Does Language Proficiency Affect Behaviors? Article Writing Example

Abstract

The learning environment in a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) classroom, which includes the attitudes of the educator, is vital to the success of the student.  This is no different when engaging English as a Foreign Language (EFL)/ English as a Second Language (ESL) student and has a strong impact on student behaviors.  This research presents an analysis of student impressions regarding instructor activities in a TESOL environment to assess how this contributed to language proficiency as well as student behaviors in the classroom.

Essentially, comprehension of the lesson impacts student behaviors, so it is integral to the proficiency of EFL/ESL students that they are engaged in the lesson to avoid poor behaviors that can interrupt the learning of the entire class.  The impressions students’ form of their instructor is a primary determining factor in students’ ability to engage in the lesson and teachers must ensure that they are not deterring their EFL/ESL students from learning.  Teachers that fail to maintain control of their classroom, appear disinterested, or demonstrate other negative behaviors instigate poor EFL/ESL proficiency as well as disruptive behaviors in their students.

Exploring the Impact of Language Proficiency on Classroom Behavior

The high influx of foreign people into countries other than their own facilitates the necessity for TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and an investigation of how language learning impacts classroom behaviors.  In recent years, many countries in Europe, the United States, and Asia have doubled their efforts to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the lower level of schooling due to the influx of bilingual students in primary educational settings.Teaching asecond language to young children is commonplace in countries such as Europe, the United States, Asia, Australia, and Canada because of the large influx of immigrants (Awan, Azher, Anwar, & Naz, 2010). The ability to successfully perform as a TESOL educator requires the individual to study how language learning affects the behaviors of children in such context (Ajayi, 2008a).

Understanding the nature of disruptive behaviors relies on the accurate conceptualization of the numerous terminologies relevant to student behaviors, such as and maladjusted, deviant, delinquent, troublesome, and difficult, which are common identifiers applied to disruptive students (Chaiklin, 2011).  Many of these terms are shrouded in ambiguity due to the fact that teachers tend to define terms like disruptive and troublesome in ways that are distinctive to each instructor (Samson & Collins, 2012).  Moreover, current information is wholly incomplete and criteria used to define the terminology vary widely within scholastic settings and from study to study (Chaiklin, 2011).

Establishing a workable definition for the common terms used to describe disruptive influences within the classroom eliminates the necessity of formulating judgments regarding what constitutes good or bad behavior in students and formats the definition into a comprehensive framework (Helfrich & Bosh, 2011).  This removes the various teachers’ perspectives regarding the attributes concerning what constitutes disruptive, maladjusted, troublesome behaviors (Hertzog, 2011). The present study examined several variables, including student relationship impressions, relationship with classmates, academic self-concept, and level of life satisfaction with consideration of poverty level or socio-economic status (SES)as the predictors of students’ behavior problems.

Research Questions

Examination of the impact that language proficiency has on student classroom behavior is guided by the following research question:

• Is scholastic behavior affected by the student’s ability to comprehend or acquire the target language in TESOL classrooms?
• Is EFL/ESL proficiency a predictor of poor student behavior in TESOLclassrooms?
• Do the attitudinal values of the teacher dictate student behaviors and therefore the student’s ability to achieve EFL/ESL proficiency?

Examination of these research questions will provide new knowledge regarding the performance of EFL/ESL students in TESOL classes that do not rely on the typical factors that affect the student’s performance such as ethnicity, and special education needs, but instead determines how deeply behaviors impact the abilities of students to perform at necessary levels to find solutions that will improve bilingual education.

Literature Review

Advances in communication and technology have instigated the formation of global cultural interaction and fusion, defined by the incorporation of various cultural aspects in each community with elements from other cultures and languages (Philip, Oliver, & Mackey, 2008). Language learning strategies(LLS) are usedby all language learners, even young children learning their native tongue (Ball, 2010).  Incorporation of such skills has occurred in language where linguistic borrowing has caused the emergence of new cultures and languages such as the emerging dialects of English, which speak volumes about the dominance of English as the lingua franca of the world (Sybing, 2011).

