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UNIVERSIDAD TÉCNICA PARTICULAR DE LOJA

La Universidad Católica de Loja

NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

MAESTRIA EN ENSEÑANZA DEL INGLÉS COMO LENGUA

EXTRANJERA

An EFL Student Case Study - TEFL Program Portfolio

Degree thesis

Author:

Cueva Espinoza, María Paulina Advisor:

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Alba Bitalina Vargas Saritama

THESIS ADVISOR

CERTIFIES THAT:

The following research work developed by María Paulina Cueva Espinoza has been thoroughly revised. Therefore, authorizes the presentation of the thesis, which complies with all the norms and internal requirements of the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja. Consequently, I authorize this presentation for the corresponding legal purposes.

Loja, September 2012.

………

MGS. Alba BitalinaVargas Saritama

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AUTHORSHIP

The thoughts, ideas, opinions and the information obtained through this research are the only responsibility of the author.

September, 2012

……….

María Paulina Cueva Espinoza 0102359965

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CESIÓN DE DERECHOS

Yo María Paulina Cueva Espinoza, declaro ser autora del presente trabajo y eximo expresamente a la universidad Técnica Particular de Loja y a sus representantes legales de posibles reclamos y acciones legales.

Adicionalmente declaro conocer y aceptar la disposición del Art.67 del estatuto Orgánico de la Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja que en su parte pertinente textualmente dice: “Forman parte del patrimonio de la Universidad la propiedad intelectual de investigaciones, trabajos científicos o técnicos y tesis de grado que se realicen a través o con el apoyo financiero, académico o institucional (operativo) de la Universidad”.

Loja, septiembre de 2012

………..

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CONTENTS

CERTIFICATION ………..II AUTHORSHIP………...III CESION DE DERECHOS………...IV ABSTRACT………...Vl

INTRODUCTION………...2

METHOD………...5

LITERATURE REVIEW: THE IMPORTANCE OF READING AND WRITING IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING………7

THE TESOL/NECATE STANDARDS ……….22

CHAPTER I: EFL STUDENT CASE OF STUDY 1.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDENT AND SETTING……….28

1.2 PRE-TEST……….30

1.3 POST-TEST ……….32

1.4 SAMPLES OF THE STUDENT WORK………36

1.5 STUDENT SELF-EVALUATION………55

CHAPTER II: TEFL PROGRAM PORFOLIO 2.1 DOMAIN 1: LANGUAGE………58

2.2 DOMAIN 2: CULTURE………...87

2.3 DOMAIN 3: PLANNING, IMPLEMENTING AND MANAGING INSTRUCTION………...92

2.4DOMAIN 4 ASSESMENT: ...………....122

2.5DOMAIN 5 PROFESSIONALISM ………...135

CONCLUSIONS ……….140

RECOMMENDATIONS ………..142

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ABSTRACT

This thesis presents the results gotten in the EFL Student Case Study and the EFL Program Portfolio, in order to improve the reading and writing skills on one student and to validate the knowledge and the strengths of the student by applying the TESOL/NCATE standards to the work done at the educational research.

The EFL Student Case study was based on a course given to a group of pre-intermediate students. However, the work of one student was documented through the course, to look over his progress. Furthermore, at the TEFL Program Portfolio, the TESOL/NCATE standards applied to a sample of the teacher´s work to write a reflection on how this work meets one particular standard.

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INTRODUCTION

This thesis is based on the work done with a group of students to increase their reading and writing abilities and with the use of the TESOL/NCATE standards to find how the assignments done through the TEFL Master Program meet them. This work has two chapters; the first one includes an EFL Student Case Study which is about a course given to a group of pre-intermediate of thirteen and fourteen year old students, to improve their reading and writing skills. The reason why these skills were chosen was because these skills are connected to each other somehow, and the teacher considers a good exercise to improve students writing skills by working on their reading skills at the same time as a part of the process. The EFL Student Case Study documents the improvement of one student during the whole course. The second chapter contains the TFL Program Portfolio. It is based on the TESOL/NCATE Standards and illustrates a sample of assignments done out the Master Program which reflects how the assignments meet the standards.

The Master program in Teaching English as second language was an enormous opportunity of development and self-growing for the students who were involved at the program. Moreover the EFL Students Case Study and the TEFL Program Portfolio are examples of the work and knowledge that the master students have acquired during these two years of study. Each course ended with an assignment project that let students the chance to apply what they have learned at the course and to verify the strengths of the students while they present samples of work as teachers of their own students.

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important to develop these skills on his students. As resource for this study the teacher worked with his own students, what helped him in the development of the reading and writing skills to a group of students he already knew, which makes it easier to identify their strengths and weakness and to work individually with each student helping them to develop these skills, the teacher also worked with their own text book making an adaptation for them to focus just on reading and writing. For TFL Program Portfolio the teacher worked with a sample of his own work as resources facilitating the process of matching this work with the TESOL/NCATE standards.

There were some limitations for this work like finding a student who was willing to accept to be part of this research, because they feel scared and shy to be evaluated by the teacher and probably other people. Also finding the correct activities to work with the students to improve their reading and writing skills, trying to use their text book was a challenge for the teacher because the text book is focus on the four skills of the language. Another limitation for this work was the time; it results difficult to reach a high level of improvement with just eight weeks of work with the students.

