Daryl Young

SLT 103

C. Torres

SLT Final Reflection

While I was a participant observer inside the ESOL 92 class, I was able to work

closely with the students and the teacher throughout the course of this semester. When

I was not initiating contact I would observe and write down the pedagogies that stood

out the most to me. Pedagogies refer to the “interactions between teachers, students,

and the learning environment and the learning tasks.” (Westbrook, Durrani, Brown, et al.

p. 35). The way the teacher interacted with her students closely resembled teaching

techniques associated with Socio-cultural theory. The first technique I recognized was

Culturally Responsive Instructions (CRI), the second technique was Zone of Proximal

Development (ZPD). The base content inside the classroom was developed around CRI

and taught using ZPD among other techniques. While learning inside a second

language teaching 103 courses (SLT 103) concurrently with my participatory

observations of ESOL92 I was able to connect what I was learning with what I was

doing.

CRI was the first thing I had noticed my first week inside the ESOL 92 class. I

was able to reflect upon the seven standards associated with CRI through the artifacts

that were displayed in the class, on handouts, and homework. The first standard from

CRI is a joint productive activity (JPA), which centers on student group cooperation. A

great example of JPA occurred on March 10, 2017, the teacher grouped the students up

to correct a sentence that had bad grammar. Each group corrected a sentence on a

large sheet of paper and presented their corrections. The artifact here was the corrected
paper that the students worked cooperatively on. Language and literacy development is

the second standard; the artifact that best represents this standard is the class

developmental charts. This chart is projected weekly to show students how they have

progressed in fluency, accuracy, and modification as a class, in addition to where they

should be. The most relevant standard for the ESOL 92 is the third one,

contextualization which puts learning in a cultural context for students to personally

relate to. The base content of the ESOL 92 class was immigration and every

assignment that was handed out was a reflection of that. From a cultural standpoint

each student was either international or an immigrant, so the artifacts were the

readings, movies, and writing assignments. As for the last four standards: complex

thinking, instructional conversation, modeling, and student-directed activity; these

standards supplement any learning environment not just the language learning

classrooms like ESOL 92. This kind of teaching pedagogy required high teacher

engagement.

After witnessing how the teacher engaged students using CRI I was able to

observe the teacher disengage with ZPD. I attended the ESOL 92 class every Thursday

from 9:20 am until 10:20 am and Friday from 9:20 am until 11 am. On Thursdays,

because of my time restriction, I tried to use that one hour to write down my

observational logs. Another reason I chose Thursday to complete my observational

logs is that the students would usually have tests or quizzes on Fridays. From my

perspective Thursday served as test-prep days to see what the students knew and

needed help with. Inside the ESOL 92 on February 16, 2017, was the first time I was

able to connect my research to what I was learning. During this day I observed how the
teacher wrote sentences down on the board after discussing subject, verb, and object

agreement. She first identified all of the key grammatical features and had her students

identify those features. Secondly, the teacher wrote another sentence and solicited

answers from the students to help identify the key relevant grammatical features. Lastly,

she paired the students up to identify key grammatical features together without help in

a clozed activity. During this observation, I was able to recognize the core idea of ZPD

and how it could be used inside a classroom.

Having experienced the use of Socio-cultural theory’s CRI and ZPD on a first-

hand base had left me with a few questions on whether or not they were actually being

used effectively inside the classroom. The answers I was looking for would come from

my interview and tutoring logs from the perspective of the teacher and the students. My

first teacher interview focused on student difficulties and language barriers. After the

interview, I had learned that learning a language takes a lot of effort on both the teacher

and student behalves. There are many invisible parts which actually make up a

language lesson that students can benefit from, but sometimes language learners do

not see the benefits of the class until the end of the semester. What I gathered from that

interview is that the effectiveness of CRI and ZPD cannot be measured simply, because

of its’ many components. On the other hand, from my tutoring log, I could count the

multiple times where the standard: Contextualization from CRI had played a big role in

effective teaching and student engagement.

All the information I had collected relates back to one specific topic and that is

the socio-cultural theory. The socio-cultural theory incorporates the use of cognitive

teaching techniques from CRI and ZPD. The research that I completed inside the ESOL
 92 class has left me with a remarkable experience. This experience has had a strong

impact on how I view teaching in a language learning classroom and how I will teach in

the future. By including socio-cultural theory and techniques into a lesson plan I will be

able to lower effective filters and control the learning flow of the classroom by making

students feel more involved.

References

Westbrook, J., Durrani, N., Brown, R., Orr, D., Pryor, J., Boddy, J., & Salvi, F. 2013. Pedagogy, curriculum,
teaching practices and teacher education in developing countries. Education rigorous literature review.
Department for International Development.