Recent Activities of the Week

This week’s Activity of the Week presents an opportunity to attune to your own experience and consider how intention arises, becomes articulate, and is manifest in healthy community. If you’re not in a consistent journaling practice, consider setting a timer to help structure your experience. If you journal often, consider spreading the prompts out over a series of journaling sessions. 

The journal prompts are available here. Feel free to pick and choose or work your way through the extensive set of prompts.

Today's Activity of the Week is designed to accompany Mandy Gettler's Topic of the Week article about saying "no" and saying "yes." Using this attached reflection template, note what you say "yes" to, both implicitly and explicitly, and then explore how you could say "no" at times so that you can say "yes" at bigger times. 

As you follow this month's series of articles about self-care, starting with today's article about dispositions related to languaging and self-care, we invite you reflect on each disposition. We begin this month by asking you to use the attached template for selecting areas of focus for reflection. 

This activity is based on Cen Williams’ original use of the term translanguaging to describe the systematic use of two or more languages within the same language, and also inspired by an idea described by Jason Anderson. 

Objectives: Students will be able to…

• scan for information in target language texts;
• synthesize information to present in a first language;
• synthesize information to present in the target language; and
• notice benefits and challenges of moving between two languages.

Modes: Interpretive, Presentational

Materials needed: Internet access, research graphic organizer, language reflection sheet

The Women’s World Cup will have its final match on July 7. Students will read articles to find a team, player, or event to profile. Half of the class will read articles only in the target language and write only in a first or classroom language; the other half will do their research in a first language and write their profiles in the target language. Following a discussion of their experiences with each method, students will switch which language they use for each part to write another profile.

Procedure:

1. Create a bulletin board about the World Cup. Most of the bulletin board will be blank to begin with; students will be adding profiles.
2. Everyone will read news highlights dealing with the World Cup, but only in a specified language.

• Here are a few resources:
• The official FIFA website is available in English, German, French, and Spanish; students can select their designated language before reading content. The team profiles pages are especially helpful 
• Using Google News, scroll down to “Language & region” on the left side of the screen, and click on it; from here students can select the language they want to read in.
• Choose a country that speaks the target language, and find their team’s official website. For example, here’s the link to Brazil’s teams.

3. Divide the class into two halves: the half that will research in the target language and report in an L1, and the half that will research in an L1 and report in the target language.
4. Distribute the research graphic organizer to students. You may choose to translate it into different languages that the class will be working with.
5. Students collect information in an Internet search.
6. Following the research, each student will write a short profile to add to the bulletin board. This could be a short description of a player, a team, a match, or even a single play. Specifics for this assignment and scaffolding will depend on students’ proficiency levels.
7. Next, ask students to discuss in small groups or as a class how it felt moving from one language to the other. How did the experience differ between the two halves of the class. Students can use the language reflection sheet to help them organize their thoughts.
8. Now, repeat the entire research process, but this time the two halves of the class will switch which language they use for each part.
9. Again, discuss students’ experiences moving between languages. What strategies do students plan to use in their next research task?

Note: In some settings, learners speak a variety of first languages. In some cases, you can substitute a shared classroom language (for example, if all of your Chinese students speak English even though some of them speak Spanish or French at home). In other cases, such as an ESL class with a wide variety of student first languages, you can have a widely multilingual bulletin board that reflects the diversity of L1’s.

By Isabelle Sackville-West, CASLS Fellow

This activity is a critical-thinking activity that engages students in analysis of their own values and internal biases as they relate to linguistic diversity. Depending on how discussions are scaffolded, It can be used for any proficiency level. It makes use of the wonderful game Parable of the Polygons by Vi Hart and Nicky Case which can be played in a variety of languages including English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, Italian, Russian, Hindi, and Arabic.

Objectives: Students will be able to:

1. Think critically about the linguistic diversity of their home community
2. Assess how important linguistic diversity is to them personally
3. Discuss immersion schools and their impact on the community
4. Argue for or against the integration of an immersion school in their community

Modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal, Presentational

Materials: Computers with Internet access, poster paper

Procedure:

