Reflection 9

This was the second to last time I attended North Central to help tutor students. When I arrived, two students I had never seen before came over and asked if I could help with a health assignment. They explained their assignment to me saying they had to give a presentation about illegal drugs to the class and provide a handout. I noticed both of them had fairly competent conversational language skills. I introduced myself to them, and they introduced themselves to me as Ahmeir and Muhammad. A little later in the session, I found out that Muhammad was from Jordan and Ahmeir was from Iran. Unfamiliar with the two languages spoken in those countries, I wondered if the two of them would be able to collaborate using a common native language the way Sun and Bo did the week before–I did not hold out hope for this though. 

Walking over to the computer bank the two young men explained that they had already completed part of the presentation in two separate PowerPoints which they were going to combine. Their illegal drug was ecstasy, and I became curious about what information they were including in their presentation. I know that for topics like this, there is extensive information available online so it would not be difficult for the two of these students to find all the information they would need for a presentation.

Looking at the computer screens, I was amused to find their two PowerPoints to be a majority of copy and pasted information from various online articles. I had never thought about it before, but I suppose the ability to copy and paste presents a particular challenge to teachers asking ELL students to write research reports. In this case, the teacher simply required the students to cite their sources, it did not appear that she had asked them specifically to use their own language to report the information and write the report. Perhaps it had been the teachers intention and he/she had said this information to the class and Ahmeir and Muhammad had not listened.

The ability to copy and paste does require some level of interpretation as well as the ability to read, however, if ELL students have competency in these areas they can piece together the meaning of passages without having to completely understand the vocabulary. In asking Ahmeir and Muhammad to explain some of their information it became clear to me this was exactly what happened. The two of them could not explain most of the bigger vocabulary words to me although they could correctly pronounce them putting them both probably at the speech emergence stage (Hill and Flynn 2). I was curious if the teacher would pursue these two to either rewrite this information in their own words or if he/she would be able to know that the two of them only understood about 2/3’s of the information in their PowerPoint through their delivery of the presentation.

I was unsure about how to proceed completing this presentation with Muhammad and Ahmeir. It was clear that they needed some help to put in some of the required information, but I did not want them to continue to copy and paste because they were not necessarily learning. I thought about how I would restructure this assignment using SIOP or other techniques (Short et al.). I think I would have had the students do the presentation in parts by compiling the information they needed in one day, and summarizing in their own words with their presentation partner during class with the help of whatever resources they needed, and then they could have been allowed to insert this information into the presentation and a handout and present those to the class. In this case, the assignment might have taken closer to a week and half to complete rather than a few days.

Observing Ahmeir and Muhammad and working with them on this assignment, helped me to think more critically about how I want to structure presentations for my classes in the future. I know I want to have a research and project based class, however, I do not want my students to have superficial “copy and paste” based learning experiences. Authenticity is highly important for any learning experience, and it is especially important for the development of second language skills (Levine and McCloskey). I want to ensure that the learning experiences in my classroom are authentic, meaningful, and in-depth.

References

Flynn, Kathleen M., and Jane D. Hill. “The Stages of Second Language Acquisition.” Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners. Alexandria: ASCD, 2006. 14-21. Print.

Levine, Linda N., and Mary L. McCloskey. “Language Acquisition and Language Learning in the Classroom.” Teaching Learners of English in Mainstream Classrooms (K-8): One Class, Many Paths. New York: Pearson, 2008. 1-25. Print.

Short, Deborah J., MaryEllen Vogt, and Jana Echevarria. “Activities and Techniques for SIOP Science Lessons: Lesson Preparation, Building Background, Comprehensible Input, and Strategies.” The SIOP Model for Teaching Science to English Leaners. Allyn & Bacon, Inc. 2007. 21-51. Print

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