Anlyzing the Journals and Questions

¶ … Journal for Lems Book (Chapter 1)

I would like to choose the "language-based learning theory," "English and new language: four domains and fifth domain," and the factor of "motivation" for second language acquisition (SLA). Second language acquisition has never been easy for any new learner of the second language and according to the language-based learning theory, there is a process including interrelated areas: learning language, learning content through language, and learning about learning (Wells, 1994, p. 42). The researcher affirmed that language is a skill and this phenomenon is tested in the classrooms where students need to learn English as a second language. For that, they need to be motivated; however, there can be many types of motivational factors for those students to learn a second language like English, for example, if a student plans to go abroad in an English state and wants to work over there, he or she would have to have knowledge of the language so that communication does not remain a problem. Motivation is the learner's orientation to learn the second language (Dornyei, 1998, p. 117). It can be due to the reason that students are interested in knowing the new language, its culture and integrate into its society well. This mostly happens when a student is planning to go and live in another country. For instance, if a Japanese student wants to live in America, he will have to learn English as a second language since he would have to know its culture and people. Language tells a lot about the gestures and face expression when one is talking; hence, the voice tone and words expression of a certain language have to be learnt. Teachers depend on the four domains for this very purpose so that SLA becomes easier. The four domains- listening, speaking, reading and writing- have to be institutionalized in the classroom in order to formulate a balanced literary program for better comprehension and training.

Answer to Question 4

Once I had to visit my uncle in China and for that, I had to learn some basic words of everyday use in Chinese language. Chinese, as my second language at that time, was very difficult. I had to make use of 'integrative motivation' since I had to learn Chinese for joining a community, which was visiting China and communicating with native people for everyday reasons like purchasing goods from the market. Other than that, there was presence of intrinsic motivation and integrative motivation since my personal interest to learn the language was there, and my desire to join a Chinese community for certain period of time, two months, was the reason. It enhanced my ability to learn the language as the desire to learn allowed me to learn it quickly and that too, with full concentration. According to Gardener's motivation theory of L2 motivation for second language learning, motivation has three elements: effort, desire and positive effect (Lai, 2013, p. 91). Goal is the main orientation that the learner has to seek when he is learning another language; the orientation can be integrative and instrumental. The openness and complete identification with the other culture are the two characteristics of these orientations that allow the learner to come close to a culture and language is the best gateway for this matter. The learner's attitudes towards the new language and its culture can be modified by the teachers through instructions, curriculum, lesson plans and assessments schedules so that integrativeness could be shaped, which is an important element of motivation.

Other tasks of my life that were influenced by a number of motivations include joining the school (instrumental motivation), learning to use a new mobile phone (intrinsic motivation) and visiting China (integrative motivation). I do not have any other example for integrative motivation since this was the only experience for which I had to visit another country and had to learn its basic everyday usage of language.

Answer to Question 5

Intrinsic motivation is a person's innate capacity to learn and this is usually present in every child since the beginning (The Journey to Excellence, n.d.), as he learns in class from the stage of kindergarten. The person who has intrinsic motivation has a powerful intention for learning and the teachers would have to tap this characteristic for further building of the learning and character of children. As classroom, teachers and parents are the primary sources of learning for the child, these can serve as motivating environment as well. It can be inferred that intrinsic motivation can both be inborn and learnt from the environment. In addition to that, it has been widely researched that intrinsic motivation for second language acquisition is directly related to positive outcomes of the students since there is greater motivational intensity and greater realization of self-confidence when it comes to language competence among other students of the class (Al-Ghamdi, 2014, p. 3). In the light of these pieces of research, it is known that producing appropriate environment for learning in the class is conducive for intrinsic motivation. Along with that, group-oriented learning encourages learners to work harder towards their aims as the group working increases their commitment; however, it depends on the group members' ability and skills required to achieve those goals.

On the other hand, resilience is learnt from the external environment since it is the ability of the child to cope with stressful situations and respond to those with their brains and immune system (Walsh, 2015). It is because when a child faces any adversity, it is only then that his resilience ability comes into play. It can be deduced that adversity, obstacles and other environmental threats helps an individual to build resilience (Konnikova, 2016); hence, resilience can be determined by upbringing and external environmental factors.

Discussion Questions

Question 1

The points in the PowerPoint presentation "Not Just Good teaching," I was familiar with points like a good ESL teacher helps to develop academic vocabulary along practice of syntax and grammar patterns, knows that spelling are important predictors for developing reading proficiency along with spelling development having to build a separate path as that of a native. The point that I was not familiar with from the same presentation was readiness for parental involvement along with welcoming culturally diverse families into the class.