1. Pre-Activity: Conduct a class discussion that primes students for the rest of the lesson, asking about diversity and linguistic diversity in their community.
   1. What is diversity? What types of diversity are there?
   2. Do we live in a diverse community? How so?
   3. Is our community linguistically diverse? What languages and cultures are represented?
   4. Is linguistic diversity important for a community? Why or why not?
   5. How can we increase linguistic diversity? (Discuss immersion schools here)
2. Game Play: Have students play their way through Parable of the Polygons (available at https://ncase.me/polygons/), asking students to think of the different shapes as representing speakers of different languages. As they scroll through the game, have students discuss the following guiding questions in smaller groups.
   1. Do you think that small biases affect the larger shape of society?
   2. In the second black board, what happens to segregation over time? Did you expect this? Why or why not?
   3. On the third black board, play with the scale adjusting how sensitive the shapes are to diversity. How sensitive do you think members of your own community are? What percentage would they fall at?
   4. Before you play the fourth board, what do you expect will happen in an already segregated society if you lower their bias?
   5. In the fifth board, individuals start demanding diversity. Is diversity demanded by members of your community and if so, how much? What percent range would you place your community at? Why?
   6. Why is it important to work together to increase diversity? And why is it scary to do it alone?
   7. After you play the final box a few times for fun, try to use it as a model for your own community and see how it behaves. What do you expect to happen and why?
3. Analysis: Once students have finished the game, debrief on the concepts of the game as applied to linguistic diversity. In the game, it is proposed that it is not enough simply to be happy with diversity, individuals must actively seek it out (in other words, small individual biases yield larger group biases). With this in mind, discuss how immersion schools provide one method of actively seeking out linguistic diversity by attracting members of different linguistic groups into an area, thus increasing its diversity. Brainstorm ideas to combat and feelings of discomfort that might be associated with this increase in diversity. For example: Training in intercultural communication for parents, students, and school administrators; facilitated discussions between groups; persistence and patience in the face of cultural and linguistic challenges, etc.
4. Extension: Now that students are familiar with the principles of the game, immersion schools, and the concept of linguistic diversity, ask them individually or in teams to make a poster that either argues for or against an immersion program at their school. For the poster, students should not only consider the pros and cons of immersion in the community, but also which language should be selected and why (students do not have to choose the target language if they don’t think it is most suitable for their community).This project will look different depending on the proficiency level of the students.
   1. Novice—simple commands, short sentences and phrases, and lists of words such as a pro/con list. Sentence frames might need to be provided by the instructor.
   2. Intermediate—more complex sentences and longer, sometimes connected discourse. Students should elaborate on their pros and cons and be able to provide simple explanations for their choices.
   3. Advanced—Students should incorporate persuasive language and utilize longer, connected discourse with more complex structures.

Objectives: Students will...

• gain an explicit awareness of translanguaging practices in their community: what language(s) and varieties, who, and when
• examine connections between translanguaging practice and individual and community identity
• express a perspective on how language use connects with identity

Materials Needed: Exploring Community Language Use worksheet, Language Use and Identity worksheet

Procedure:

1. Introduce the concept of translanguaging: a person's and community's use of their entire linguistic repertoire (different languages and/or language varieties) in communication (for more on translanguaging see this Topic of the Week article). Give examples from your own life or what you observe in students' communities. Some possibilities are expressions in an indigenous language that everyone on the reservation knows, use of a heritage community language by different people in different contexts, or local/regional ways of saying things. You can choose to introduce the term "translanguaging," or you can simply talk about "how people use language."
2. Ask students to fill out the Exploring Community Language Use worksheet. Encourage the sharing of ideas with classmates; possible structures include think-pair-share or rotating partner sharing. 
3. Distribute the Language Use and Identity worksheet. Ask for examples of what portraits of language use, with different speech balloons, might look like to represent different examples from the table students filled in on the Exploring Community Language Use worksheet. If you've made an example yourself ahead of time, or if you've done this activity before and saved some student examples, you can show these to the class for inspiration.
4. Ask learners to draw community or individual language use portraits. Students can share and reflect on their work in a variety of ways: displaying the portraits on a bulletin board, small-group sharing, or solicitation of volunteers to share their work with the whole class.

Notes: In some community contexts, differences in language use are clear. For example, indigenous communities often have some use of an indigenous language as well as English, and heritage language communities often use the heritage language in certain circumstances. In other community contexts, such as a rural setting with little mobility and widespread monolingualism, you may need to focus more on different varieties of English - for example, slang, a local accent, or deviations from "standard" English grammar.

By Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor

Last week comedian Tito Ybarra posed this question on Facebook: How many Ojibwes does it take to mow a lawn? Answer: Four!!! Three to do the mowing, and one to sing the Ojibwemowin song. The post came with a video of exactly that: three men mowing, while dancing to the song that Tito was singing. Ojibwemowin is the name of the Ojibwe language, and it's pronounced like the English phrase "Ojibwe mowin'." At this time, the post has 394 likes and 214 shares, an indication of how well this bilingual joke has resonated among Anishinaabe people and language activists.

This week, celebrate multilingualism by going on a translanguaging quest, and then inviting your students to do the same. Your quest and theirs is to find some multilingual jokes, and then to see who can create their own original jokes.

Start with the understanding that what you're looking for are not jokes about bilingual people, but rather jokes that require knowledge of multiple languages to be funny. Here are a few places to start:

• If you Google "bilingual puns," you'll be rewarded right away with a good selection. You can also Google for specific language pairs, such as "English Korean bilingual puns." 
• Reddit is a good source of bilingual jokes. Here are two good threads to start with: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/aazvp9/anyone_got_any_good_bilingual_jokes/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/34czul/whats_the_best_bilingual_wordplayjoke_youve_heard/
• Wikipedia has an entry that includes eleven different language pairings with example jokes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingual_pun

Choose a selection of jokes to share with your students. Some of the jokes you find may not be appropriate for your classroom context, which is why it's a good idea for the teacher to go on his/her own quest as a first step.

