Abstract:

Language is one of the ‘cultural attributes’ listed among the characteristics of human diversity in education (Cushner, McClelland, & Safford; 2019). Teachers increasingly experience the reality of a global more diverse classroom. Instructors are one plane flight, one bus trip, one boat ride or one border crossing away from welcoming an immigrant, refugee or international student in their classroom. Instructing English as additional language (EAL) students effectively requires an approach to teaching that is culturally and linguistically relevant (CLRT). Creative and interculturally competent teachers humanize their pedagogy by implementing a variety of approaches to teaching. This paper specifically explores a set of teaching methods to help future teachers deliver the content in ways that are highly creative and beneficial to EALs. The discussion identifies existing teaching methods and examines how they can optimize learning for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. The quest to identify a set of culturally and linguistically relevant teaching methods is an outcome of teaching both undergraduate and graduate TESOL courses for several years as a faculty. The course adopts a critical issues approach to developing literacy in an ESL classroom. During our semester long conversations, a persistent and critical pedagogical question of “how to teach” students whose first language is not English led the instructor to design an assignment that examines existing research-based teaching methods and determine how they are culturally and linguistically relevant. This paper draws from two sources of data. First the author used the existing literature on culturally responsive pedagogy to design the assignment. Second, she conducted a systematic review of research to:
(a) identify a variety of teaching methods that are transferable when instructing across human diversity in education, and specifically conducive to optimizing culturally and linguistically diverse students’ learning, and
(b) create a model composed of eight teaching methods.

To select these methods the author completed a database search of 49 EBSCOhost databases, limiting the search to scholarly journal articles 2010-present from various geographic sources. The following search terms were used: teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), English language learners (ENL), English as additional language, culturally and linguistically relevant teaching, culturally responsive pedagogy and culturally and linguistically diverse learners as identified in the article abstracts. Articles that met these selection criteria were fully reviewed. The author selected 24 articles in this search to summarize insights and examine rationale for listing uncovered methods as culturally and linguistically relevant. Eight teaching methods are compiled to develop a model and enhance TESOL Candidates’ understanding of CLRT and encourage them to critically and creatively adapt existing teaching methods in delivering content to English language learners. They include: differentiated instruction, interactive lecture, virtual fieldtrip, role playing, authentic assessment, storytelling, (guest) speaking and cooperative learning (DIVRASSC).

Keywords:

Language diversity, Culturally and linguistically relevant teaching, Methods, TESOL, Responsive pedagogy.