Reflection on ESL Students´ Second Language Learning Process

In this paper I choose to focus on a grade 12 Business Leadership classroom to discuss my observations and reflections on ESL students’ second language learning process. The reason for choosing this specific classroom is that in my first practicum I spent all the time in the Grade 12 Business classrooms and did not have the chance to observe an ESL language classroom. However, I think this practicum provided me with valuable experience of understanding some of the ways that ESL students interacted with the teacher and their peers and how these interactions would affect their learning process.

This Business Leadership course is an elective opened to all Grade 12 students who are interested in learning about this business topic. The teacher uses a combination of lecture and group work in the delivery of course materials.

There are 29 students in the classroom and 2 of them are ESL students who are attending ESL courses at the school and use a language other than English at home. In order to know more about these two students’ background, I had a small activity at the beginning of my practicum to have students write down the languages they speak and some other interesting things that they would like to share with the class. Considering that these ESL students might feel uncomfortable talking about their English learning experiences in front of all the other students, I had some small conversations with them in between the lessons.

In this way, I got to know that one ESL student speaks Chinese and came to Canada with his family only one year ago, while the other student speaks Korean and has been living in Toronto for more than three years. Before coming to study in a Canadian high school, the Korean student attended an elementary ...

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...ions and negotiation for meaning.

In conclusion, in the classroom that I observed during my practicum, there was little amount of teacher-student interaction happening, which was partly due to the large size of classroom and the lecture style that the teacher adopted in his teaching practice, and partly due to the anxiety that ESL students felt when talking aloud in the classroom. However, the group work project created some space for student-student interaction which facilitated the communication and collaborative learning between two ESL students and their classmates. Although there was no correction of errors provided to ESL students, the meaningful interaction led to their better comprehension of the topic and greater exposure and use of English. I believe that these two ESL students would benefit from more frequent interaction with the teacher and their peers.