I have extra expertise in helping and correcting proper English for use for the students, alerting to refer students for special education screening issues, helping in the development of the grammar, spellings and syntax, guiding learners for correct academic writing and speaking, and doing formative/summative assessments. The areas in which I am not "up to the speed" are inviting parents to the class as I have not done that before, but I am willing to do that as this is an important aspect of learning second language in the class that would serve as a real life experience for the students.

Question 2

All of the researches were already familiar to me except CREDE since it involves teaching to address inequalities. As already mentioned above, I was unfamiliar with involvement of parents that belong to diverse background for better ESL learning; same concept can be applied to this EEL learning so that inequalities and their diverse backgrounds could be studied deeper for better comprehension of language and collective training in the class with teachers.

Question 3

I would like to share my thoughts on one video named "Communicative language teaching: Jeremy Harmer and Scott Thornbury- The New School." The video talks about teaching and various other aspects that relate to the fact that teaching is all about learning from what happens in the class. Teaching is an ongoing learning experience for both the teacher and his students since the students are learning from their teacher while the teacher learns from various other sources such as books or the internet to prepare lessons for the class. It was intriguing to know that in this process, the teacher also learns new things which he later passes on to the class and encourages them to learn about it on their own in the form of home assignments or class group discussions and other linked activities.

Module 2

Reflective Journal for Lems Book (Chapter 2)

The ELL/ESL plan I found on one of the websites called "ESL Kids Stuff" that was for ages 8 to 12 seemed appropriately designed for the children of this age group. The plan was an introduction lesson that included greetings, asking and answering questions, identifying classroom stationery and using modal verbs for rules (ESL Kids Stuff, n.d.). The CALP skills in the four domains of this lesson can be incorporated in the following ways:

Speaking: Although the plan includes asking and answering questions, which means that students would be encouraged to speak and communicate with the teacher more so that they know the language which they are to learn. Communicating with the teacher is the best way to learn second language as the teacher would listen and make corrections for the students. In addition to that, speaking can involve small activities like talking about a recent place they visited for 2 minutes.

Listening: As mentioned earlier, the plan includes asking questions, therefore, when the teacher would answer students, they would 'listen' to her. The listening skills of the students would be enhanced as they would be able to recognize words uttered from their teacher's mouth. Moreover, the listening activities like audio records of the second language stories or showing video stories so that students are able to hear the sounds of the words and language could be introduced into the lesson plan as well.

Reading and Writing: Doing a class survey is a good activity for letting the students know each other in that, students would also be able to 'read' the questions written on the survey that they are supposed to ask other students. Along with that, each student would be required to note down the other students' responses on the same survey paper so that 'writing' skills are also polished in the same activity. Further, the reading and writing skills could be enhanced in the same lesson plan by allowing the children to write about themselves on a paper and then exchanging those papers with each other; each student would then be called in front of the class to read another student's paper that he would be holding in his hands. In this way, the reading and writing skills would both be catered to in the same lesson plan.

Reflective Journal for Chen Book (Chapters 1 and 2)

The new words that I encountered within the same chapter are:

Phonology: The structure of equivalent associations among the tones of vocalizations that comprise the basic elements of a lingo.

Metalinguistic knowledge: The aptitude to substantiate language as a procedure as well as a work of art. The transmission of knowledge across other languages is helpful in explaining this awareness along with its execution.

Contextual information: The information that is required to understand the text, for example, the identity of things such as people, and places etc., interpretive information like keywords and themes, and other related data.

Discussion Question

Integrating an ESL student in the class is not easy since the student would belong to another state, another language and he would be unable to understand English in the first few days. Communication and comprehension would be quite hard and for that teachers need to focus more on visual aids rather than giving instructions in the air (Gonzalez, 2014). Encouraging more group work would also help them merge with the other students and would make them understand English well when they would be noticing other students' language cues and face expression on some reactions of the words etc. Teachers must make use of culturally unique words and vocabulary and encourage the ESL students to communicate with the teachers more.

