TESOL 2020: Three Reasons You Need to Go

It was in 2018 that I first experienced participating in a TESOL International Convention & English Language Expo; it was in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I was very thankful to have been selected by TESOL International Association as one of the recipients of the Betty Azar Travel Grant for Practicing ESL/EFL Teachers, which helped me a lot in the expenses for the conference. My TESOL Convention experience was one of the best in my entire life as an English language teacher for 15 years. And from them on, I promised myself to save up every year in order to participate in the annual TESOL Conventions. Wherever you are in the world, if you are an ELT professional and contemplating attending the TESOL 2020 Convention in Denver, Colorado, I would say you need not think twice—just go for it! Here’s why:

Romualdo Atibagos Mabuan, Assistant Professor

1. Professional Development Opportunity on a Global Scale

In my 15 years of English language teaching (ELT) experience, I have already been to several local, national, and international conferences in the Philippines and in several parts of Asia. However, my TESOL 2018 experience was one-of-a-kind. It was my first time participating in an ELT conference like no other. True to its tagline, a TESOL Convention is indeed “Where the World Comes Together,” because it is the world’s largest gathering of ELT professionals. The convention is participated in by more than 6,000 ELT teachers, researchers, administrators, and policy makers across various levels, cultures, and contexts. And with more than 1,000 sessions, including keynote speeches, oral presentations, workshops, Preconvention Institutes, forums, and meetings, there is certainly something for your interest.

The Convention provides you a gamut of opportunities for professional development on a global scale, as the world’s best ELT teachers, researchers, and professionals share their experiences and expertise with everyone without boundaries. You may engage with anybody and spark conversations about your professional practices and forge partnerships for future academic collaborations and professional network expansion. It’s an open market of overflowing ideas that will certainly quench your thirst for knowledge in the ELT field and ignite your interest in embracing new pedagogies and practices, welcoming new paradigms, and widening your perspectives.

2. Cultural Immersion and Experience

Participating in a TESOL Convention means going out of your comfort zone, leaving your daily routines temporarily, and going to a whole new world and surroundings to see and experience new things. Though it’s true that the Convention itself can provide limitless opportunities to learn in our field and to meet ELT professionals from other parts of the world, you simply cannot miss the chance of experiencing the culture of the host city or state.

When I attended TESOL 2018 in Chicago, it was my first time going to the USA, so it was a whole new level of experience for me. Hence, I made sure to plan ahead for my itinerary to include pre- and postconvention cultural explorations. In Chicago, I went to several cultural hot spots, universities, museums, restaurants, and markets on foot, by train, and by bus, curiously observing and exploring the new environment. This practice can provide another dimension in the overall convention experience, as discovering the host area can uncover wonderful and unforgettable learning opportunities, which you can share with your students and colleagues back home.

So are you ready to attend TESOL 2020 in Denver, Colorado? Let’s explore The Mile High City’s cultural hot spots, like the Denver Art Museum, the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre, Colorado State Capitol, and the nearby Rocky Mountain National Park and Colorado Springs, among others. This cultural experience will certainly complement your amazing Convention experience!

3. Personal and Professional Reflection and Appreciation

Participating in the TESOL Convention is one of the best investments ELT professionals can do for themselves. The momentous experience of going to a truly global conference and meeting diverse audiences from the four corners of the world is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that no English teacher should miss. Meeting and engaging with like-minded individuals in the field can open your mind to possibilities, giving you the moment to appreciate your profession and to reflect upon your significant role in your country’s educational system and in the lives of your students.

The Convention gives you that sense of belongingness to the field and the pride to be in the profession that touches hearts and lives and transforms communities through English language education. The chance to meet ELT world figures, shake hands with them, and converse with them is an inspiring, surreal, and priceless experience. The stimulating sessions on various topics of interest by expert teachers around the world, the wide array of new TESOL books, and the interesting display of modern educational technologies at the Electronic Village give you insights for classroom innovation and a revisit to and reconfiguration of your own pedagogical practices. There is that moment of feeling renewed, connected, enlightened, and empowered. Even when you go back home, that feeling lingers and sparks new beginnings in your personal and professional journey. You will become a better person and teacher.