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The Program Portfolio was created to document the teacher´s work including instructional material, work samples and assessments. The main objective of this portfolio was accomplish because it summarize knowledge and understanding gain at the Master’s Program and how this knowledge will be incorporated into future teaching experiences. With this portfolio the teacher demonstrated management of the learning process.

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METHOD

This qualitative study presents findings of a EFL Student Case Study and the progress of a student of a TEFL Master Program which were held in Cuenca, Ecuador. Qualitative research reports by design are descriptive, holistic and based on reality, thus it seeks to capture perceptions and experiences observed during the period of the research.

In the EFL Student Case Study, the sample includes the set of artifacts of a 13 year old boy who is studying the 9th grade at a particular, private school, taken over an eight-week period of English lessons in order to improve his English reading and writing skills. The first step of the course was to take a Pre - test that consisted in to read to two profiles of people and answer a questionnaire about it. Then the student had to create his own profile following the examples he read before.

With a clear idea of the level of development of the reading and writing skills of the student the course begun, applying different methodologies and strategies to document samples of the student work that included readings, questionnaires, brainstorming techniques, writing exercises, grammar exercises, short essays writing exercise and summaries of readings. At the end of the course a post-test was taken to appreciate the improvement of the student after these eight weeks of English lessons. The post-test consisted on a biography reading and a questionnaire, the student needed to answer.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

THE IMPORTANCE OF READING AND WRITING IN SECOND

LANGUAGE LEARNING

The reading and writing skills are connected because these skills need to be taught together, in fact when kids learn to write they need to learn who to read in first place. Moreover, kids learn to listen and to speak by themselves, but they usually need formal education to develop reading and writing skills. Being able to read and write, makes people literate which means that people have access to a literacy society, where most people are able to have formal education with this education the possibility to become a professional at the field they choose.

Moreover, reading and writing in second language learning are two important skills that have to be learned together. It is impossible to separate them because when students learn to write in a second language, they need to learn to read first. Also as more as they read they are developing their writing skills without noticing. Therefore, for most beginners and intermediates students it is easier to develop their reading skills before developing their writing skills of the language.

Developing Reading Skills

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and a large number of the students use their first language to translate every word they read, making the process of understanding the context of the text more complicated.

Additionally, Iwai (2010) points out the challenging issues that English learners experience when they are reading: The first issue he points out is: Culturally Different Schemata, in other words, background knowledge. The English learners come from different cultures and most of the time they do not have enough information about the new culture to understand the readings. For example: if students do not know about the Thanksgiving Day celebration it is hard for them to understand the meaning of the topic. A suggestion for the teacher is to develop a cultural sensitivity for student’s cultural background, understand cultural differences and respect them. Iwai (2010) suggests that teachers have to understand that students have difficulties in the process of learning English because they have a different language construction in their own language.

The second issue he points out is the Limited Vocabulary Knowledge. This is a challenging issue for the students because they do not know all the words and most of them do not have enough vocabulary to understand every word in the passage. On the other hand, many words in English have different meanings and this confuses students because they do not consider the meaning in the context of the text. To deal with this issue, teachers have to encourage bi-literacy in their students, in other words, to be able to read and write in both languages. The author also claims that looking for the meaning of every word in the dictionary is not a bad activity for the students in the process of learning, because, this way they develop bi-literacy .

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try to guess the meaning of the words from the context without translating every word, which will help the students to understand the context and the real meaning of the text.

According to Carrell and Grabe (2002) the interest on second language reading has increased in the last 15 years because many reasons like the recognition that the reading abilities are the base for academic learning and L2 reading is the way that students can learn on their own, another reason will be the interest on new ways of communication in a globalized world that is connected through global media, and where the most part of the information is written, so we need to find ways to understand this information to stay connected with the world we live in.

Reading is a complex cognitive process where the learner has to recognize symbols and to convert them in to meaning; this is what is called reading comprehension. The reading process requires continuous practice and development. Reading in a second language can result difficult for the learners because they do not have the same cultural and social knowledge as they have in their first language, so they are working with cognitive resources and processing that involve two different languages. Which suggest that second language reading learners may employ cognitive resources differently from what they do on their first language especially when they noticed clear differences for example: the mapping of sounds and orthographic forms (Carrell and Grabe, 2002). Also there are some other differences between reading in a second language and reading in the first language that may complicate the process of learning to read in a second language:

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Teaching Reading

There are hundreds of varieties of writing texts and each one has its own rules that characterize a particular genre. Teachers need to teach how to recognize each genre and help students to develop strategies for extracting necessary meaning from each Brown (2001). For example: Novels, short stories, Letters, Greeting Cards, Memos, Messages, Newspapers, Forms, Applications, Directions, Recipes, Bills, Menus, Advertisement, etc.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension according to Brown (2001):

1. Identify the purpose of the reading: Efficient reading consist in to identify clearly the purpose of the reading. Teaching this strategy means to teach students to identify the real purpose of the reading.

2. Use graphemic rules to aid in bottom-up decoding: One of the most difficult parts of learning to read is to make the difference between spoken and writing English, so teachers need to help students to recognize short vowels, long vowels, hard c and g from soft c and g.

