REFLECTION: ESP WORKPLACE ENGLISH HAMEL 1

As a future teacher, and a graduate student, I found the experience of working as an ESL

teacher in a workplace English program to be invaluable because not only was I allowed to

practice what I’ve been learning throughout my coursework, but it allowed me to ask questions

about the teaching process that I had not yet been exposed to. Additionally, it allowed me to

build upon my experience of teaching adult education; while living in Ohio, I was a volunteer

ESL teacher to adults who were visiting scholars, refugees and spouses to individuals who had

moved to pursue a degree internationally. Although I had these experiences, there were crucial

steps in the teaching process that I had never thought of nor planned for prior to this internship.

With the help of my internship supervisor and a colleague, who was teaching another

section of the course, we set goals and objectives for our students. Since our students were

faculty of Colorado State University, i.e. kitchen workers or maintenance, the goals and

objectives had to align with what the requirements of their supervisors; workplace related

vocabulary, daily conversational norms and health and emergency. In order to reach these goals,

we then created weekly topics and daily lesson plans so that our students were learning and

practicing the appropriate language and subsequent skills. Since my previous experiences

teaching were more informal, these were steps in the teaching practice that I had never

implemented.

In order to implement these plans, we had to consider the students’ needs. Because these

students had come from varying educational backgrounds, some who were not literate in their

L1s to students who had PhD’s from their home countries, special considerations had to be taken

during class activities. As to facilitate their needs, students with similar proficiencies would often

be paired together during class time. This would then allow low-leveled students to be

challenged because of the task at hand, while higher-leveled students could be challenged by

REFLECTION: ESP WORKPLACE ENGLISH HAMEL 2

being provided with extra steps within the activity. This strategic pairing provided the

opportunity for the whole class to be pushed to their own learning goals.

Once I began learning how to cater to varying educational backgrounds, a new challenge

regarding students’ needs presented itself: fossilization. Some students had been in the

workplace program for a couple of years and still continued to make similar mistakes; because

my supervisor had had these students for many years, she was able to inform both myself and my

colleague when trouble areas and topics came along. After collaborating with them, we were able

to determine that the use of total physical response (TPR) might reduce the fossilized tendencies.

TPR was integrated when difficult pronunciations occurred, by having students use their fingers

to point to their mouths to emphasize when sounds need to be exaggerated. Another way TPR

was used occurred during question formation; once again students would use their hands and

fingers in movement when the subject/verb inversion occurred during question formation.

Although it’s difficult to say whether or not fossilization was reduced in our students

permanently, it was observed that throughout the semester certain mistakes were lessened.

Students weren’t the only ones who were attempting to fix their mistakes, through

constant reflection with my colleagues, I was able to improve giving directions to students. After

each class, the three of us would meet and talk about what went well and didn’t go well in our

classes. Through my self-reflection during these discussions, it had been made apparent about

how confusing giving directions can be, whether it be the verbiage utilized or the pace at which

they are explained. With the intention of being clear as to what I wanted students to do, a

tendency occurred to then over-explain the directions and and thus confuse students more. By

being able to express my concerns, my colleagues provided advice to: write out directions

beforehand, predict where students might have questions and to speak slowly. Once I was able to

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implement their advice, I noticed that I spent less class time repeating directions that became

more and more confusing.

Even though the skill of giving directions isn’t up to perfection yet, it still was noticed

and improved upon because of this internship. Apart from this, for the first time, I was able to

work directly with professionals in the field to collaborate and improve upon my teaching

practices. From their advice, the integration of total physical response has enabled me to give my

students the tools to improve upon their English competencies.