TESOL Language Learning Framework

Module 25, Unit 3, Activity 1

TESOL Language Learning Framework

This week in my module for my program through Moreland University we are exploring socio-cultural competency in linguistically diverse environments through looking at different language program frameworks. I chose to look at the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) framework for this activity.

I found with the initial 6 principles (TESOL International Association, 2021) that I looked at by going to the TESOL International Association webpage, that they follow great teaching standards. If you have completed a teaching certification program, these principles should already be built into your practice as a teacher. As a teacher, these principles didn’t seem especially revolutionary, but I suppose they are worth reiterating and delving into in depth.

The Six Principles for Teaching the TESOL Framework

1. Know your Learners

This is where the socio-cultural competence would come into play with the TESOL framework. Everything should begin with knowing about the identities, abilities, and cultures of the students you are going to teach. Without knowing those things, you aren’t apt to make relevant lessons that would yield meaningful learning experiences for your students. Everything you teach should have some connection to their life and their world. As Arias and Medina wrote, “...situating language teaching within the culture of the speakers and providing students with examples of cultural relevant variation”(2020) is how to really achieve socio-cultural competency in the classroom and so that begins here with principle one. Therefore, knowing your learners in a socio-cultural competent way is extremely important.

1. Create conditions for language learning

Creating conditions that support language learning really comes down to creating a safe and supportive classroom environment. This too is a part of socio-cultural competence. Understanding the cultures and needs of each of your students should be a huge factor in how you design and implement the learning environment. Once a safe and culturally supportive environment has been created, then conditions will have been created to support language learning.

1. Design high-quality lessons for language development

Principles one and two feed directly into this principle. This is where all the prep work of getting to know your learners and creating a safe and supportive environment finally come into play. By being socio-cultural competent, it is assumed one would design lessons to enable language learning that relate to the students’ lives and cultures, as previously explained in principle one.

1. Adapt lesson delivery as needed

As with any sort of teaching, when you realize your learners are either not understanding or have already understood and need a little push, adapting lessons as needed is a key part of teaching.

1. Monitor and assess student language development

Using data, collected in various ways, through formal assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments, using data to drive the decisions to be made about what lessons to plan to best teach the students and create meaningful learning experiences is optimal. You cannot teach anything to a student if you do not monitor their progress to be sure they are accruing the knowledge needed to succeed.

1. Engage and collaborate within a community of practice

When creating lifelong learners, it is best to be one yourself. The greatest resource for continuing to learn and add to your practice is your colleagues. Collaboration with colleagues is a sincere gift that can yield amazing results.

The TESOL principles seem pretty self-explanatory to a practiced teacher. Here is how I have used them in my own classroom.

In one lesson with my 6th grade ESL class, where we explored surfing in the arctic as a part of their outdoor pursuits unit, I employed the principles of the TESOL framework. I used their culture to inform my teaching, but also knew I was probably exposing them to something they had never fully come into contact with before, that being surfing, so I came prepared with answers to my own questions to drive the lesson and discussion.

The opening task was just to list some things they knew about surfing, one young learner said he knew nothing, so I started going through some of the facts I came prepared with to the students. I had assumed, based on the knowledge I had of my students, that they wouldn’t know much, so prepared facts kept the lesson going without stalling it. Then we discussed places where people could surf, with the last being the Arctic, because it is a very unusual place to surf.

From there we watched a short video to help the plethora of visual learners in my class visualize exactly what we were talking about, and to open up another discussion opportunity, that being what obstacles are there to surfing in the arctic. After that, we launched into the core of the lesson, reading a differentiated article on surfing in the arctic from Newsela.

The students were already sitting in homogeneous reading groups. Therefore, it made easy passing out the article, which contained the exact same information, but was differentiated by lexile level. The students then took turns reading the article aloud to each other. Then completed a comprehension quiz, that we then discussed the answers to as a class. After that, they completed a 3-2-1 exit ticket to end the class.

I used socio-cultural competence in planning this lesson because I knew it would be something strange for my students to be exposed to, and I came prepared so the lesson wouldn’t stall due to lack of student knowledge.

I think the principles of the TESOL Framework are excellent, but could dive deeper into what is needed. These seem to be basic teaching standards, not guiding principles for an English Learning Framework. That would be my biggest critic. Additionally, the need for socio-cultural competency is implied, it is not explicit. That is, I think, another failure of this framework. It needs to go much deeper in providing guidance for how to adequately teach ELLs.

References

Arias, B., & Medina, J. (2020, October 26). Sociocultural Competence in Action. Language Magazine. https://www.languagemagazine.com/2020/10/15/sociocultural-competence-in-action/.

TESOL International Association. (2021). The 6 Principles for Exemplary Teaching of English Learners. TESOL.org. https://www.tesol.org/the-6-principles/k-12.