Date of Award

5-2022

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT)

Department

World Languages and Cultures

Committee Chair(s)

Sarah Gordon

Committee

Sarah Gordon

Committee

Abdulkafi Albirini

Committee

Nolan Weil

Abstract

This teaching portfolio is a product of the author’s studies in the Masters of Second Language Teaching Program at Utah State University and her experiences as a teacher of Chinese at the elementary school level in the State of Utah’s public school Dual Immersion program. The author provides a selection of teaching reflections and research that have had the most impact on her teaching practice. First, the author offers personal reflections and a theoretical framework for her pedagogy in the Teaching Perspectives section, through a discussion of her professional environment and teaching experience; this is followed by the Teaching Philosophy Statement, which explains the lens through which she views her teaching practice, and a discussion of a selection of teaching observations conducted. The Teaching Philosophy Statement speaks to the importance of connectivity and how learners may best connect with language. The Teaching Philosophy also offers some best practices for a student-centered, task-based, communicative, classroom environment and how best to facilitate language learning. Second, the portfolio focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning, in the Research Perspectives section, in which the author includes two selected papers written in the course of the masters program, including: a paper that investigates teaching culture in the elementary Dual Language Immersion context and a paper that explores teaching Chinese as a foreign language through task-based learning and Computer-Assisted Language Learning. It concludes with an Annotated Bibliography that represents a literature review and crystallization of the topic of humor in enhancing learner engagement. Through these select theoretical and practical discussions of teaching, the author suggests that language teachers need to be mindful of 6 C’s: critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, culture, connectivity, offering a modification of the 5 C’s in the American Council of Teaching of Foreign Languages standards. The portfolio culminates with the author’s career plans and the continuing journey to improve and innovate in her teaching.

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