3. Use efficient silent reading techniques for relatively paid comprehension: This strategy works better with intermediate or advance level of students. It is important to teach them some silent reading rules to speed their reading abilities.

4. Skim the text for main ideas: This is one of the most valuable strategies when reading because it is the learners the ability of predict the purpose of the text without reading the entire text.

5. Scan the text for specific information: The purpose of this strategy is to look for important information to understand the text.

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7. Guess when you aren´t certain: The reader can guess the meaning of a word for the context; guess a grammatical relationship, a discourse relationship, a cultural reference, and content messages.

8. Analyze Vocabulary: This technique consists in to analyze a unknown word with things we probably know for example: look for prefixes, suffixes that indicate the part of speech, look for roots that are familiar or grammatical contexts.

Types of Classroom Reading Performance

According to Brown (2001), there are a variety of language performances in the language classroom to expose students to written texts.

- Oral Silent Reading: This type of reading could be done with beginners and intermediate levels to check the student’s pronunciation, to increase class participation.

- Intensive and Extensive Reading: This is a classroom-oriented activity where students are focused on the linguistic part on the text. Intensive reading calls the students attention for the meaning of the words, grammatical rules, discourse markers, and other surface structure details. The purpose of this kind of reading is to understand the literal meaning of the text. While the extensive reading purpose is to achieve a general understanding of usually something longer like a book and essay or a long article.

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skimming), reading for specific information (often called scanning) and reading for detail comprehension (Harmer, 2009).

Teaching students extensive reading is very important to develop word recognition skills, but it is also important to have a plan with the appropriate materials, guidance, tasks and facilities for the students. Therefore, the materials have to be easy to understand for the proficiency level of the students, and they can enjoy their reading. Moreover, it is true that not all the students like to read by themselves, in this case teacher have to motivate them explaining them the benefits they would get by becoming an extensive reader.

Another fact that is true is that not all the students like to read about the same topics, so teachers need to give them the opportunity to choose sometimes the texts they want to read according their interests, or if this is not possible the teacher can give different options to the students to choose from and when the reading is mandatory the teacher needs to find different topics for every time.

Furthermore, in order to motivate our students to read in class, and to be fruitful on their way, the role of the teacher has a great importance, the teacher needs to create the appropriate environment by choosing interesting topic and tasks, that really call the student´s attention, however there are some other important roles that the teacher needs to accomplish to succeed in the process of teaching reading skills to his or her students (Harmer, 2009):

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- Observer: When the teacher asks students to read by themselves, he or she really needs to give them, the time to do it without interrupting to give them special information or directions. At this time the teacher has to observe how students are working on this task, to look and be a guide if someone has difficulties or they need extra time.

- Feedback organizer: When students have finished their task, the teacher has to organize the feedback to check reading comprehension. A good way to do this is to organize the class in pairs and they share their answers, students usually like this activity because they feel less intimidated by sharing their answers with one classmate instead of the whole class. At this point the teacher needs to be supportive in case he or she needs to give any negative feedback.

- Prompter: When students have a reading text, teachers can direct them to noticed for special features, specific grammatical forms, or specific vocabulary words if is needed to strengthen what they are learning.

Intensive Reading: the vocabulary question

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- Time limit: It should be a limit of time dedicated to explain the meaning of every word students do not understand of the text.

- Word/phrase limit: Teachers can say that they will only answer and exact number of questions related to the meaning of some words and phrases. - Meaning consensus: Teachers can arrange the class in pairs or groups where

each student can have a list of the words he or she did not understand about the text and share it with the pair or a group and together find answers for the other words.

Intensive reading: Letting the students in

When teachers ask students to read a specific text and them complete activities following a course book, the teacher do not really know the students thoughts about the text, they are just completing the activities at the course book, what is fine, but it is important that the teacher uses a variety of activities and techniques besides the course book to check each student progress and understanding (Harmer, 2009). A good way to do this is to ask students what they think about the text, what are their feelings about the text and if they like the text, another way to let the students in is to give them the opportunity to create their comprehension tasks by creating charts or maps to organize their ideas. Furthermore, working with these activities will give students the chance to be more interest in the text than just completing the post reading activities at the course book.

Reading lesson sequences

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and details on the text, or just reading for communicative purposes to identify specific purposes of the language. Most reading sequences involve more than one reading skill. Usually teachers start for asking students to read to comprehend the general purpose of the text and then they can read for a detail comprehension Harmer (2009).

Developing Writing Skills

In the past someone that was literate was a person who knew how to read and write, now days a person who is a literate is a person who has more knowledge than read and write, now days it is possible to talk about different levels of literacy according the people instruction to performance different tasks or roles, for example these days it is possible to judge the level of literacy of someone by evaluating his or her technology skills, furthermore, when taking about second language writing the teacher has to decide what level of literacy he or she expects from the students (Harmer, 2009).

In fact, the process of writing needs to be taught. This skill cannot be learned without instruction as other skills such as walking or talking, learning to write means that we are part of a literacy society. This kind of view suggests that the process of learning to write in a second language is the collection of grammatical rules and formal texts. Obviously the writing process cannot be seen just like this. It is true that the learners need to have clear the structure of the language and the grammatical rules but they will also need that the grammatical structures are connected with meaning to be learned. Students need to find a purpose on the structures and the rules they are learning.

