CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS (RQ1, RQ2)
4.3 Integration of Culture and Language
4.3.2 Potential Benefits of Integrating Culture with Language Learning
accomplished in terms of cultural practice. To create for students a unique cultural experience, rather than only reading about Halloween, Christmas, and Thanksgiving in textbooks, the ETAs devoted themselves to transforming classrooms into a learning environment full of a real atmosphere for cultural immersion. The classroom
preparation thus seemed to be an external force to better equip students with basic culture-related knowledge regarding the history, traditions, customs, and common practices of festival celebrations. This led to a more proper understanding specific to foreign cultures.
Excerpt 44
節慶的介紹，ETA 更是積極地佈置教室環境、創造節慶的氣氛，讓孩子們 一進教室即能感覺到不同的氛圍，同時讓孩子們深入地認識節慶的意義和 內容，並更進一步對西方文化的認識。
(Regarding festival introductions, the ETA spontaneously decorated classrooms to create the atmosphere for students’ immersion when they stepped into the classroom. In addition, the ETA also helped students to learn more about the meaning of festivals deeply. This really benefited them.) (LET’s feedback report, 2016)
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From the examples demonstrated in Excerpts 28 to 31 and also the following Excerpts 45 to 47, students were presented with Hawaiian culture, Greek culture, and the Kwanzaa holiday through the ETAs’ introduction, where they learned how
holidays are celebrated and how to exchange greetings if they visit Hawaii and Greece.
They also learned how African-Americans commemorate their African ancestors on Kwanzaa. With the diverse cultural practice in language classrooms benefiting students, students’ international perspectives on foreign cultures and cultural
knowledge seemed to be expanded and fostered. Furthermore, the students in Excerpts 41 and 43 experienced unusual practices with regard to the “wasting of eggs” to celebrate Easter, cooking stuffing inside a turkey, and eating cranberry with turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving. In Excerpt 47, students seemed to increasingly and eventually expand their understanding of how to develop appropriate attitude to appreciate and respect cultures from different places by being exposed to stimuli inherent in multiple cultures, even if what students perceived conflicted with their current
culturally-related value systems.
Excerpt 45
Since my ETA is a Hawaiian American, at time when we conduct a cultural lesson, students get to learn not only American ways but also Hawaiian styles for celebrating different holidays. For example…They also learn about the art
of Hula dance and the different ways of greetings in Hawaiian. Students’
cultural knowledge is strongly fostered through the genuine contexts and fresh ideas we devise out of her native speaker perspective. (LET’s feedback report, 2011)
Excerpt 46
Since my ETA is a Greek American, students get to learn not only American culture from her but also aspects of Greek culture… ETA also helped to
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broaden students’ understanding of Greece’s rich culture by introducing some Greek conventions, greetings and myth stories in class. Students’ cultural
knowledge is then strongly fostered through the genuine activities… (LET’s feedback report, 2014)
Excerpt 47
“課程上介紹世界各國文化，讓學生更有機會接觸多元文化刺激，學習欣賞 與尊重不同國家的文化。”
(“The ETA introduced different cultures in the world, which enabled students to be exposed to multiple cultural stimuli and to learn how to appreciate and respect different cultures.”) (LET’s feedback report, 2015)
4.4 Acknowledgement of Differences in Learning Styles
4.4.1 Ways of Promoting Learning in Different Learner Styles
Thus far, a close examination of what the ETAs did in the classrooms seemed to reveal characteristics of the ETAs’ classroom activities, such as teaching activities of a contextualized nature, providing game-based language learning activities, and
promoting a cultural-related English learning experience. It was thus found that these features seemed to foster Taiwanese students’ English learning.
In addition to the above-mentioned characteristics, the ETAs also utilized a variety of instructional materials and resources so as to stimulate different types of language learners. Learning styles refers to an individual’s approaches to learning and how an individual acquires information by resorting to preferred ways to interact with and respond to the learning environment (Dörnyei, 2005). Today, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles are commonly used to categorize people’s differences in the learning process. The importance of identifying learners’ distinctive characteristics is increasingly recognized to enable effective teaching (Gilakjani, 2011; Hamdani, 2015).
