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Content Type: 5
Title: Reflective Learning in the New Year
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It’s a new year, and what better time to practice reflective learning, make changes, and set new goals? After much debate, our staff felt the framework of New Year’s resolutions feels inauthentic. Nevertheless, a new year triggers a moment of reflection and goal setting.
Each year, we help teachers guide their students in setting their own language learning goals. In an effort to practice what we preach, CASLS staff are setting goals this year, too. After all, people who explicitly make resolutions are ten times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t.
Our staff’s goals for this coming year
- Julie Sykes, Director: “My goal is to make it to the Oregon coast at least once a month. I want to see the changes all year.”
- Mandy Lindgren, Associate Director: “My goal for this year is to take ten minutes out of every day to relax with stretches or deep breathing exercises. I am constantly on the go, thanks to my work at CASLS, my volunteer position at a local nonprofit, and my three-year-old son. Self-care is important for maintaining my health and sanity!”
- Genevieve Beecher, Chinese Flagship Coordinator: “I make daily, weekly, and monthly resolutions, so I don’t usually make a specific New Year’s one. My resolutions are usually about balancing out my life. For example, I plan to go to the disc golf course once each week on my lunch break.”
- Carl Burnstein, Educational Software Developer: “My goal is to improve my knowledge and coding ability for mobile devices.”
- Deborah Cooke, Instructional Designer: “My goal is to work carefully and methodically in a way that infuses reflection and insight for change.”
- Linda Ellis, Business & Financial Development Coordinator: “My watchword for 2014: appreciation. I plan to enjoy having renewed vision, and I will glory in a return to reading and writing fiction! I will play very beautiful piano music very badly. I will see all the colors in the rainbow at every art gallery. I will reduce the font size on my computer. I will return to Ashland, and I’ll recognize friends on the street. I will even revel in the ability to read PowerPoints and see my face clearly in the mirror (maybe). Among many other things, I will appreciate working here with all of you.”
- Linda Forrest, Research Director: “I can’t wait to get exciting new data sets involving language learning games, which is a new direction for CASLS! And I can’t wait to wring information out of DNA analysis for genealogical information in the new data sets I got this year.”
- Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor: “My goal is to prioritize increasing my proficiency in Potawatomi. A target behavior is to be thinking about how I can say something in Potawatomi as often as I can. I also want to use my time more efficiently – especially my screen time! I want to reduce my screen time overall, but I also really value the things that I can do on a computer. I want to work on making the most of the time I spend staring at it.”
- Scott Morison, Educational Software Engineer: “Without discernible measure or proper sense of existential scale, yet increasingly aware of my boundaries, I embark nervously and adventurously into the other half of my allowed quota of human form.”
- Krystal Sundstrom, Online Learning Specialist: “I plan to emphasize the following three areas: content, process, and purpose. My content goals include learning more about gamification and expanding my understanding of learner autonomy. My process goals involve refining my work flow to improve strategic planning and efficiency, and my purpose goals include cultivating a greater sense of creativity and focusing on equity and social justice initiatives.”
- Li-Hsien Yang, East Asia Special Program Coordinator: “My goal is to empower study abroad programs by bridging the relationship between UO campus departments and partner schools.”
- Yifang Zhang, OIIP Director: “My goal is to learn more about pragmatics and the teaching of language and culture, and hopefully I can start to do some kind of research with the existing OIIP data.”
What are your personal reflections and goals for 2014? Share with us on Twitter by tweeting @CASLS_NFLRC or posting on our Facebook page.
Source: CASLS
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Content Type: 3
Title: Welcome!
Body:
As the incoming Director of the Center for Applied Second Language Studies, I welcome you to the next iteration of Intercom! We at CASLS are excited about what will arrive in your inbox each Monday morning. While we will continue to offer a compilation of the high quality content specific to your area, we have also added some new features that we hope you will find useful. Starting this week, each issue of Intercom will include:
- Weekly topic: A brief insight into an issue relevant to language teaching and learning
- Activity of the week: An original activity exemplifying the application of the week's theme
- Spotlight: Update on CASLS' activity
- Publications: Links to publications that match your interests
- Professional development: Links to professional development opportunities
- Language corner: Resources and ideas for language professionals, customized to your interests
We look forward to your feedback as we continue to explore ways to deliver the most useful information possible.
