ANALYSIS OF FOUR SITUATIONS

SITUATION 1: STORIES WITHOUT LETTERS

Warja Lavater was a Swiss artist and illustrator noted primarily for working in the artist’s
books genre by creating accordion fold books that re-tell classic fairy tales with symbols
rather than words.

The work done by Lavater gave me the idea to create the learning situation, which consists
of learning new content through a story. But not the traditional story, one without letters,
only with images.

The images are interpreted by the reader, according to their own point of view, and
therefore the reader themself becomes a narrator who renews the orality of the story by
adapting it to their own experience and sensitivity. This type of code allows students to
understand the story, without requiring special knowledge. The goal is to enable school-
age children to access complex stories.

With these stories, younger children almost always have positive reactions: they
associate characters and actions freely and unknowingly, assign roles creatively and
develop the plot of the fairy tale relying solely on the sequence of images. This freedom
and creativity when explaining the story can give students more facilities to remember the
vocabulary and grammar structures they have to learn.

Lavater excludes any use of the text, forcing the reader to develop his own symbolic
thought. The story develops in a linear objective way, without expressing any kind of
judgment and without using rhetorical figures or implications. The reading takes place in
three stages.

The general vision takes place in the first stage, and it makes it possible to quickly identify
the atmosphere, the context and the characters. When telling the story in the class
context, it would be interesting to explain students the activity they will do and create an
adequate atmosphere.
Then comes the interpretation of single events. In the case of my learning situation, the
teacher would make the students understand the different images that would appear in
the story.

Finally, the giving of meaning to the story as a whole takes place. This includes telling the
story and creating a final debate talking about the opinions of the listeners.

REFERENCES

- Colistra (2022) PERFORMATIVE READINGS WARJA LAVATER’S WORDLESS

TALES.
 SITUATION 2: NATIVE OR NONNATIVE TEACHER?

On Friday I was talking with an English teacher about if it is better for children to have a
native or nonnative teacher. Our reflection was focused on pronunciation, if children can
learn the correct pronunciation with a nonnative teacher.

During English classes, the teachers don’t focus on teaching pronunciation, students
have to learn how to pronounce the different words by listening to how the teacher does
it. They don’t have a specific time to teach only pronunciation. Moreover, at Joaquim Ruyra
school, the teachers who teach the English subject are nonnnative. Would it be better if
teachers were native?

If there isn’t an adequate training or certainty about the effectiveness of instruction and
programming in lessons, pronunciation would be a difficult aspect to teach, without
considering the nationality of the teacher.

To start with, nonnative language teachers may also see themselves as non-capable
models for pronunciation, leading to increased worriness about whether or not they
should teach pronunciation. Sometimes, they feel insecure about teaching pronunciation
simply because they are not native speakers. In this way, they need training and to gain
confidence.

Furthermore, native language teachers might have difficulties in understanding the needs
and problems of their students as they don’t share the same linguistic background.

Derwing and Munro (2005) advocate that the issue of native teachers versus nonnative
teachers status is irrelevant in and of itself. Instead, a focus must be placed on ensuring
that teachers 1) have an appropriate level of proficiency in English, 2) have the requisite
knowledge and skills for classroom teaching and 3) are able to employ pedagogically
sound principles in the classroom.

Levis, Sonsaat, Lin and Barriuso (2016) have done research with the aim of studying the
effects on students depending on the nationality of their teacher. They kept three
measures in mind: intelligibility, accentedness and comprehensibility.

- Intelligibility: ability of a listener to successfully decode words in speech.

 - Accentedness: the amount of difference from the accent in a given locale.
- Comprehensibility: amount of work it takes listeners to process speech.

Two groups of native-English-speakers raters evaluated students’ accentedness and

comprehensibility in their speeches to determine if there was a difference between
classes taught by the native language teachers and nonnative language teachers.

The tests that they used to collect data failed to show significant differences between the
native language teachers and the nonnative language teachers. At an individual level, the
results suggested that the students who used English outside of class could improve their
pronunciation. Those who did not show any improvement expressed a consistent lack of
outside language use.

With these results we can conclude that learning pronunciation is likely to be dependent
upon factors other than whether the teacher is native or nonnative. Students of Joaquim
Ruyra school wouldn’t learn better pronunciation if they had native language teachers.

