In my Introduction to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) course, I require students to complete an extended service-learning project. Students volunteer in local ESL classrooms and regularly reflect on their experiences and connections to course content; I facilitate these reflections through both written assignments and oral discussions. In addition, students develop materials for their cooperating ESL teachers, applying what they have learned about TESOL theories and research to fill expressed needs in the classrooms in which they volunteer. Although I had spent considerable time developing the service-learning component of the class, even working twice with students to re-imagine the service-learning project and its connections to the broader course goals, I had not spent much time formally assessing the student learning outcomes of the project. In this research project, I hoped to examine those outcomes.
Student Profile
The Introduction to TESOL course is required for English Education majors, but it also attracts students from other Education programs, as well as students who are interested in teaching English abroad. Students typically are sophomores or juniors when they enroll in the course, but the only prerequisite is a first-year writing course required of all Elon University students.
Service-Learning Projects
In addition to volunteering in the ESL classrooms for 18 to 20 hours a semester, TESOL students complete several activities and projects that help integrate the service-learning field experience into the course:
- Students write weekly reflections about their service-learning experience and address prompts designed to help them connect those experiences to the week's course materials.
- The class devotes one day a week to discussing the students' service-learning experiences and to relating them to TESOL theories and practices.
- Students write profiles of the ESL classrooms/programs, analyzing them as rhetorical situations. They investigate the learners' characteristics, the goals of other stakeholders (i.e., teachers, administrators, parents, community members, etc.), the languages represented in the classroom, the purposes for learning/teaching English, and other contextual factors that might shape the learning experience.
- Students create materials for the ESL classrooms based on real needs they and their cooperating teachers have identified. In addition to giving a copy of the materials to the ESL teachers, students post their materials and corresponding reflections on a TESOL @ Elon wiki resource accessible by current and former students, as well as cooperating teachers.
Community Partners
In the last two years, students have volunteered exclusively in ESL classrooms in the Alamance-Burlington School System. Placements have included elementary, middle-grades, and high-school ESL classrooms. Although students often are placed in the grade level they anticipate teaching, alternate placements sometimes are necessary to meet the needs of our service-learning partners and to accommodate students' schedules and transportation options.
Research Question
Although I identified several research questions about the learning outcomes associated with the service-learning experience, this report focuses on my overarching question:
- What are students' perceptions of a service-learning field experience in ENG 206: Introduction to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and
- What do their perceptions suggest about learning outcomes associated with the experience?
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