attached a note to it that told her where to get her own copy of the notes and told her to give to her roommate. Because it was such a big class the teacher was unable to notice her in the lecture, I think it is critical for Asian ESL students to have some type of one on one tutoring or something of that sort to help them transition. That is a major key to ensure the students success.
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