Early Childhood Language Acquisition

Young children can learn different languages besides their mother tongue depending on the educational environment and the EFL/ESL teacher has a responsibility to create and provide an enabling learning environment to EFL/ESL learners (Ajayi, 2008b).  The educational environment mustprovide them with all the necessary learning materials to enhance cognition of the material. This is done by employing diverse LLSthat integrate the student’s native tongue to foster engagement through understanding (Conteh & Kawashima, 2008). It is very crucial to any teacher to know, and identify the learners’ present strategies, strengths, and weaknesses so all future progress can be appropriately tracked and measured. This will help the educator to teach new strategies so that the performance of the learner is improved.

Differences in how children learn must be understood if the educator wishes to successfully encompass every student in the lesson. Children use different strategies when acquiring an additional language than adults. Most of the researches that have been done do concentrate on learning strategies of learners above elementary schools, and very little have been done on the strategies of learners of elementary schools.

Importance of Language Learning Strategies

In TESOL classrooms, LLS should include important mnemonic tools that help students remember the lessons and allows them to employ self-monitoring, elaboration, and inference strategies (Helfrich & Bosh, 2011).  Specific LLS are very susceptible to the learning context, and to the learners’ mental states, so tasks require different strategies to help each student achieve certain learning goalssince strategies used for adolescents and adults cannot be used for children (Hernandez, 2012).  Two primary reasons to include LLS in TESOL classrooms include expansion of the students’ understanding of the lesson according to the cognitive, metacognitive, affective, and social processes that are involved in language learning and secondly, they enable slow learners to be taught new strategies that help them become better language learners (Helfrich & Bosh, 2011).

There are numerous factors that affect language acquisition in early childhood that the teacher must consider, such as the characteristics of the learner, the social setting, in addition to the quantity and quality of the linguistic input the child receives, which may not factor as strongly into the learning paradigm of an adolescent or adult EFL/ESL learner (Otto, 2010).  This makes it necessary for the ESL teachers to understand the skills and cultural heritage that their students bring to the classroom, all of which can have drastic effects on the students’ ability to assimilate the target language (Otto, 2010).  In early childhood, the more developed the child’s first language is, the easier it is for them to acquire a second language (Ball, 2010).

Additionally, empirical research has proven that when children are educated in their mother tongue in early childhood, before the introduction of a second language, they are more likely to succeed and this also encourages parental involvement (Ball, 2010).  Additionally, fluency and literacy in the mother tongue provides a cognitive and linguistic foundation for learning additional languages, providing that their mother tongue is the primary language of instruction throughout primary school (Forrester & Lok, 2008).

The social environment in which interactions occur with the speakers of the target language is highly dependent upon whether the learner is a listener or an active participant in the conversations (Abdo & Breen, 2010).  The presence of concrete referents that contribute to symbol formation and conceptual development also has a primary role in the acquisition of linguistic knowledge of the target language (Appel & Muysken, 2006).  The proficiency of the individual that is modeling the target language and their linguistic development as a proficient speaker of the native and/or target language with sufficient pedagogical training to successfully engage the student so they can maintain their native tongue while learning the additional language is sorely lacking in the educational forum (Ball, 2010).