For example, visual learners prefer to study by reading the text and making use of
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pictures or PowerPoint presentations to help themselves understand (Brown, 2007; Xu, 2011). As Brown (2007) has suggested, “Auditory learners prefer listening to lecturers and audiotapes” (p.129). In contrast, kinesthetic learners are very interested in
physical and practical activities involving bodily movement. They thus study best by participating in activities such as demonstrations and bodily movements (Gilakjani, 2011; Xu, 2011). Different participants of the ETA program from various regions have commented on this teaching practice by ETAs in Taiwan. Examples were extracted from the reports of various regions illustrating that catering to different types of learner styles was a strength that ETAs demonstrated in their teaching.
The following excerpts and tables firstly showed how songs, visual stimuli such as pictures and PowerPoint presentations, and audio-visual devices such as CD audio and YouTube video were all employed by ETAs to facilitate visual- and
auditory-oriented students’ understanding and comprehension of English respectively.
Then, how drawing activities and hands-on activities used to accommodate the learning style of kinesthetic-oriented students and help them acquire experiential learning experience were presented. Lastly, how ETAs incorporated a variety of activities and teaching materials together to address the needs of different types of students were demonstrated. These examples displayed how ETAs accommodated the needs of students with different learning styles.
4.4.1.1 Incorporation of Songs
In Table 12, the ETA used CD audio to facilitate students’ comprehension of the content in the textbook. This audio-lingual practice seemed to make the whole class more willing to follow the ETA’s instruction, repeated after the ETA’s model, repetitively practice the conversation, sing along with the CD, and practice the
“what’s this, Andy?” song together.
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Table 12
Lesson Observation Feedback Report for Lessons of Singing “What Is This, Andy?”
Song
Lesson Objectives:
Students will be able to
1. Demonstrate comprehension of and be able to say the conversation: “good morning. Good! Thank you.”
2. Sing the “what’s this, Andy?” song Activities Observed:
10:33 ETA leads Greeting, and practice of the sentences-
This is a wonderful Audio-lingual practice model-ETA leads the dialogue, Ss need to repeat after ETA…
10:39 Ts use CD audio-textbook practice. Ss need to read along with the CD.
10:40 ETA asks for volunteers: 4 kids get to the stage represent 4 roles in the text. Play the CD again…
10:57 Listen to the CD text audio.
10:58 ETA: “everyone sings together!” All class sing together with CD. Then class…Take turns to sing half of the song, then switch.
(Lesson observation feedback report, November 1, 2013)
In the same way, English sentence patterns were embedded into the songs which ETAs used to appeal mainly to auditory-oriented students. Students sang the songs chorally and danced with the songs as they practiced saying the sentence patterns.
Table 13 from the co-teaching lesson plan recorded that students in the activity sang and danced with the host on the screen, and they were encouraged to practice saying their names.
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Table 13
Co-Teaching Lesson Plan for Lessons of Asking and Answering “What Is Your Name?”Questions
Objectives
Have students understand “What’s your name” sentence pastern and be able to respond with “My name is______” or “I’m______.” Expose…
Procedures 1. Warming up
2. Introduction
Have the students repeat “What’s your name?” and “My name is blahblahblah”
respectively multiple times. Get them moving and excited while standing up.
3. Activities
1. Open up YouTube video for “What’s your name” song and play it for them… Sing and dance with the host on the screen. Host on the screen gives chances for the kids to say their own names, encourage them to yell it at the screen if they are losing interest.
(Co-teaching lesson plan, 2015)
Tables 14 and 15 from the teaching advisors also demonstrated how talented ETAs incorporated songs in the YouTube video to involve auditory-oriented learners in class, who seemed to enjoy learning and singing songs. The purpose of applying songs as a hook in language classrooms was to help students practice and master sentence patterns such as “My name is______”, “I’m______”, “Do you like _____?”, and “Yes, I do/No, I don’t.” The ETAs’ use of songs in the co-teaching classrooms has confirmed the findings of Law’s (1998) study regarding native speaking teachers’
teaching behavior. The results from students’ interviews manifested that listening to songs appeared to be students’ favorite activities and students began to pay more attention to lyrics; thus students had a good perception of ETAs’ teaching. This made
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the lesson more enjoyable and further motivated them to learn (Law, 1998).
Table 14
Lesson Observation Feedback Report for Lessons of Asking and Answering “Do You Like ______ ?” Questions
Activities Observed:
Students greeted teachers chorally to begin class.
Introduced a song with video based on the sentence starter-Do you like _____? Yes I do/No I don’t. Students listened to first 2 verses then sang along with the song. Students were engaged and enjoyed the song. Language level of song was on target.
