PLO #3 Reflection

Xuwei (Sara) Luo

GSEP – Pepperdine University

EDTE 611 – Capstone Integration Experience

Dr. Weina Li Chen

 Description

There is only one assignment in this primary learning objective. Which is the Language

Pedagogy Mastery Assignment. It includes all the mini-lesson that I have design and taught

during the second semester of the TESOL program. It represents my ability to plan and

implementing language instruction based on research. All the mini-lessons include the usage of

technology, implementation of teaching methods, and interactive participation from students. 

Process of Writing

This assignment includes many components: class environment, lesson plan, and

reflection. Each lesson was done by different groups, each of us is responsible for part of the

lesson. All lessons are created based on California English Language Development (ELD)

Standards. My portfolio includes three lesson plans: writing, listening, and contextualizing

communicative approach. I did the writing lesson with Ana and Jessie, the listening lesson with

Jamie, and the solo contextualizing the communicative approach. I had a chance to design three

different lesson plan that teaches three different age group & difficulty levels. We created a

theme as a group for each lesson. My favorite lesson was the contextualizing communicative

approach because, in that lesson, I was able to take control over the whole lesson and got a

chance to experience how the class will look like if I am the only teacher in the classroom. To be

honest, I was horrified. The result was good, but during the process, I kept forgetting what I want

to say next, so there are lots of pauses, and I do not know how to give valuable feedback, so I

kept saying “that’s good” or “that’s awesome.” But I am glad that I was able to pull everything

together. Another reason that I like this lesson is that I was able to get everyone to participate in

the class activities, and they seemed to enjoy the lesson that I taught. It gives me a lot of

confidence. 
 Learning & Expanding

This project, which lasted for a whole semester, helped me tremendously in designing the

course. The three lessons gave me a deeper understanding of preparing a lesson and organizing a

class. When I taught the mini-lesson for the first time in the first semester, I had many worries

and was overly nervous, so the lesson did not turn out so well. When I was working on my first

listening class in this language pedagogy lesson, I still had many concerns when designing each

lesson. When I was preparing for the lesson, I was most worried about the content, teaching

method, classroom management, and how to link the content together as a whole, etc. In addition

to that, when it came to the actual teaching time, I wondered how to motivate the students in the

class and make the content more interesting. One of my biggest fear was that during the lesson,

for various reasons, the actual class may not go exactly as expected, and then I would panic. To

sum it all up, I was terrified when teaching each lesson. However, it all changed after getting

some feedback and suggestions from classmates and professors, which helped me. They helped

me build up my confidence, and when I was in a group with Ana, she taught me a lot of valuable

tips, such as using some infographics or worksheets to teach writing. Stephen also taught me

how to face my biggest fear: tell myself that I should calm down and not interrupt the students'

thinking process, but rather improvise as soon as possible, and try my best to find some

connection between the student's question and the content of the lesson or direct his attention to

the lesson's activities. Dr. Wong's advice has been very detailed and to the point, and he has

helped me refine the structure of my course design over the semester.

This mini-lesson teaching experience helped me significantly in lesson planning, and I

would love to apply some teaching methods in the future. I would like to do more research as

well. Since I only got a chance to teach contextualizing communicative approach, I had a chance
to do more research on this specific teaching method. Thus, I did not have many opportunities to

dig deeper into other techniques, such as communicative language learning, task-based

instruction, etc. Getting to know these teaching methods and understand how to apply them in

my future classroom will tremendously enrich classroom engagement and interaction. 

I also want to do more research on how to create a more student-centered classroom. 

I only know how to plan a teacher-centered classroom because I received that teaching mode

when I was little. Thus, it is difficult for me to imagine the setups of a student-centered

classroom. Teacher-dominated classroom environments are still prevalent, but student-centered

teaching and learning environments are being promoted, in which the teacher primarily plays a

guiding role. There are series of the problem need to be solved, and little details need to pay

attention. Brown & Lee (2011) suggested that when students make mistakes in a task, the teacher

should not point out the mistakes directly but should go ahead and provide appropriate guidance,

such as repeating the student's mistakes so that they can realize what is wrong or asking a series

of questions to lead the student to understand what the problem is. Group activities are also an

essential part of building a student-centered teaching environment. How can the value of

cooperative group learning be better reflected? Sometimes, collaborative group learning is

superficially lively, but the effectiveness of group discussion is not well-reflected. Some

questions are thrown out, and students communicate without independent thinking, which is

meaningless and ineffective learning.

 Reference

Brown, H. D. & Lee, H. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language

pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Longman.