Notes from PowerPoint.

1. From Theory to Practice & Back in TESOL
Presentation Notes
Marie Takai, M.A.
mari.k.takai@gmail.com
Rebekah Sidman-Taveau, M.A., PhD
rtaveau@yahoo.com
Slid Speake Script
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1 Rebekah: This is Marie Takai. She has an M.A. TESOL from SJSU and is currently
teaching three levels of Japanese at Sunnyvale-Cupertino adult education.
Marie: This is Rebekah Sidman-Taveau. She taught in my M.A. TESOL program at
SJSU and was my practicum teacher last spring. Rebekah’s PhD in Foreign
Language Education with a focus on TESL. She is currently ESL Coordinator
and Lecturer at San Francisco Art Institute and part time faculty at SJSU.
2 Rebekah: To start, Marie will share some of her innovative and successful lessons. Then
we will both talk about specific theoretical connections we see to her practice.
Marie managed to engage her beginning class in the collaborative publication of
an international recipe book, to have her beginning students give presentations
of their recipes and share them with the class. As I witnessed Marie’s lesson and
learned about her cook book unit, I saw connections to different theories
including:
 Constructivist/socio-constructivist learning theory
 Comprehensible Output Hypothesis
 Multiple Intelligences
 Motivation Theory and the
 Affective Filter Hypothesis
I will talk about each of these theoretical connections as Marie explains her
lessons but first lets here a bit about the transformation Marie went through to
be able to implement these lessons. A key point we would like to make today is
that it is not a one way trip from reading about theories to consciously
implementing them. Theory can be utilized pre-during-post lesson and in
conscious and unconscious or even inadvertent ways.
Marie’s story is testament to this.
3 Marie: Hello, so let me start by telling you a bit about my teaching context. My
practicum teaching took place in an Adult School in the South Bay. The class
was Beginner High – the third lowest of nine levels. They only knew basic
grammar and vocabulary and seldom spoke out in class. The size of the class

2. was about 25 – 30. As other adult school classes, this class was also transient:
students came in and went out. It was a multi-ethnic class with students from
nine countries – Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Mexicans, Indians & an Iranian,
a Peruvian, a Vietnamese, and a Japanese. It was a morning class which
included a lot of female home makers especially middle aged Asian women.
4 Marie: In this photo, I may look cheerful but, at the beginning of my practicum, I was
very nervous. The tremendous pressure felt by a typical student teacher
frustrated me. I felt I was not qualified to teach and my self-esteem was very
low. In short, I was suffering from classic imposter syndrome.
The woman sitting next to me is my mentor teacher. She is an experienced
professional teacher. Her students admired her for her great teaching skills and
kindness. She was an American and a native English speaker. Yes, she seemed
to represent the main stream of the American culture. As an Asian non-native
speaker, I felt intimidated by the presence of the perfect ESL teacher.
What made me feel worse was that I had been traumatized in my former
language learning experiences. Though I had lived in the U.S for five years, my
English was nothing but a stumbling awkward production. In Japan, where
most of the classes I took where behaviorist based approaches, my English
grades were always terrible. The mean teachers corrected every single mistake
and I didn’t enjoy learning at all. Having been an unsuccessful learner, how
dare I teach English to others?
5 Marie: However with the support of my mentor teacher and practicum instructor, I
overcame my fears and completed my practicum. Please look at this, here is
what I enabled the beginner students to achieve: the production, editing, and
final publication of an International Recipe Book. It is a recipe book of 15 pages.
Dishes from nine countries are introduced with students’ drawings.
6 Marie: On the final day of my teaching, we had a potluck party. Students brought the
food for which they had written the recipe.
After this fun pot luck party, they presented their recipes. 6 groups and 5
individuals made their recipe presentation. This means almost all of the
students participated. Beginners who seldom spoke out in class orally presented
how to cook their country’s food. Everyone seemed motivated and actively
involved.
7 Marie: Here’s a sample of one presentation. A Mexican group showed us how to make
enchiladas. This Video has three parts. In the first one, a young Mexican
woman started their presentation in a humorous way. The second parts shows a
good example of using kitchen utensils and gestures. There is an interesting
interaction in the third part. When the young woman wants to know a cooking
verb, she uses a gesture in asking a question.
8 Marie: Here’s a sample of one presentation. A Mexican group showed us how to make
enchiladas. This Video has three parts. In the first one, a young Mexican
woman started their presentation in a humorous way. The second parts shows a
good example of using kitchen utensils and gestures. There is an interesting
interaction in the third part. When the young woman wants to know a cooking

