Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Overview
The word ‘global’ has shifted the world on how to compete; it
also has a significant effect on education, especially on how teaching English
should be. Provisioning students with ‘perfect’ English brings a serious
concern for every teacher. Initially, teaching a language was identical as
teaching a separate subject but then it considered as an integral part of
learning. Thus, in a current curriculum, teaching a language and content are integrated;
this called as collaborative curriculum.
This notion brings the idea that everyday English or
spontaneous concept (Vygotsky’s definition) is not sufficient for students to
succeed in academic performance, as students need more exposure to scientific
concept. Thus, ESL integrated curriculum is designed to answer such problem. It
is an attempt to link between language teaching and content learning, to
accelerate language learning, and to give more opportunities learning a
specific term in the classroom setting.
In this curriculum, content and ESOL teachers collaborated in
organizing lesson plan and share responsibility in classroom teaching. Content
teacher conveys knowledge of the subject taught; whereas ESOL teacher transfers
language through content. This collaboration brings the idea of better teaching
as two teachers are designing material—classroom teaching is obviously
attractive and engaging.
List of Implication for further
teaching
ESL integrated curriculum gives me the idea of integrating
content and language instructions in one go. One of the implications is
teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in higher education or for adult
learners.
Response
Novice Teachers do not receive
professional development
Concerning to what we have been discussing, ESL integrated
curriculum requires novice teachers to be professionally developed—they must
join some trainings to understand comprehensively what ESL integrated
curriculum is, unless it will not run well.
In the reality, my ESP teaching runs well in terms of
exposing students with academic related vocabularies, but there are still many
problems encountered in regards to the application of this idea such as
teachers’ proficiency in teaching the content of subject.
Two different teachers
I believe that two heads are always better than one, but this
is not the case when two different teachers with gap in teaching style,
schedule, and personality have to be collaborated, this notion would lead to
ineffective teaching.
Lack of content-knowledge
and language mastery
The school condition in non-speaking English country:
Content teachers need to master English professionally in
order to be able to teach subject or core course through a language; while ESOL
teachers must be professional in conveying English through content because they
are an English expert by profession.
Question
Who is the best practitioner to teach English in
ESL integrated curriculum, a content teacher or a language teacher?