InTASC STANDARD 1: Learner Development

The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing the patterns of learning and
development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and
physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging
learning experiences.
Name of Artifact: ​Case Study
Course:​ FL 664 - Second Language Acquisition Theory and Practice
​ pring 2016-2017
Date: S
ACTFL Standards Addressed: ​1.2, 2.2
Rationale:
In a second language acquisition class, I conducted a case study about a student who was
currently taking my class and who had a propensity for language learning. I studied her at the
beginning of my foreign language teaching career so as to gain more insight into how L2ers learn
or acquire another tongue. The study that I conducted shows my understanding of the fact that
second language learners vary on an individual level because the study was centered primarily on
her personal experience as a second language learner. However, because I also understand that
taking note of how successful language learners acquire or learn another tongue has implications
for the foreign language classroom, I used the traceable patterns of her acquisition process to
improve my understanding of the cognitive processes by which the mind obtains another
language. In harmony with these enlightenments, I work to improve my teaching practices so
that learners can grow steadily in their own process of transitioning from an interlanguage to the
target language.
In my case study, I give special attention to the exact characteristics which attribute to the
participant’s prodigiousness in second language learning. In my own classroom, I have sought to
promote and cultivate those very same qualities so that more of my students may develop the
same level of advancement in foreign language learning or acquisition as the student under
observation did. One of the methods that I noticed contributed to communicative competence
while conducting this case study was the heterogenous pairing or grouping of students. Ekembe
(2014) said that when students within the foreign language classroom have the opportunity to
interact, “it provides learners with the opportunity for producing language, input comprehension,
and reception of feedback (Philp and Tognini, 2009), and falls within the scope of the
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach practised in FL contexts” (p.237). Because
of her advancement, I often placed the participant with emerging students. I found that they
would not only try to rise to her expectations in conversations but that they would mimic her
enthusiasm, as well.
In my own foreign language classroom, I recently arranged students in groups of fours to
complete a jigsaw task with the lyrics of a song in Spanish. I placed them in heterogeneous
groups with varying levels of second language abilities. Some of them were good at listening for
syllable boundaries. Accent posed no problem for others. Still others were able to accurately
comprehend if the order of the written word corresponded to that of the spoken. Thus, I used the
individual’s developments for the betterment of the group. Students were able to have an
interchange of knowledge that they naturally retain because of all working with someone who is
better at a particular aspect than they are.

References
Ekembe, Eric Enongene. (2014). Interaction and Uptake in Large Foreign Language Classrooms.
RELC Journal: A Journal of Language Teaching and Research,​ ​45​(3), 237-251.