REFERENCES

- Levis, J. M., Sonsaat, S., Link, S., & Barriuso, T. A. (2016). Native and Nonnative Teachers
of L2 Pronunciation: Effects on Learner Performance. TESOL Quarterly, 50(4), 894-
931. [Link]
 SITUATION 3: CLIL METHODOLOGY

We can define the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology as a
type of bilingual education with a dual focus, that is on content and language learning at
the same time, thus requiring the teachers to be familiar with both pedagogies: content
and language learning, to deliver its objectives.

Three years ago, the school leadership team of Joaquim Ruyra decided to introduce the
CLIL methodology in their Science classes. When they analyzed the course development
applying this methodology, they realized that there were more negative things than
positive.

First of all, the only teachers who were able to do the Science classes were those who
had English as their major subject, so they needed more teachers working at school.

Moreover, teachers felt that students didn’t understand the Science content. They already
had difficulties when they did the subject in their first language, so their difficulties
increased at that moment. Also, it seemed like students didn’t learn English, they only
learned new words in their first foreign language.

I disagree with this decision, considering that with CLIL methodology students can gain
motivation to learn a new language and, in my opinion, this is the most important factor
during the learning process.

Last year, Lindsay R. Buckingham and Janina Iwaniec published a study with the aim at
exploring the differences between CLIL students and non-CLIL students L2 Motivational
Self-System.

L2 Motivational Self-System subsumes three constructs that are considered to have

motivational power:

- Ideal L2 self-vision: what the learner would ideally like to achieve.

- Ought-to L2: what the learner feels he/she should achieve due the influences
around him/her.
- Language and learning experience: the immediate environment that influences the
student.
In all focus groups, participants generally expressed the feeling that the ability to
communicate in English is important for the future, to get a better job, travel, or otherwise
communicate with others. Even then, some participants mentioned that studying in
English may not be the best option for those who want to continue their studies at
university in Spanish or work locally.

The results of the study conclude that non-CLIL students think that if they had studied in
English they would have had poorer results and they consider themselves unable to study
in a CLIL secondary school due to their perceived low ability in English.

Participants from CLIL school think that studying in English involves a greater effort, but
that this effort is worthwhile, due to the greater benefit of learning language and content
at the same time. They saw themselves studying abroad and one day having jobs that
require English language, as they tended to claim more confidence in their abilities in
English.

We can conclude that CLIL students have a better L2 Motivational Self-System, they feel
they are learning English and that this learning can help them in their future. If the Joaquim
Ruyra school introduces CLIL methodology and maintains it, their students will gain
confidence and new knowledge useful in their future.

REFERENCES

- Buckingham, L. R., & Iwaniec, J. (2023). Self‐concept and self‐visions in CLIL

and non‐CLIL learners and their effect on motivation. International Journal Of

Applied Linguistics. [Link]

 SITUATION 4: STORYTELLING AS A NEW METHODOLOGY

The main objective of my bachelor thesis is to investigate the effectiveness of the use of
storytelling in primary lessons. General consensus exists that storytelling in the early
years promotes early literacy development and can help provide a meaningful context for
introducing a foreign language.

As Artigal’s narrative methodology emphasises, “we don’t learn a language first and then
use it, but rather, we learn it through using it: in other words, we learn to speak by
speaking”. This is one of the main reasons why I have chosen to introduce this
methodology. If children learn to speak English through stories, they will learn the
language.

This methodology has some advantages, it allows the teacher to introduce and learn
English in a meaningful way, students can have fun and engaging encounters with the
language through these stories. Children can improve their oral communication skills by
hearing the language in a natural and authentic way, and improve their active listening
skills. Storytelling promotes the development of active listening skills and the gradual
development of story-related written tasks providing opportunities for building
vocabulary, generating awareness of grammatical structures, and becoming familiar with
the written form.

To create the learning situation, I leaved out one of the steps of the Waddington’s
storytelling routine, following the format indicated below:

- Welcoming. The teacher creates with the students a relaxing atmosphere and
prepares them to listen carefully to the story.
- Key vocabulary and grammar structures. The teacher explains the most important
words that appear in the story and the grammar structures.
- The teacher narrates the story encouraging maximum interaction among the
students.
- Closing the session and saying goodbye.
The learning situation is aimed at fourth grade students. As Waddington says, third and
fourth grade students should listen to and interact with storytelling sessions, complete
written tasks and begin their Storytelling Circle Portfolio. I have omitted the Circle
Portfolio part, considering that the amount of sessions available was very limited.

REFERENCES

- Waddington (2017). Competency-based ELT: Learning to Learn through Our Storytelling

Circle.