Module 3

Reflective Journal of Lems Book (Chapter 3)

Answer to Question 1

I would like to choose "phonological awareness," "auding," and "assessments of listening skills." Phonological awareness is useful since it is present in all human beings and develops over time as the ears become accustomed to certain words' sounds and pronunciations. ELL students can be assisted in developing and building this awareness when they are learning English since learners' ability to comprehend the second language depends on his awareness about the structure of a second language L2 system. The speech comprehensibility and polishing of reading abilities is highly related to phonological awareness, specifically for L2 learners (Venkatagiri & Levis, 2007, p. 264). Auding to active listening can be used to help ELL students to listen to various audio records and related things so that they learn and identify words and their sounds and use them in other two domains, which are reading and writing a new language. Assessments can be used to evaluate students about their learnings and corrective actions if they are not learning enough to help them understand things in a better way. The English language learning assessments have been used by teachers in the form of multiple choice questions, essay tests, paragraph readings etc. so that appropriate classroom assessments strategies could be gauged in order to test their effectiveness (Jabbararifar, 2009, p. 1). It is done to evaluate whether students are achieving the lesson plan goals related to the second language acquisition and for that assessments are mandatory. However, it should be noted that evaluation and assessments are distinguished since assessments are carried out to assess an individual student's performance while evaluation goes beyond it to consider all aspects of teaching and student learning.

Answer to Question 7

Body language sometimes reveals more than words and therefore, these cues could be of high importance when deciphering the meaning of someone's conversation. Eye contact, voice and expression give more power to the words uttered from the mouth (Furnham, 2015) since sometimes a person might use carefully selected words that might change the meaning of the conversation while eye contact and other related body language signs might predict something else, may be even more clearly. Various researchers have noted that nonverbal cues play an important role in interpreting the meaning of the conversation of the person. The second language learners would have to go beyond their normal conversations and reading, listening and interpreting skills so that the information could be used in classrooms by the teachers and students both for enhancing communicating competence (Gregersen, 2007, p. 52). It would not be wrong to say that second language learners would have to pay extra attention when conversing with other people in order to understand the critical role of face expressions and gestures of the communicator in its speech comprehension.

Answer to Question 11

Once I saw a movie without sound and it was weird doing so as I was unable to understand the situation well. Although my perception worked at its peak to understand what was happening in the scenes and that was possible only by identifying the body language and face expression of the actors, for example, in a scene where they were happy, surprised, angry or sad etc. It is quite different watching a movie with sound since the understanding is only possible when you hear the words clearly, and not just have to guess them. Also, I have watched a movie in a completely different language as well but that was only 10 to 15 minutes since I was completely unaware of what was happening except just supposing the expressions of the actors such as happy, sad, angry etc. According to Darwin, facial expressions are the complete manifestation of the conversations uttered from the mouth of the communicator (Matsumoto & Ekman, 2008). The behavioral responses in the form of vocal and postural expressions, the skeletal movements along with psychological responses are the actions displayed by the communicator so that a coordinated response of the conversations is displayed. A study was conducted to investigate the "culture-specific" gestures and facial expression and whether these expressions are same across cultures and within the same cultures (Matsumoto & Ekman, 2008). It was revealed that expressions for happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise were same within and across cultures. This finding can serve a basis when the movie analysis is done in mute state since it would be easy to analyze these basic expressions.

Reflective Journal of Chen Book (Chapter 3)

The new words that I encountered within the same chapter are:

Pragmatics: The branch of linguistics dealing in which the language in use is studied along with its contexts in which it is used including text organization, and taking turns in conversations etc.

Balanced literacy: It aims at including the elements of both 'whole language' and 'phonics'. It includes five components: the read aloud, guided reading, shared reading, independent reading, and Word study.

Orthography: The standard spelling system of a language.

Discussion Question

Early childhood language development helps the children to become familiar with a certain language and its vocabulary and the same stands true for ELLs who are new to a certain language. For example, when a small child does not know how to speak, he listens to his elders and starts identifying words and gets himself familiar with them (Guccione, 2012); the same stands true for a student who needs to learn a new language. The next stage is when the small child starts responding to a word or two or tries to develop small sentences; same stands true for a new language learner. I was familiar with these aspects and something that was different for me was creating a sense of excitement for the ease of learning of the ELLs.

Module 4

Reflective Journal for Lems Book (Chapter 4)

Answer to Question 1

I would like to choose "probabilistic reasoning," "major kinds of writing systems," and "two aspects of opacity." Probabilistic reasoning would help the students to make use of their cognitive processes to make the sounds of a word in their head. This would let them try on their own to make sounds and pronounce words when they would learn a new language. It is the method in which the human brains structure, process and acquire language word by the impression those words imprint on the human mind. Major kinds of writing systems would make them aware of the types of writing and how certain words should be pronounced. The writing system helps them enhance their won writing abilities, which would have been different for their first language, but it is a slow process for them when it comes to second language acquisition. They have to familiarize themselves with the letters and word formation for easy and quick comprehension in both reading and writing. Moreover, two aspects of opacity: symbol-to-sound matching and sound-to-symbol matching would help them comprehend how certain words are close enough to their real sounds of pronunciations.