3. verb, she uses a gesture in asking a question.
9 Marie: As I experienced successful teaching, I fled from past experiences as an English
learner which had imposed meaningless perfectionism on me. There were many
exciting lessons which led up to this transformation. I am going to introduce the
lesson I prepared for the instructor observation day, when Rebekah came to my
classroom to observe my teaching. But first a bit more theory from Rebekah.
10 Rebekah: Marie’s transformation is remarkable. Not only did she overcome the fears most
of us face as new teachers and the challenge of being a non-native speaker of
the language she was teaching but I think she was also struggling in her mind
between two very different theoretical bents. This slide which Marie created
represents her struggle between her previous conceptions of language learning
which were closer to a behaviorist conception of learning and her developing
conception of language learning which reflected more of a constructivist leaning.
Let me explain a bit about these theoretical bents and then I will return to this
slide to explain the central points of her shift.
11 Rebekah: For starters, when Marie told me a bit about the experiences that haunted her-
the authoritarian professors, memories of constant and humiliating error
correction, and long boring meaningless study of discreet points- I thought it
sounded a lot like behaviorist based instructional methods. To put it simply,
behaviorists believe that learning is the acquisition of new behavior through
conditioning. Some principles associated with behaviorist learning theory
include the ideas that concepts need to be broken down into discreet measurable
points, that learners need to imitate and repeat, and that they need
reinforcement including clear negative reinforcement for errors.
This conception of learning is very different from Marie’s developing conception
of learning. During her practicum, she began to apply more progressive methods
reflecting a constructivist concept of learning.
12 Rebekah: Constructivists believe that “learners actively construct their own knowledge”
Some principles derived from this theory that are relevant to Marie’s work are:
 Student interests and needs should drive learning
 Students learn through participation and doing
 Dialogue, reflection, and activities engender learning
Marie’s recipe writing project is an example of a way to actively engage students
in the process of learning. Rather than teach the food and cooking vocabulary
through lecture, drill, or repetition of dialogue, Marie had students learn the
language through the real world practice of writing and sharing recipes. She
choose the tasks of recipe writing because she knew it would be interesting to
students and she allowed them to choose their recipe. She engaged them in
dialogue and a variety of tasks associated with the recipe writing.
Another constructivist notion is the idea that new knowledge is built from prior
knowledge. A principle based on this theory is that learning can be facilitated by
connecting new knowledge to what learner’s already know. One way to do this is
to use authentic materials and situations that the learners may already be
familiar with and to give them choices about topics of interest. Marie placed the

4. cooking vocabulary students needed to learn in the context of recipes, something
that her students would be familiar with and she allowed them to choose their
recipes. As you’ll find out later she also used authentic materials like cooking
utensils. Marie’s lesson was nothing like traditional “banking” instruction Paulo
Freire spoke of. Instead students were actively involved in learning through
doing.
Another way to help student access their background knowledge and make
connections to new knowledge is to start by asking student what they already
know. Marie did this by centering the lesson around what student already knew
about food and cooking. At the same time, she honored each student’s cultural
knowledge by having them write about recipes from their country. This was not
only an opportunity to connect the new language to what they knew but also a
chance to share their culture with their classmates.
Now let’s talk a bit more about how Marie got to this point in her teaching.
13 Rebekah: Another important constructivist notion is that of disequilibrium. According to
Piaget, disequilibrium occurs when
“When learners encounter new knowledge that does not fit within their pre-
existing framework it causes disequilibrium. This condition leads to deeper
learning because the learner schema must be expanded or reorganized in order
to alleviate it”.
14 Rebekah: Some constructivist notions of errors that build on this theory include the ideas
that errors:
Should not be avoided entirely
They are learning opportunities that need to be explored and discussed
They are also a natural part of the learning process. Many second language
acquisition researchers have theorized that there are stages of acquisition
during which learners are not ready to understand certain types of error
correction. Learners also go through a stage of having an “interlanguage” their
own grammar system which often reveals transfer from their L1,
overgeneralization and simplification
Given this line of thought, errors are seen as informative events that show us
students’ working conceptions and process towards acquiring a language
A related principle is the ideas that teachers can model how to learn from
errors. When they make errors or have gaps in their knowledge they can use
these as a opportunities to model problem solving and error correction
strategies. This last idea seems to be a core part of Marie’s transformation.
15 Rebekah: As I mentioned earlier, Marie seemed to be fighting btw previous behaviorist

