R ELACIÓN CON OTRAS COMPETENCIAS INTELECTUALES

Simone first began to teach “through the back door because I joined the Peace Corps and my assignment was teaching EFL in a high school” (S1-04). She enjoyed that experience but did not immediately pursue it after returning from her Peace Corps tour. Like Cecilia, Simone entered the ESL field after several years in another field, after which she decided to focus on teaching. She began tutoring for a language services company and then started a master’s degree in ESL at a local university, to “get into it the official way” (S1-04). After completing her master’s degree, she started working at the university, and has been there for over twenty years.

Simone has traveled extensively and feels that being the outsider in so many situations has been an important influence on how she approaches teaching ESL to international students because “I know what it's like to not understand what's going on, or learning a language and living in a different place,” (S1-06) which motivates her to be empathetic and to make her classroom a comfortable place for students. For Simone, another important aspect of her career in teaching has been collaboration.

The greatest influences? I think the people I work with, you know, the teachers I had [as a master’s student] and I think this department, collaborating with people, observing people, and …talking about it, having the people around to talk about teaching, you know, and sometimes they are casual conversations, but just having that environment that is very supportive and people like to talk about what they are doing. (S1-06)

Simone’s collaborative approach resembles the approach described by Breen et al. (2001), in which teachers work in groups as well as individually and these collective actions can have a powerful effect on teacher cognition and practices.

6.1.1 Simone’s preferences and strengths

Although trying to learn about grammar almost made Simone quit the master’s program in her first semester, she now feels most confident teaching grammar and writing.

I've become more comfortable with other skills over the years but, and it's sort of funny because the first class I took in the master's program was [an intensive] grammar class, and I almost dropped out because it was way over my head... and another student and I were both- like, we can't do this- and [the professor] talked us out of the idea and we stuck it out. But now I feel like there... if there is something I don't understand about grammar I can figure it out, so I just, with experience, feel like I know it. And the same thing with writing- all the years of experience- I think I feel most comfortable. (S1-08) Her reflection on this initial discomfort with learning grammar in her non-corpus-based grammar course over twenty years ago might have been one reason why she recently audited a course on corpus linguistics. Knowledge she gained from that course provided her with strategies to use sources of grammar based on language use (e.g., Biber et al., 1999) to confirm or at times challenge her own intuitions, thereby building a stronger knowledge base built on real language use.

Simone initially preferred to teach more proficient students, but now feels comfortable teaching at all levels within the IEP. That change occurred gradually in recent years as she taught more lower-level classes, which she found more challenging because it requires developing strategies to connect to students whose language is so limited. She also found that student engagement was greater in the lower levels because in the higher levels “there's a big mix of students who… know enough that they get bored [so] it's harder to engage them, and I think more and more, with phones and technology, it's really challenging... how to attract them to your class, how to keep them engaged” (S1-10). This concern for student engagement, especially when competing with technology-based distractions, such as smart phones and social media, is a recurring issue for Simone.

The most engaging aspect of teaching for Simone is getting to know students and figuring out what motivates them and what makes them laugh. “I think that then you know you've really connected so I think that that's fun for me. Every day is a different day, you know? And a bad day... [Well, the] next day is going to be a good day, we hope. Variety of teaching, variety of students... yeah... never a dull moment” (S1-12). This echoes what Gatbonton (1999) identified as teachers’ “awareness of the need to make contact with and have good rapport with students” (p. 43).

Her self-identified strengths are her organizational skills and approach to those times when students are not as attentive in class as she would like. Though she struggles with how to best deal with the onslaught of personal technology in the classroom, she believes her sense of perspective and patience are strengths.

Sometimes I let them not be attentive- not in every case, but this semester is a good example. You know, I have three students who are constantly on their phone or at the computer and they also don't do their homework, so I'm like... okay, that's their choice- I'm not nagging them about putting their phone down... tolerance, I guess, I've developed some tolerance- and trying to choose the right place for it. (S1-18)

6.1.2 Simone’s beliefs and knowledge base

When reflecting upon her belief system as a teacher, Simone identified several issues as important. She feels that her experience as a language learner and her coursework as a master’s student have both played a role in her belief that her classroom should be a place where students feel comfortable. More so than either Cecilia or Lorraine, she sees collaboration with colleagues as essential. In building and evaluating her knowledge base, Simone relies heavily on

collaboration with other teachers; “even when I can [do] it myself, I often prefer to collaborate with somebody, and I feel like I get other ideas or I like talking about ideas with other people” (S1-32).