Language & Behavior

The scholastic environment, including factors like a supportive school atmosphere and the classroom context as well as language barriers, was determined to be directly related to school satisfaction (Abdo & Breen, 2010).  The numerous studies conducted on the effect of the classroom environment, support of the educator, the student’s sense of belonging within their academic surroundings, academic achievement, and peer pressure on the self-perception and moods of the students has revealed that these factors have a direct influence on learning and classroom behavior (Awan, Azher, Anwar, & Naz, 2010).  Scholastic satisfaction has been defined as a cognitive-based assessment of a student’s overall contentment with their educational experience (Chaiklin, 2011). Research implies that youth attending primary and middle schools are beginning to exhibit a declining importance in attending school, which correlates with congruent studies that have determined high school students tend to be dissatisfied with their lives (Payán & Nettles, n.d.).  Summative student perceptions regarding classes will result in an increase in reflective decision-making and can decrease the weight of peer pressure (Wei, Brok, & Zhou, 2009).  Student perceptions can be strongly influenced by factors such as teacher popularity, the impressions of their peers, the grading leniency of an instructor, or student backgrounds (Tong, 2010).  The impact of the learning environments is additionally affected by perceptions of the interpersonal interactions between the student and the teacher.  It has also been established that there is relational significance between the life experience, intellectual self-sufficiency, and motivation to learn and the student’s level of satisfaction (Casteel & Ballantyne, 2010).

Socio-Cultural Background

Incorporating a socio-cultural approach suggests the need to expound on language teaching knowledge situations soLLS can include social as well as cultural institutional structures (Chaiklin, 2011). Understanding of how teaching relates to the pedagogical practices allows teachers to integrate the social background of the learners that investigate the relationship between student’s cognitive progress, the social, and the cultural context in which they learn (Conteh & Kawashima, 2008).Learning is mediated by socio-cultural practices of students, which are used in language such that instruction requires a new shift for teaching EFL/ESL studentsthrough their socially and culturally constructed artifacts  (Tong, 2010).

Learning English as a second language constitutes the dialogical interdependence between the learner, the society, social practices, and the context of learning must be replicated in the classroom (Sybing, 2011).Research suggest that social as well asthe cultural context of daily life constructs the dynamics of human cognitive development, so an individual’s learning cannot be detached from other people’s learning (Samson & Collins, 2012).  Since language is entrenched within the social fabric of interpretation, information must be presented within the relative contexts to facilitate a comprehensive understanding.

Research Methodology

This study will entail an examination including diverse EFL/ESL students from five primary schools with comparatively low SES.  Within the study examined, all classes of students in grades 4, 5, and 6 participated, totaling 547 students, with 130 from grade 4, 163 from grade 5, and 254 from grade 6 consisting of 295 boys and 252 girls, as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

The study involved a questionnaire similar to the widely used Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) (Wei, Brok, & Zhou, 2009).  The QTI consists of 77 questions that correlate eight elements representing two universal interpersonal facets: Influence, which relates to the amount of control the teacher exudes and Proximity, which relates to the measure of cooperation the teacher receives from the students, as shown in Figure 3 below, which illustrates typical student behaviors aspects based on student-teacher interactions(Fisher, Fraser, & Cresswell, 1995; Wei, Brok, & Zhou, 2009).  The questionnaire used in this study included 48 questions ranked on a five-point scale ranging from (4) meaning strongly agree, (3) meaning agree, (2) meaning neither agree nor disagree, (1) meaning disagree, and (0) meaning strongly disagree, as shown in Figure 4below (Fisher, Fraser, & Cresswell, 1995).

The questionnaire was established to gauge student responses based on the actions of the teacher to demonstrate the strength of this influence on student behaviors (Wong, 2010).

The questionnaire was administered to students in their native tongue to avoid language barrier issues or failures in communication (Wong, 2010).  While the response for each question was tabulated individually, the average number of students’ responses for each aspect category is analyzed and presented in this research.

Research Results

Children often learn and develop social habits in accordance with the actions and norms of their peers, so it is important for teachers to maintain control of the learning environment they create.  Examination of the behavioral paradigm of Strict Behavior is shown in Figure 5 below and illustrates the student impressions for the indicated survey questions.  While the majority of students perceived their educator as ‘strict’ and found the exams challenging, few indicated that they were afraid of their teacher, which demonstrates a lack of negative feelings.