If there is any gathering for ELT professionals around the world, the TESOL Convention is the go-to event. The time and energy spent during the conference is tantamount to lifelong learning and personal and professional development that are both meaningful and rewarding.

Hope to see you soon in Denver for the #TESOL2020 Convention!

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Author Bio
Romualdo Mabuan is an assistant professor of English at the Lyceum of the Philippines University in Manila, the Philippines. He is an Alumnus of the U.S. Department of State’s E-Teacher Program and is a MOOC camp facilitator at the Regional English Language Office of the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/tesol-2020-three-reasons-you-need-to-go/

TESOL Research and the Scholar-Practitioner

Welcome to the second in a series of blog posts from the TESOL Research Professional Council (RPC) highlighting aspects of the TESOL Research Agenda. This post outlines how the agenda defines and offers research directions, explores teacher research and professional development, examines the concept of the scholar-practitioner, and points to examples of possible research questions.

The TESOL Research Agenda

The TESOL Research Agenda defines research as “a spirited inquiry and systematic investigation that contributes to the knowledge base of a field” (p. 5), with the purpose of that research being to inform principled decision-making about policies, plans, and actions. By identifying new and emerging research directions in TESOL, the agenda focuses on three change drivers at the individual, community, and societal levels:

1. Theoretical perspectives on the nature and learning of language(s)
2. Technological support for learning
3. Teacher agency

Teacher Research and Professional Development

Closely aligned with the agenda’s definition of research is Borg’s (2010) definition of teacher research. For Borg, a visiting professor of TESOL at the University of Leeds, teacher research also involves systematic inquiry, but it is specifically carried out by teachers in their own school and classroom environments. The goal of teacher research is for teachers to find out more about their teaching practice and share those findings publicly. The research produced by teachers has great potential to impact teaching and learning while also contributing to institutional development and policy making (Borg, 2010).

The TESOL Research Agenda recognizes teacher research as a meaningful avenue for professional development. Xerri (2017), a lecturer at the Centre for English Language Proficiency at the University of Malta, has pointed out that this kind of professional development puts teachers in the driving seat and involves teachers in improving the field of English language teaching and learning more effectively and sustainably, perhaps, than more general forms of in-service training. With this kind of professional development, teachers become creators of knowledge rather than just consumers (Xerri, 2017).

Teachers as Scholar-Practitioners

Furthermore, when teachers incorporate research and the spirit of inquiry into their practice and as part of their professional development, they are embodying the concept of the scholar-practitioner. Macintyre Latta, Cherkowski, Crichton, Klassen, and Ragoonaden (2017), teacher educators at the University of British Columbia, have conceptualized scholar-practitioners as students of learning who

• engage in continuous professional growth,
• make use of and contribute to the scholarly community,
• employ their practical knowledge to improve the field of education, and
• seek out links between teaching and research to best suit their contexts.

The work of scholar-practitioners enhances intellectual well-being in the profession while energizing and nurturing teaching and learning. Lowery (2016), an associate professor in Educational Studies at the University of Ohio, has further pointed out that scholar practitioners want to better understand how teachers teach and how students learn, with the goal of adding to current research and educational theory when they notice misalignments with their own particular classroom experiences. Scholar-practitioners can further advance educational research and theory when they systematically notice effective practices that emerge in their own work as well.

