 Welcome to Practicum at York University's Department of Language, Literature, and Linguistics. My name is Tara. Hello, my name is Samuel. My name is Mega. I'm a fourth-year student at York University and a TESL student. Dr. Hussain, what makes your DLL and ESL stand out from other schools? Thank you for this question. I would say our ESL program that is different and distinguishable from other universities or the department's ESL program is that we offer credit-bearing undergraduate EAP courses. And also, most of our EAP courses that we offer in this ESL program are content and language-integrated learning model-based courses. So what it means that through our ESL courses, students get to explore some content related to the current humanity aspects and some foundational content related to social science. The DLL offers a variety of courses that are very much tailored to students' needs and they are grounded in the pedagogical frameworks of multiliteracies, experiential education, multi-modalities, content and language-integrated learning in the communities of practice. For instance, in our courses, in the ESL courses of teaching, students have numerous opportunities to participate in the collaborative projects that explore their transnational identities. They can research on the topics of interest and relevance to them and they might, through their research, contribute to the positive changes in their community. And I'd like just to talk about a few representative assignments in the ESL courses just to demonstrate how we ground our teaching in the frameworks of multi-modalities, multi-literacies and experiential education. For example, in ESL 1450, students are working on a collaborative assignment which we call multimodal identity text. For this assignment, they reflect on their experiences living in different countries, speaking multiple languages and then they create videos or posters or songs in which they explore their transnational identity. Okay, what's your name? Hi, my name is Habib. I am basically originally, I was born in Afghanistan. Yeah, but now I call this place Canada home. And the ESL class that I have here at York plays the main role. It helps me to boost my confidence level. In other classes in my major, I only have one more class in my major. When I am talking in the class, all the people, all the students, everyone speaks English so well. Most of them, their native language is English. And when I talk to them, I don't feel like very high in confidence. I'm not a person with low confidence. I have confidence, but I am talking to them English. I feel like my English is not as good as them. So it causes me to feel very, very down and demotivated and low in self-confidence. But when I go to ESL class, that's the only place that I feel very confident. I can speak well, I can speak loudly, I can speak without the fear of being judged by someone else. I was placed at York University's Department of Language, Literatures and Linguistics in a first-year ESL class. Simon, who was your professor, your mentor, teacher? I had Fernanda, who was my mentor teacher. She was so awesome. We had a meeting beforehand, so she was very helpful, very supportive, answered any questions I had. Really put herself out there to be a support to me. So how are you supported and did you give any tools to support? So I was very heavily supported by both my mentor teacher, Saskia, as well as the group who was placed at DLLL. In the Saskia's class, we were given a lot of tools, so we were given texts to read. We went through various methodologies throughout the course before we started our practical placement, so that we were prepared with what we might encounter in a real-life context. My mentor teacher, again, she went over the entire syllabus, she provided me with access to the E-Class, and she always stopped periodically to give me reason as to why she was doing what she was doing, just so that I could follow along in terms of her methodology. And then within the group, a lot of the other students who were also placed at DLLL, we shared all of our experiences and we could empathize with each other. And how did you feel in the beginning compared to how you felt at the end? Well, definitely at the very beginning, everybody would be nervous. It's not just me, everybody would be nervous. But after you have the practical, you get used to it. You know what each step you make, the timing, what material you use, stuff in the class. So you'll be fine. I'm all looking forward to actual teaching because you know what's coming. I'm still scared, but definitely know what to expect. So final question, so any advice for people who would like to do this in the future? I think that communication is key when it comes to practicum, especially if you're somebody who has little to no experience like myself. Just to get over any concerns that you might have. The best thing is to ask. That's all you can do. Thank you. Thank you for coming.