The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context.

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ARTIFACT 1

Name of Artifact: Essay on Comic Books in L2 Instruction

Course: FRE 641: French Culture through Comics

Date: Spring, 2023

World-Readiness Standards Addressed: Interpersonal Communication, Interpretive Communication, Presentational Communication, Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives, Relating Cultural Products to Perspectives, Language Comparisons, Cultural Comparisons.

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RATIONALE

The artifact I have selected to demonstrate my understanding of the multiple issues and concepts around effective instructional planning is an essay I wrote on an article that discusses the benefits of comic books for L2 instruction. Comic books are popular among students but have long been dismissed by parents and many in the L2 teaching profession as an ineffective resource and not something that merits any serious attention as a tool for instruction or L2 learner development.

 

I used to share this opinion. I would never have seriously considered integrating comic books into my lesson plans, but I selected this artifact because the use of comic books, their place within instructional planning and their overall value to leaner growth and to second language acquisition in general represents a significant shift in how I view them as a resource and also how I think about instructional planning. Prior to writing this artifact and conducting my work in the course FRE 641: French Culture through Comics, I planned my French lessons around grammar themes closely tied to the textbook. I’ve learned from my MATL course work that this type of textbook-centered approach to instruction planning and teaching French is not very effective for learner development. It focuses on discrete unrelated linguistic elements, is often void of interesting content, does not contain authentic material, only partially meets some of the world -readiness standards and does little to provide for differentiated instruction to accommodate individual learner styles.

 

Textbooks have a place in an L2 curriculum, but I’ve learned that lessons planned uniquely on grammatical elements from the textbook do not create meaningful or effective learner experiences.  Comic books, on the other hand, represent an authentic and interesting resource that reduces many of the shortcomings of textbook driven instruction planning. Their blend of interesting textual and visual content inspires learners in a very unique way and has a significant impact on their motivation (Clark, 2017). Placing learner needs at the heart of instructional planning, therefore, emphasizes the selection of resources like comic books because the degree of learner motivation they are capable of creating in turn reduces affective barriers while increasing learner willingness to communicate and engage (Brown, 2014).  Comic books also support effective instructional planning by allowing for differentiated instruction. Many factors influence individual learner styles, including social and cultural background, L1 ability, general aptitude, attitude to learning, willingness to take risks and tolerance of ambiguity. One of the many strengths of comic books both as a resource and as a tool for instructional planning is that they appeal to many different learning styles (Oz & Efecioglu, 2015).

 

The more interest I took in comic books as an instructional resource, the more I discovered how using comic books in L2 instruction is supported by more and more research. Comic books contain a large amount of speech acts which lend them to planning instruction around pragmatics, an approach that can result in increased communicative ability (Schauer, 2022). In addition, the benefits of comic books to second language acquisition can be explained in part by dual coding theory, a process by which learners concurrently use verbal and imagery cognitive functions to provide a broader and deeper understanding of meaning (Liu, 2004). I also began to see how comic books represented a flexible resource that supported planning instruction around the combinations of the four language skills as well as the three modes of communication. 

 

In addition to highlighting the importance of staying on top of the latest research trends to guide instruction, this course, and this artifact in particular, has had the effect of making me reflect on my own teaching and asking questions about my pedagogical approach: Why was I preferring some methods and not others? What was working and not working?  Was I choosing effective resources? What activities and resources motivated my students the most? In what areas were my students improving? What process did I follow when planning instruction?   Was I placing learner needs at the focus of my instructional planning? This reflection and self-assessment spurred on by the use of comic books has helped me grow as a teacher. It has helped me open my mind to new resources, to new approaches and to ask questions of myself as I plan instruction to ensure that every learner is supported.

 

References

Brown, D. H. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching: a course in second learning acquisition (6th ed.).

     Pearson Education.

Clark, E. (2017). Are Comics Effective Materials for Teaching ELLS? A Literature Review

     On Graphic Media for L2 Instruction. International E-Journal of Advances in Education, (3)4, 298-309.