Example Research Questions

To guide the work of the scholar-practitioner, the TESOL Research Agenda offers examples of the kinds of questions, with different focus domains and change drivers, teachers might ask when putting together an inquiry project. These questions propose topics teachers could consider as well as provide models teachers can use to develop their own questions pertinent to their particular teaching and learning contexts. For example, a question about how “the proficiency of individual learners develop[s] over time in distinct contexts of language use” (p. 10) connects to the individual domain and theory change driver. A question about “the relationship between students’ use of technology for language learning and their broader socialization into a community” (p. 10) relates to the community domain and technology change driver. As a last example, a question about how “language teaching professionals [shape] their own field and [influence] public debate around language education” (p. 10) points to the societal domain and teacher agency change driver. More examples can be found on the 2014 Research Agenda Suggested Research Questions website.

An Invitation to TESOL 2020

Teachers have an important role to play in strengthening the field of TESOL through their own research as scholar-practitioners. Systematic inquiry, as part of ongoing professional development, has the power to invigorate the field and benefit learners. The TESOL Research Agenda serves as a valuable source of ideas for teachers working as scholar-practitioners who want to seek answers to questions related to teaching and learning in their own contexts. For teachers interested in learning more about how to set up a research project, the Research Mentoring Workshop for Novice Researchers, a ticketed event at the TESOL 2020 International Convention, is a valuable opportunity to connect to the TESOL Research Agenda and explore ways novice researchers can formulate questions. All teachers interested in research are invited to attend this workshop, which takes place on 31 March 2020 from 3 pm–5 pm.

See the other posts in this series:

• The TESOL Research Agenda: By and for Teachers

References

Borg, S. (2010). Language teacher research engagement. Language Teaching, 43(4), 391–429. doi:10.1017/s0261444810000170

Lowery, C. L. (2016). The scholar-practitioner ideal: Toward a socially just educational administration for the 21st century. Journal of School Leadership, 26(1), 34–60. doi:10.1177/105268461602600102

Macintyre Latta, M., Cherkowski, S., Crichton, S., Klassen, W., & Ragoonaden, K. (2017). Investing in communities of scholar-practitioners. Teacher learning and professional development, 2(1), 32–47. Retrieved from http://journals.sfu.ca/tlpd/index.php/tlpd/article/view/31

TESOL International Association. (2014, November). TESOL Research Agenda 2014. Alexandria, VA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/pdf/2014_tesol-research-agenda.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Xerri, D. (2017). Teacher research as creative disruption. Modern English Teacher, 26(3), 17–19.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/tesol-research-and-the-scholar-practitioner/

Do ELs Lack Access to Education in STEM?

I recently came across a report published in 2018 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that concluded that English learners (ELs) do not have adequate access STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education in U.S. schools. The report, entitled English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools and Lives, is the result of a consensus study from educators from universities across the United States.

ELs Underrepresented in STEM Careers

The report emphasizes that “all children, irrespective of their home culture and first language, arrive at school with rich knowledge and skills that have great potential as resources for STEM learning” (p. 95). It goes on to say that ELs are woefully underrepresented in STEM careers, and this affects their potential earnings in the future. One barrier to ELs’ participation in STEM learning is that many school districts assume these students cannot understand the demanding STEM content learning before becoming proficient in English. This belief is unfounded, according to the authors of the report. Another barrier to STEM learning for ELs is that content-area teachers are not trained to differentiate their instruction in STEM subjects.

Access to STEM Careers Needs to Start at a Young Age

The report concentrates more on high school barriers and solutions than it does on ELs in the lower grades. I agree that there is a real lack of access to STEM at the high school level, and that is a crucial problem that needs to be solved. But I don’t think we should focus just on older ELs. One of the report’s points makes a real impression on me. The authors of the study emphasize that much of STEM education isn’t only accessible through the reading of dense text. It is comprehensible through hands-on experiential learning.

When I taught elementary ESL, I did so by teaching English through content. I taught a lot of science, and participation in the school’s science fair was part of my curriculum. However, I never thought about explicitly linking the students’ interest in science to thoughts about a future career, although I did often call my students “scientists.” This link needs to be made explicitly to students, and teachers need to think of them as future mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.

