Statement_of_Relevance_Sample_1

Name:______________Statement of RelevanceDuring the Boot Camp, and also in the readings prior to, mention was made of the “E-S-A” model of language instruction which calls upon language educators to first “Engage” their learners and generate interest and anticipation of the target subject, and then “Study” the intended material through structured, supervised practice. Lastly, students are afforded the opportunity to utilize their newly acquired language skills in a more free exercise where these skills c an be “Activated.”While theories such as this one may look very impressive on paper, often their application may prove a bit more challenging. For this reason, I most appreciated the demonstration that Hugo provided of this methodology in his Portuguese lesson. In his lesson, Hugo first “engaged” our interest in the subject of Brazilian BBQ by slowly revealing a picture and encouraging us to guess and conjecture what the lesson’s subject matter might be. Through his presentation, I was able to experience first-hand the increased level of attention and participation that a properly executed “Engage” activity can generate. Had Hugo merely just told the class what the lesson’s subject was going to be, the learners would have been placed immediately into a passive, recipient role, which would have been far less conducive to the active atmosphere present in the remainder of the lesson. The “engagement” of student interest and participation was essential in generating the interest of the class, as well as with providing a context for the rest of the instructional period.Hugo then began a period of intensive, structured practice with the key language and sentence patterns. During this “study” section of intentional, specific practice of keylanguage, Hugo relied entirely oral instruction. No use was made at all of the whiteboard, or any written forms of the language. Hugo focused entirely on eliciting correct pronunciation and repetition of the target vocabulary and sentence forms. Throughout the entirety of this study exercise, Hugo required exact accuracy in enunciations, and was attentive to, and readily addressed and corrected, mistakes.Immediately after our structured practice had yielded satisfactory results, Hugo called up on the class to utilize what we had learned, as little as it was, in an “activation” activity where we were required to use the words we had just learned in the context of a conversation with a classmate. This alternation between “study” and “activation,” or “instruction” and “application,” was done twice. As soon as new information was imparted, the opportunity to use that new language was also granted. Although this “activation” exercise was repetitive, it was highly purposeful, and therefore maintained our attention and interest in pursuit of a specific task, in this case, ordering food at a restaurant. This final component of the “E-S-A” framework recognized both of our needs to not only practice the new language structures as much as possible, but also to utilize our new linguistic input in a communicative and functional fashion, as opposed to merely repeating sentences in parrot-like monotony.The applications and relevance to my own responsibilities at EF are readily apparent, particularly in my classes for low-level learners. Although communication in the target language may represent a daunting challenge for low-level students, I was able to experience first-hand the necessity of being placed in an active, rather than passive, role from the very beginning of the language-learning experience. While students may not possess very much linguistic material to work with, they should nevertheless beencouraged to use what they do have as soon as possible. Also, during the initial “engage” activity Hugo did not employ any E nglish in productive capacity, but only spoke in the target language. He did however allow us to use English initially as we negotiated meaning and conjectured as to the topic of the lesson, as was the goal of the first exercise. This point did make me wonder if it would be advisable or preferable for someone who could not at least understand students’ first language to be teaching them the target language at very low levels. Hugo seemed to rely on his ability to understand English utterances in order to gauge whether or not he was making headway with the lesson’s aims. Regardless however, his demonstration did make apparent the fact that, even when teaching students of very limited proficiency in the target language, only use of the target language by the instructor need be made for instruction and solicitation in the classroom.The “study” section as well was an excellent reminder of how difficult the matter of correctly pronouncing and using new language forms can be, and thereby also how essential it is for instructors to pay close attention to learners utterances to ensure that they are practicing the correct pattern of speech. I am often hesitant to correct low level learners for fear of damaging the confidence. H owever, Hugo’s lesson made me reali ze how necessary it is to address any problems from the onset, before learners become accustomed to an incorrect pronunciation for instance. Continual drilling of an incorrect utterance is definitely not beneficial for the learners, and certainly not a valid use of class time. Through Hugo’s demonstration of a correctly executed “study” activity, I was able to see the importance of error correction and accuracy, even for very low-level learners.As mentioned above, Hugo’s final “activate” exercise, wher e we applied our new language forms in a real-world activity, was focused and functional. We were required to employ the language in a repetitive, yet communicative, style. This allowed for both practice, and purpose. The importance of being able to gen erate “comprehensible output,” as opposed to merely sound imitation, is something that Hugo demonstrated very well, and something that is extremely relevant to teaching low-level students. While continual practice in realistic, functional contexts is extremely important, mindless drilling of words and sounds, that students may or may not completely have a meaningful grasp of, is frivolous and unproductive. Students need to use language in communicative tasks.All in all, Hugo’s demonstration of a properly implemented “E-S-A” lesson provided an extremely relevant example of how to actively involve low-level learners at all stages of a lesson, thereby increasing the amount of time they have to engage in communicative practice of the target language, and ultimately, further empower these learners towards long-term acquisition and use of the target language.。