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thinking process that requires other skills that not all the speakers develop without any instruction. Moreover, writing pedagogy focuses students on how to generate ideas, how to organize them and put them in to a writing, revise the text and to produce a final product (Brown, 2001). Many years ago teachers only focus on the final product of writing, they checked the structure, the grammatical rules and they checked if the final product met some establish standards; while teachers these days still focus on those things but they also let students to be focus on the content, the message and their own motivations to write.

Teachers these days are sure that the process of writing has more importance than the final product, which helps students to understand their own composition process, also help them to build strategies like prewriting, drafting and rewriting, gives students time to write their ideas and rewrite them and place the central attention on the process of revision giving students feedback during the process, not after. This point of view has to be seen in a perspective of balance between process and product (Brown,2001). The product is the last goal of the course while the process involves all of the other learning goals.

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On the other hand, the recognition of the importance of the process of L2 writing as the process of thinking and composing, gives the teacher the role of facilitator for his or her students. As a facilitator the teacher offers guidance and help for the learners on the process of organize their ideas and compose a writing text, giving them continuous feedback. As a facilitator the teacher offers respect for the students ideas, values and beliefs and he or she does not try to impose his or her ideas for the students writing, they feel free to write what the y want, even if the topic is impose by the teacher, students have the right to say what they feel and what they think about it.

The teacher also need to be a motivator, to motive and encourage students to start writing by creating the appropriate conditions to for the generation of ideas, and persuading them to realize the usefulness of the activity. Further mote during the writing process, specially the more extended writing task the teacher needs to be a resource for the students, to supply information about the language at any time that is needed, to be there for them to check their work and offer advice and suggestions to it, and finally the teacher needs to be a feedback provider, responding positively to encourage the content of what students have written Harmer (2009).

Approaches to Student Writing

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Furthermore, If teachers are concentrate on the product they are interested on the final draft of the student´s writing, but if the teachers are focused on the process they are interested on the whole process where students develop their writing strategies with the guide of the teacher, and the teacher is able to check the language use, to check punctuation, spelling, selecting the best ideas for making the conclusion. One disadvantage of having students concentrate on the process is that it takes a long time to develop all the strategies of writing and sometimes they need to learn how to write in faster way. It is hard to say which one of the techniques is better because this will depend on the objectives that the teachers have designed for the course, and off course bought techniques have to teach the process of writing to be successful at the end.

On the other hand, when teachers concentrate on genre, teachers need to expose their students to the kind of text they want their students learn to write for example; if the teacher want that his or her students learn how to write a movie review, they have to study movies reviews and to make an analysis of how these reviews are structured to follow the rules, the grammatical structures, and the use of language. This genre approach is more appropriate for students of English as Specific Purposes, but it is also use for general English Harmer (2009).

Types of Written Language

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Novels, Short stories, Letters, Greeting Cards, Memos, Messages, Newspapers, Forms, Applications, Directions, Recipes, Bills, Menus, Advertisement, etc.

Furthermore, it would be interesting for teachers to try to find examples of each type of written language, to show their students and find out what kind of written language texts they are able to produce by themselves.

Characteristics of Written Language

- Permanence: The student is entitling to revise his or her work, and to make as many corrections as he or she wants before turning the final draft in. But students usually do not do this corrections and teachers need to guide them on the process of writing is to revise and refine their work before the final submission.

- Production Time: Many educational contexts require limited times when students are writing and if they spend a long time in the process, they will probably have problems at the end. In this case teachers need to guide their students to deal with this time issues and to be prepare when they work under this situations.

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- Orthography: Teachers sometimes think that their students know the enough amount of the new language, and they will be ready to start the process of writing, it is important to stop and think about the students native language which, would play an important role in the process of writing, for example: if the native language does not use the alphabet it would be harder for these students to write because they need to learn the alphabet first, or if the native language has a different phoneme-grapheme system also the writing process will be harder on the students.

- Complexity: For most students the writing process in a second language can result very complex, because they need to adapt their thinking on their native language to think in the new language. They need to learn how sentences go together, how to avoid redundancy, and go they can use some structures that are different form their native language.

- Vocabulary: The writing process is main focus on vocabulary and good writers will learn how to use the richness of English Vocabulary.

- Formality: No matter if students are writing a few sentences, a short paragraph or an essay the rules for each one must be followed to teach them the correct way of writing.

Types of Classroom Writing Performance

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- Imitative or writing down: At the beginner level of English writing learners they just write down English words and sentences trying to learn the structure of the new language.

- Intensive and controlled: The intensive writing often occurs in controlled grammar exercises, this kind of writing does not allow any creativity from the students part. A common form of controlled writing is to give students a paragraph and ask them to change the tense. For example, if the paragraph is in simple present, students would have to rewrite it using the past simple form of the verb.

- Self-writing: Most of the writing students to inside the classroom go in to this category where the audience are themselves, for example they can write about a famous celebrity, or they can listen to a story told by the teacher, take some notes and write their thoughts. Also a journal about their personal life would go under this category.

- Display writing: For language students all short ans wers exercises, essay examinations, and research reports will have an element of display.

