IEPIS Newsletter - December 2014 (Plain Text Version)
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MEET THE MEMBERS: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE FUCCIO
1. Please tell us about yourself. I started teaching English in 2003 and taught overseas mostly in Asia (Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and China) until 2012. Then I came back to the United States and started my MA in TESOL at University of Arizona. I taught international students in the First-Year Writing Program there. My husband and I are looking to teach in Turkey, but the job postings are just coming out and we are still applying, so our plans are up in the air. 2. How did you become interested in teaching English? I grew up thinking I would always teach English for the Peace Corps. When I graduated from college, I rotated between working temporarily in the U.S. and traveling and living overseas, mostly in Western Europe at first. I then started working a lot in the United States and traveling and going back and forth to Asia. I kept hearing people talking about taking CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) courses and different private lessons they had, and I was reminded that I wanted to teach. I thought maybe I didn’t have to do so through the Peace Corps, so I started looking at Dave’s ESL Café website and found a job in Taiwan. I worked with children, and although I enjoyed my experiences, I realized that teaching children was not quite right for me, and that I preferred to work with adults. I then did the CELTA course in Vietnam and started teaching adults. Within my first year doing so, I started teaching academic English, which I loved doing. 3. What are your current interests in the field? I’m combining second language (L2) writing with CALL (computer-assisted language learning), and I’m exploring teacher and peer feedback within Google Docs. A lot of times when we give feedback to students our feedback is on a different document than what students have. The process can become messy and students have to look at different documents. Using Google Docs streamlines the process for both teachers and students. There is also a power-sharing aspect to cloud documents that supersedes traditional word processing programs. And for ESL students who are already sensitive about their language abilities, this self-empowerment can be motivational. Another very interesting technology that I’m exploring is “screencasting,” which is new to Google Docs. Screencasting involves taking a video of how you are moving around the screen, allowing us to also record our speech as we work. So the video is on the text but the student can hear the audio of you talking. And they can replay it over and over. I heard about this at the Arizona CALL Conference with Spanish teachers. 4. What are some challenges you’ve experienced in teaching writing? I worked in a first-year writing program at the University of Arizona. Although the students are tracked as native or nonnative speakers, and although there is some overlap between the two groups, the writing curriculum is exactly the same. It’s up to the teacher to squeeze in any language aspects that the students need in their busy curriculum. So I tried to use as much technology as possible so we could extend L2 writers’ language instruction. The biggest challenge was matching what students need with a very busy curriculum, and potentially matching their language ability (e.g., assignments) to a curriculum designed for native speakers who have been in the education system for 12 years. Nonetheless, there is a lot of freedom within the curriculum to do what is needed in the classroom to help our students improve their writing. 5. Could you tell us about something interesting that you’ve learned recently or a lesson or approach that has worked well in the classroom? Screencasting was a huge one because I didn’t realize that it was possible. I also took an L2 writing class last semester and we really analyzed the types of teachers and how some may be quite strict while others just want students to get ideas out in writing. The range of different kinds of writing teacher styles was interesting to me. It was particularly interesting to me because I taught a lot of IELTS and TOEFL iBT writing classes overseas and am used to training students on a strict writing format. I am still a stickler for adhering to genre conventions in Academic English, but I think I have become more explicit in letting the student know why we are following such formatting and content rules. 6. Would you like to mention anything else? When I first began teaching overseas, there weren’t a lot of hard copies of teaching resources. My first few EFL teaching countries were ones that did not have hard copy English language books to use in class, so I relied heavily on Internet resources such as One Stop English, the British Council, and Breaking News English. I really delved into websites and got information from wherever I could. I did professional development on my own until I got a good job where there were more substantial professional development opportunities. What I learned was that I tend to cast the big net when looking for big ideas. For instance, I relied on Edutopia and Edudemics, which are meant for K-12 teachers. I’ve learned that good teaching seems to be good teaching and ideas can come from anywhere. If I could say anything, there are excellent ideas on ESL forums that are very specific, but there is amazing teaching information in other places where you wouldn’t normally find it. Stephanie welcomes feedback at LinkedIn (dstephfuccio) or Twitter (@stephfuccio). Thank you very much for your time, Stephanie, and for sharing your thoughts with us! We look forward to bringing you more IEPIS member stories in the future. Please contact Ilka Kostka, IEPIS secretary and newsletter contributor, to be interviewed for our next newsletter. Ilka Kostka is a faculty member in the American Language and Global Pathways Programs at Northeastern University and secretary of the IEP Interest Section. Her research interests include textual borrowing and academic writing instruction. |
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