This blog post is meant to be a reflection of the process of conducting a needs assessment… Which we did (Team Nicaragua) via questionnaires, emails, and an interview. While I learned a lot about needs assessments (like which questions to put on the questionnaires and in hindsight questions I SHOULD have included in the questionnaire) I think the cross-cultural and cross-lingual aspects were more profound for me.

We set up our initial Skype session with one of the administrators of SONATI early on in the needs assessment process. As a group we were super excited! I was excited too. But then I realized how long it has been since I had used Spanish in any sort of oral communicative activity; approximately 2 years. Most people don’t know, but my undergraduate degree is in Spanish. I studied 7 and ½ years of Spanish in high school and college. The first three countries I traveled to outside of the US were Spanish speaking countries. Most people who know me now, know of my Chinese abilities and my trips to Taiwan and China. Most presume I studied Chinese in undergrad. Which I did, but that wasn’t my major.

Choosing this project with Nicaragua was a major shift back to my early language learning career, especially when there was an option to choose Taiwan again. I figured I would have the opportunity to practice my Spanish. And I was totally not wrong about that.

We were waiting for the Skype call for like 30 minutes when I had to laugh to myself about the differences in the concepts of ‘on time’ between Americans and Latin culture. Finally, we just took the initiative to call and see if SONATI would answer. We were Skyping with a young woman who helps run the SONATI program… who may or may not know English. Regardless of this ambiguity, we conducted the entire interview in Spanish. And at the end she told me how great my Spanish was and how much of a relief it was that we could speak Spanish.

This was shocking for me. The whole interview I was super conscious of the fact that I was making so many mistakes and grasping for words that used to be readily available in my mind. Some sentences were halting half way because I was forming them with Chinese word order which doesn’t transfer (shocker!). I tried to rationalize the fact that we still accomplished everything we needed to and she understood everything I said, and I understood everything she said. But… I am no where near as fluent in Spanish as I used to be. And that is very upsetting for me.

Further in the needs assessment process, we got student responses on the questionnaire that Catherine created. The open ended question allowed the students the opportunity to tell us why they were learning English. Their responses included things like “I want to make something of myself,” and “I want something good in life.” Completely heart wrenching. It got so real that we were creating something in this class that SONATI is actually going to try to implement. It also reminded me why I originally wanted to become an English teacher. I want to help students who can’t afford private tutors or the better schools. It makes me incredibly excited for Peace Corps, yet resentful of the fact that I will have so many loans when I graduate. I’ll have to work for students who can pay me to be there to work off my loans before I can go back to working with children who need opportunities and someone to listen and give them a chance.

I am so glad that I chose the Nicaragua project. The administration are passionate, the students are eager, and the opportunity to make a difference is there. I can’t wait for the next stage of the curriculum design process.

When I read the title of the talk – “Proactive and Reactive Approaches to Integrating Language and Content,” I immediately thought of Content-Based Instruction (CBI), which provides second-language learners instruction through content in the target language. However, Dr. Roy Lyster takes a slightly different standpoint where he thinks that content is not the only thing to teach and teachers should also enhance students’ language, thereby he promotes approaches to integrating and counterbalance language and content. The main rationale behind this is that “shifting students’ attention from content to language in ways can strengthen connections in memory and increase depth of processing.” This was very interesting to me, because I previously thought that switching back and forth could be distractive and thus hinder learning both. Dr. Roy Lyster had empirical data to support the effectiveness of his theory, which greatly encouraged me to try his method out. I agree that language should be taught in content, rather than only in forms; however, for the CBI classes that I have observed, I do think that the comprehensibility, the form and the use of the language were de-emphasized. But my struggle was, I didn’t know how to integrate and counterbalance content and language. It was great that Dr. Roy Lyster taught us his proactive and reactive approaches, and it was very helpful that he showed us instructional sequence with specific examples and videos of teaching demonstrations. Dr. Roy Lyster’s idea matches with my teaching philosophy that in a second-language class, content and language are both indispensable and I think his approaches are very practical. However, the challenge for me would be how to integrate content and language in an interesting, meaningful and systematic way.

I was very inspired by Dr. Roy Lyster’s talk and I want to incorporate his notion of integrating content and language when designing my Advanced Speaking curriculum.