Part 4: Teaching Materials Reflection on Practicum Experience My practicum experience was different compared to my other classmates.

In the beginning, I taught at a workshop for reading and writing located at Hawaii Pacific University (HPU). The workshop was free and offered extra help to English learners interested in improving their literacy skills. The participants were international students, mainly Asians. Their proficiency levels varied, but most were at a low intermediate level. Unfortunately, the workshop had to be closed down in March because too few students were attending. Fortunately for me, professor John Roberts at ELS Language Centers agreed to be my mentor for a vocabulary class in April. The school is located at the downtown campus of HPU. The vocabulary class had ten students where the majority were Asians and their skill level was intermediate. The course focused on vocabulary from the Academic Word List. Its purpose was to give students the necessary vocabulary needed at an American college or university. My practice was therefore unique as I got to experience two very different teaching settings. In the workshop we used ideas from an unusual textbook called FACES: Characters in Search of Authors by Patrick Moran. The idea of the book was that students chose a picture of face that became the character in their future writing assignments. The students could choose from a large collection of faces, representing different generations from children up to elderly people. The teachers in the class also chose a picture. I chose a picture that reminded me of my father. The purpose of this was to have the teachers create model examples of the writing assignments. This was an

 excellent idea because it helped guide the students, and gave them ideas on what to write. It was also the main reading material for the class. Creating this material was a good learning experience. My first example was too detailed and difficult for the students to read. I had to restrict myself to writing short and simple sentences, and to avoid advanced vocabulary. It was great to see how one project could be expanded into several teaching sessions. We expanded it by having a new topic for each session. For instance, the first topic was to introduce the character, and give a brief description of him/her. We then moved on to other topics like the characters appearances, hobbies, music interests etc. The project taught me how important it is to make the topics authentic for the students. For instance, in one lesson I introduced the topic of the day, which was describing your characters appearance, but I did not connect it to real life. The students should know which situations require them to describe someones appearance. An example task of that could be: You witnessed a crime and need to describe the suspect to a police officer. There were four teachers in the class, in addition to the mentor teacher. The number of students attending the workshop was very small. However, this allowed us to work more closely with the students. We each got to individually coach one student. I got to work more closely with a student from Saudi-Arabia. Coaching him was a very valuable learning experience. He often had a hard time getting started with the writing assignments, so I would often interview him on a topic. This helped him get an idea of what he could write about. For example, one topic was a typical day in your characters life. Here I would ask questions like: What does your character do in the morning? Does she usually make dinner for the family? After this he would start the writing process. He was very self-conscious about his spelling, and would often put himself down. I therefore

 had to motivate him. I tried to do so by explaining that many English learners struggle with spelling because the way a word is pronounced and how it is written can sometimes be very different. I then tried to encourage him to do more extensive reading outside class. We introduced the students to a section in HPUs library, which had many short and easy-to-read novels. As a coach/tutor, I believe you get asked more questions than you would as a classroom teacher, since it is just between the two of you, which might be less intimidating. Teaching at ELS was a big contrast to the workshop setting, and teaching vocabulary was a lot more difficult than I had previously anticipated. It was hard to explain vocabulary meanings because the definitions had to be phrased in a simple manner. I struggled with this in the beginning. However, I learned that giving authentic examples that related to the students lives, made it easier for them to comprehend vocabulary meanings. There were many different cultural backgrounds in the class, so I tried to relate the vocabulary to Hawaii or their school. For instance, if the target word was previous, I would ask: What class did you have previous to this one? Another important thing I learned was to make students talk more in the class. I noticed this when my mentor told me that I was the one speaking the most in the class. In the future I need to create activities where students get to have more meaningful social interactions. My mentor was very good at making lessons fun through games, which led me to adapt the game Just a Minute Game for the class. I spent a lot of time adapting and organizing this game, but the hard work paid off. The students were very engaged with it, and my mentor told me he wanted to use it himself. I also noticed that having group

 discussions was very motivational for the students. I therefore want to use games and discussion activities to motivate and engage English learners in the future. In conclusion, both teaching settings (workshop and vocabulary class) taught me how important it is to make the teaching content and material authentic. I believe students need to see how they can make use of their new knowledge gained, and how it can help them in real life. The experience also enabled me to identify some personal strengths about my teaching. My mentor at ELS told me I had good pacing skills. Meaning, the time estimated for activates was often very accurate. Furthermore, I feel I am good at anticipating possible problems or tasks that might be confusing. In the Just a Minute game, students were paired and worked on a vocabulary meaning exercise. Each pair had a set of flashcards with the target vocabulary. They had two roles, the speaker and the guesser, where the speaker would try to explain the target vocabulary to the guesser. I anticipated that the guessers might overhear the correct answer from other classmates, since all the pairs had the same target vocabulary. I avoided this by making sure the words on the flashcards were in different orders for all the pairs. Lastly, my mentor told me I had a good use of humor and a nice personal presence. I feel I connected well with the students. They were not afraid to ask me questions, and they were very engaged with my activities. It is important to create a positive atmosphere in the classroom, so the students are comfortable to express their views and opinions.