Bring Elementary Science Lessons to Life

Here are a few ways to bring those elementary science lessons to life:

• Establish classrooms where students learn cooperatively and can teach each other. ELs need to opportunity to regularly communicate with each other.
• Bring in local community members or parents who can bring science to life and show how it affects their work. Local meteorologists, doctors, veterinarians, and other professionals can help ELs understand how careers relying on STEM can be connected to what they are learning in school.
• Use realia, photos, experiments, and hands-on lessons to make content comprehensible to ELs and allow them to participate in the life of the classroom.

As I said before, ELs have rich knowledge and experiences that they bring to the classroom. Teachers need to show that they value this experience by incorporating it into classroom practice. STEM learning is not culture free, and teachers need to value “other ways of doing” during STEM instruction.

At the very beginning of my teaching career, I was teaching fourth-grade ELs long division. Samir, a student from India, told me that his grandfather had taught him a different way to do long division. His grandfather’s method was much easier for the students to understand, and I had Samir teach it to the other students in the group. Once the students felt successful, it was easier to transition to long division as it is taught in the United States (a necessity because teachers want students to show their work).

Read English Language Learners in STEM Subjects Online

The English Learners in STEM Subjects report from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is an excellent document that demonstrates a real understanding of the academic and social-emotional needs of ELs. This document can be read for free online (there is a cost if it is downloaded). It is well worth the time that it takes to read it, and is filled with research and best practices.

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How do you incorporate STEM into your teaching? Or how do you plan to incorporate it in the future? Please share in the comments, below.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/do-els-lack-access-to-education-in-stem/

Avoiding Civil Rights Violations: Staffing and Supporting EL Programs. What’s This Year’s Professional Learning Plan?

We are several months into the school year, and this blog is dedicated to one of my favorite topics, professional learning for the education of English learners (ELs). How many or how few of you have had at least one professional  learning session, thus far, focused on supporting ELs?  Regardless of your answer, it’s not too late to start or continue those conversations. All staff members, from the bus drivers to the school leadership team, must engage in learning opportunities about the ELs they are responsible for.

In regards to staffing and supporting EL programs,

School districts have an obligation to provide the personnel and resources necessary to effectively implement their chosen EL programs. This obligation includes having highly qualified teachers to provide language assistance services, trained administrators who can evaluate these teachers, and adequate and appropriate materials for the EL programs. (Office of English Language Acquisition, 2015 p. 14)

I’d like to reiterate: School districts must have

1. highly qualified teachers,
2. trained administrators who can evaluate them, and
3. adequate and appropriate materials for the EL program.

Let’s assume all of the above has been done. In order to maintain highly effective programs for ELs, professional learning must be ongoing and job-embedded.  Educators who support ELs must plan for following up with participants in between professional learning sessions, including following through with those plans and being flexible. All staff members, including support staff members, need to engage in professional learning—this engagement in professional learning with a focus on ELs may look as diverse as our student populations.

Follow Up

In between sessions, professional learning must be followed up on in authentic ways. Whether planned for groups of educators or pursued individually, the “drive-by” or “one and done” professional learning plans will not have a huge impact on supporting positive student outcomes. In fact, they may have the opposite effect.

Districts are often competing for the same allotted days and times for professional learning. How can we assure that our EL population and other traditionally marginalized groups of students remain a priority? Following up with professional learning plans is imperative if we are going to strengthen the alignment.

For example, a group of general education teachers were discussing informal assessments of their students. The teachers knew some of the students were Els, but they had never received their students’ score reports from the annual English language proficiency exam despite requests to receive this information.

Follow Through

Following through is important to professional learning because without it, the best-laid plans are not plans at all but, rather, ideas. For professional learning to gain momentum, it must first have traction; the planning and following through with the plan is what helps with that traction. Here are two ways a professional learning plan could be stalled:

1. Self-imposed delays in professional learning: Educators of ELs engage in professional learning communities. Responsibilities are delegated or resources are promised, but there is no follow through.
2. Access to information delay: Teachers need information to begin their professional learning plans. Resources or documents they need about their ELs are often left in mailboxes—this information has technically been “passed out,” but there is no follow through in a personal way.
3. Access to information denied: Crucial information about ELs is never provided to their teachers.

