Hey now, TESL Ontarians! Recently, I have been teaching online and multimodal courses and I thought I would share with you an activity I have found effective when working both with ESL students and TESL pre-service and in-service teachers.

As someone who is new to incorporating (in any substantive way) digital tools into my teaching arsenal, I have slowly come to view activities that allow for taking advantage of students’ digital literacies as invaluable. I hope you find the second part of this two-part description of how to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies in our language classrooms useful and engaging. The first part of this series described how I have used video introductions as a way to build a stronger (e-) learning community in my classrooms (See my post dated July 18th). This second part describes how to incorporate students’ digital literacies when engaging with notions of identity and investment in language learning through production of Autobiographical Identity Texts (AITs). 

Overview

An autobiographical identity text (AIT) is a multimodal, digital “text” produced by students, allowing for a narrative description of the intersections between language learning and identity construction/negotiation. More simply, this narrative digital text allows students to represent their multiple, hybrid, evolving identities as language learners to teachers and other students in a comprehensive manner that provides the opportunity for authentic language use, oral presentation skills, and critical reflection on their language learning. These texts include student descriptions of what moments have been decisive in students’ life journeys along with how different factors (e.g. nationality, ethnicity, language, gender, class) have impacted how students view themselves as a member of real or imagined language communities (including English language ones). Ultimately, this activity allows for students to positively reflect upon their evolving identities as they learn English while building their awareness of language as a dynamic mediating tool for cultural expression. This activity can be used with students at any level of proficiency, including those in English for academic purposes (EAP) classrooms^[1].

Objectives

• Develop strong classroom community
• Promote authentic target language use
• Promote academic oral presentation skills
• Allow for positive reflection of students’ cultural and linguistic identities
• Promote critical reflection on “investment” in real/imagined language communities

Steps

• Provide students with clear evaluation rubric and assignment objectives
• Allow class time for investigation of audio/visual production tools
• Provide class time for students to produce notes to guide their narration
• Model a version of an autobiographical identity text (teacher version)
• Provide platform for sharing texts (if not institutionally-supported platform, texts can be shared via youtube.com)
• Allow for description of “text” production (another opportunity for step by step description: First, I…Second, I…Next, I…Finally, I…)
• Allow for follow-up text (critical reflection) describing why particular choices were made to represent hybrid, evolving identities
• Provide feedback at several levels (critical thinking, clarity, coherence, structure, grammar, vocabulary)

*I highly suggest producing a model AIT for the students to use as a template.

**Please note that these documents often include sensitive information and students should be consulted before sharing their AITs with colleagues. In my experience, students are often eager to share once the classroom community has developed a sense of safety and collegiality.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this activity, TESL Ontarians, and, as always, I welcome any additional information or feedback as we learn from each other.

AIT Production Resources

https://voicethread.com/

https://screencast-o-matic.com/home

http://www.apple.com/ca/mac/imovie/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapchat/id447188370

https://prezi.com/explore/staff-picks/

https://office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx

Related Academic Readings of Potential Interest

Cummins, J. (2009). Pedagogies of choice: Challenging coercive relations of power in classrooms and communities. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 12(3), 261-271.

Duff, P. A., & Uchida, Y. (1997).The negotiation of teachers’ sociocultural identities and practices in postsecondary EFL classrooms. TESOL Quarterly, 451-486.

Herath, S., & Valencia, M. (2014). 7 Neither “A complete insider” nor “A complete outsider”. Advances and Current Trends in Language Teacher Identity Research, 5, 86.

[1] I have also found this activity to be effective when used with in-service and pre-service TESL teacher candidates as it allows them to reflect upon the journeys taken by their culturally and linguistically diverse students.

James Corcoran @jn_corcoran

Hey now! My name is James and I have been involved in teaching ELT/ESL/EAL/EFL/EAP (enough acronyms yet?) for the past 15 years. My teaching and teacher education experiences have taken me across the Americas (from Brazil to Mexico to various parts of Canada). I have a PhD and MA from OISE/University of Toronto and research/teaching experience in a wide variety of classroom contexts. Recently, while teaching graduate and undergraduate students at universities across southern Ontario, I have been experimenting with different modalities in delivering English for academic purposes and TESL theory & methodology courses/workshops. I am excited to share my experiences in educational research and pedagogy with the TESL Ontario faithful as we co-construct knowledge together.