Blog 3- Interview with an English as a Second Language Teacher

I decided to interview one of the teachers from my school that I am student teaching at: Diane Winborn ES in Katy ISD. Mrs. Guevara received her ESL certification last year, and she is currently teaching third grade ESL students. Like my last interviewee, she is very adverse to video and did not want her face shown. Therefore, I respectfully obliged.

Please click here to watch to the interview.


REFLECTION

Mrs. Guevara and I touched on two key components of Second Language Methodology in the interview: SLA learning process and SLA teaching. In regards to SLA learning process, it is clear that Mrs. Guevara understands where her students are in their English language learning. In her circumstance, her students are advanced. Therefore, they are able to say things in English correctly including formulating questions. Ortega discusses the stages of English questioning that SLA learners go through. Mrs. Guevara’s students are able to question at the “inversion stage,” which is the most “advanced stage” (Ortega, 2011). However, Mrs. Guevara did mention that she had come in contact with students who mixed up proper English sentence patterns with Spanish sentence patterns. Ortega states, “…an L1-induced inter-language rule had emerged, and one that was delaying many of these learners in their path towards adopting the full target-like rule of inversion in English questions” (Ortega, 2011).  The fact that Mrs. Guevara recognizes this demonstrates that she is capable of teaching second language acquisition learners.
In regards to teaching to student interest it has been found that “…enjoyment and investment combined consistently explain on average between nine percent and sixteen percent of the variation between motivational quantity and L2 achievement…” (Masgoret and Gardner, 2003). Mrs. Guevara understands that student motivation is a huge factor in her ESL students’ success, just as research suggests. For example, she puts their interests into the most intricate pieces of her lesson, such as math questions. If they’re interested in the topic of the math question they get excited about learning math. The fact that they are also motivated encourages them to display their English language learning through speaking and writing in “output activities” (Ortega, 2011).
I enjoyed learning about how the theoretical ideas I’ve learned in the course are translated in the real world classroom. After learning the material from the course and interviewing an actual ESL teacher, I feel prepared to apply these theories and practices in my own classroom next year.


Reference 

Ortega, L. (2011). Understanding second language acquisition. London and New York:     Routledge.




Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 11, 2018 at 9:06 PM

    Kaela,
    I really enjoyed watching your interview video with Mrs. Guevara. I learned many new things from your interview. What really stood out to me and think it was a great strategy to use with bilingual students would be questioning them. Because it always helps them think about the certain question more. Which also helps them comprehend certain lesson better since there is a lot of questioning and verbal communication being involved. Researchers have stated, “conversational interaction in a second language forms the basis for the development of language rather than being only a forum for practice of specific language features” (Ortega, 2011, p.349). i think Mrs. Guevara is always going above and beyond to help her students. Because many often times verbal communicating and questioning doesn't always help students all the time. So I think the way Mrs. Guevara uses English sentence patterns and Spanish sentence patterns is very beneficial for students as well. Because that helps students gain a visual understanding as well.

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    Replies
    1. Kaela BaileyMarch 21, 2018 at 6:11 AM

      Thank you for your reply, Seemin. You are right. Mrs. Guevara does go above and beyond to meet her students’ needs. Mrs. Guevara is ESL certified, but she does not know how to speak Spanish herself. This just goes to show that you do not have to know Spanish in order to be a great ESL teacher. I pray I will be a great ESL teacher. I believe that watching Mrs. Guevara and taking this course will help me achieve that goal.

      Delete
  2. UnknownMarch 14, 2018 at 9:16 AM

    Kaela, I think the questions you asked her were great! I liked that your interviewee added an example of how ELL typically mix words around, and I think it is because they may be trying to translate what they want to say from Spanish to English. I agree with your CT when she said she would pair her students with another classmate in order to learn from them. Children need to have that social interaction to better their communication skills. Research has proven that this is the best way for students to learn how to express their communication needs (Gass & Selinker, 2008). I can tell your CT knows her students well. It is important that a teacher knows his/her students’ interests, in this case, soccer. Based on this interview, I wonder, is there a Dual program at Winborn? I know there is a small number of schools in Katy ISD that have a bilingual program, but I also heard they are going to be getting rid of them at certain schools in Katy. Is Winborn one of them?

    Reference
    Gass, S. M., Selinker, L. (2008). Second Language Acquisition: An introductory course. Third edition. London and New York: Routledge.

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    Replies
    1. Kaela BaileyMarch 21, 2018 at 6:18 AM

      Maisa, you bring up such great points and ask such great questions. I agree with you, knowing one’s students and their interests is crucial to teaching them. Winborn Elementary does not have a dual language program, unfortunately. What is also interesting is that we have a high ESL population. I have heard of a school not to far from Winborn that does have a dual program, but I did not realize Katy ISD was closing some of these programs. I had the privilege of conducting my developing teaching semester at a school with a dual language program in HISD, and I found the program quite neat.

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