How might we plan for time to engage as practitioners with a focus on ELs so that we are starting and remaining on task, gaining traction, versus experiencing lots of false starts and stops?

Professional Learning Scenario

A high school has plans to implement a peer-coaching model as one of their professional learning initiatives over the next 2 years. The school leadership team has created the list of required reading and an  informal observation checklist. At the same time, the school experiences a 15% increase in their EL population. Most of the students are considered newcomers, those at beginner levels of English proficiency. Their families have recently resettled into the community, and the school does not offer a bilingual language support program.

Some of the teachers are concerned that they’ll be “evaluated” by their peers about their ability to teach ELs in content-area courses. Although the school has always had a small population of ELs, there is concern that the professional learning initiative doesn’t address how teachers can effectively support ELs at the secondary level.

Questions to Think About

1. How should the leadership team respond to the teachers’ concerns?
2. Is the current professional learning plan specific enough to address the needs of ELs, or is it too general?
3. How might the teachers address the professional learning plan as it aligns to following up, following through, and being flexible?

Flexibility Is a Must

The preceding scenario outlines how one district has a professional learning plan and recent changes in their EL population indicate a new plan may be needed. The plan they have, while perhaps initially sufficient, may not meet the needs of the teachers and support personnel. Being flexible and responsive enough to know when adjustments are needed to professional learning plans is crucial if student achievement is the ultimate goal, especially for linguistically diverse student populations.

For example, one elementary school leader implemented a professional learning session that helped the teachers to work more closely with interpreters. Instead of interpreters showing up at the scheduled times with the families they were going to be interpreting for, the teachers and interpreters had time to meet and work together before working with linguistically diverse families. The educators planned best practices, such as body language and eye contact, and the topics to be discussed, all with the intent of making sure the family members felt welcomed and were heard, and partnerships were fostered. This was a new professional learning topic for this learning community, but one that was needed as a result of their student population.

Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Does your school community have a professional learning plan that is inclusive of its EL population?
2. To what extent are professional learning plans following up, following through, and being flexible?
3. Are any of these recommendations in your immediate control? Do you have what you need?

What You Can Do

What I mean by the last question is that if you are a teacher who is reading this blog, what is in your sphere of influence? You can ask for information you are entitled to have, even if you are not exactly sure what that information might be, to meet the needs of the students you have. This may require you to ask more than one person. Remember, to adhere to the federal guidance, to be prepared for the ELs you have, you must engage in professional learning practices whether as part of a group or independently. This is a form of authentic advocacy! How can anyone ask you to teach harder, reach all learners, implement culturally responsive pedagogy, use data to drive instruction without providing you with all of the information you need about your students?

How do your school’s professional learning practices stack up? What have you done or can you do to improve them? I’d love to hear from you. Please share in the comments, below!

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Next month’s blog will highlight the need to ensure ELs have equal opportunities to participate in all curricular and extracurricular activities. This includes the core curriculum, graduation requirements, advanced courses, sports, and clubs.

Reference

U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education (2015). Dear colleague letter. English learner students and limited English proficient parents. Retrieved from https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-el-201501.pdf

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/avoiding-civil-rights-violations-staffing-and-supporting-el-programs-whats-this-years-professional-learning-plan/

Using Technology to Promote Reading

There are so many excellent resources online for teaching all the various aspects of the English language and culture. I have previously shared some of my favorite sites and tools for listening and speaking as well as writing. This month’s blog entry will focus on promoting reading skills.