Once everyone understands the punchline of each joke you share, you can send students on their own quests to find more bilingual jokes. Your main objective here is for students to see how prevalent multilingualism is in the world, and how common it is for people to make use of multiple languages at once for communication. In addition to Internet searches, students may ask multilingual people they know if they know any good jokes. Rather than a short-term assignment, consider keeping a running list or log book of these jokes over the course of several weeks or longer.

Encourage students to create their own original bilingual jokes. You can have a tournament in which the class votes on the funniest joke, bracket-style. For guidelines and inspiration for setting up such a tournament, see this InterCom article: https://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/content/24750.

Have fun, and remember to celebrate your ability to use multiple languages at once to make people laugh (or groan)!

By Isabelle Sackville-West, CASLS Fellow

This activity is designed to help students identify the pragmatic norms of emoji usage in the target language. This includes not only which emojis are most common, but also what they potentially signify, when to use them, and how they can be used in relation to textual language. The scavenger hunt activity was designed with novice learners in mind, but could be used for any level as long as the task is appropriately scaled.

Learning Objectives: Students will be able to…

1. Identify commonly used emojis in the target language
2. Analyze social media platforms and identify the norms of emoji use
3. Engage in synchronous chat that makes use of emojis

Modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal

Materials Needed: Emoji Scavenger Hunt Worksheet, a mobile device or computer with access to the desired social media platforms/messaging apps

Procedure:

1. Observe: Have students examine at least two popular social media platforms in the target culture (i.e. Twitter, Instagram, Weibo, etc.). If they text with members of the target language community, they can also optionally look back at old conversations. Using the Emoji Scavenger Hunt Worksheet, have students take note of the types of emojis used, what they might signify, and how they are used (after an utterance, by itself, before or after punctuation, etc.).
2. Analyze: Conduct a class discussion in which you create a giant class version of the Emoji Scavenger Hunt Worksheet. To do this, invite students to share their findings as you write them down. Alternatively, you could have students come up to the class and fill in their information on a drawn-out version of the worksheet on a white board/chalk board. Finally, facilitate the discussion of several reflective questions such as:
   1. What surprised you about emoji use in the target language?
   2. What similarities are there between how emojis are used in the target language versus your native language? What differences are there?
   3. Do you have any questions about how emojis are used in the target language that weren’t answered or that came up while collecting information?
3. Extend: In pairs, have students communicate via a messaging app (ideally, pick one that is commonly used in the target culture, but feel free to use other free plaforms such as Slack). Have students select conversation topics that are relevant and interesting to them personally to elicit emotional response that might warrant emoji use. Topics can range from talking about weekend plans to a current event, or recent course-related topics. The conversation should involve at least 5 turns each to give both students enough context/content in which to appropriately use emojis.
4. Reflect: After finishing their conversations have students briefly reflect on their experience in a journal or brief write-up. Some guiding questions include:
   1. How well do you feel you are able to use emojis in the target language?
   2. Do you have any questions or confusions about how, when, and what emojis are used?
   3. In your conversation, did your classmate react to your emoji use in the way you expected? If not, how did they react? In what way do you think they interpreted/misinterpreted your intention?

By Leila Tamini Lichaei, CASLS Fellow

This activity is designed for Intermediate to Advanced students. The overall goal is for learners is to analyze and discuss hashtags and how they are used in the target language.

Learning Objectives: 
Students will be able to:

• Expand their understanding of hashtags in the target language 
• Articulate their understanding of hashtags and their use in social media
• Support claims about the utility of hashtags

Modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal
Materials: Computers and a printer to print out students' hashtag sheets

1. Start the lesson by asking students to work in pairs or groups to discuss hashtags in think, pair, share format. They should discuss: 1) what hashtags are; 2) how hashtags are used; and 3) if they (the students) use hashtags in social media and in what ways. The following questions can be used as guidance:

• What is a hashtag?
• What is the symbol that is used on every hashtag?
• How do hashtags work? What are their purposes? 
• Who can use hashtags?
• On which apps do you use hashtags the most frequently?
• What hashtags do you use the most?

2. Then, make a list of the hashtag examples that students have used on the board. Note anything important about the situations in which they are usually used/ their perceived purposes, such as: 

• Categorizing content
• Discovering new or related articles about a topic
• Supporting social/political movements

3. In this step, first guide students to go to the Internet and check the reports of the trending hashtags in the target language. For example, Twitter provides lists of hashtags in different languages. After students learn where to look for hashtags, have them take various (5-6) screenshots of the hashtags they find interesting. 

4. Students then organize the hashtags based on any patterns that they perceive in how the hashtags are being used. To do so, they should paste the screenshots into a Word Doc, Google Doc, or an online mind mapping tool like mind42.com. 

5. Print out the students’ hashtag sheets and put them on the walls around the classroom to prepare for a gallery walk. Students then walk around, study the hashtag sheets, and leave comments or notes for their peers on how the hashtags have been organized.