5. conceptions of learning which were based on her own experiences as an English
language learner in Japan. She was fighting between these notions and her own
developing conception of language learning. In talking with Marie it seemed
that her philosophical shift centered mainly around different teacher and
student roles, styles of teaching, and these differing conceptions of error
One the one hand, as she mentioned earlier, she was caught up the imposter
syndrome that was made worse by her traditional conception of the teacher as
the all knowing authoritarian figure whose job was to provide answers and
correct passive students. Within this more traditional conception, errors are
seen as something to be avoided and which should be corrected immediately
with clear negative reinforcement. The approaches she experienced as a learner
in Japan also focused on imitation and repetition through mechanical drills.
On the other hand, Marie as a teacher and M.A. student was beginning to
develop a more constructivist conception of learning. Within this conception, the
teacher’s role was more that of a facilitator, one who models coaches, and guides
student learning. Thus, Marie began to explore teaching methods with more
focus on meaningful communication and student centered activity. Most
importantly, she began to see errors differently. Instead of being caught up in
the fear of not speaking perfectly, she began to see errors as source of learning. I
think this is how her breakthrough occurred. She realized that she did not have
to be perfect but that she could model risk taking, problem solving and learning
strategies using errors or gaps in her knowledge as opportunities for learning
and modeling good learning strategies.
So now let’s hear more about what Marie did following this breakthrough.
16 Marie: Thank you Rebekah. It is really good to know theories can explain what
happened to me. Let’s go and see more details. Here is my lesson plan I
prepared for Instructor Observation Day. We are going to talk about three parts;
the opening, a bodily kinesthetic game, and the recipe writing. Rebekah and I
will link my lessons to relevant theories.
17 Marie: First, I will show a short video of the opening of my lesson. I started the class by
connecting the theme to a prior lesson. In the test book students read about a
man – Gilberto - who wants start a international restaurant. I mentioned this
class is international and encouraged students to write the recipe of their own
country’s food to help Gilberto.
18 Marie: In order to write a recipe, students have to know cooking verbs. In the
presentation of cooking verbs, I used visual aids from a picture dictionary, and
explained each action using kitchen utensils. Like in beat & whip (a bowl and a
whisker). And then, as a part of reinforcement, I tried a charade like gesture
game. A student comes to the front, picks a card and acts out the cooking verb
on the card. The other students then guess the meaning of the word based on
gestures. I once experienced a similar game when I was an ESL student and
found it very helpful and enjoyable.
19 Rebekah: I think another influence behind Marie’s innovative lessons was a more
socioconstructivist conception of learning influenced by the theories of Vygotsky.

6. Social constructivists believe that learning is a social process; knowledge is first
constructed in the social realm and later internalized individually. Vygotsky
also forward the well known concept of the Zone of Proximal Development.
Principles derived from these theories are often used to justify more focus on
collaborative learning activities. The idea is that learners can learn from one
another; their zones of proximal development are closer to one another so they
often know just how to help each other, and they can construct new knowledge
in collaboration with one another. For language learning in particular, the
social interaction provides opportunities for students to test their knowledge of
language and to get feedback on language. It also provides motivation for using
and learning new language.
Another important notion forwarded by Vygotsky is the notion of language as a
mediational means. Verbal language, the visual arts, and music are all different
examples of mediational means. They are communicative tools which interact
with our cognition or thinking and they are socioculturally situated, i.e.
influenced by social and cultural contexts. One principle derived from the
theory of mediational means is the idea that when we use different types of
mediational means to represent ideas and concepts, it helps us to reflect upon
them and develop new perspectives.
Marie applied this principle by bringing in actual objects and using pictures to
help students learn new vocabulary. The actual objects were particularly
powerful because they were full of cultural meaning. Something as simple as a
fry pan is laden with cultural information: Marie’s Japanese fry pan is small
and square, whereas my American fry pan is big and round. Their shape and
size reflect their use for different foods with different portion sizes and for
different meal rituals. A simple verbal translation of the word “fry pan” does not
carry all of this meaning. By bringing in the actual objects, Marie enabled her
students to reflect on the relationship of the words to the objects and their
cultural attributes. I believe this allowed for further processing and
understanding. It also allowed students to develop more complete visual
associations with the words, thereby assisting memory.
In addition, Marie had students produce an artifact, the cook book, using
different mediums: drawings, photos, and written recipes. I believe this use of
different mediums helped to promote more reflection, understanding, and
retention of language.