(Lesson observation feedback report, April 8, 2015)
Table 15
The Advisor’s Lesson Observation Feedback Report for Lessons of Singing “I Am Thirsty” Song
Activities Observed:
Students greeted teachers chorally.
A song “I am thirsty” is introduced. Students listen the first time, then [sic]
are asked comprehension questions…
The song was played again and students sang along and did accompanying actions.
The advisor’s feedback:
Good hook to begin the class-Great song-“I’m thirsty” which was linguistically appropriate.
(The advisor’s lesson observation feedback report, April 9, 2015)
4.4.1.2 Incorporation of Visual Stimuli
One ETA used her photos, video clips, and PowerPoint slides as teaching aids
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to attract the attention of visual learners while presenting a more holistic picture of San Francisco. Table 16, from a teaching advisor’s report, was a good demonstration of the teaching pattern.
Table 16
Lesson Observation Feedback Report for San Francisco Lessons Lesson Objectives:
To learn about San Francisco and the vocabulary associated with the topic Activities Observed:
Vocab:
San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge cable car Chinatown Mansion Brunch State, city, capital
Sequence:
Presentation- call and response matching vocab with Chinese translation.
Great Power Point to keep students engaged- nice using basketball and things students are interested in.
Also very nice including a picture of herself in front of Golden Gate Bridge.
Great use of video to show students cable cars in San Francisco.
(Lesson observation feedback report, October 15, 2015)
Furthermore, in Tables 17 and 18 and Excerpt 48, pictures, images, YouTube videos, Halloween ghost drawings, and PowerPoint presentations were all employed by other ETAs to communicate with students, to get the meaning across, to make themselves understood, and to assist visual and auditory learners in making sense of Halloween-related characters and adjectives such as costume, ghost, mask, and scary that they had learned. It was noted that visual stimuli as a support used in the
classrooms made ETAs’ teaching more accessible to students (Vogely, 1998). With the
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information displayed using these media, the students seemed to comprehend the words more easily and be more willing to speak up voluntarily.
Table 17
Lesson Observation Feedback Report for Reviewing Halloween Lessons Lesson Objectives:
1. Students will understand the history of Halloween
2. Students will learn and understand the words: ghost, costume, mask, and scary Activities Observed:
1. Halloween writing and drawing activities Reflection on Observation:
9:05 ETA introduced the history of Halloween and associated vocabulary using Power Point…
9:13 She had the children… review the adjectives…
9:15 ETA showed a slide in which the middle had square containing “For Halloween, I want to be a _________.” In the four corners, students placed one word and a picture of a Halloween figure (witch, skeleton, ghost and vampire)…
(Lesson observation feedback report, October 31, 2013)
Table 18
Lesson Observation Feedback Report for Introducing Halloween Lessons Lesson Objectives:
1. Students will learn about Halloween as a U.S. holiday 2. Learn names of popular Halloween characters
3. Learn about Trick-or-Treating Activities Observed:
Warm Up 10:30-5
ETA introduces new Halloween related vocabulary to the ss.
T encourages ss to provide answers in Chinese and English… Ss seem
comfortable participating due to their willingness to volunteer to speak
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without being called on.
Activity 1: PPT & Video 10:35-50
ETA introduces four Halloween characters to the ss using PPT images.
T plays YouTube video for ss. Video has all four Halloween characters in it…
T plays second half of YouTube video… T pauses video, ask ss which characters they see.
Ss really seem to enjoy video as they are dancing in their chairs and singing along.
(Lesson observation feedback report, October 30, 2013)
The teaching advisor’s remark in Except 48 implied that students with visual- and auditory-oriented learning styles in the classrooms were all taken care of by ETAs.
Excerpt 48
The Ts did a wonderful job of utilizing the technology in the classroom, as they used the smart board to display the PowerPoint Presentation, YouTube videos.
Additionally, by transmitting and displaying information through these media, the Ts were reaching out to Ss of all learning styles. (The advisor’s lesson observation feedback report, October 30, 2013)
Transmitting information from media was one good way to facilitate students’
understanding and learning; the ETA also utilized pictures, graphics, and drawings.
Based on one LET’s perspective, it was drawings that the ETA was adept at and used to help students to comprehend as well as to communicate with students.