6. In the end, students can vote among themselves the most interesting hashtags that were shown in the gallery walk. 

By Christopher Daradics, CASLS Language Technician

Activity Description:

This activity shows how communication is always based on prior communication and other already available material. In other words, we can say and do things because others have said and done things before us. The idea that new communication is based on old communication is called "Remix Culture." This happens on the biggest scale, such as in language class where we learn to use (i.e. remix) a language that another culture developed and practices. It is also true at the smallest scale, such as the moment you and a friend make up (i.e. remix) an inside joke based on a shared experience. In these and all cases, moment-by-moment communication is remixed from material that has come before. Remix culture is simply a description of how we do things in the world.

We remix language, as in the examples above, but also other materials. Photos, video, audio, and even analog material like things and places are among the resources we use to say and do things in the world. Memes are a good example of remix culture in action. They use recycled language and photos in predictable and surprising ways, and it is their balance of predictability and surprise that makes them interesting.

This activity is designed to help you see that even in your most casual communication you are using sophisticated, remixed communication strategies. Using remix culture conscientiously will help you gain access and participate in any target language community in interesting and contextually meaningful ways. An awareness of the mechanics of remixing will give you a lot of material to work with, even if you feel like you don’t know the language very well.

Objectives:

• Students will be able to identify knowledge they already possess about remixing culture.
• Students will be able to extend their knowledge of remixing culture into language learning.
• Students will be able to transfer their remix culture skills to their own language learning.

IPIC Dimensions: Awareness, Analysis

Procedure:

Day 1: Understand

1) In Class:

Read the activity description individually. Next, do a think, pair, share to clarify the key points:

• What is remix culture?
• What examples can students offer that illustrate remix culture in action (e.g. specific/favorite memes; remix technologies like instagram filters, manipulated screenshots, or internet comment forums; ongoing conversations with friends/family; etc.)? As a class, discuss how each example students provided involves remixing and in each case what people may be trying to accomplish by remixing the media in those particular ways (e.g. to be funny, to express an emotion, to gain something, etc.).
• How might understanding remix culture be helpful for language learning?

Observe

2) Homework:

For the next 24 hours focus your attention on noticing what had to be in place in order for the communication you witness to happen the way it did. In other words, see if you can list what resources support the interactions you see. For example, how are existing conversations, environments, documents, devices, materials, meals, patterns, schedules, etc. woven into the fabric of the interactions you witness? Make notes about the ways you notice people using linguistic and other resources to structure and remix communication. See if you can make any guesses about what you think they are trying to achieve by incorporating the specific elements they do in their remix. The idea of remix culture is very abstract and will probably feel difficult to describe and capture. The difficulty is due in part to the fact that remixing comes so naturally to us that we can hardly begin to describe how we do it. That is okay. Just notice. Be prepared to share your observations in class tomorrow.

Day 2: Analyze

1) Students reread the activity description, individually or as a class.

2) Review the homework assignment.

3) Students share their remix observations from the last 24 hours in groups and then as a class. Teacher facilitates and guides discussion to help students elaborate their descriptions of the elements at play within each of the remixed scenarios they present. Help students identify the functional nature of communication in their scenarios and how communicative resources (often non-linguistic) are leveraged to navigate activity in the world.

4) In groups, students discuss how getting good at remixing culture and leveraging the multitude of communicative resources might help people who are learning and practicing a new language and culture. Each group should come up with three specific examples of how they could (or already) use remix strategies to engage with their target context. Groups share their insights together with the class.

Extend (optional challange)

4) Inspired students can begin keeping a language journal to record interesting observations and other insights around their language growth. If this sounds meaningful to you, consider beginning with a list of resources that you could get good at remixing. What people, places, things, and activities would help you remix your way into more target language interaction? Expand on your list as you develop. Periodically, reflect on how successful you were trying to incorporate different resources into your communicative practice.

By Leila Tamini Lichaei, CASLS Fellow and Juan Carlos González Zacarias, CASLS Intern  

Lesson Objectives: Learners will be able to:

• Identify the most common SMS abbreviations in texting and online communication
• Critically analyze abbreviations, how they are used, and what they mean
• Expand their understanding of abbreviations, articulate their understanding of them, and argue about them being useful or not
• Determine when and when not to use abbreviations

Modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal

Materials: Abbreviation Worksheet

1. Start the lesson with asking students to work in pairs or groups and discuss what sort of  SMS abbreviations they use (such as BTW for ‘by the way’) and make a list of those abbreviations as well as when they use them.

2. Ask the students to share with the class what abbreviations they use and when they use them. Document them on the board.

3. Then ask learners to discuss the following questions:

• In what situations do you use those abbreviations? And with whom?
• Do you think they are polite or impolite? Formal or informal?
• Do you often use those abbreviations?
• Do you have similar abbreviations in any other languages you speak?
• Why do you use the abbreviations instead of the complete words? What are your reasons? 

