Speaker
Description
Despite the acknowledged effectiveness of translanguaging - allowing students to use their native language (L1) to learn, discuss, and write, even if the instructor does not speak that language - as scaffolding in language education, research depicting how specific scaffolding strategies are integrated into pedagogical translanguaging in English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classrooms remains limited. This workshop explores how ESL instructors in Viet Nam, those who are not fluent in Vietnamese but native English speakers, and those who are fluent in both Vietnamese and English, can best support their emerging bilinguals in the Vietnamese EFL classroom. Several key scaffolding strategies are examined and discussed to analyze how ESL language instructors can linguistically advance their students in classrooms with varying levels of fluency and proficiency. The key takeaway is perceiving scaffolding as fluid, on a spectrum, in order to best accommodate and aid emerging Vietnamese-English bilinguals. Teacher talk in Vietnamese, modeling in two languages, and employing gestures, realia, and translation matching games are some scaffolds demonstrated in this workshop. Engaging and motivating learners to securely incorporate English into their identity is also discussed. This workshop aims for participants to critically reflect upon their personal choices regarding a conceptual understanding of scaffolding strategies. Granted, all language classrooms are linguistically diverse and every instructor has their own toolkit for enhancing the linguistic outcomes of their students; therefore, this workshop is meant to be both informative and interactional, with participants sharing their thoughts, ideas, successes, and challenges during the presentation.
Biography
Valerie Sartor gained her doctorate in Education from the University of New Mexico, USA, in December 2014. Her research centered up the politics of language; specifically, she studied multilingual Russian-born Buryat children whose families had trekked to Inner Mongolia, China, for their children to gain fluency and literacy in both Mandarin and Classical Old Mongolian. During her tenure as a scholar, she also researched best practices for Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL); specifically, assessment, curriculum design, teaching methodology, and classroom practices. Dr. Sartor has researched linguistic shift and taught ESL in the USA and abroad for many years. She served as a Fulbright Senior Fellow twice (2014-2015, Russia; 2019-2020, Kazakhstan) and also as an English Language Fellow (2009-2010) in Turkmenistan. She volunteers as a CEA curriculum reviewer and currently serves as a US Peace Corps Volunteer, teaching high-school English near Cu Chi, Viet Nam.
| Affiliate type | Vietnamese public school |
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