Unit Reflection

As I reflect on the effectiveness of my unit, I am pleased to say that the instructional

activities that I created for my lessons significantly improved the students’ interpretive and

presentational communication skills as well as their cultural understanding of Mexico’s myths

and legends. Nevertheless, this unit was far from perfect. While some instructional activities

thrived, other learning experiences struggled to succeed. In order to become a better teacher, I

must reflect on the effects of my instruction as well as what I can do to improve it.

The most successful instructional activity of my unit was the PACE method activity that I

implemented at the beginning of the unit. In all honesty, I was shocked at how well this activity

went because I thought it would be too challenging for some of the students. However, they

completely surprised me as they analyzed the significance and meaning of an authentic source,

the Mexican corrido known as “La Adelita,” and as they utilized the context of the song and their

critical thinking skills to decipher the functions of the preterite and imperfect tenses. In addition,

the students remained highly engaged as they collaborated with each other during the

Presentation, Attention, and Co-Construction Stages. Due to the fact that I implemented this

activity in my most difficult class, the triumph of this complex activity is even more astounding.

I believe that the success of this instructional activity stems from the nature of the PACE method

itself; after all, it is one of ACTFL’s High Leverage Teaching Practices: Focusing on Form in a

Dialogic Context Through PACE. According to Glisan and Donato, my PACE method activity

was successful due to its focus on form in meaningful cultural texts and contexts that encourage

collaborative dialogue with the teacher. In addition, the PACE method activity successfully

facilitated language acquisition by showing how the grammar structure, or in this case the

preterite and imperfect tenses, serves a larger communicative purpose of describing past events
in a story. In the end, one of the significant insights about language learning that I gained from

teaching this unit is that the acquisition of a foreign language is more successful when grammar

lessons are embedded in meaningful contexts. Authentic sources provide rich, cultural contexts

that support language learning even more. Unfortunately, the Extension Stage of this PACE

activity was too ambitious for the students as they struggled to use the new grammar forms to

write a new ending to the song. Nevertheless, it wasn’t the least successful activity.

The least successful instructional activity in my unit was the Integrated Performance

Assessment from my second lesson plan. After the success of the PACE activity, I created this

IPA to help students develop their interpretive communication skills as well as gain a cultural

understanding of the perspectives of Mexico’s ancient civilizations. Unfortunately, many of the

students struggled to understand the events of the authentic text, a Mazateca legend from

Mexico, and eventually, many of the students gave up or barely even tried to analyze the text.

The language acquisition theory that explains the failure of this instructional activity is Stephen

Krashen’s affective filter theory which refers to the negative emotional and motivation factors

that interfere with processing comprehensible input and acquiring a foreign language. According

to Krashen, the difficulty of the authentic text and the anxiety of completing an IPA that

consisted of multiple pages encouraged a high affective filter that prevented students from

successfully completing the IPA. As a result, one of the significant insights about language

learning that I gained from teaching this unit is that I need to ensure that my classroom’s

affective filter is low so that my students feel comfortable enough to take risks and try new

things. I will lower the affective filter in my future classrooms by providing the students with

adequate support and scaffolding that facilitates language acquisition.

 If I were to teach this unit again, I would provide the students with more scaffolding and

support. For the IPA, I gave the students the authentic source with very little direction on how to

properly read, interpret, and analyze the text. I would change this by teaching the students how to

break down a text into smaller, manageable chunks, which would not only help them with this

activity but would advance their interpretive communication skills as well. In addition to

providing more scaffolding, I would provide the students with more opportunities to participate

in interpersonal communication. Unfortunately, my unit lacked this critical component of foreign

language instruction. I would improve students’ interpersonal communication skills by devoting

ten minutes every day to having the students talk about a variety of past events such as scary,

happy, or surprising past events. Finally, the last thing that I would do to improve my unit would

be to describe my experiences abroad and the perspectives I gained from them. While I spoke a

little bit about my adventures at the Mayan ruins in Mexico, these were only random comments

that didn’t improve the students’ cultural competence of the ancient civilizations of Mexico. If I

were to teach this unit again, I would go into depth regarding the experiences and the

perspectives that I gained abroad in order to increase students’ cultural understanding of Mexico.

Sources

http://www.focalskills.info/about-fs/low-affective-filter.html

Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High-Leverage Teaching Practices