Jamie´s entry...

Going into our second class, Shaunice and I thought that we had more of a grasp on what to expect. However, it proved to be different than our expectation yet again. Although this time the weather was in our favor, and we had a foundation from the previous session, we still wound up with only a group of three people. After communicating with our peers from the SLA class about the amount and type of participation that they had, I assumed our class would be larger and contain more varied levels of fluency. Before class we drew out some information from our lesson plan focused on home and families. We restructured our lesson to form a sort of “middle ground” amongst the different levels, while concentrating on communicative competency. However, it turned out that all of the participants were yet again advanced speakers, one of which had studied in the U.S. for several months. This made our idea of a “middle ground” impractical. We began the class with introductions as planned, then started in on the first section of the lesson plan. In this brief warm up it was evident, by picking up on cues from the learners that we needed to change our approach and go in a different direction. We ended up using our initial lesson plan as more of an outline for topics for conversation, adding several cultural references and vocabulary along the way.

From the two classes that we have hosted we have found that what we expected for this experience was vastly different from what these students anticipated. Although the class was advertised as intermediate, it is clear that we will have a majority of advanced speakers throughout the program. I believe that this is due to the fact that the general population of people that would want to attend a class like this, have a genuine desire to learn the target English language. Without having the opportunity to submerge themselves into an English-speaking culture, these people are driven to find ways to advance their fluency and communicate with native or expert speakers in other forums. This does however, prove their willingness and motivation to learn. Through our class discussions we have found this aspect to be a vital key in mastering a second language. So instead of turning away from this new recognition, we will manipulate our strategy to best suit the needs of this type of learner.  We will create an environment for both learner-to-learner, and teacher-to-learner interactions in which we can negotiate meaning. We will create outlines based around pragmatic conversation, building their colloquial speech, and downplaying some of the semantics that we had previously built our teaching model around. Possibly centering discussion on a problem, role play interactions and debates. In the case that we may have a lower level member join later down the road, we will adapt and mold to that as necessary instead of the other way around.