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Evaluating Student Writing

The evaluation of writing can result really hard for most teachers especially when the writing is oriented on the process, because with this approach; the role of the teacher is to be a guide or a facilitator for the student writing learning process and at the same time the teacher has to judge the student work. According to Brown (2001)there are six general categories that are often the basis for the evaluation of student writing:

a) Content: Thesis statement, related ideas, development of ideas through personal experience, use of description, cause/effect, comparison/contrast, consistent focus.

b) Organization: Effectiveness on introduction, logical sequence of ideas, conclusion, appropriate length.

c) Discourse: Topic sentences, Paragraph unity, transitions, discourse markers, cohesion, rhetorical conventions, reference, fluency, economy, variation.

d) Syntax e) Vocabulary

f) Mechanics: Spelling, punctuation, citation of references, neatness and appearance.

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Moreover, the most important thing regarding evaluation is to make students understand that the comments of the teacher and the grade they get for their work is a feedback that will make them improve their writing the next time, while they develop fluency in the new language. Also evaluation will be seen as an opportunity to continue developing their writing skills.

THE TESOL/NCATE STANDARDS

The TESOL/NECATE standards were developed for the recognition of TESOL programs in P-12 ESL teacher education. Many states in the US have adopted these standards to guide their teacher education programs. The standards were created according to the need of having professionals in charge for the education of students with different linguistically and culturally background and many of them do not speak or speak very little of English. The number of students who are learning English as second language has grown enormously in the last decade and the application to these standards to the teacher development guarantee the learning process and the results of the students.

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implementing and managing the instruction, the Assessment and the Professionalism to teach.

Domain 1. Language

Candidates know, understand, and use the major theories and research related to the structure and acquisition of language to help English language learners’ (ELLs’) develop language and literacy and achieve in the content areas.

Issues of language structure and language acquisition development are interrelated. The divisions of the standards into 1.a. language as a system, and 1.b. language acquisition and development do not prescribe an order.

Standard 1.a. Language as a System

Candidates demonstrate understanding of language as a system, including phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics and semantics, and support ELLs as they acquire English language and literacy in order to achieve in the content areas.

Standard 1.b. Language Acquisition and Development

Candidates understand and apply theories and research in language acquisition and development to support their ELLs’ English language and literacy learning and contentarea achievement.

Domain 2. Culture

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supportive learning environments for ELLs.

Standard 2. Culture as It Affects Student Learning

Candidates know, understand, and use major theories and research related to the nature and role of culture in their instruction. They demonstrate understanding of how cultural groups and individual cultural identities affect language learning and school achievement.

Domain 3. Planning, Implementing, and Managing Instruction

Candidates know, understand, and use evidencebased practices and strategies related to planning, implementing, and managing standardsbased ESL and content instruction. Candidates are knowledgeable about program models and skilled in teaching strategies for developing and integrating language skills. They integrate technology as well as choose and adapt classroom resources appropriate for their ELLs.

Standard 3.a. Planning for Standards‐‐‐‐Based ESL and Content Instruction

Candidates know, understand, and apply concepts, research, and best practices to plan classroom instruction in a supportive learning environment for ELLs. They plan for multilevel classrooms with learners from diverse backgrounds using standardsbased ESL and content curriculum.

Standard 3.b. Implementing and Managing Standards‐‐‐‐Based ESL and Content Instruction

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speaking, reading, and writing. Candidates support ELLs’ access to the core curriculum by teaching language through academic content.

Standard 3.c. Using Resources and Technology Effectively in ESL and Content Instruction

Candidates are familiar with a wide range of standardsbased materials, resources, and technologies, and choose, adapt, and use them in effective ESL and content teaching.

Domain 4. Assessment

Candidates demonstrate understanding of issues and concepts of assessment and use standardsbased procedures with ELLs.

Standard 4.a. Issues of Assessment for English Language Learners

Candidates demonstrate understanding of various assessment issues as they affect ELLs, such as accountability, bias, special education testing, language proficiency, and accommodations in formal testing situations.

Standard 4.b. Language Proficiency Assessment

Candidates know and can use a variety of standardsbased language proficiency instruments to show language growth and to inform their instruction. They demonstrate understanding of their uses for identification, placement, and reclassification of ELLs.

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and techniques to inform instruction for in the classroom.

Domain 5. Professionalism

Candidates keep current with new instructional techniques, research results, advances in the ESL field, and education policy issues and demonstrate knowledge of the history of ESL teaching. They use such information to reflect on and improve their instruction and assessment practices. Candidates work collaboratively with school staff and the community to improve the learning environment, provide support, and advocate for ELLs and their families.

Standard 5.a. ESL Research and History

Candidates demonstrate knowledge of history, research, educational public policy, and current practice in the field of ESL teaching and apply this knowledge to inform teaching and learning.

Standard 5.b. Professional Development, Partnerships, and Advocacy

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CHAPTER I

EFL STUDENT CASE STUDY

1.1Description of Student and Setting

This student case study consists of student work samples taken over an eight-week period. The general setting is taken from a private small school in Cuenca -Ecuador. The student is a 13 years old boy, who is in 9th grade. Santana is a bilingual school that has elementary school, middle school and high school. One of the school´s goals is to have bilingual students by the time they graduate from high school. At the particular case of the student, he has been studying English as a second language for three years and this is his first year at Santana. He has not had English instruction since he was 4 or 5 five years old like it is the case of most of his classmates. He took over six years of German as a second language before starting to take English.

