From Respect to Repetition: Crafting an Inclusive ESL Experience

I was very moved in my first class teaching at the Community English Program when I invited my students to write on a large poster about what they thought the classroom should look like. The first student who came up put two words down in bold, “To respect.” I asked: “Can you elaborate on this word you wrote?” This student responded with something that had I never expected to bring up myself: “to respect each other’s accent.” I added these words onto this poster, and said to the class: “Yes, only to laugh with; never to laugh at.” Later on, other students added more entries to the poster, including “Never be shy,” “Ask questions,” “do not interrupt,” and “expect the teacher to give corrective feedback,” etc. As an ESL teacher coming from an international background, I embrace the awareness of maintaining a respectful learning environment for my students. I am thrilled that the students are provided with this chance to think about their needs and values.  

I grew up learning English with the Audiolingual Method and the Reading Approach, and I welcome my students to explore these two strategies in the classrooms. For example, by listening to native-like materials in English including television conversations, news, and teacher’s instructions, and by practicing the structures through repetition and scaffolding, the students will be primed to use these sentences on their own. Input and output are both involved in this process. This approach has a lot to do with how I started learning English: my father introduced me to a large amount of content of native English from various American television series, introduced by my father. There were two things he did that I later proudly attribute to my progress in English learning: he’d play a line from a television show or an audio article, and I’d have to repeat it without dropping a word. It would usually require more than five attempts. There was no explicit teaching of grammar. However, to my surprise, after the repetitions I did, despite the complexity and length of those sentences, the sentence structure, the beats, and the clauses would just reveal themselves. I also experienced the same feeling when I took theatre courses in college, where I was able to practice the same line over and over again and find verbs to describe the objective of each line. 

The Reading approach also helped me build vocabulary as well as the habit of reading. I have been reading extensively throughout my English learning and collecting new vocabulary along the way. I managed to look up the words’ definitions in English rather than my native language, and I always attached sample sentences to provide context. In the in-class reading tasks, I would ask my students to underline unfamiliar vocabulary items that they couldn’t figure out from pure guessing. Before I reveal the meanings, I would give them some time to negotiate with their partners and fill each other’s gaps, before I ask questions later to help them understand. Moreover, I would highlight vocabulary from the textbook and expand on their different uses. Huckin & Bloch (1993) pointed out, "Research has shown that second-language readers rely heavily on vocabulary knowledge and that a lack of vocabulary knowledge is the largest obstacle for second-language readers to overcome." By giving my students vocabulary to discuss and work on as homework, they would have something tangible to see that they learn new things bit by bit. I always highlight the importance of making continuous little steps, especially for adult learners whose language learning effect is largely correlated to motivation: to stay motivated by the long-term goal. 

As an ESL instructor, I am particularly observant outside of class and constantly look for interesting interactions and bring pragmatics into my lessons. My favorite language teacher from college, a Japanese professor (Ito-sensei), used a large number of resources from Japanese daily news and television clips in her lectures, which targeted the language points she was instructing in that specific lesson. This way of introducing how language was used in daily-life conversations motivated me deeply. I’d like to facilitate conversations using these materials in my classroom.

I also enjoy bringing career-related materials into the adult classroom so that they would feel connected and share more personal stories. For example, in one chapter from our textbook, the topic was about giving online medical suggestions and feedback using modal verbs. After the students discussed what was covered in the textbook, I expanded the topic to giving career advice, especially around vocabulary that is used to describe the candidate’s different aspects of characteristics. As professionals in their own fields, they were able to connect their own experiences to the English learning material. 

I especially enjoy the process of searching for communicative materials and structuring an activity about the materials by scaffolding. From a recent class, in which students just learned about past tense earlier, I brought in a conversation script where two friends were chatting about a restaurant experience in the past tense, present tense, and future tense. The dialogue was communicative and colloquial, and the mix of tenses was a good way of showing how different tenses could be used effectively within the same topic. 

Along the way, I have come to value the following things more and more: giving wait time to the students, helping the students feel proud of their work, inviting them to collaborate and interact, and last but not least, showing curiosity about what each of them says. I look forward to revealing more joyful moments with my students in the English classroom.

The “Common Ground” poster we made together as a class.