This collaborative approach plays an important role in how Simone incorporates new methods or tools in her class. For the present study, she asked that the teacher of the other section, Nancy, be involved in our corpus working session because they worked very effectively as a team and matched their lesson plans throughout the semester. She also saw students’

collaboration as an important part of her classroom and the learning process.

Simone’s most pressing needs as a teacher, as she identified them early in the study, are managing her own time, using effective materials in class, and establishing good student

relationships, all highly ranked by the respondents to survey presented in Chapter 4. These needs lead her to several additional processes during her teaching. She constantly assesses the time each activity or assignment will take, in preparation, during class, and when grading or providing written feedback to her students. She also finds she often needs to modify or create new

materials that supplement the textbook or, in some cases, replace sections of the textbook for individual lessons or even entire units. Finally, she works hard to develop positive, productive relationships with students, trying to build rapport and a sense of community by addressing each student’s motivation, engagement, and comprehension of the material.

6.1.3 Simone and L2 writing

Simone has extensive experience teaching L2 writing, and has worked during an

evolution of the IEP, with the curriculum shifting from an almost exclusively grammar-focused set of courses to academic content-based courses that emphasize the writing process almost to the exclusion of explicit grammar teaching. “I've been in this program when we didn't have a 'structure/composition' class- we just taught grammar and then we just sort of evolved to

teaching structure/composition where there is very little grammar taught” (S1-41). Based on her experience, Simone sees several important aspects of effective L2 writing classes within the

structure of her IEP. These aspects include providing targeted, understandable feedback, providing useful models of the writing assignments for students to examine and integrate into their own writing process, and having students write extensively.

She describes the way she teaches L2 writing as breaking it down into manageable tasks, and trying to get students to connect to their previous knowledge of writing in their first

language.

[I teach L2 writing by] taking it apart a little, piece by piece, like starting out with the organization and I also like to tell students to think about [how] the writing style in their own culture is probably not as linear as it is here, so I try to … present them with ‘this might be different than what you do in your own country, but in this American

environment, a five-paragraph essay or freshman comp kind of writing which is what we do is basically very linear’ and then show them how to organize it just by taking apart an essay, the topic sentence, thesis statement, and work on it piece by piece and then put it together. So, in this class, for example, the first thing [they wrote] didn't even have an introduction. You know, it's just like- let's look at the body paragraphs, and how are you going to support that, like examples, and then have a lot of examples for them to see how it was done. (S1-36)

One of Simone’s needs as a teacher is managing time, with one important element being how to find the time to provide useful feedback to student work. In considering her writing classes specifically, she explained that time plays a critical role in deciding how much writing she assigns and the kind of feedback she provides. “I know I would have students write more if I had more time to read it … sometimes they write and I don't collect it, or I have them look at it, but it would be better if they could write more and I could look at it, so more time” (S1-38).

6.1.4 Simone’s approach to new methodologies

Simone is open to new technology; she identifies herself as someone who is eager to try new technology once a few of her peers have started using it. This is in part connected to her collaborative nature as a teacher, as mentioned previously. Simone commented that “I think I react openly, like maybe it's a better way, or how could I do that? And, again, talking to other

teachers- I think that's where you can find other ideas or hear what somebody else is doing” (S1- 41).

Lam (2000) noted that many teachers have mixed feelings about the use of technology. Similarly, Simone also sees both positive and negative aspects to this, though she leans more towards seeing it as mostly positive. She sees her students as increasingly more connected to their mobile technology and social media, which at times distracts them from effective

engagement with the teacher and other students. For Simone, the great benefits of technology, however, are in word processing, the potential for corpus analysis by students, class management systems such as Blackboard or Moodle, and the effective use of the Internet. She sees great benefit in using the Internet judiciously in class, as a source of information for students, a tool for building lexical and grammar knowledge, and a potential source for useful models of writing.