Abstract:

Many U.S. undergraduate students who find employment teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) after graduation are in many ways underprepared to effectively teach English abroad. Unless their course of undergraduate study specifically addresses second language pedagogy, these aspiring English teachers have limited background in second language acquisition theories and basic classroom techniques and practices. These new teachers also have limited experience in reflecting on and explaining how the English language works.

The overarching aim of this study is to report on a collaboration-based approach to teaching English pedagogical grammar to aspiring English teachers at a university in the United States. In this course, native speakers of English interested in becoming English teachers and international exchange students who are studying English as a second language were brought together in the classroom to engage in joint conversations about the English language. As part of the course requirements, the exchange students were responsible for coming to class with their questions about how English works, which then served as a foundation for discussions with the undergraduate students. This provided the undergraduate students an authentic opportunity to practice how they would teach certain grammatical and vocabulary points to English learners.

This study draws from and builds on the bodies of research related to collaborative dialogue in language learning (e.g., Swain & Lapkin, 1998; Swain, 2000; Swain et al., 2002), as well as a multiliteracies approach to meaning making (The New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). The types of data analyzed in this study include: student artifacts of course work, audio and video recordings of class conversations, the instructor’s teacher-researcher journal, and the instructor’s lesson plans and teaching materials. Constructivist grounded theory, a systematic and flexible approach to collecting and analyzing qualitative data (Charmaz, 2014), is the analytical framework applied to this study. In particular, this study analyzes how the exchange students and undergraduate students made meaning and co-constructed knowledge as they engaged in joint conversations about the English language. Additionally, this study reports on the challenges presented to both the instructor and the learners during these collaborative conversations.

Keywords:

Language learning, collaboration, English as a second language.