The English Language program at Santana has different levels for each year but also it has a lower and an advance level each year with two different teachers. For example: The student is a the pre-intermediate level, but also at the lower one (of the pre-intermediate level) which means that he is going to learn the same as the advance group but they go slower, so the teacher can make sure this group of students is learning, but at the same time they do what they can do.

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language at Santana. It is the first year for all of them in this school and they feel they are far behind their classmates at the English classes because at their old school they spoke German as a second language. However, for him it has not been too hard because the fact that he is learning a third language at this time, makes it easier the learning process and he is making a big effort to get better and better since he came to this school.

As a pre-intermediate level (Low) the student has 10 hours of English classes per week, two hours daily. At these classes he has Reading & Writing, Grammar and Listening & Speaking. These areas of the language are integrated and the course is designed to meet all of these skills with different activities for each one. Also the students have a textbook and a work book addressed to develop the four skills of the language. There are ten students in his level and even that this is his first year for him in Santana taking English classes he has showed a great interest and a great improvement since he got to this school, he is planning to study in United States for a year after he graduate from high school, so he knows that he needs to work hard to get a good level of English to be accepted at the program he is going to apply next year.

The English course that the student is taking is focus on the four skills of the language reading, writing, listening and speaking with a good amount on grammar, bur for this portfolio and for the following eight weeks of class I am concentrating on the development of reading and writing because I feel these skills are connected and it is impossible to have reading without a little of writing and have writing without a little of reading. This is the way that the course is designed.

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construct a simple paragraph and he still has some basic grammar errors, not enough vocabulary and misspellings.

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In order to determinate the level of the reading and writing skills, the teacher gave the class an exercise on February, 24th of 2012, where students had to read two profiles and answer some questions about them. Also they had a witting task where students were ask to write their personal profile of 80 to 100 words for an internet chat room and call this profiles “The Real Me”. The profile needed to have an introduction with name, hometown, age and brief information about school and family; they had to talk about their hobbies, interests and sports, as well as a brief description of their personality.

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At the writing part he did it very well, his profile was clear the structure was fine made some mistakes like repeating the word and to many times, he forgot to write old after describing his brothers ages, he misspell some words like the superlatives of older or the adjective brown. He definitely needs more vocabulary to describe his personality and his likes and dislikes. And he made an incorrect word choice. But overall the student shows that he has potential and with the good practice he will get better to comprehend and write about more topics in the future.

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Before taking the post-test students spend these weeks learning about the past simple and the past continuous. The teacher gave the class a short reading about a surfing super star in Hawaii on April, 13th of 2012. Before the reading the students had to look at the pictures an write what do they think the reading is about, after they read the text they had put in order the events at the text, answer some true and false questions, find the past simple forms of the verbs in the text and match the highlighted words in the text with definitions. Also students had to write a brief description of the life of a world champion they know. For this last point of the test students were ask to bring some ideas from home.

The student did it very well at the test he seems to comprehend the text and he answered the questions without any difficulty, he could not describe what this reading was about at just looking the pictures, but after he read it he understood the text and he did the activities he was asked to. At the reading part the student shows an improvement from the pre-test were the structures at the profiles were really simple and only use the present simple, at this time he can read and comprehend more difficult structures and it is clear that is vocabulary has been improve too.

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1.4 Samples of the Student Work

Artifact 1

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This exercise was applied on March, 12th of 2012 and it was part of the student’s workbook that students of 9th grade at pre-intermediate level (low) are following. The teacher thinks this exercises has a great importance at the time students improve their writing skills, because it is a practice of how to use articles that is something that most of my students struggle in my class. The teacher and the students spend a whole class talking about the use of articles when they are writing, and I encourage them to read a few chapters of a book of the school’s library to find examples of what we are talking and making exercises in class. The class was oriented on how to use (a) or (an), when to use the article (the), also the students learned which sentences need a definitive article (the) and which are generalizations.

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Artifact 2

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This artifact was applied on March, 17th of 2012 and it was taken from the text book that students of 9th grade at pre-intermediate level (low) are following. This is a reading task were students has to read a short text about Teenage Fashion at the UK , the text talk about different groups of teenagers how do they dress and ant the things that they like. The artifact begins with a vocabulary task related to the reading with the words that they have been learning trough the unit, were students had to complete a short text, with the words in the box, then they read the text and find some facts about the four groups of teenagers the text talks about and at the end they had a short writing task were they had to choose from two different prompts and write a short paragraph about (thirty words):

a) The clothes that you like to wear:

Why do lo like them? Do your friends wear similar clothes? What do your parents / teachers think of your clothes?

b) The clothes that a group of young people in your country likes to wear

Does the group have a name? Do the people judge them from the clothes they wear? What kind of music do they like?

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Artifact 3

Student´s Profile

This artifact was applied on March, 19th of 2012. For this artifact students have been working with a thematic unit called “The Real Me”, where they have learned how to create a profile of themselves including an introduction with name, hometown, age and brief information about school and family; they had to talk about their hobbies, interests and sports, as well as a brief description of their personality. They also have been learning about different groups of people, how they live, dress, what do they like. They have been asked to create their personal profile after reading many profiles of other people at the textbook, at home and the school library.

