My TESL Journey

TESL 0120 Phew! I have come to the end of  the TESL Speaking and Listening Course and read, analyzed and internalized a great deal of information. As I have said in the past, I have taught English as a Second Language before, although quite a while ago. I have also been working in the public school system for about ten years. Reading the assigned readings and completing all of the activities for this course has been somewhat of a refresher for me, but some of the information has definitely been new as well.  Differentiation is an idea that is familiar to me as I have been working as a teacher for many years and it is considered best practice. As I reviewed the speaking and listening differentiation assignment, ideas on how to adapt the lessons for below-level learners and above-level learners came to me instinctively. Diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments were also not new to me as I have been incorporating them into my classroom teaching. As a result, I was a...

TESL 0120 Listening is definitely not a passive skill! This is a myth that was explored in Unit 3, Approaches to Listening Instruction . One key idea that resonated with me from the readings and activities this week is that context is vitally important in listening. As Wilson stated, "Listeners guess, predict, infer, criticize, and above all, interpret." (2008, p. 22) Active listeners need to be critical thinkers and infer and interpret what a speaker is trying to say based on the context of the situation. There are a multitude of contextual factors for a listener to consider when people are speaking, including the location of the conversation, the relationship between the speakers, and the purpose of the conversation. Not only does a listener have to hear and understand the words spoken, they often have to read between the lines to find out what the speaker is actually trying to say. As Wilson put it, "people do not always say what they mean or mean what they ...

TESL 0120 I had a big “aha” moment during this unit on pronunciation. I have a very strong background in literacy and have been a teacher since 1996. I have taken a lot of courses, attended a lot of trainings and professional development sessions and read a lot of texts on literacy. I have taught in the public as well as the private school system, tutored students one-on-one, and taught ESL in a foreign country. However, never in all of my years of professional experience have I learned how to read or use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Of course, I have seen the pronunciation symbols in dictionaries and various other texts, but I have never personally been taught or tried to learn the meanings of the symbols. After reviewing the readings and completing the activities for Unit 2, I believe that having a strong understanding of the phonetic symbols will be of use to me in an ESL classroom. As a Reading Recovery Teacher, I do spend some time reviewing and pra...

TESL 0120 This past week has been a great learning experience, and I know this is just the beginning! Even though I taught English as a Second Language in the past, times have changed and pedagogy has greatly evolved since then. Shortly after graduating from the University of Manitoba with my Bachelor of Education in 1996, I went to South Korea and taught ESL for about two and a half years. I continued in the field for a few more years, teaching in private language schools in Winnipeg and  Florida.The majority of the classes I taught in South Korea focused on English conversation at various levels. For some of the classes there was a textbook or curriculum to follow, whereas others were more open and teacher-created. As I read through the Canadian Language Benchmarks this week, I was amazed at the amount of detail in the descriptions of competencies and the examples of specific tasks for each. I wish that this type of document had existed when I first taught ESL! I was also o...