7. As I mentioned earlier, Vygotsky is also well know for the concept of ZPD. I will
talk more about this concept after Marie discusses her lessons.
20 Marie: Let’s see the video of the game with applications of the theories Rebekah
mentioned. This Iranian man who was actively engaged in a game used
imperatives to communicate with other students. Just after that, other students
copied the imperative even though they used a less-developed grammatical
structure.
21 Rebekah: While witnessing this game in Marie’s class, I immediately thought of Swain’s
Comprehensible Output Hypothesis. This hypothesis states that Language
acquisition depends on comprehensible output, communicative opportunities for
meaningful negotiated interaction. In other words, learners need to speak and
write in meaningful situations where they are interacting with others and have
real goals. If they have specific goals to achieve, listeners will need to ask for
clarification and speakers will have to reconstruct their understanding and
correct their language when communicative breakdown occurs.
As you saw in the video, students in Marie’s class were working in teams with
the common goal of guessing the words on the cards they were given and
keeping the game moving. Many seemed also to have the goals of cooperating
with one another, learning the language, and winning the game or at least
playing the best they could. As I watched, I saw one elderly Chinese woman go
to the front of her table and pull a card. She then began to gesture using a
strainer for the word “to strain”. Her teammates repeatedly guessed the word
“strain” and she said “no” each time. Finally, two of her Spanish speaking team
mates came to the front of the table and looked at her card. “No” they said, “this
is not strain, the word here is stir”. Then they carefully gestured the verbs “stir”
and “drain” while saying the words, as Marie had done earlier in the class. The
Chinese lady repeated the words and gestures showing that she had
understood. Then the two women went back to their seats and the Chinese
woman correctly demonstrated the word stir to her team, at which point they
were all able to guess the correct word “stir”. The Chinese student had not only
reconstructed her understanding of these words but also developed visual and
kinesthetic associations with the words. It was an excellent example of
meaningful negotiated interaction.
22 Marie: Another theory I implemented more consciously in this game is Gardner’s
Multiple Intelligence Theory. As you probably know, Gardner claims eight
intelligences interactively play a significant role in successful learning. As a
former actor in a student theater, I always think connecting body, feelings, and
language is important in language learning. My own learning experience has
shown that this is true. In the TESOL program at SJSU, I wrote a few essays
about drama techniques for language education. In my research of the
literature, I encountered Multiple Intelligence Theory and found that bodily
kinesthetic activity has been found to be an effective tool in ESL classroom.
Getting this theoretical support, strengthened my own beliefs.
23 Marie: After the game, I had the students write recipes. I divided the students into five
ethnic groups and gave them a worksheet to guide their team work. I also

8. allowed L1 use in the groups, and walked around to check on their progress.
24 Rebekah: To me, Maria’s implementation of this recipe unit is reflective of a constructivist
conception of learning. Because learners actively construct their own
knowledge, we know that individual learner variables play a large role in
learning. Some of the key variables in language learning are Motivation,
Anxiety, Learning styles. I think Marie’s teaching demonstrates careful
attention to each of these factors
25 Rebekah: Second Language theorists such as Gardner talk about different types of
motivation. Two commonly discussed types are instrumental and intrinsic
motivation. Instrumental motivation is when the learner has an external goal
such as getting a good grade or winning a game. Intrinsic motivation is when
the learner has the internal satisfaction of learning and enjoying a task.
Instrumental motivation certainly has a role as you saw with the game Marie
implemented. However, intrinsic motivation is said to be the strongest
motivation because it can last regardless of an external reward.
I think the joy and excitement Maria radiated in teaching and the fun she
created through games, jokes, and creative projects were all powerful means of
positively affecting students’ intrinsic and instrumental motivations.
26 Rebekah: What was also surprising and impressive to me is that Marie enabled this group
of beginning language learners to perform in front of the class. Speaking in
front of a group in a relatively new foreign language is a situation that is
frequently associated with foreign language anxiety. But these students
participated widely and enthusiastically.
I believe Maria managed to lower her student’s affective filter because she made
the lessons fun and social using games, humor, and actual cooking utensils. She
also used the familiar context of cooking and recipes. She provided plenty of
positive feedback and she honored students’ cultures by allowing them to choose
recipes from their own countries. In addition, Marie served as a model, taking
risks and perceiving her own errors as learning opportunities. I think the
students felt that if the teacher, who was a non-native speaker, could get up in
front of the class and speak so enthusiastically so could they.
According to Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis (1985) high anxiety, low
motivation, and low confidence can work together to increase the affective filter
and form a mental block that prevents comprehensible input from being used
for acquisition (1985) But students with high motivation, high confidence, and
low Anxiety tend to have higher language acquisition
These individual variables depend on the student and, from a
socioconstructivist perspective, they are also influenced by the classroom
setting, teacher, and peer relationships. In terms of the classroom setting and
teacher, I believe Marie attended well to these psychological factors having a
positive influence on student motivation and confidence, and helping them to

