Chapter 2: Lesson Planning and Classroom Management

I really liked reading about these two topics because classroom management can be intimidating and lesson planning in a TESOL class is a bit foreign to me (no pun intended).  For lesson planning, Harmer has set elements in a lesson plan.  On page 27 they are listed as the description of the class, recent work, objectives, contents, and additional possibilities.  I don't really think anything is left out here.  The objectives part is something I think should be emphasized because a teacher could create a very engaging lesson that students will enjoy just because it's engaging, grabs their attention, or fun for them.  However, with this, the lesson can be lost and overlooked by students because the objective of the lesson, what they were intended to get out of it, wasn't emphasized.  The description of the class was interesting to me but not new.  I really liked how it was described as adapting, in the case where a lesson was already planned, because it goes along the lines of how to be creative and make something personal; your own.  I am not someone who enjoys planning out things too ahead of time, but from reading this I realize how important planning is in creating an effective lesson for students; one where they will leave the lesson with the intended objective.  The three classroom management aspects pointed out, motivation, constraints, and teacher's role, were also helpful.  I haven't read about it being broken down into those three aspects before but the descriptions for each really clicked.  The effective use of these strategies will help students "make the most of the opportunities for learning and practicing language" (28).  I hope I can do this in my future classroom.

Who Speaks English Today?

I thought this article was especially interesting and grabbed my attention because of my previous knowledge on the subject.  Having taken a TESOL class with Dr. Seloni before, some of this information was not brand new.  So, gaining more in depth knowledge on the ENL, ESL, and EFL was helpful in my understanding.  Also, I enjoyed hearing more about pidgins and creoles because I learned basic definitions in previous English classes and was very interested in learning more.  I really liked reading about McArtheu's six proviso's about what's wrong with categorizing English speakers into only three groups.  Each one was very descriptive and I felt that nothing was really left out or left me with questions.  The two that I definitely couldn't agree more on are the first two; how, "ENL is not a single variety of English, but differs markedly from one territory to another, and even from one region with a given territory to another.  In addition, the version of ENglish accepted as 'standard' differs from one ENL territory to another," and the second, which describes how, "Pidgins and creoles do not fit neatly into any one of the three categories."  These two points are sort of obvious in my opinion, and are the two biggest problems with the three categories of English speakers.  The one that I wasn't quite aware of was number six, which was about the separation between native and non-native speakers of English by those who were born and raised learning the language and those who learned it through their education.  This continues on to describe how native speakers are considered (and apparently always have been) superior, somehow "better" simply because they learned from birth and their home, but has nothing to do with quality, which baffles me.  The intranational purpose for English would be offensive to me if I were in the Netherlands or Scandinavians, etc. shoes because language is so SO much more than just words; it's culture, how we communicate and have understanding with another person, show emotion, describe things, and many other things.  It kind of makes me wonder, what is so great about English that these people are almost changing their country's native language?  I feel like it's so much more, which we know; politics, social status, and the list goes on.