4. Provide the Abbreviation Worksheet. Students work in groups or pairs and complete the table of abbreviations. 

5. Review the list of abbreviations and they discuss their meaning and usage. 

6. Students write a reflection on using SMS abbreviations. Their reflection should be guided by the following thinking questions:

• Do you use SMS abbreviations only when typing? If no, when else do you use them?
• How common are these abbreviations in speech for people in your life?
• Why do you think you use the abbreviations? Is it for saying time or something else?
• When you are texting and autocomplete suggests typing out the words, do you take advantage of that option? If so, do you leave the suggested text as is or do you change it? Why?

This Activity of the Week is inspired by and adapted from Thorny Games’ Dialect. It is appropriate for all proficiency levels of language learners and is included to showcase how play can promote and involve language use throughout a school year.

Learning objectives: Students will be able to:

• Construct an identity and communicate it in the target language
• Explore ways in which language is shaped and informed by identity

Mode: Interpersonal

Materials: Reality Construction Handout

Procedure:

1. Put your students in teams of 4-6 players. Begin by creating a world in which the characters your students will play interact. To construct this world, learners will need to decide:
   1. How they are connected? (Are they a family? A team of explorers? A band of thieves?)
   2. When and where are they located? (Is it the future? The present? In a big city? On a remote island?)
   3. What is their goal as a group? (Is it to plan a party? Execute a heist? Find a hidden treasure?)
2. Provide your students with the cards on the first page of the Reality Construction Handout, and instruct them to read the card in silence and ask any clarifying questions they might have. These cards will inform the next step.
3. Learners will fill out the first part of page 2 of the Reality Construction Handout. This step should take no more than 5 minutes.
4. Learners will share the information for Questions 1-4. They will only reveal the information to Question 5 as gameplay continues.
5. Inform learners that they will engage in a roleplay discussion of one of the scenarios provided on page 2 of the Reality Construction document. Before they can engage in said roleplay, they have to 1) work together to decide on the blank information in the scenario templates and 2) decide how each of their characters will need to act/react in the situation by answering the character planning questions (page 3 of the Reality Construction Handout) privately.
6. Learners engage in the role play experience(s).
7. At the end of each role play, which can and should be conducted at various points throughout the school year, learners should document their experience in a journal. This journal should inform a final project like the creation of a photo album for their constructed reality, a series of newspaper articles that document their journey, or even a short film.

Notes:

• In Step 1, teachers should take care to adapt this discussion to proficiency levels of the students. For example, advanced students could operate solely from guiding questions, while novice students should have lists of options to help them make their selections and sentence stems to support any debate that may arise.
• In Step 5, teachers of novice students may need to provide some concrete options from which they can choose.
• Also related to Step 5, teachers should feel free to progress through the scenarios in the way that most closely aligns with curricular needs and content.
• Learners, particularly Novice and Intermediate Low learners, will likely find it useful to outline the roleplays before engaging in them. Teachers are encouraged to allow this type of scaffolding but to avoid situations in which learners write scripts. If the teachers wish for learners to engage in Presentational Writing instead of Interpersonal Communication, step 6 could instead be a script writing step.

By Tera Reid-Olds, PhD Candidate and CASLS Intern

This activity is designed to highlight classroom implementation of the reading strategy of predicting content before reading.¹ 

Objective:

• Students will practice the strategy of predicting meaning and content before they read.

Modes: Interpersonal, Interpretive

Materials Needed:

• 3-4 images (cover art, icons, photos, or drawings) associated with a text   
• A blank sheet of paper or worksheet with sample Venn diagram for comparing 3-4 images

Procedure:

1. Before class, compile 3-4 different images that represent a specific text. For literature, these images might be book covers, for social media they might be photos and/or gifs, and for news articles they might be images or drawings.
2. Project the images on the screen (and/or print them out for the students to look at).
3. Tell the students to think about the fact that all of these images represent the same text. Have them work individually for five minutes to compare and contrast the images using a Venn diagram.
4. Once the students have completed their Venn diagrams, tell them to turn to a partner and discuss for three minutes the observations they’ve made.
5. Engage the students in a whole class discussion about predictions for what the text will be about. Ask the students to justify their predictions by linking them back to their observations of the images. As the students respond, write their predictions (key words) on the board. Once you have a complete list of students’ predictions, take a picture of the list before erasing.
6. Ongoing: as the students read the text, revisit the list of the predictions and verify their validity. This process can happen corporately or individually.

¹Adapted from Bell, T. (2013). Innovative approaches to teaching literature in the world language classroom, In S. Dhonau (Ed.), MultiTasks, MultiSkills, MultiConnections: Selected Papers from the 2013 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (127-139). Eau Claire, WI: Crown Prints.

By Leila Tamini Lichaei, CASLS Fellow

One of the speaking strategies that any language learner can use is asking for clarification during conversation. This activity provides learners with the opportunity to observe and practice interjecting in a conversation.

