Teaching Spanish to Grade 9: A Constructivist Approach - Essay Sample

Introduction

In my experience, teaching Spanish to 15 years old is a difficult and often a subtle task. Instructing a grade 9 Spanish class in formally-contrived contexts is to a great extent intellectually demanding. In order to teach a grade 9 Spanish class effectively, it is paramount to constitute a clear understanding of the specific learner's and their position on their journey of learning. The purpose of this paper is to explain the constructivist approach to teaching students of Spanish as a foreign language in a year 9 class. Also, the study will outline the impacts of Vygotsky's social constructivism method with a focus on peer interaction.

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Reflection on Ways This Theory Relates to my Teaching

Scaffolding + Reflection

Boblett (2012) notes that Scaffolding incorporates a significant amount of the tasks that takes place in a classroom learning as well as the interaction between a teacher and a learner. Bruner (1985) noted that Vygotsky advocated for students receiving help from educators to obtain knowledge inside their Zone of Proximal Development to advance their knowledge. Also, this help from instructors improves their skills without being frustrated by difficult challenges that are currently hard to conquer (Wood, 2010). In my teaching, this is evident as I apply reciprocal instructing by initiating a discourse between me and the students; I model skills by reading a text, such as rephrasing or asking a question.

I recently used scaffolding whereby I came across a student who had constructed the sentences in a wrong manner. I first commended the student for his effort and asked:

Me: "Can you spot the small error?" using the first stage of contingent instructing.

Student: "No, I do not know." The student stared for a while and then answered.

(I then proceeded to the second level which is Specific Verbal Instruction (SVI))

Me: "Look at the second sentence. Can you see what's wrong?"

The student did not see the problem, I proceeded to the third stage of Indicate Materials (IM) where I showed the student the exact point that was incorrect and explained on why it is incorrect. The "scaffolding" was complete since the learner could proceed without my involvement.

With time, the student slowly assumes a greater responsibility for controlling the interaction, and eventually takes up my role as the instructor to other students. The evidence to show that the students are slowly becoming the instructors is usually assessed mostly through curriculum-based monitoring tests and formative assessments. The idea of ZPD was arrived at after an in-depth study by Vygotsky to demonstrate the effectiveness of numerous methods of teaching and how children learn. The tests based on individual knowledge are in most cases not a feasible way to analyze the intelligence of a young student. Children should interact with more intelligent students in order to learn. I have always been a thinker and throughout my career, I have significantly perfected my teaching skills with the help of Vygotsky's theory.

Therefore, this theory is relatable in my Spanish class as and I agree that students stand a better chance of applying learnt knowledge independently when they receive the much-needed support from teachers while learning something new (Pollard and Collins, 2005). As the students achieve independent learning strategies advancing their individual psychomotor, affective, and cognitive knowledge and learning skills, the aids should be moderately eliminated.

Zone of Proximal Development + Reflection

Vygotsky's Zone of proximal development can also be related to my own teaching n Spanish class in numerous ways. In my teaching, the ZPD common conception implies a co relation between a less knowledgeable student and a more knowledgeable person. Notably, this happens in a way that the less knowledgeable student becomes independently proficient at what was in the first place a team-based task. In order to perfectly teach using the zone of proximal development, I usually stress the co relation between the students' previous knowledge in daily contexts with the current concept being learned. For instance, if I am teaching conversational vocabulary and I had previously taught conversational grammar, I apply this prior knowledge when introducing information about the new topic.

According to Lui (2012), the argument of ZPD is significantly precise and elaborated than its common interpretation or reception. Palincsar (1998) also noted that the negotiated nature of learning and teaching is helpfully structured using construct of "zone of proximal development" (ZPD). For my Spanish class, the cognitive apprenticeship places key emphasis on the significance of the method that MKO transfers that skill to a learner. Notably, the human learning constructivism approaches have resulted in the advancement of cognitive apprenticeship theory. According to Vygotsky, fostering ZPD development leads to more rapid development in learning. The process of teaching incorporates the provision of extra modeling as needed, availing feedback correctively, and giving reminders that aim to present the learner's understanding of that of the MKO.

