TESL Certificate Program
The Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) certificate is for students who want to teach English as a second language overseas or in the US.
TSL3360
Intro to TESL
In Intro to TESL, I had to create a language learning task, create both TBLT (Task Based Language Teaching) or PPP (Presentation, Practice, and Production) lesson plans, participate in an ESL (English as a Second Language) interaction, participate in a classroom observation, and perform a teaching demonstration. "Do you want to hang out?" A Lesson Plan in Making Plans was the title of our TBLT lesson for our teaching demonstration. The other students in the class had to role play as English language learners. We taught the class for 30 minutes and utilized materials such as worksheets and presentations that we had created ourselves.
LIN4721
Second Language Acquisition
My L2 Buddy (Jason)
The set of six drawings used for the narrative transcripts (third section)
A huge part of this class was dedicated to the L2 Buddy project. In this research project you work with a person who speaks English as a second language. This is your L2 buddy. The L2 Buddy Project consisted of six sections.The first section was the L1 Information Sheet. In this part of the project, I researched and asked my L2 Buddy questions about his native language (Korean). These questions focused on sounds, orthography, rhythm, stress, morphology, verb forms, grammar, vocabulary, and differences between Korean and English. In the second section, I interviewed my L2 buddy and transcribed this interview. These questions revolved around how he learned and acquired English as a second language. In the third section, I gave my L2 buddy a set of six drawings that illustrated a story. I then asked my L2 buddy to provide an oral narrative to explain what is happening in those drawings. I then asked him to provide a written narrative. I transcribed both of these narratives. In the next section, I analyzed my L2 buddy's written narrative transcript in order to understand and investigate the nature of his interlanguage. In the fifth section, I analyzed and collected data from my L2 buddy's narrative transcripts. This data allowed me to understand the complexity of his speech and writing. Finally, I reflected on what I had learned and experienced throughout this project.
LIN3680
Modern English Structure
In Modern English Structure, my group and I performed a teaching demonstration where we discussed and explained the grammar of spatial prepositions. Since COVID-19 was happening at the time, we had to perform our demonstration online via zoom. We created and utilized presentations and worksheets throughout the lesson. Our presentation used gifs and videos which was visually engaging and demonstrated the different spatial prepositions effectively. Because our theme revolved around pets, we had an enjoyable teaching experience while also continuously capturing the student's attention.
TSL 3378
Pronunciation TESL
This course is for future English teachers and it discusses phonetics and development of pronunciation in second language acquisition of English. We also learn current pedagogy and language instruction. We discussed the difference between accent and native-like pronunciation and we discussed if this difference was important at all. We learned about phonetics and which sounds were difficult for English language learners to develop. We learned how to teach and discuss consonants and vowels, the adjustments we make in rapid speaking, and prominence and intonation.
For this course, I had to create a PowerPoint with accompanying audio that provided a learner friendly explanation fo the allophone flap /t/.
I also had to create a script for a verbal explanation of teh vowel contrast /ʊ/ vs. /uw/. I had to adjust my explanation accordingly depending on my target class. I also provided some visuals and examples of this vowel contrast.
Throughout this course, I met with a tutee for 6 one hour meetings. My tutee was a UF visiting scholar from Instanbul, Turkey. I had to identify 2-3 listening foci and I would prepare multiple lessons that would improve my tutee's English pronunciation.
I also created a set of lesson plans and a voicethread for 2 days of class time based on the material that I have learned throughout this semester.