MATL Reflection

I began the MATL program in the Spring semester when more advanced courses such as Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and the Vocabulary class were being offered. A benefit to starting in the middle of things was that there were a lot of new and interesting concepts to get involved in from the beginning. I was fascinated by what I was learning.

I was also taking the Instructional Technology Hyperstudio class as an elective at the time. This put an interesting spin on things for me because I was learning about online corpora linguistics in the Vocabulary class. With a combination of the two technological influences, I explored many options of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). I believed that computers could offer a plethora of solutions in the language classroom.

In addition to the two aforementioned classes, I was also privately tutoring students at a local high school as part of a special topics course. This was a really integral part of my first semester because it gave me the opportunity to experiment with what I was learning. It also taught me a lot of things that I could never learn in a classroom.

I performed a case study experiment (for SLA) on one of my students and discovered a teaching method that has become integral to my philosophy. This particular student had been having a difficult time in her math class. I found myself doing most of the work during our sessions. One day I had her tell me how to solve the problems. She told me, "add this and multiply that" while I worked them out on paper. It proved that she had a knowledge of the subject matter and working vocabulary. Most importantly, it worked! We finished her homework that day and in the future her test scores improved.

This was my first experience with task-based instruction. Shortly after this I wrote a research paper for SLA on the history of ESL in public education in the United States. In the process of writing this paper I discovered Complex Instruction (CI) as a strategy for integrating non-native speakers into mainstream classrooms. The focal point of this method is that students work together to complete a goal-oriented project. Through the course of the task, they learn the content material.

Not only does this employ content and task-based learning, but it also keeps ESL students in the classrooms, where I think they should be. Instead of being pulled out of their regular classrooms in which they will most likely miss out on something. In my Practicum experience this semester I saw that ESL students are frequently left behind when their class goes to lunch or on a field trip while they are in their ESL class. CI is one alternative to pulling students out.

The timing of my interest in task and content-based language teaching couldn't have been better. Just a couple of weeks after I wrote the paper for SLA, I went to Havana, Cuba. In Cuba I was fortunate to meet two of the educators who helped develop the current public education system in Cuba. They were appointed when Fidel Castro stepped in, and their first task was to increase the literacy rate all over the island.

Since the educational materials they had been previously receiving from the United States were no longer made available to them, Cuban educators had to come up with a way to create new materials and teaching methods that used limited resources including teachers. So many people had left the island that they experienced a serious teacher shortage.

The method Cubans employed over forty years ago is what we now call Content-based language teaching. They taught history classes in English, for example. This way they only needed one book instead of one for history lessons and one for English lessons. Most Cubans received only two to three years of English instruction but by talking to Cubans in the streets of Havana, one would think that they had studied longer.

I didn't know that Cuban educators used CBLT before I arrived. It fit into the hypothesis of my SLA paper perfectly. Since we are experiencing teacher shortages and budget cuts heavily in the United States, CBLT could work here for the same reasons it does in Cuba.

Later I applied for a Fulbright Grant to teach English in Chile. I had a difficult time finding out how Chileans teach English as a Foreign Language, but I did learn that they are in the beginning stages of developing and implementing an English teaching program. Chile recently signed a free trade agreement with the U.S., which increases the number of Chileans who will need to communicate with workers in American businesses. This is an example of how, like in Cuba, the language-related educational needs of a country are connected to what's happening economically and politically. Therefore, every country around the world has the potential to have some unique variances in teaching methods. Because of this, I have become interested in increasing the communication among educators worldwide. This could be done easily with the technology we have available today.

Upon my return from Cuba I took the Options in the Teaching of Grammar course and Sociolinguistics in the second summer term. I enjoyed both. In the Grammar course, Michael Long's Focus on FormS reinforced the effectiveness of Task-based learning in the classroom. I realized also that learning grammar can be fun and effective if we focus on communication and meaning instead of on form.

In Sociolinguistics we used communicative methods to talk about culture and language. We were fortunate to have a classroom full of people from all over the world. Together we discussed cultural stereotypes and realistic differences. Most importantly, we talked about ways to teach these notions to language learners in the classroom.

As one of the only Americans in the Sociolinguistics course, I came to the realization that the United States is not a monocultural civilization, as many people falsely assume. On the contrary, the United States is vastly multicultural. Not only do people from virtually every country in the world reside in the United States, but we also have cultural variety among regions.

For example, the customs and traditions in Louisiana are dramatically different from those in Southern California. I think that the key to teaching language is to teach it through culture. When teaching English as a foreign language abroad, it is important to represent the cultural variety in the United States, I think, in order to counteract the spread of our entertainment industry.

My Practicum experience in the last semester gave me the opportunity to see the teaching styles of several different educators in a variety of teaching environments. I observed kindergarten and first grade ESL classes, a high school Spanish class, and two different ELI teachers. I also had the opportunity to substitute teach a good bit for the ELI, and did focused observations of my own teaching.

The Practicum was my favorite class in the program because it was so learner-centered. I was responsible for selecting the dates my assignments were due, and I was also allowed to tailor the class to my own individual teaching and observation needs. The texts used were relevant, authentic, and helpful. I can't say enough good things about the way that this course was designed.

There are three classes that I haven't mentioned in this paper, but all were important to my MATL experience and have contributed to my philosophy and teaching style. The storytelling class gave me many great ideas for teaching younger children. In this class I was able to combine my interest in music with language instruction activities. Applied Linguistics and Methods were both excellent classes that covered a wide variety of interesting material. Since I took these classes later, rather than early in the program, I had seen some of the content before. However, exploring it more helped me develop a clearer understanding of many concepts.

The MATL program has given me an unlimited number of tools that will be integral to my teaching profession. I feel as though I am taking away not only methodologies and practical insight into relevant research, but have also had experiences that will help me in my future endeavors. I look forward to using what I have learned in an attempt to help others.