Program Goal 2: Creating Curricula, Objectives, and Teaching Materials

Picture of Role Play“Your ability to design, adapt, and evaluate curricula, technology, media, and other resources that meet the specific instructional and language-related needs and abilities of adult English language learners”

Sample Documents

  1. Lesson plan on using oral English when conducting office hours and accompanying instructional PowerPoint
  2. Visualization of the “journey” of a 5-paragraph essay: Topic Sentences SCOBA
  3. Curriculum Development Project: Proposed ESL Course in Technical Writing
  4. PowerPoint on the Research/Brainstorming Process
  5. APLNG 808 Lesson Plan Project:
    1. Lesson Plan 1: Learning through Listening (For ESL Composition)
    2. Lesson Plan 2: Focus on Reading (For ESL Composition)
    3. Lesson Plan 3 : Focus on Writing (For ESL Composition)

Reflection

The Penn State Department of Applied Linguistics has provided me with an ideal environment for building up my teaching skills and awareness. Since I have also been teaching ESL Composition at Penn State while working on my TESOL certificate, I have constantly been able to compare my own teaching experiences with the pedagogical theories covered in my courses, enabling me to enhance my teaching praxis with the infusion of these theoretical concepts.

For example, while taking my final course in the program, I created several lesson plans as part of my coursework, and then I implemented them in my own classes after having received feedback from my professor (Lesson Plan 1: Learning through Listening, Lesson Plan 2: Focus on Reading, and Lesson Plan 3 : Focus on Writing). At the time that I made these lesson plans, I was also mentoring a TESOL graduate student who assisted in teaching one of my classes, and the structure of these plans helped me to explain to her my pedagogical reasoning behind these lessons. These detailed lesson plans were effective for guiding her when she conducted parts of the lessons herself, and we had several enlightening conversations about the art of teaching as a result.

SCOBA for portfolio1In my own classroom, I have been improving my use of SCOBAs (Schemas for the Orienting Basis of Action) and other kinds of visualizations of abstract concepts regarding the writing process. After learning more about an Applied Linguistics approach to the writing process, I was meditating on how cognition is highly associative, cyclical, and non-linear, whereas writing and speaking tend to be linear forms of representation. I have found that diagrams and SCOBAs help to bridge the gap between non-linear/associative/cyclical experience and the linearity of the written/spoken word. I also find the visual form of the SCOBA to be liberating for communicating with my students about abstract processes.

Concerning technology in the classroom, I have also created an entire Teaching with Technology e-Portfolio, which is accessible in the main menu above.