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were talking about. This task was very useful because encourage students to talk using English but at the same time they felt confident talking with one member of the class instead of talking in front of the whole class, it also helps to improve their writing skills by writing a personal profile of a person that in most of the cases they did not know.

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Artifact 4

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This artifact was applied on March, 22th of 2012. Since at the last artifact most students were having problems using the past simple tense and the past continuous tense, this is obviously not a reading or a writing sample but it shows the progress that the student is doing by learning how to use different verb tenses which will improve his writing skills.

The class worked two days, talking and making exercises about the past simple tense. Students learned how to recognize it, how to form it and also they were asked to memorize a list irregular verbs and learn how to form the past simple of them. For this task students were ask to write sentences with some verbs using the past tense of them using a positive form, a negative form, a question form with a positive and a negative answer for each one.

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Artifact 5

Natural Disasters

This artifact was applied on March, 27th of 2012. The teacher gave a class to the students, where they talk about natural disasters. The teacher encouraged students to talk about what they know about this topic. They were really motivated with the topic and they had an hour taking about it and making a poster about what they can do to avoid natural disasters. After this activity the teacher gave them a reading on the same topic and at the end of it they had to answer three questions.

1. Which of the advice in the reading do you follow? Which of the advice do you think is not very useful?

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3. What natural disasters can you think of? How can you prepare for them?

Before students were given the questions they were asked to organize their answers. The teacher taught them, how to use the brainstorm technique; and also taught them to organize their writing by writing one sentence for each response and a couple of supporting sentences to complete their answer.

At this time the student did not do a good job, his answers were not clear and they did not follow the techniques the teacher taught them before. By this time he should have known how to structure his answers. His first answer was not clear; it did not give any details about the advices to follow in case of a natural disaster, at the second question he did not give a complete answer and at this time he knows how to do it. And for the last question he did not give an answer. At the reading part he understood the text, but he just did do well completing the questions.

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Artifact 6

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book they wanted to read and I asked them to go home and read it. The teacher gave them a week to read the first three chapters of the book and write a short summary about each one.

Students were asked to find the characters of every chapter, write the summary including a little description of them and to look for a picture in a magazine that shows how they imagine the characters at the book. This task were a little hard for them because it was the first time they are reading a book and making a summary bur while the goal of this course is develop reading and writing skills, it is a good way to encourage students to read and write.

The student chose the book Love story by Erich Segal; it is short version of the book written for English Language learners. He did it very well, he understood the story, he liked the story and he completed the assignment without any difficulty. For the first summary he did a description of how the main characters of the story met a brief description of them. He could have written more, and he could have been more specific about what happen in this chapter of the book, but it is a good start, it is his first time reading a book and making a summary, and it was some improvement from his first writing assignments, the paragraph is short but it is structured, his vocabulary is getting a lot better and he is using articles correctly.

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At the third and the last summary, he named other characters of the story but he did not describe them; He described what happened between Oliver and Jenny. He also did a good job here. He made a couple of mistakes; he should have used the past simple instead of the present simple to talk about what happened in the story. But overall he did it very good at this summaries considering that it is his first time writing them and it is clear his writing improvement since we start this program a few weeks ago.

Artifact 7

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This artifact was done on April, 9th of 2012, for this artifact the teacher chose a reading text called “Bullied”, because this is a problem that many teenagers go through and they do not talk to anyone about it. And also it is a great opportunity to have an activity that improves the students reading and writing skills. Students were asked to read the text that is written in present simple with independent sentences so; the teacher took advance of this fact to talk to them about sentence structure and to encourage them to write sentences after the complete the activities after the reading.

After the reading students had to answer some questions about what they understood of the text, and also they had to write a short paragraph ans wering the question: Have you ever been bullied? Do you know someone who has? Explain.

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the teacher understood what he was trying to say but it is not very well structure, he needs to work at the punctuation marks, the paragraph needs to be more organized to be more clear, but he was using new vocabulary and he was using the past and the present simple.

At the part where they had to write sentences following the Subject +Verb+ Complement structure he did a great job.

Artifact 8

El Cajas

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As homework students were ask to do a little research about other nation parks specially the ones that are located in Ecuador and write a short paragraph describing the place. For this task students had to use the writing techniques they were studying in class.

At this homework the student chose El Cajas National Park, located a few kilometers from Cuenca-Ecuador, just where we live. He did an excellent work, finding interesting information and structuring his writing. He did not write an entire paragraph, he did it more like separately sentences about the topic, this is a good effort , because the sentences are very well structured, he uses very good vocabulary to describe this place, it is clear that he did some research, what helps him to improve his reading skills as well.

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The student´s self-evaluation shows that he feels he has improved his reading and writing abilities. He thinks that he is doing much better now than eight weeks ago and his work reflects that. In a scale of one to five at the writing skills, he writes he was 2 eight weeks ago, and he is 4 right now. This shows that he believes his writing skills are much better now, and he feels more confident when he writes. The same thing happened when he was asked about is reading skills, he said he was 3 eight weeks ago, and he is 4 right now, what also shows he noticed an improvement but not too much comparing to the writing skills.