Learning objectives:

Students will be able to:

• Identify culturally and contextually appropriate phrases and sentences used for asking for clarification
• Demonstrate understanding of how to ask for clarification during conversation

Mode: Interpretive, Interpersonal

Materials: Sorting Activity Handout, Scenario Handout

Procedure:

1. Have students download the LingroToGo app. Direct them to watch the following videos:

• Asking for clarification: Work & school>At school>Asking about homework> Video: Asking for Clarification
• Asking people to repeat themselves: My Community> Sports and Leisure> Buying tickets to a sporting event> Video: Asking people to repeat them
• Asking for help in a conversation: Digital World >Communication > Ending a personal phone call > Video: Asking for help in a conversation

2. Use Think-Pair-Share to discuss the videos with your students. During each phase  of Think-Pair-Share, ask students to answer the following questions:

• Which of these strategies have you used before in your L1? L2?
• How prepared do you feel to try and use one of the strategies that you observed? Do you have any questions or hesitations?
• What do you need to know in the L2 to engage in the strategy that you don’t already know?

3. Next, provide learners with the first page of  the Sorting Activity Handout and give them five minutes to work individually and sort the phrases into the correct columns. If learners do not know the meaning of all of the phrases, direct them to  use semantic and linguistic patterns to guess the appropriate meaning of the phrases.

4. At the end of the five minutes, discuss the phrases with the learners and lead a think aloud to help learners discern the meaning of the phrases that they didn’t understand in Step 3. Also, make sure that they understand the situations in which those strategies and phrases can be used.

5. Next, have students engage in interpersonal interactions that align with your current curricular needs and direct them to  use the Sorting Activity Handout to support their selection of  strategies for asking for clarifications. Everytime they use a strategy, they  should make a note in some way.

6. At the end of class, have your students write a brief exit ticket in which they list the strategies they used in class and identify the ones they would like to practice more in the future.

Notes:

If you would like any examples of interpersonal scenarios to use in class, feel free to reference to this handout and adapt accordingly.

By Harinder Kaur Khalsa, adapted by Leila Tamini Lichaei, CASLS Fellow

This activity of the week is included to complement this week’s Topic of the Week and offers a variety of ideas related to listening strategies that are beneficial to learners of all proficiency levels.

Learning objectives: Students will be able to

• Identify listening strategies that they can use before, during, and after listening.
• Articulate a plan to use a few listening strategies.
• Practice a few listening strategies.
• Demonstrate conscious awareness of their personal listening strategy use.

Mode: Interpretive

Materials: Student Handout, Listening Skills Strategies Sheet

Procedure:
1. As a class, brainstorm reasons that people listen to audio texts. Some answers may include: 

• to be informed 
• to reflect 
• to be entertained and intrigued

2. Next, ask learners to offer their favorite audio texts in the target language. What types of texts would they like to listen to? What would they need to better understand those texts?

3. After that discussion, discuss with learners that you will be working together so that they understand strategies to use before listening, during listening, and after listening.

4. Have learners brainstorm the strategies that they use while listening in small groups. After the brainstorm, allow each group to document strategies on the board as either pre-listening strategies, during listening strategies, or after listening strategies. 

5. Discuss the strategies that learners brainstormed. Augment their offerings from your own experience and/or the strategies in the Listening Skills Strategies Sheet. 

6. Ask learners to do a quick self-assessment regarding the strategies on the board. They should, in their own notes, make a list of the strategies they know and use, the strategies they would like to use more, and the strategies they either are unfamiliar with or don’t understand.

7. Ask the learners to vote on 3-5 strategies that they don’t know or understand and inform them that you will spend time modeling those strategies in the upcoming weeks. If time allows, feel free to go ahead and model a strategy or two.

7. Pass out the student handout. Ask learners to plan how they will handle the next audio text that you will use in class. It should be a text that aligns with curricular needs. Allow learners time to fill out the handout.

8. As students listen to the text, direct them to consciously engage in the strategies they have selected. 

9. Provide time for the learners to reflect on their strategy use. Use the following as guiding questions:

• Were the strategies helpful? How so?
• Did the strategies help you focus?
• How did strategy use impact your stress, if at all?
• Is there a strategy that you tried that you want to practice more or need more modeling from the teacher for? Which one?

10. Read the reflections and use them, in concert with the student handout the rest of the school year to remind learners to continue both modeling strategies and remind learners to engage with strategies as they continue to grow.

This activity is designed to support teachers in crafting assessment policies and lesson design that facilitate risk taking and communication in the classroom.

Procedure:

1. First, examine your grading policy. Ensure that the weight of your formative assessments is very low. This approach maximizes opportunities for learners to practice before summative measures without fear of it hurting their grades.
2. Next, examine how you grade. Make sure that you are using rubrics (typically with four levels of achievement: Below expectations, Meets expectations, Exceeds expectations, Exemplary status) that are framed positively- that is, they define the work that is expected at each level instead of defining the possible deficiencies at play (e.g., Student communicates using memorized words and phrases instead of Student does not form complete sentences).  Avoid attributing the loss of certain point values to certain errors related to form (e.g., minus .5 points for orthographic errors) as this type of grading can discourage motivation and cultivate an environment in which learners privilege vocabulary and grammar acquisition over meaning making.
3. After that, consider the extent to which you empower learners to effectively deal with the unknown. Ensure that you teach them strategies (i.e., circumlocution, scanning, or predicting meaning) for learning and communication. Make sure that you protect time for practicing those strategies during class.
4. Finally, ensure that your classroom activities adequately prepare learners for their summative assessments. If your classroom activities are focused on form and your assessments are more focused on meaning making, there is only a slim possibility that your learners have tried to achieve your expectations before assessing. Make sure that you empower learners by allowing them to try hard things before (and during) the final assessment. That way, they will have a clearer idea of how they are performing, what they can do to improve, and how to continue to push themselves in summative contexts.

