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ESL 301 Fall 23 Autoethnography and TESOL Toolkit assignment Yip
Part 1: Autoethnography (15% of total course grade)
For your final project, you will write a narrative about your ongoing journey as a pre-service teacher, using excerpts from your rationales, lesson critiques, and the autobiography you wrote at the beginning of the semester. (You may also add new personal experiences to your narrative). Analyze your narratives using principles, theories, and methods we learned in class. Support your analyses with academic sources. Sources could include our textbook, lecture materials, slides, videos, and any papers we have read this semester. Additional research is welcome but not required. Your autoethnography should be at least 5 pages in length, including quotes and references.
Grading rubric
Content Provide at least 5 relevant autobiographical experiences and details related to the course content. Use quotes from your rationales, lesson critiques, and autobiography whenever appropriate.
(Each experience is worth 10 points)
Analyses of experiences For each autobiographical experience, provide well-developed connections with course content. Use at least two sources* for each experience
*Note: Most of you will be using your textbook. If you cite the section on the authenticity of a writing assignment on p.431 and subsequently cite the section on schema theory on p.391, you can count those as two separate sources.
(The analysis of each experience supported by two sources is worth 15%)
Clarity and citation style Write clearly and in an academic style. Cite sources used in your write-up, following the APA style guide. Please also see footnote 1.
(5 points for each experience)
Total 150
A sample autobiographical experience
My high school Spanish learning experience wasn't exactly a walk in the park. The heavy
focus on grammar drills made the classes pretty dull, and it felt like we were constantly stuck in a
cycle of memorizing rules and conjugations. The teacher, for the most part, used the Grammar
Translation Approach, which places a heavy emphasis on vocabulary and grammar and does not
encourage oral production in the classroom (Brown and Lee, 2015, p.18^1 ). She also used mostly
English in her instruction, which is another feature of the Grammar Translation approach. She
seemed more interested in textbook exercises than making the learning process engaging or
relevant. The classes lacked the liveliness that I believe should come with learning a new language,
and the rigid structure didn't leave much room for practical application or real communication. The
course materials lacked the “communicative authenticity” (Ur, 2012, p. 229) needed to make
language practice in the classroom meaningful. Most importantly, I felt that I learned nothing about
the Spanish culture. I knew a lot of metalanguage and grammar rules. However, not only was I not
able to apply those rules communicatively, I was also not trained to be an “interculturally
competent” Spanish user. My feeling at the time was aptly captured by the Languaculture Principle
stated by Brown and Lee (2015, p. 81):
Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. As learners redefine their identities as they learn an L2, they can be aided by a direct approach to acknowledging cultural differences, an open affirmation of learners’ struggles, of the value of their “home” culture, and of their self-worth in potential feelings of powerlessness.
Unfortunately, this approach made the whole experience feel disconnected and left me without
the enjoyment I was hoping for in learning Spanish back then. My high affective filter (Krashen,
- resulted from my disinterest in the class impeded my learning of Spanish.
(^1) The official APA 7 style guide only requires the use of page numbers when you are using direct quotes. However, for this assignment, I want you to include the page number whenever you cite your textbook.
