Vandreia Montano

ESC 708
Spring 2015
Reflection 1.a.
For this reflection I chose three artifacts from my graduate class ESC 757 - Linguistics
for TESOL/Bilingual, from the fall of 2014. These artifacts meet the TESOL standard 1.a.
Language as a System when it comes to morphology, semantics, discourse varieties, and aspects
of social and academic language.
The artifact entitled Dialectal Codeswitching was a take-home final exam activity for
which I had to read an article about the topic and answer some reflective questions on the
dialectal codeswitching issue. Developing the artifact helped me to understand the diversity of
discourse that a language may have and how important it is for the teacher to respect the
students dialects at the same time that he/she helps the students to build their standard language.
This activity opened my eyes to the fact that some dialects of English have their own structure
and rules, and that teachers should be able to identify when the students are using their dialect in
order to be able to contrast the dialectal differences and guide the students to the appropriate uses
of language varieties in the different social contexts.
The second artifact, entitled Code-switching in the bilingual classroom, was also part
of the take-home final exam activity mentioned above, for which I read an article on the topic
code-switching in the bilingual classroom and answered a number of reflective questions. This
activity made me understand how the structure of the students first language can help them
achieve in the second language. It made me think of the importance of the teachers knowledge
of the positive aspects of code-switching in the bilingual classroom. With this artifact I learned

that the teacher can help the students to understand the content by allowing peers to talk in their
first language to explain a given topic as well as to hear what the ELLs have to say about the
subject being taught, but that they might be struggling to reveal due to language limitations.
The third artifact was a homework assignment on morphology, entitled Homework 3,
for which I analyzed and described words formation processes, studied a student writing sample
and identified what inflectional morpheme the student was struggling with the most. I also
created a classroom activity to teach the derivational suffix -er (e.g. teach + -er = teacher).
Developing this artifact helped me to understand the word formation processes and how teachers
can help students to learn the language by using some techniques that focus on certain aspects of
the language morphology. In addition, I learned how to analyze students writing samples and
identify their language errors in order to focus on what the students struggle with the most in the
classroom. Furthermore, I learned how to create activities to work with different aspects of
English morphology and help the students to understand how words are built in English to carry
different meanings, such as the use of prefixes and suffixes.
Looking at the artifacts, I can say that all of them helped me to be more aware of the
different aspects to be considered as an ESL teacher, such as the variety of dialects in the English
language, the word formation processes, the use of the students first language in the classroom,
and how to correct the students language errors without embarrassing and creating a barrier for
them to learn the language. Also, when developing these activities I was exposed to the structure
of the English language, and I learned the word formation process and how to use the students
first language knowledge to develop their second language. This experience with the artifacts
described above prepared me to meet with the TESOL standard 1.a. as follows: Candidates
demonstrate understanding of language as a system, including phonology, morphology, syntax,

semantics, pragmatics, discourse varieties, aspects of social and academic language, rhetorical
registers, and writing conventions. Teachers use their knowledge of these inter-related aspects of
language to help ELLs acquire English language and literacy to achieve in content areas.
To conclude, developing the artifacts contributed in the refinement of my knowledge of
language structure as a future teacher. After reflecting upon the different linguistic issues to be
addressed in the classroom I feel more prepared to guide the students through their language
acquisition process.