Strong leadership can be accomplished by increasingstudent levels confidence while decreasing anxiety and discomfort will help the teacher achieve better behavior patterns through dependable leadership (Awan, Azher, Anwar, & Naz, 2010).  It has been established that language learning is especially successful when the objective language is used to facilitate understanding and helps EFL/ESL educators encourage their students to participate vocally in language classrooms to produce comprehensible feedback (Samson & Collins, 2012).  Creating an environment that engages the students and encourages active participation through patient, collaborative interactions is the crux of the Helping/Friendly Behavior paradigm shown in Figure 7 below.

The majority of positive responses to the questions in this group demonstrate that allocating a sufficient amount of time to allow students to organize their responses to teachers’ questions or to formulate questions improves responsiveness (Tong, 2010).  Students should be allowed to talk about the lessons and compare notes with their classmates before they give responses, which will give them the confidence to voice their opinions while their fellow student’s work, like when classmates are doing exercises or completing compositions (Noel, 2011).  Under these conditions, students were able to give complete answers to their teachers’ questions in a collective way and classroom disruptions were reduced to a minimum.

Additionally, students were more comfortable with verbal communication when they were not called upon individually to speak in front of their classmates and displayed more cooperative behavior in groups due to such demonstrations of Understanding Behavior, the categorical paradigm illustrated in Figure 8 shown below (Abdo & Breen, 2010).

This Understanding Behavior fosters relationships between students as they learn to support one another and this boosts their confidence in their ability to give oral presentations (Chaiklin, 2011).  Students’ joint efforts to solve problems were demonstrated by their willingness to ask questions and make requests (Tong, 2010). These behaviors also demonstrated the advent of a resolution to maladjustment issues through collaborative efforts and a deeper comprehension of the curriculum as well as the elements of the next categorical paradigm of Student.

The level of certainty the educator displays when instructing students directly correlates to the degree of confidence the student will demonstrate when engaging in the curricular activity.  Student perceptions of Uncertain Behavior paradigm are illustrated in Figure 10, which is shown to encourage the students to use the target language (Tong, 2010).

Assurance is strongly advocated and demonstrated through arrangement of oral group activities in English lessons because, while pair or group work is in development, students can ask teachers questions or clarify items with the teachers without fear of censure (Abdo & Breen, 2010).  Surety in the instruction provided is necessary to engender student confidence, which facilitates positive behavior (Casteel & Ballantyne, 2010).  This can also be achieved through demonstrations of satisfaction with the students’ performance since the need for encouragement among students is a universal phenomenon affecting all school teachers.  This propensity is illustrated in the student responses to the questions posed in the Dissatisfied Behavior paradigm shown in Figure 11 below.

According to behaviorist theories, students subsequently learn to spot the moments when they are to take turn in conversations through reward and punishment behavior that includes expressions of dissatisfaction (Graham, 2010).  Additional noteworthy points demonstrate that there is a continuation of high on-task level, conduct co-operation and rules compliance in the non-target classrooms when token reinforcement or increased teacher approval is adopted (Casteel & Ballantyne, 2010).  In this context, teachers must be sure to carefully monitor their Admonishing Behaviors, such as anger, rebuffs, sarcasm, or other negative expressions, as illustrated in Figure 12, which presents the actions of this paradigm.

The open approval of the teacher is an encouraging aspect that can be beneficial to students, but this should not be a necessity to inspire acceptable behavior.   Studies suggest that there are numerous reasons for reserved behavior that may be derived as a result of defects in learning capacity, disturbing social occurrences in schools, parental pressure, economic, social, ethnic, rural/urban minority groups, or attempts to learn the social habits of a different group (Tong, 2010).  Students may also be reluctant to express themselves due to a belief that they will lose more by talking than by remaining silentor they feel they are unsuccessful when communicating in the target language, so they adopt a pattern of avoidance of social contact with others (Tong, 2010).

