PLO #2 Reflection

Xuwei (Sara) Luo

GSEP – Pepperdine University

EDTE 611 – Capstone Integration Experience

Dr. Weina Li Chen

 Description

This second primary learning objective (PLO) includes ESL/EFL Course Syllabus Project

and Team Language Awareness Program Proposal (LAPP): UNHCR - The United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees. Both represent the course/program designing skill that I acquired

through this TESOL program. They fit the criteria of PLO No.2, which is to use the connection

between language and culture to design a supportive language learning environment that is

related to theories and principles. I worked with two different groups to create these programs.

The Course Syllabus Project was completed in EDTE 606 – Language Curriculum and Course

Design. This project provides an opportunity for our team to design a reading class syllabus for

the English intensive program. The LAPP project was created in EDTE 603: Sociolinguistic

class. It is a teacher training program that helps prepare a group of volunteers to teach English

and cultural awareness to refugees of a specific population.

Process of Writing

These two projects have something in common, both took a long time to design, both

took a lot of effort to do editing and polishing. Jessie, Stephen, and I was working on ESL/EFL

Course Syllabus Project together. It took us 30 minutes to decide what topic that we want to do.

As an international student myself, I always hear about the English training program but never

got a chance to experience the process. Plus, Stephen has heard about the English intensive

program in Japan, so we decided to develop our own version of the English intensive program

that focuses on both language and culture aspects. Dr. Ashtari provided a six-step outline for us

to think through and fill in the blanks. The six-step include: environment analysis, teaching

approach, principles, goals, content & sequencing, and create the syllabus. When we were doing
the Environment analysis, we thought it would be fun to create our own university, so we came

up with the “Random American University” known as “RAU.” We came up with three courses

in this English intensive program. 

Learning & Expending

            The most significant concept I learned from the course syllabus project is various

approaches that I can use for different program designs. For example, in this project, we planned

to use the academic language function approach. According to Murray and Christison (2011),

This pedagogical approach is conducive to students' academic language development. This

instructional approach requires the teacher to create specific tasks for students that illustrate the

purpose of learning and language in an academic setting. During instruction, the teacher

identifies academic language functions and operationalizes each function by specifying the

language requirements associated with each function. In particular, some selected academic

language functions - categorization, prediction, persuasion, classification, and synthesis. Since

this English intensive program’s target students are international students, more specifically,

students who do not have the English language proficiency required for admission to an

institution when applying to college. This program is specifically designed to assist international

students who are experiencing academic language difficulties. Since students who attend this

program will be pursuing a degree at a U.S. university, they need to understand the academic

language of their major. Thus, the academic language function approach is most appropriate for

this purpose.

          For the other project – the LAPP project, I learned so much during sociolinguistic class.

One most fascinating thing I learned is that sociolinguistic is such a broad topic: sociolinguistics
focuses on the influence of various aspects of society on language use and the impact of

language on society. Since this project is a language awareness project, we thought it would be

most appropriate to design a teacher training session. We did research on many associations that

are working with teaching refugees. Finally, we decide to use UNHCR as the association that we

collaborate with and designed an entire training session that only teaches the sociolinguistic

aspect of language teaching. This project is a collection of practices in finding resources

researching articles, demographic analysis, needs analysis, etc. I was able to apply what I have

learned during class to this project in many ways. As a team, we were able to design over seven

activities based on students' demographics and use the needs analysis to find out what kind of

activity is more suitable for the teachers to do and acquire the tool into their own toolbox. I love

how we all work as a team and go through this process that led to designing a well-thought

teacher training session. 

          These two projects allow me to have a practical program design experience from step one

to finish. It helped me understand how to begin doing a program design, from needs analysis to

seeking resources. Since I will become an educator in the future, these are must-know knowledge

that I must acquire. These projects allowed me to go through this process and receive some

feedback from the professionals (Dr. Ashtari and Dr. Steinfeld). It is an open-eye experience for

me. In the future, if possible, I would like to be involved in an actual program design process. It

would be interesting to learn what other procedure needs to be done when doing a program

design. 
 Reference

Murray, D. E., & Christison, M. A. (2011). What English language teachers need to know.