     Http://ijaedu.ocerintjournals.org

Liu, J. (2004). Effects of comic strips on L2 Learners’ reading comprehension. TESOL Quarterly, (38)3, 225-243.

Oz, H., & Efecioglu, E. (2015). Graphic novels: An alternative approach to teach English as a foreign language.

      Journal of language and linguistic studies, (11)1, 75-90.

Schauer, G. (2022). Exploring the potential of graphic novels for pragmatic teaching and learning-focus on young learners.

     The language journal, (50)4, 491-505. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09571736.2022.2088445. 

    

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ARTIFACT 2

Name of Artifact: Essay on Comprehensible Output

Course: WL 664: Second Language Acquisition

Date: Spring, 2021

World-Readiness Standards Addressed: Interpersonal Communication, Interpretive Communication, Presentational Communication, 

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RATIONALE

In the early stages of my experience as a French teacher, my instruction planning was centered almost completely on the textbook. A large part of my lessons was driven by a pedagogical approach based on lectures that emphasized teaching grammar. Input in the target language lacked variety and although I planned for opportunities in which learners could practice speaking, those opportunities were characterized by repetitive drills and rehearsed dialogues from the textbook. My MATL coursework has helped me to understand the shortcomings of the traditional grammar-driven approach and has had a profound effect on my approach to teaching, my understanding of how students learn a second language, and my ability to plan instruction so that it is more effective. The most effective instruction, it is now known, is based on a backwards designed approach that places learner needs at the center of all planning. Objectives are developed around what students should know and be able to do with their L2. Lessons need to use a wide variety of materials and tools and learners need to be provided with authentic communicative tasks that integrate the three modes of communication (Shrum & Glisan, 2016).

 

Even when all the elements of effective instruction planning are present, there still remains major challenges to second language acquisition that learners continually face. Arguably, the most important is when learners develop the ability to understand much of what is said, but are still not able to effectively produce utterances to communicate what they want to say. The artifact I selected for this standard of instruction planning deals specifically with this issue. Based on an assignment in the course WL 664: Second Language Acquisition, the artifact stresses the critical importance of integrating comprehensible output into instruction in order for genuine acquisition to occur. I chose this artifact because it represents a fundamental change in my approach to teaching and demonstrates the degree to which my understanding of instruction planning has changed due to my MATL coursework.

 

Making comprehensible output a fundamental and consistent aspect of instructional planning ensures that students are placed at the center of learning and that activities can be more effectively developed around authentic tasks that integrate the three modes of communication. It also lends itself to seamless and ongoing learner assessment, the use of a wide variety of materials, and most importantly, allows for the integration of meaningful classroom opportunities for learners to practice and acquire a second language (Gass et al., 2020).

 

This artifact made me reflect on my teaching approach and helped me to understand that even though I had been planning instruction that integrated input and output activities, the way I was planning my lessons and classroom activities was not going to lead to genuine acquisition for my students. For genuine acquisition to occur, instruction needs to be planned around more than just output, it needs to be planned around comprehensible output. That is, instead of speaking activities based on rehearsed drills, students need to be placed in situations of communicative pressure to convey utterances when they do not have all the knowledge they require to say what they want or mean. When learners do this, they are required to engage in repeated conversation-based interactions founded on negotiation and feedback. The result is that learners must think about their L2 syntactically in order to convey their intended meaning and this in turn is what leads to genuine second language acquisition (Gass et al., 2020).

 

This artifact demonstrates my understanding of how to integrate a critical aspect of L2 content into my teaching in a way that both supports the current paradigm of L2 instruction planning and provides learners with a research-based approach to genuine second language acquisition.

 

References

Gass, J. M., Behney, J., & Plonsky, L. (2020). Second language acquisition: an introductory course (5th ed.). Routledge.

Shrum, J. L., & Glisan, E. W. (2016). Teacher’s handbook: Contextualized language instruction (5th ed.). Cengage learning.

    

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