Discussion

Students were more likely to improve their EFL/ESL skills when their experiences involving sociolinguistic conversation are increased (Appel & Muysken, 2006).  Participation is important due to the supposition that a relationship may exist between student oral participation and the teachers’ questioning techniques demonstrated through a selection of classroom activities, which can encourage students to continue talking (Abdo & Breen, 2010).  Studies suggest that students’ oral participation is increased if application and presentation activities are used; the right vocabulary is offered when students need it to continue; questions related to students’ prior experiences are asked; and an informal and friendly classroom atmosphere is present (Casteel & Ballantyne, 2010).

The results of this research have enabled the following determinations in response to the research questions:

Is scholastic behavior affected by the student’s ability to comprehend or acquire the target language in TESOL classrooms?

One of the primary functions of school is to promote socialization amongst students in addition to providing instructional guidance regarding academic pursuits.  Learning has acquired an amalgamated function as the basis for school-based learning and out-of-school learning, with school-based learning providing credentials and independence while out-of-school learning is geared more towards relevancies to everyday life (Samson & Collins, 2012).  Normative representations of parental, teacher, and student collaborations tend to assume that teacher-home-student relationships are co-mingled and reformation policies, as supported by countries worldwide, declare the necessity for parents to be engaged in joint ventures with schools.

Scholastic settings are wholly based on the most popular set of holistic principles, which respect and emphasize the larger conglomerate of universal holistic values (Chaiklin, 2011).  While the familial unit operates on particularistic values, the larger society functions on the foundation of universalistic values (Hertzog, 2011). The scholastic environment requires students to transition from familial values to those of the higher social order, which can cause students to struggle with the process of adapting to this new lifestyle (Chen, Kyle, & McIntyre, 2008).   Students that have been coddled by their families or have not been properly prepared may endure significant trauma from this setting.

The majority of students accept the scholastic objectives set forth by the academic institution and adhere to the methods approved to achieve their goals through the conformity method of adaptation.  However, some EFL/ESL students may reject the academic goals established due to lack of linguistic proficiency or another disadvantage, such as unpreparedness and use retreat as a method of coping with the challenge (Helfrich & Bosh, 2011).  Some students attend school as a result of compulsory education, are indifferent to the process, lack meaningful friendships, and adapt to the scholastic setting by using the coping technique of ambivalenceor the rejection form of adaptation to discard scholastic authority and values (Hernandez, 2012).

Is EFL/ESL proficiency a predictor of poor student behavior in TESOL classrooms?

Research has determined that the more proficient in English the students were, the more willing they were to participate in speech communication and the more positive they were about it (Tong, 2010).  Supplementary aspects of this study also focus on the construction of conjectural representations that integrate the information within the case studies.  This study proposes that the introduction of the Internet facilitates additional opportunities for remote learning and leadership instruction is no longer exclusively regulated to scholastic settings (Noel, 2011). The student’s desire to become engaged in scholastic activities must be voluntary in order to facilitate an environment conducive to learning and ensure the student will adhere to proper classroom etiquette and protocol.

Additional discussion presents the notion of various modes of adaptation relevant to explaining deviant behaviors.  Students are faced with the daunting task of achieving esteemed goals but do not possess the means by which to achieve such objectives (Ajayi, 2008a).  Such a conundrum results in a condition called anomie and requires students to endure significant strain and anxiety (Otto, 2010).  However, some of the methods adopted by students to combat the strain imposed by anomie are deviant methods and must be corrected.  Students that have correctly conformed may find it difficult to dispel their deviant ways through adaptive techniques.

Do the attitudinal values of the teacher dictate student behaviors and therefore the student’s ability to achieve EFL/ESL proficiency?

