A note about Feb. 16th

I felt like this class period was probably the most productive for me over the course of this semester so far. We got a good presentation from Thea and Stephanie, got some valuable insight from Solen, looked at some interesting cultural material from Malaysia, and we were able to sufficiently prepare for our portfolio assignment that will be due next week.

Out of all of those activities I want to mention what I found to be the most interesting part of Solen's presentation. He informed us that his ESL 202 students were very uninterested in being in his class for various reasons and then he gave some advice about how he bypassed his students' lack of motivation. I think that many of his techniques may have been very practical, but I think that they would be very effective. He even told us the differences in his approach from his first ESL class to this one. I experienced an unmotivated student last semester when I was tutoring for pronunciation and I think that when we are able to show our students their true need for further language development then they usually become more internally motivated and engaged, which are just a couple of the essential ingredients for L2 success.