Using Bulgarian Mini-Lessons in an SLA Course to Improve the KAL of American ESL Teachers

Abstract

This research was inspired by some of the challenges faced as an instructor of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) courses in an MA TESOL program with mostly nontraditional student population. When started teaching four years ago had just finished my Ph.D. in Foreign and Second Language Education. remember how thrilled was at the idea of designing my own syllabus and teaching my first SLA course. vividly remember my first class and the question asked my students after introducing myself: I assume you are students in the TESOL program who are preparing to become ESL said. The answer came back like a blow: No, they said, We already teach ESL students. tried to conceal my surprise and started handing out the syllabus that described the goals and assignments for the course. Students had to read numerous articles on SLA and do a presentation on a topic of their own choice. When finished, they asked for more information because they were not familiar with some of the topics that they were supposed to select for their presentations. It was only then that realized that even though my students were teachers, they had no background knowledge in either Linguistics or Second Language Acquisition. Needless to say had a very difficult first semester. Since that time have completely changed my way of teaching this class. have learned through both my experience and my reading of the research (van Lier, 1996; Bartels, 2002; Lo, 2001) that students need more than lectures on the theories of SLA in order to be able to understand these theories and apply them in their future teaching. Teacher knowledge has three major dimensions: subject matter content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge (Shulman, 1986). All three dimensions are important in making decisions in actual practice. However, most of these decisions are also based on beliefs and assumptions, which seem to be an inextricable part of teacher knowledge (Woods, 1996). Courses of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in language teacher education programs seem to emphasize only one aspect of