The overall influence of teachers on student learning must be analyzed against the findings that have established certain practices as counter-intuitive.  Analysis of qualitative research includes numerous case studies to enable a comprehensively study of the available literature and relevant information (Hertzog, 2011). The selected literature includes details for schools where teacher leadership was most likely to be present and an inclusive detail regarding contributory actions. Assessments of the relevant factors specify that teacher leadership has a pronounced effect on the degree of each student’s scholastic engagement. However, teacher leadership, student engagement and home/school interaction are three areas of import that require additional clarification (Hertzog, 2011).

There are two predominant approaches commonly utilized in the study of resistance behavior exhibited by students. The first approach evolved principally within the field of the sociology of education, focusing on the pupil’s style of adjustment in school, which includes resistance or misconduct. The second approach is relevant to the field of deviance and crime, although learner misconduct can’t actually be considered a crime and remains a mild form of deviance.  Approaching the problem of student misconduct from the aspect of deviant behaviors in students can be the most effective way to gain an understanding of resistance behaviors in scholastic settings.  For optimal effectiveness, these two approaches should be combined to gain the best understanding and remedy for resistance or deviant behaviors in students.

Additional modes of adaptation include modes that shift the focus from the social strata to various coping mechanisms like compliance, ingratiation, opportunism, colonization, intransigence, and rebellion.  NewStudents face the challenge of learning to speak and write an entirely different dialect when they arrive at their new school.  Additional differences arise in the educational structures of schools, specifically the degree of English spoken and taught. Additionally, new students new are frequently place in classes beneath their own age groups, which may cause feelings of embarrassment and frustration at being placed in lower level classes. These aspects can have a significant effect on the new student’s sense of belonging, which has an influence on their motivation, aspirations, and behavior patterns.

Conclusion

In summation, classroom management has been a major concern for educators for years and various methods have been developed to address this issue(Johnson & Weiss, 2008).Applied behavior analysis enables teachers to organize their classroom environment to promote acceptable behaviors and to effectively deal with misbehavior with minimal disruption to the process of learning and teaching (Chaiklin, 2011; Graham, 2010). In order to be the most effective, teachers have the responsibility to increase and maintain students’ on-task behavior through actively engaging EFL/ESL students in the lesson using various LLS techniques while effectively managing their time to accomplish the most curricular objectives (Johnson & Weiss, 2008).  As engaged time increases, so does learning and positive reinforcement is a valuable component of applied behavior analysis that helps maintain a positive learning environment while encouraging desirable responses (Casteel & Ballantyne, 2010).

Effective use of student potential and classroom time reinforces the teacher’s ability to promote students’ on-task behavior using reinforcement such as contingency contracting, which allows teachers to synthesize individualizedsupporting plans that include curricular adjustments when necessary (Johnson & Weiss, 2008). Self-management strategies allow pupils to recognize appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, self-evaluate, assume ownership, and derive a plan for improvement or correction of inappropriate behaviors (Graham, 2010).  These self-management strategies have derived a transfer of accountability for change from the teacher, a peripheral agent, to the pupil, an interior agent such that students have become effectual modifiers of their own behaviors (Johnson & Weiss, 2008).

Such involvement can help students establish a foundation that will enable them to accurately communicate what they want to say. Reviews concerning the efficacy of pairing EFL students in groups to encourage oral participation found that when second language learners worked in groups, their motivation increased, they took more initiative, and experienced lower levels of anxiety regarding their learning. Teachers must establish that oral participation is an integral part of the teaching and learning processes at the beginning of the term/course to support future student communications in English (Tong, 2010).

These lessons can be combined with the teachers’ unremitting support or gentle reminders for students to orally participate in the lessons (Graham, 2010). The teaching of conversational English can promote turn-taking skills, which can be useful in numerous ways.  Silent behavior and inflection patterns in turn-taking can be built in the pronunciation course and students’ attention can be used to draw insinuations of silence in target language conversations.  In addition, students’ understanding of the intonation patterns in the conversational turn-taking processes can be raised and conclusions drawn that contributory instruction will improve students’ speaking proficiency, and also cultivate a positive attitude towards English lessons.

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