He did not know any writing techniques before, but he is using some techniques now like the brain storm technique, he also writes one strong sentence for a paragraph with supporting sentences to support his ideas. He thinks he is better in writing now and he believes he can understand more when he reads. For the student this is not enough, he knows he needs to work more and harder to accomplish his goals and to improve even more his English abilities.

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CHAPTER II

STUDENT PROGRAM PORTFOLIO

The Student program portfolio was developed according to the TESOL/NCATE standards. This portfolio is a response to the five domains of these standards. The Student Program portfolio includes an assignment artifact described and a rational that demonstrates how the program content has been applied to TEFL field. Also this portfolio demonstrates that the master student applied the knowledge acquired through the program in all the assignments done and the classroom as well.

Moreover, the students have met all the TESOL/NCATE standards during their work at this MS TEFL program through all the courses. Everything they have learned in this MS TEFL will improve their professional live and will make them better teachers, most of the content that they have learned during this program they are using it in their everyday work.

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2.1 Domain 1: Language

Artifact 1

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Rational:

The assignment the thematic unit plan, made at the course of International Applied Professional Experience was chosen to meet the standard 1.a. Language as a System with the indicator “Candidates can use the components of language and language as an integrative system to create instructional plans for ELLs.” Because in order to write this thematic unit the student needed to work with the language as a system, using all the components of the language to create thematic unit plan to develop all the language skills on the students.

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express their thoughts using the new language.

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Artifact 2

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Rational

This artifact called lesson plans made it at the course Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages was chosen to meet this standard of Language Acquisition and Development with the indicator that “the teacher understands and apply knowledge of the role of individual learner variables in the process of learning English”. Because this lesson plans try to include different learning methodologies and multiple intelligence approach to meet the individual learner variables in the process of second language acquisition.

To develop this lesson plans the teacher uses their understanding that each learner is different and they need to be taken as individuals with different needs to provide them individualized learning and appropriate learning environments. The lesson plans are designed to develop different skills on the student by using different strategies and activities to encourage students to learn and to use the new language.

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2.2 Domain 2: Culture

Artifact 3

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Rational

This artifact call The Importance of Culture when Teaching a Language was chosen to meet the standard Culture as it Affects English Language Learning because this paper meets the indicator that says that the teacher understands and applies knowledge about cultural values and beliefs in the context of teaching and learning. This paper is an essay that explains the important to teach culture when teaching a second language and to respect the culture of the students.

This assignment reflects the student thoughts on the importance that the teacher design and deliver instruction that incorporates students’ cultural values and beliefs. It is impossible to separate language and culture; that is the reason why in our classes in a Spanish speaking country we should respect and incorporate facts about the culture of the country in our lesson as well as we need to incorporate elements from an English speaking country, not to be adopted just to be learned to understand the culture and to have a better understanding of the language students are learning.

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2.3 Domain 3: Planning, Implementing and Managing Instruction. Artifact 4

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Rational

I have chosen this artifact call ESP Course to meet the standard: Planning for Based ESL and Content Instruction. With the indicator: Plan Standard-Based and Content Instruction. I think this artifact meets the standard because the ESP course was designed by the teacher according the standards and using a content-based approach.

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vocabulary, special techniques and special information about the city using English, to assist the retirees on the process of moving to Cuenca. This course follows the content-based approach because it has a topic to develop the course, this content is all the information that the retirees need to move to a new country without any knowledge of the language and the culture.

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Artifact 5

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Rational

The artifact call Planning and Syllabus design from the course Curriculum and Materials Development was chosen to meet the standard 3.b. Implementing and Managing Standards-Based ESL and Content Instruction because provides activities and materials that integrate the four skills of the language: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

This artifact consists on designing a syllabus for an English course for High School students from 8th to 12th grade. The focus of the course is to teach English and develop the four skills of the language: reading, listening, writing and speaking in order to give the students the confident to use the language more effectively and to become bilinguals by the time the graduated from high school. The course will use all kinds of activities and materials to provide students with different tools to make their learning process more interesting by integrating the four skills of the language.

With this assignment, it was designed a syllabus including content-based activities that integrate all the skills of the language to increase the learning process of the students. Moreover, in the future the master student will continue using content-based instruction to design courses including different activities and strategies to develop the four skills of the language: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Standard 3.c. Using Resources and Technology Effectively in ESL and Content

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Artifact 6

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Rational

This artifact called Technology Plan from the Course Technology for TEFL was chosen to meet the standard 3.c. Using Resources Effectively in ESL Instruction, because encourages students to use computers and internet to enhance language and content-area instruction. This assignment is a summary of what master students have learned at the Technology course and it is a guide of what they can teach thier students to use to enrich their learning process.

This Technology plan is based on the research of different web-sites that and it will be very useful for English language learners. At this plan the teacher have include information like how to make a Google account and a Google + page where students can have all this interesting gadgets that will help them in their learning process. The teacher also include the twitter website to encourage students to open a twitter account, which can help the class to share interesting information, and finally the teacher have included different websites where they can find information for their homework and projects or just to clarify any doubts they may have about the language.

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2. 4 Domain 4: Assessment

Artifact 7

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Referencias

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