Breaking News English

I have written about Breaking News English previously, but I have not focused on the reading materials that they offer. Every other day, the site adds a news story that is available for listening or reading with an extensive collection of additional materials that support all skills. Readers can select different speeds of text delivery (for the text in the following example, you have the options of 100 words per minute, 200 words per minute and 300 words per minute); the following movie is an example of 100 words per minute:

Users can also choose a number of other modes for interacting with the written text, including two jumbles, which present chunks of the text as a grid, requiring learners to drag them into the correct order. One jumble is composed of shorter chunks of text into 24 pieces while the other includes longer chunks with 15 pieces (see Figure 1). Each reading is also accompanied by a quiz. Learners, or teachers, can also use these tools to create their own reading activities that utilize these functions for individualized reading texts.

Figure 1. Text jumble, 15 chunks. (Breaking News English)

One of my favorite things about the site is the ability to identify thematic topics that are of interest to students. In particular, I think that that the topic of technology itself is quite popular and likely to promote vocabulary that is beneficial for many learners. Breaking News English has a page that compiles technology related news stories that can be found here.

E-Readers and Digital Textbooks

Another great resource for promoting reading today is to take advantage of the many opportunities presented by e-readers and digital textbooks. However, I have seen little evidence that they are being used much with English learners. E-readers such as the Kindle, Nook, and iPad offer readers a variety of new ways to interact with text in compelling ways.

Figure 2. Kindle screenshot.

Rather than simply being a digital equivalent to a printed text, e-reader texts that are thoughtfully designed have the potential to include interactive content, including multimedia and links to additional related sources of information. Texts can easily be projected in class in order to share with a larger group. Learners can take advantage of the built-in dictionary to support their reading (see Figure 2).

Learners can adjust the size of the text, which can be particularly helpful for learners with vision challenges. They can also have words read aloud so they can also learn to pronounce new vocabulary. Further, these devices can allow users to take digital notes, highlighting and sharing portions of text that are interesting, challenging, or worthy of further study; these notes are saved in an online repository. Data can be gathered about the learner’s use of the text in order to gain insight into their abilities and challenges.

Many interactive e-books can be downloaded for free from various sites online, purchased through familiar venues, such as the Amazon Kindle store or Google Play store, or accessed directly from academic publishers. Instructors can also create their own customized, interactive reading materials for their students or, perhaps even better, students can create content for other students. This can be done using a number of different platforms, largely depending on the format learners are expected to be using. For example, the ibook authoring tool allows us to create such materials for use on Apple’s iOs devices (including iPhones and iPads). Similarly, Amazon provides tools for creating Kindle-friendly content, including the Kindle direct publishing resources.

For some additional ideas about how to use these devices in the English classroom, you can check out FluentU’s site, How to Transform Your Kindle into an English Learning Tool.

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What educational technology do you use to promote your students’ reading? Or have you found new and interesting ways to use Breaking News English, or e-readers? Please share in the comments, below.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/using-technology-to-promote-reading/

Digital Games for the Writing Process

Welcome back to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning blog. To kick off this month’s post, I wanted to encourage everyone to visit the new Ludic Language Pedagogy journal by James York and Jonathan DeHann. The journal strives to encompass all forms of play and how teachers support that play through their classroom practice. Check it out or, even better, submit an article!

Since we are on the topic of journals and article writing, this month’s post highlights several digital games that can be integrated into your writing classroom.  These are all single-player games which engage students in a storyline that makes for interesting writing prompts.

Quandary

Quandary is a sci-fi themed game designed to “develop critical thinking and perspective-taking, practice empathy, and learn to make ethical decisions through fun and engaging gameplay” (Quandary, 2019). The story occurs at a remote human colony on the planet Braxos. As captain of the colony, the player is tasked with settling disputes and achieving compromise.

For language learners, the game is a well-crafted introduction into discourse as players must listen to colonists and determine what is an opinion, a fact, or a solution to the current problem. Rich illustrations and audio versions of the dialogue provide support for language learners as they learn to differentiate between the opinions of the colonists and the facts of the problem at hand. For students learning to write papers, Quandary can be an engrossing way to learn how identify argument structures.