This activity highlights the way the physical environment structures human communication. A working knowledge of this basic principle is tremendously helpful for language learners. When we communicate, we use our bodies, media, and other objects to structure communication and attention.  This lesson focuses specifically on using the environment to construct compliments, but it also serves as a more general example of the way the material world provides just-in-time resources to support any functional, situated communication.

Modes: Interpersonal, Intercultural

Materials: Pen, paper, and your classroom (or other target) environment.

Procedure:

1. Construct. Ask learners to work in pairs to draft 2-3 sample compliments drawn from the environment that function in the following ways:
   1. Novice: express admiration or approval of someone’s work/appearance/taste.
   2. Intermediate: open and sustain conversation.
   3. Advanced: establish/confirm/maintain solidarity.

Potentially relevant scaffolding:

1. Novice: It may be necessary to help students identify appropriate objects/artifacts to incorporate into compliments to express admiration or approval.

• Example items include articles of clothing, stationary supplies, etc.
• Orienting question: How could nearby items be used in compliments to express admiration or approval?

2. Intermediate: It may be helpful to identify several environmental features to get students oriented to the task of using environmental features to open and sustain conversation.

• Example items include  academic work samples, creative work samples, physical styling, conversations (e.g. a recent topic or ongoing discourse).
• Orienting question: How could these objects/artifacts become “keys” or “tokens” to open and sustain conversation?

3. Advanced: Learners will need to identify which features within the environment they authentically identify with. Additionally, learners will need to identify a specific speech partner who shares a similar perspective with regard to the objects, speech utterances, or media.

• Example items include work samples, recent conversations, recent media (audio, video, images), clothing, other identifiable elements within the environment (e.g. curricular themes, relevant local/youth culture, etc.).
• Orienting questions: What is something you and your speech partner both identify with? How could you use that/those item/s to “get on the same page” with them and build a sense of mutual identification, affinity, and connection (AKA solidarity)?

2. Explain. In the same (or new) pairs, have students explain why the language samples they came up with function as compliments. Also, have them articulate why the items they chose were selected and see if they can identify any other object(s) that would function more powerfully as “compliment generators.” For novice and intermediate learners, these explanations will most likely be articulated in the L1.
3. Compare.
   1. Novice: Learners vote as a class which compliments and objects make the best pairs.
   2. Intermediate and Advanced: Learners discuss (as a class) which compliment/object pairs were most appropriate, convincing, and functional/powerful.
4. Extend.
   1. Novice: Students are encouraged (or assigned) to continue noticing and practicing throughout their day how features of their environment can/must be used to express admiration or approval of others’ work/appearance/taste.
   2. Intermediate: Students are encouraged (or assigned) to continue noticing throughout their day how the environment structures discourse and attempt to use features of their environment to open and sustain conversation.
   3. Advanced: Students are encouraged (or assigned) to continue noticing throughout their day how the environment structures discourse and continue to practice using features of their environment to establish/confirm/maintain solidarity.

By Leila Tamini Lichaei, CASLS Fellow

Lesson objectives: Learners will be able to 

• Use instant translation for learning languages in real life experiences
• Identify street signs in the target language 
• Critically analyze the machine translations and identify some benefits and drawbacks

Level: Novice High - Intermediate Low
Modes: Interpersonal, Interpretive
Materials: Worksheet #1 for learners to write down their own translations, Scavenger Hunt Worksheet plus the street signs to cut and put on the walls, previously downloaded Google Translate app on mobile devices

There are many ways to use instant translation apps in the classroom, such as: 

• Writing short texts, translating them, editing them, and fixing their grammatical errors
• Translating a website as a group project
• Translating a recipe or a chosen piece of text and finding the errors of the translation with its grammar, vocabulary, structure, etc

There are newer features to the instant translation apps such as: 

• Translating pictures 
• Translating handwriting 
• Voice recognition and instant transcripts 

In this activity we are going to see how a scavenger hunt game can be done with the help of Google Translate’s picture translation feature. Before doing the activity, have your language learners download Google Translate’s app. You could use any other similar app that you are familiar with. 

Pre-activity
For this part,with the help of your learners, put street signs of the target language on different walls of the classroom. Have learners walk around the classroom and read the signs. They are not allowed to use their apps yet. Students walk around the classroom and talk in pairs or groups and try to guess the meaning of the words on the signs. They can write them down on a piece of paper. Learners can use a sheet like Worksheet #1.