9. reduce their anxiety.
27 Rebekah: The other thing that Marie did was tune into the students
ZPD. Is everybody familiar with the concept of ZPD?
The “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD) is the distance between actual
development and potential development with the guidance of another . It is
considered the optimal place for instruction and level at which learning can
take place.
28 Rebekah: Rebekah: Bruner extended the concept of ZPD and developed the metaphor of
scaffolding, with which you are also probably familiar. Scaffolding occurs when
support is given that enables a learner to extend his knowledge or skills. The
scaffold (or support) is just enough for the learner to move forward on his or her
own and not so much that the problem is solved for the learner.
Modeling, coaching, and guiding are three forms of scaffolding. Constructivist
teachers value scaffolding as an important tool instruction because it is a means
of empowering the student to make progress on their own, learning not just the
answer but how to get the answer.
Marie scaffolded student work on their recipe book and their presentation in
multiple ways.
Modeling – she began by modeling with her own example of a sushi recipe
Coaching – Marie coached her students offering frequent encouragement and
giving them specific positive feedback on their work and writing
Guiding – Marie guided her students through the recipe writing project by
breaking it down into manageable chunks, by providing a worksheet with step
by step instructions for the group work, and by offering individual attention
while circulating around the room. She also used the strategy of “Just in time
instruction” where instead of simply lecturing on grammatical issues she waited
until she saw specific emerging issues in the student’s writing. For example,
while carefully listening and observing she saw students were having trouble
with count and non-count words. She knew from experience that this was a
difficult topic and she had prepared a transparency which she then pulled out
and used to do “just in time instruction” on this emerging grammar topic.
IN SUMMARY: To me Marie’s recipe unit was a reflection of constructivist and
socioconstructivist conceptions of learning. She modified her instruction based
on student interests and background knowledge and put them at the center of
activity; sharing, making, and presenting rather than practicing drills or being
lectured to. She also she paid careful attention to individual learner variables

10. including the affective factors of motivation, confidence, and anxiety. She tuned
into specific learner needs and levels, teaching within their Zone of Proximal
development, and made learning into a social process using authentic language,
real world materials, and collaborative games and projects with the real world
goal of writing and sharing recipes.
In addition, Marie employed multiple intelligence theory using a variety of
strategies and kinesthetic activity to engage students with different learning
styles. Overall, I think her recipe unit was innovative and successful and,
although not always deliberately intended, it was very much in line with
current second language acquisition and learning theory.
29 Marie: Wow. I really feel great whenever I hear this part. Anyway, as Rebekah pointed
out, the lesson plans I implemented can be connected to many theories, but
most of them, I had not intended to practice. Honestly, when Rebekah
mentioned some of theories, I could not remember what they meant. After my
practicum, I had several discussions with Rebekah and evaluated my practices
in reflective writing. Through these interactive reviews, Rebekah and I found
that the sources of the implementations could be traced back to various
experiences in my life.
If you look at this diagram here you’ll see the link between practice and theories
is not necessarily linear.
The sources include my academic development, language learning, teaching,
and personal experiences. These resources led to both conscious and
unconscious implementation of theories. If you look at the lines here, you’ll see
the straight white lines are for conscious connections and the broken lines are
unconscious ones.
In the MA TESOL program at SJSU, I consciously connected my personal
experiences to the academic knowledge I learned. For my practicum, as I
seriously wanted to please my students, my own experiences and knowledge
provided a map for successful teaching. Sometimes, I consciously implemented
theories such as Multiple Intelligence Theory (a choice that was influenced by
my theater experiences and a literature review I had done for a class
assignment). But mostly the practice of theories was intuitive. Only through
post-lesson reflections, were the links between practice & theories discovered.
30 Rebekah: As you can see from Marie’s story, theory application is not necessarily a linear
process. Theoretical influences can come from many different sources: direct
study of theories, experiences as a learner, or modeling from expert teachers’
theory based practices.
I believe that all teachers are driven by their own theories of learning even if

11. they are not conscious of them and new teachers can have very good instincts
without knowing the theory. However, the process of exploring and reflecting
upon your beliefs and what drives your instructional decisions can be very
rewarding.
Theory can be useful as a guide not only for planning instruction but also as a
tool for reflection post lesson. We recommend taking time for self reflection or
doing this type of collaborative reflection, which can be very rewarding.
31 Marie: Before ending this presentation, I have to say that the successful
implementation of my own philosophy of teaching was a process of self
transformation and that transformation involves pain, facing weaknesses, fears,
and anxiety. But I believe the knowledge of theories can provide a map to
articulate our beliefs and pursue better teaching.
On the final day of my practicum, a student came to me to ask my autograph on
the recipe book. She said she didn’t want to forget me. I was very moved by this
gesture. I knew at this moment that the quest for better teaching is not an easy
task but one that is highly rewarding.