Spent

Sid Meiers, creator of the famed Civilization series of games, once define games as a series of interesting choices. Spent is a prime example of that definition. Spent is part of a genre of games referred to as serious games. These games strive to do more than entertain, but teach or inform the player about real-world issues. In Spent, the issue is poverty.

The game takes place over 30 days, and players must last until the end of the month. Starting with US$1000 and a low-paying job, the players must decide on housing costs, transportation, and health care. After each decision point in the game, players are provided with a related fact. Each day of the game the players are presented with decisions that have a direct impact on their well-being and bank account. Miss work because your kid is sick? Pay an overdue bill or buy groceries? In Spent there are no easy answers.

In the classroom, students could keep journals documenting their days and the decisions they make. Afterwards, students could compare experiences or engage in classroom research as they investigate the facts the game provides. It’s important to note that Spent covers a topic that may be too familiar to some students. Still, it can provide a way to open up a classroom dialogue around poverty by creating a fictional context that may be easier for students to discuss when compared to real-world examples.

Elegy for a Dead World

Unlike the other two games featured this month, Elegy for a Dead World is not a free-to-play game, but it may be worth buying a classroom copy.

The game originated out of the developer’s love of British poets and features the works of Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Players explore the lonely worlds of Elegy and wander across writing prompts. These prompts are half completed verses from the poets, and the players are encouraged to fill in the blanks with ideas inspired by the game’s rich otherworldly artwork.

As the developers note, these writing prompts are there to encourage the writing process and to help writers learn to write themselves out of a corner. At the end of a writing level, players have the option to upload their writing and share it with the world.

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Each of these games has great potential to encourage your students to write, and though there isn’t enough room in this blog to cover all the classroom potential of these games, there is room in the comments. If you have used these games, share what you’ve done. Want to learn more about them? Ask away in the comments! Or share other games you enjoy using in your writing classroom.

Until next month, play more games!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/digital-games-for-the-writing-process/

Collect, Select, Reflect: Portfolios for L2 Writing Assessment

Portfolios for assessing students’ writing have been around a long time, but I believe it’s worth another visit, particularly given the tools we now have available online for collecting and sharing our work.

What Is a Portfolio?

A portfolio is a collection of documents accompanied by the collector’s reflection on what those documents show about their learning or work. Much literature on teaching with portfolios emphasizes the three-step process in portfolio creation: collect, select, reflect.

Students collect documents and other artifacts they have created, select those that best illustrate what they have learned, and reflect on why they chose those artifacts and what they show about their learning as writers. Though many teachers expect their students to keep their coursework together, without the element of reflection, this collection is simply a binder (or computer folder) accumulating paper (or files).

Course portfolios are a common form of assessment in writing and language teacher education programs. Students collect their drafts and final papers; to create a portfolio, they then select texts from that collection that represent their growth as writers across the term. Portfolios sometimes include a capstone reflection that summarizes students’ learning as documented in the entire portfolio; other portfolios may have reflections as cover sheets for each selected artifact.

Guidelines for what students should put in a portfolio may include some of these:

• All the drafts of one assignment, from your brainstorming notes to the final draft, including feedback you received from your teacher and peers.
• A paper that represents your best work in the class.
• A paper that shows how much you have improved your writing. This could be a paper that did not receive a high score from your teacher, but which you have revised since you received that score.
• Samples of writing created for different audiences or purposes.
• A reflection about your writing process (this might be included with documentation of all the drafts of an assignment).
• A reflection on how you think you will use the writing you learned in this course in your future studies or career.

Importance of Reflection

Writing portfolios can show not only what a student writer is able to do, but also what they understand about writing and themselves as writers (Murphy & Smith, 1992). As noted in the previous section, reflection is what differentiates a portfolio from merely a collection of students’ writing. Lam and Lee (2010), for example, describe a course portfolio wherein Hong Kong students selected two of their best writing texts from across an entire semester and wrote “a reflective journal to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in writing at the end of the portfolio programme” (p. 56). Through the portfolio selection and reflection process, the students were able to see how much they had learned about writing and commented that they felt empowered by having choice of which texts to include. Without these reflections, evaluators may not have known students’ reasons for selecting particular texts.

