Part 4: Teaching Materials Reflection on Teaching Artifact #1: Teaching Unit on Discover Hawaii This teaching unit was

created in AL 6715: Second Language Reading. It was completed at the end of the fall semester in 2012. I was given the text Language in Hawaii from the book Discover Hawaii as my teaching unit (Klein, 1982). The goal was to develop a series of lesson plans worth five hours of instruction. The text also had to be adapted to an intermediate ESL/EFL audience. We could decide on the lesson content and the target audience ourselves. I imagined that my target audience would be from Norway, since that is where I will teach in the future. I also wanted to focus on teenagers between the ages of 14-16, as I have had experience teaching this age group. The first three lesson plans related to the topic of Language in Hawaii. Lesson one focused on reading comprehension of the assigned text. One activity to help with reading comprehension was a pre-reading vocabulary exercise based on eight vocabulary words from the text. The second lesson focused on writing, where the students answered recall questions about the text They also had a short vocabulary quiz. In the third lesson the students practiced a speed reading strategy with an article about the Hawaiian language. After the first three lessons I was stuck. I did not see how I could further expand the topic. I was relieved when I learned that all the lessons did not have to relate to Hawaii. Consequently I decided that my fourth lesson would be about Norwegian difficulties with English consonant sounds. I based this lesson on previous experience I had with AL 6110: English Phonology and the Teaching of Pronunciation. In that class I had researched common problems Norwegians

have with English pronunciation This is something I want to teach when I go back to Norway. I decided to focus on four different consonant sounds, and how to discriminate between them through minimal pair exercises. The last lesson focused on varieties of English. Traditionally, British English has dominated in Norwegian schools, since the UK is geographically closer to Norway than the US. However, today the younger generations get more influence from the US, due to the American dominance in broadcasting. Most young Norwegians watch a lot of American TV shows and movies. My last lesson was therefore on differences between American and British English. Students listened to audio segments of these two accents, and practiced speaking them through partner reading exercises. There are several strengths in my teaching unit. I am especially pleased with lesson four, because I got to use the knowledge I gained through research on Norwegian problems with English pronunciation. The greatest strength of this lesson is its authenticity, as it addresses specific consonant sounds that are challenging for Norwegians to pronounce. For example, activity five (p. 20) makes students practice the distinction between the consonant sounds /t/ and // through a minimal pairs exercise. I really want to use this lesson plan in the future. I am also proud of lesson five, which focuses on the distinction between British English and American English pronunciation. Leaners of English will encounter several varieties of English outside the classroom. I believe it is important to educate students on this topic, and not to strictly focus on one variety of English. I think that also made the lesson more authentic. I am very pleased with the end result of my unit plan. However, developing it was challenging at times, and I had to revise it three times.

One of the struggles I had was expanding the topic into several lessons. I did not know much about languages in Hawaii, and I did not feel it was relevant for my target students. Consequently, lessons four and five had different topics. However, after finishing the unit plan I see that I could have chosen related topics more relevant to the target audience. For example, I could have compared the relationship between Pidgin and Standard American English and that between Bokml and Nynorsk, both written forms, in Norway. There is constant conflict on whether both should be taught in school. I thought it could be interesting to compare Nynorsk to Pidgin, since both these languages are not considered to be the standard and as a result have been discriminated against I also had to revise some of the materials I developed. For instance, the vocabulary quiz needed to be revised three times. In my first draft the course instructor did not want me to test vocabulary recognition of definitions, because that would just result in students memorizing them. Therefore in the second draft I created test items where the vocabulary would be guessed from context sentences. However, some of the sentences I created were ambiguous and could have several correct answers. For instance, I had items such as Lilly was reading out loud from her English book to practice her ___________. Here I wanted the students to guess pronunciation. However, other correct answers could be intonation and vocabulary. In the third draft I replaced those sentences with pictures. For instance, I asked, which of the four pictures represents pronunciation. In conclusion, developing a teaching unit was a very valuable experience. I am glad that we had the opportunity to do several drafts. The instructors feedback certainly helped me develop and improve my materials. I learned a lot about teaching and assessing vocabulary, reading strategies, pronunciation exercises, and varieties in

English. Furthermore, I gained more knowledge about the history and culture of Hawaiian language and Pidgin. References Klein, E. & Klein, V. (1982). Discover America Hawaii: A conversation book for intermediate English language learners. Skokie, IL National Textbook Company.