Notably, in my class, as the students understand the language development, the instruction and feedback presented by the MKO reduce. For this to be feasible I ensure that the students pay attention, have access to and retain the information given, be motivated, as well as present the capability to reproduce the desired skill accurately. When I am implementing coaching and modeling processes in my teaching, the cognitive apprenticeships further help the three levels of skills acquisition presented in the expertise literature: the autonomous stage, the associative stage, and the cognitive stage. In the first stage of cognition, a student constructs a declarative skill comprehension. In the second stage of association, the student's misinterpretations and mistakes of the language in the first stage are highlighted and removed while strengthening the associations between the critical elements involved in the language. Finally, the student's language skills are perfected and honed in the autonomous level.

Peer Tutoring + Reflection

Vygotsky's theory also relates to my teaching as through peer tutoring. I apply peer tutoring which can be defined as a peer-mediated and flexible method involving learners themselves acting as academic students and teachers. In my teaching, an impeccable performing learner is grouped other students with weak performance records in order to review critical behavioral or academic concepts. Vygotsky's theory is relatable as he views students as a 'sociogenic process' in that they obtain skills over cultural signs and elements from their interaction with other students in their environment. Notably, these other students are in most cases, more knowledgeable and assist them in gaining significant understanding and learning how these signs and elements are of significance in their cultural groups. In my experience, the interaction process between the MKO and a child can significantly affect the learner's development in understanding Spanish, especially if the interaction takes place within the student's ZPD. One of Vygotsky's solution suggested peer-teaching arguing that grouping of learners with comparable but different skills, they can assist one another. For instance:

Student 1: Requests for assistance in pronunciation of certain words or a comment.

Student 2: offer positive reinforcement and feedback.

As a teacher I inform peers that I have read and appreciate their comments. In some cases I can add two more students to discuss so they can then reason (negatively or positively) about the suggestions or comments.

In my career, this strategy is more effective in comparison to what a teacher would achieve. My primary involvement is usually with the significantly advanced students in the Spanish language and lack an MKO to assist them, but also can smoothly communicate with the instructor because of the minimal knowledge gap.

Summary

It is clear that Vygotsky's theory relates to my teaching in my year 9 Spanish class in numerous ways such as scaffolding, working in ZPD and cooperative learning activities. This does not mean that Vygotsky's theory is applicable to any child, only activities and instruction that lie within the zone promote development. The evidence presented above demonstrates that the ZPD is effective in my classroom. Furthermore, I can use the Vygotsky's zone of proximal development to organize my Spanish class in more strategic manner to achieve maximum results.

Theoretical Issues in Vygotsky's Theory

To comprehensively understand the faults in how Vygotsky's theory is implemented in learning contexts we need to conduct a critical review each of its assumptions logically. The aim of this section is to criticize Vygotsky's theory in the field of education in general, and applied linguistics in particular (Martin-Kniep and Picone-Zocchia, 2009). Notably, there are numerous problems with trying to extract scholarly implication from his theory. For one, he never outlined what state of social interaction provides help to a student in the ZPD. Secondly, the notion of promoting development via collaboration is neither constructivist nor behaviorist. Therefore, this means that an instructor can avail cooperative, non-directive furtherance as well as authoritarian, and ordinate help.

Issue 1: The Potential Assumption

One of the issues is that the term ZPD is mostly applied in learning instead of development. Comparatively, the theory seems to suggest that learners cannot understand a language on their own. But they are likely to comprehend with the help of a more knowledgeable peer working within the ZPD which is not the case (Chaiklin, 2003). Chaiklin further notes that the theory seems to present that learning within a ZPD is fun - he further outlines how losing a race can be a significant event for development. Moreover, his argument does not note that potential was a child's attribute. On the contrary, he assumed it was a learning situation's trait that which is not likely to contain the potential to move a student from one stage of development to another. Therefore, it is clear that it would be a mistake to assume that there exists a 'sweet spot' in each student that the instructor should note and then target teaching. Notably, Vygotsky's theory perceived teaching within the ZPD as teaching in a realm that was likely to improve a learner's mental advancement (Chaiklin, 2003). We can come to a conclusion that discussing the term 'zone of proximal development' is imprecise, vaguely unhelpful.

In my Spanish class, development and learning are automatically linked closely but this does not mean they are...