Activity 

Then explain to learners that you are going to play a scavenger hunt game in which learners are going to walk around the classroom, use their Google Translate app to read the pictures and complete the worksheet. In the worksheet, there are a list of clues that would help learners identify the signs. They should also write down the machine translations. Then explain to learners how this app works and what the features are. Also model translating one sign as an example for them. Here is how it looks when you use the app to translate a sign: 

Post-Activity

Lastly, ask learners to work in pairs or groups, compare their own translations with the machine translation, and answer the following questions:

• Was the machine translation accurate?
• Did you identify any errors? 
• If you want to grade the machine translation what number would it be? (1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest score)
• Do you think machine translation is helpful? Will you use it in the future?
• What are the limitations? (i.e. translation of longer phrases)

In the end, go over all the signs, explain the correct meaning of each sign, and discuss the errors and the limitations of the program.  

1. Learners will complete the onboarding process for Covet Fashion. 

2. Learners will begin Phase 1 of the Phases 1 and 2 Handout by using context (photos and written descriptions) to identify and make predictions about the meaning of domain-specific vocabulary. As they do this step, they will submit their first Limited Time Challenge.

3. Learners will complete the rest of Phase 1 by using their predictions to work with a partner and create a semantic map of the domain-specific vocabulary they defined. It is possible that teachers will need to intervene at this step to help learners verify predictions and/or to point out linguistic patterns to help learners dissect the terminology.

4. Learners will work in pairs to complete Phase 2 of the Phases 1 and 2 Handout. In this phase, they will vote on fashion challenges. As they vote, they will make predictions about whether the outfits they select will receive a high or low score. They will note if they are correct and any observations/ideas they have about how others are scored.

5. Lead a class discussion in which learners reflect on general trends they note from their experience voting on looks. If you have not already done so, it may be necessary to provide learners with instruction regarding comparisons and superlatives in the target language before completing this step.  Use the questions below to guide the discussion:

a.     What types of clothing are most liked?

b.     Do the body types of the models impact how their clothing is rated? How?

c.     Are there skin colors and hairstyles that seem more highly correlated with high scores than others?

d.     Is there anything else you noticed?

6.    Select a specific Limited Time Challenge or Jet Set Challenge (scores will post for Limited Time Challenges in a couple of days, and scores will post from Jet Set Challenges in 8 hours). Have learners return to Covet Fashion and work in pairs to try to earn the highest score possible. 

7.    The next time you have class, review the results to see who won in the class. If possible, have learners share images of their outfits and the results. 

8.    Revisit the discussion questions from Step 5 in gallery walk format by getting four pieces of butcher paper and writing one question on each piece. Place the four pieces of paper around the room. Divide the students into four groups at random and assign each start group to a specific sheet of paper. Give each group a minute to respond to the question on their paper before rotating to the next sheet.

9.    Work as a class to use the learners’ experiences and observations to create a list of 5 tips for players wanting to earn the highest score possible in Covet Fashion. 

10. Use images from fashion and beauty magazines in the target language to decide whether or not your 5 tips still would apply in the target culture.

By Julie Sykes, CASLS Director

The purpose of this activity is to exemplify appropriate L1 use in the world language classroom. Specifically, we focus on the role of the L1 in facilitating deep inquiry and reflection.

Modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal

Materials: Three transcripts of leave-takings in the L2 that involve pre-closers (utterances that indicate that the conversation is about to end without explicitly ending the conversation).

Procedure:

1. Provide learners with a few transcripts of conversations that includes leave takings.
   1. Novice: Learners underline any pre-closers.
   2. Intermediate: Learners underline any pre-closers and compare/contrast them to what they normally do in the L1 in a Venn Diagram.
   3. Advanced: Learners read a target language etiquette guide to understand the complexities of saying goodbye and color-code the transcripts based on whether or not utterances adhere to or flout the norms they read about. They use this knowledge to set goals for themselves for future interactions.

Potentially necessary L1 supports:

Potentially necessary L1 supports:

1. Novice: None unless there are significant misunderstandings.
2. Intermediate and Advanced: Brief commentary or discussion regarding the exploration or comprehension of nuanced language.

4. Engage in creation related to leave takings.
   1. Novice: Students create a short comic strip or meme that showcases leave takings with pre-closers.
   2. Intermediate: Students create a comic strip or series of memes that utilizes pre-closers in such a way that it showcases both appropriate and inappropriate leave takings.
   3. Advanced: Students create a comic strip or series of memes that utilizes pre-closers in such a way that it showcases both appropriate and inappropriate leave takings. They must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of cultural values related to leave-takings through careful incorporation of content.

Potentially necessary L1 supports:

All levels: Clarification of cultural nuances and visual communication strategies (such as the use of gestures) that may not have been explicitly discussed or evident in the transcripts.

Notes:

At all proficiency levels, teachers should use as many communication strategies as possible to facilitate use of and thinking in the target language. However, if deep thinking and inquiry are impossible in the L2 given the learners’ proficiency, educators are encouraged to permit the use of the L1 and to set very clear expectations regarding the extent to which the use of the L1 will be permitted in class. Setting such expectations will not discourage L2 growth, but rather ensure that learners are engaged cognitively in higher-order processes. Such engagement is a critical factor in motivating ongoing, sustained learning.