Honestly, my reaction to this point is one of disbelief. I find it hard to believe that having students write reflections and aspirations via social media results in a more complex use of language in students. I am not sure how much this argument applies to younger students prior to college or high school level, either. I do feel that students are more comfortable writing in familiar spaces like Facebook or Twitter versus writing an extensive research paper or persuasive essay. I also agree with the point that students' online posts were affirmed by their peers, which, in turn, serves as a positive reinforcement for students. I suppose this positive reinforcement from peers on social media takes the place of constructive criticism or praise from a teacher.

I never thought about this before that kids who learn to read in their first language will transfer those skills to English faster than if they try to read and learn English at the same time. It makes me think of all the ESL kindergarten students in my school. Curriculum builds in kindergarten and first grade from learning site words to sentences to reading. I wonder if ESL students are learning to read with their Bilingual teachers or if they are learning to read in their native language at home with parents? I am not a classroom teacher (I am an art teacher), so I do not know the process of teaching literacy to young children. I am curious how the kindergarten and 1st grade teachers are teaching reading to ESL students if those teachers only speak English in the classroom...

"It's hard to know what a book is for if you've never seen one." This quote really popped out to me because of the startling shock value of it. I couldn't help but think of my own education, all the way back to grade school through high school and college and all the advantages I had growing up, including access to a good education, including reading and writing supplies and excellent teachers along the way. I also think of my current students and the elementary building I teach at. Our students are so well equipped. I suppose this quote just blatantly pointed out the reality that many children in the world do not have the advantage of access to education and learning materials/teachers. This quote makes me grateful that I am a teacher and am contributing in my own small way to help a very big global problem: gaps in education and literacy.

I was very interested to hear how children naturally have lower expectations of themselves and the ability to pause and take their time before attempting to speak. An ability to pause, think, and reflect is a strategy that comes natural to children. T Krashen suggests this ability helps ensure that they (children) have lower anxiety levels and, in turn, higher rates of language acquisition. I am wondering how this skill can be applied to older ESL learners, including middle school, high school, and adult learners. I feel as though anxiety and stress levels obviously increase with age, as a result of self-awareness and self-scrutiny increasing. An ESL teacher can possibly help reduce stress and anxiety in language learners by maintaining a calm, nonthreatening classroom environment. The teacher can create this welcoming classroom by using the various ESL teaching methods, using Principled Eclecticism that we discussed last week like CLT and TPR, so each student's learning style is met. Also, the teacher wants to avoid threatening or harsh corrective teaching responses so the ESL learning does not feel additional pressure and anxiety on top of the pressure of learning a new language. If only adult learners could turn off that switch in their brain that causes us to overthink or over scrutinize ourselves, so we could learn with the full open-mindedness of a child again.