Program Portfolios

Program portfolios document accomplishments across multiple courses toward a program-level goal. My MA in TESOL from the SIT Graduate Institute culminated with a portfolio aligned to the Vermont Standards for Teacher Licensure, which required that I select artifacts that showed what I had done in my coursework and student teaching to meet the standards. For each standard, I wrote a reflection that explained what I had learned from the activity represented by the artifact as well as what I saw as areas where I still needed to develop more.

As another example in teacher education, the e-portfolio my colleagues in Chile developed (which I presented at several conferences over the past year) is meant to document students’ progress across all 5 years of the English teacher education program. In each year, students select a few artifacts that represent their learning of particular program competencies. They write reflections about their choice of artifacts as well as broader reflections on their reasons for becoming English teachers and later their philosophies of teaching.

E-Portfolios

In our digital world, portfolios have also moved online. In contrast with paper portfolios, which require writers to keep printed copies of all their drafts and to make sure the documents are all in one place, e-portfolios reside on the internet, where writers can continue to upload documents and write reflections even as their teachers have access to the files. Another benefit of e-portfolios is that they can be designed with a wider audience in mind, allowing student writers to think about how to present their work in ways that would be accessible to people beyond their teachers.

Kevin Knight’s 2014 TESOL Blog post discusses how e-portfolios can be used in English for specific purposes (ESP) contexts, where students may be developing career-focused dossiers of their work. Knight lists several  platforms as potential hosts for e-portfolios. In a 2016 TESOL Blog post, Tara Arntsen described SeeSaw, a platform that facilitates student-driven e-portfolios where teachers and parents can access files that students have selected from among videos, written texts, and other modes of representation. Not all commercial platforms can meet all program needs. The e-portfolio my Chilean colleagues developed is based in a purpose-built platform that was designed specifically for their program.

Grading Portfolios

An advantage of portfolios is that they shift teachers’ role from being purely an assessor to being a collaborator or coach (Elbow & Belanoff, 1986; Murphy & Smith, 1992). Though teachers can still assign grades to individual assignments, they may choose to make those grades placeholders, where students can revise texts and submit them for reevaluation through the portfolio. The teacher of the course Lam and Lee (2010) described opted not to grade students’ texts at all while they worked through the writing process, only assigning grades to the two pieces the students selected for their portfolios. Students commented that this approach encouraged them to focus on improving their texts rather than raising their grades.  Another option is to weight the portfolio such that it counts for a greater percentage of the term grade than individual assignments, but a proportion of the portfolio grade comes from the quality of revised texts and from reflection.

Grading portfolios can be more time-consuming than grading individual assignments, but the process can be integrated into any writing program with multiple sections and teachers to share the responsibility. Elbow and Belanoff (1986), for example, described a writing program-wide portfolio process where teachers met midsemester to give preliminary feedback (so students have a sense of how they’re doing), and then teachers grade each other’s students’ portfolios at the end of the year. This process allowed teachers to step back from the stress of evaluating their own students’ work and rather act in support of the students’ development.

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Have you had experience with portfolio assessment in places where you’ve taught or studied? How did it work? What suggestions do you have for teachers wishing to implement portfolios in their programs?

References

Elbow, P., & Belanoff, P. (1986). Portfolios as a substitute for proficiency examinations. College Composition and Communication 37, 336–339. doi: 10.2307/358050

Lam, R., & Lee, I. (2010). Balancing the dual functions of portfolio assessment. ELT Journal, 64(1), 54–64.

Murphy, S., & Smith, M. A. (1992). Looking into portfolios. In K. B. Yancey (Ed.), Portfolios in the writing classroom: An introduction (pp. 49–60). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/collect-select-reflect-portfolios-for-l2-writing-assessment/