Excerpt 49
“ETA 擅長用繪畫的方式與學生溝通，有時學生實在不了解情況時，ETA 會以圖像的方式讓學生易於學習。”
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(“The ETA was good at drawing; thus, she often used images and pictures to communicate with students. In addition, the ETA also used images and pictures to facilitate students’ English learning.”) (LET’s feedback report, 2013)
4.4.1.3 Drawing Activities
In the above example, the ETAs themselves resorted to drawings to convey meaning to students was described. Furthermore, on Halloween, after introducing the history of Halloween and a review of Halloween-related words and adjectives, based on the teaching advisor’s classroom observation report, the ETA in Table 19 even had students draw their own Halloween characters such as ghosts in order to familiarize students with the sentence pattern “For Halloween, I want to be ______________” by writing the nouns and adjectives they had previously learned to describe their works.
Table 19
Lesson Observation Feedback Report of Drawing Activities for Halloween Lessons Lesson Objectives:
1. Students will understand the history of Halloween
2. Students will learn and understand the words: ghost, costume, mask, and scary Activities Observed:
1. Halloween writing and drawing activities Reflection on Observation:
9:05 ETA introduced the history of Halloween and associated vocabulary using Power Point…
9:13 She had the children turn to Page 17 and review the adjectives that students can use to describe the Halloween character in their later drawing.
9:15 ETA showed a slide in which the middle had square containing “For
Halloween, I want to be a _________”…The students were given a worksheet on which they drew their ghost and wrote a sentence containing an adjective and a noun as a description underneath the drawing…
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(Lesson observation feedback report, October 31, 2013)
Similar accounts were also reported by the ETA in Excerpt 50. To help students review what they learned in Halloween lessons, the ETA asked fourth-graders to display their creativity by designing their own Halloween cookies and Halloween candy; the ETA asked the fifth-graders to create their own Jack-o'-lanterns. The students were then required to write sentences such as “He looks/feels/is _______” to describe their lanterns; they seemed to enjoy participating in this drawing activity.
Correspondingly, the example shown in Excerpt 51, in which students used their pictures coupled with creative sentences or vocabulary words such as “I go to school by cloud” or “I go to school by T-Rex” to depict how they go to school as they were learning different means of transportation. Drawing activities seemed to be a good strategy to invite especially kinesthetic-oriented students to learn English concurrently because students revealed their interests in the drawing process.
Excerpt 50
With the fourth grade classes…I tried to incorporate what they were learning in the classroom into the Halloween lesson. I showed them pictures of Halloween snacks and cookies, and asked them to draw their own “pumpkin cookies” or
“ghost cookies” or “Halloween Candy”. I also did a Halloween Lesson with the Fifth Graders… At the end of the main presentation…and asked them to create their own Jack-o'-lanterns. At the bottom of the page, I asked the students to write, “He feels/looks/is_______.” Many students wrote, “He feels bad” or “He is a naughty boy.”… they really enjoyed the activity. (ETA’s biweekly reflection report, October 31, 2011)
Excerpt 51
… So instead I made worksheets where the students had to draw while
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incorporating the sentence patterns or new vocabulary. For instance, we had the fifth graders draw a picture of how they go to school since we are learning modes of transportation. It was great practice, some of them got really creative drawing things like “I go to school by cloud” or “I go to school by T-Rex”…
The students really got into the activity and it was great to see their work.
(ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, March 25, 2016)
4.4.1.4 Promoting Learning of Kinesthetic-Oriented Learners
Aside from attending to visual and auditory learners, the comments made by the LETs and the ETA in Excerpts 52, 53, 54, 55, and 56 where the ETAs also devise non-traditional lessons to incorporate hands-on activities into co-teaching classrooms, such as dying eggs, making gingerbread men, making fruit salad, baking cookies, making peanut butter, and making jelly sandwiches. All seemed to point to the
purpose of ensuring students’ acquisition of experiential learning (Kolb, 2015). These activities reflected the accommodation of kinesthetic-oriented learners in terms of learning English in a more practical way. Through these activities, the LETs realized that the importance of experiential learning can no longer be ignored.
Excerpt 52
“本年度 ETA 有帶入實作薑餅人、彩繪彩蛋、及萬聖節咬甜甜圈活動的慶 祝活動。”
(“ETAs designed some hands-on and practical activities, such as dying eggs, making gingerbread man, biting doughnuts, for students to celebrate special holidays in class.”) (LET’s feedback report, 2015)
Excerpt 53
我請 ETA 事先烤好薑餅小圓臉的餅乾，我們講完薑餅人的故事後，ETA 讓 小朋友們用糖果裝飾薑餅人的表情，讓我體會到做中學的重要性。
(“The ETA baked gingerbread cookies while students were listening to the