In the spirit of the beginning of the new year, this month we will focus on goal-setting and formative assessment in the language classroom. This will include a synthesis of research about the value of goal setting and self-assessment in the classroom, activities that can be used with your students to both set goals and make use of formative assessment with your students, and information about Linguafolio Online, an online e-portfolio to facilitate long-term goal setting and self-assessment. In this issue, we offer a hands-on activity designed to help your learners think about their goals for learning a second language and tools for helping them meet this goal.
Please feel free to share this issue with any colleagues you feel would benefit. They can also sign-up directly at http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu.
Best Wishes for 2014!
Julie M. Sykes, PhD
Director, CASLS, University of Oregon
Source: CASLS
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Content Type: 4
Title: Goal Setting
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As is often tradition at the start of a New Year, we begin our InterCom Activity of the Week section with a focus on goal setting for language learners. With the launch of the new NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements and Can-Do Benchmarks at the ACTFL Convention 2013 (see http://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/ncssfl-actfl-can-do-statements), it is an ideal time to help your learners start setting their own learning goals. We use interpersonal speaking at the novice level as an example, but any level may be used based on your learning context.
Objective: To enable learners to set target goals that are meaningful and realistic for the term/class/semester to come.
Resources: Goal Setting Student Resource Sheet (caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/uploads/contentUploads/201401/05/Goal Setting_activity fillable pdf_01-05-14.pdf)
NCSSFL-ACTFL Benchmark Checklist for Interpersonal Communication (http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/1-InterpersonalCommunication.pdf)
Goal Tracking System (i.e., Linguafolio Online (https://linguafolio.uoregon.edu), an e-portfolio tool, an in-class paper-and-pencil portfolio)
Procedure:
1. Ensure the benchmarks selected match those appropriate to your proficiency level and mode of communication. The benchmark resource referenced here is Interpersonal Communication. For the benchmarks at higher proficiency levels see the NCSSFL-ACTFL Global Can-Do Benchmarks (http://www.actfl.org/global_statements).
2. Plan 10 – 15 minutes to work with students in-class to begin the goal setting process using the Goal Setting Student Resource Sheet (caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/uploads/contentUploads/201401/05/Goal Setting_activity fillable pdf_01-05-14.pdf) and the NCSSFL-ACTFL Benchmark Checklist for Interpersonal Communication (http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/1-InterpersonalCommunication.pdf).
3. After the initial goal setting activity, have learners revisit their goals weekly and monthly to track their own progress. This can be done in class using a paper-and-pencil portfolio or the newly updated Linguafolio Online (http://casls.uoregon.edu/pages/tools/linguafolio.php). BONUS: To celebrate the launch of the new InterCom we are giving away 100 free student access codes to Linguafolio Online. The first two people to email Mandy Lindgren
Source: CASLS
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Content Type: 2
Title: New Version of InterCom
Body:
Today's InterCom has a new look and feel! Even more exciting, along with the usual customized content that we always send, this week's InterCom has original content from CASLS. We hope that you enjoy it.
Some of you may have received an "InterCom Test Mail" earlier this morning that had some broken links. Please disregard the earlier email; what you are receiving now is today's InterCom.
Source: CASLS
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Title: Call for Papers: 2nd Conference of the American Pragmatics Association
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From http://ampra.appling.ucla.edu
2nd Conference of the American Pragmatics Association
October 17-19, 2014 at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
The goal of the joint conference is to promote both theoretical and applied research in pragmatics, and bring together scholars who are interested in different subfields of pragmatics (philosophical, linguistic, cognitive, social, intercultural, interlanguage, etc.). Three main topics of the conference are as follows:
▪ Pragmatics theories: neo-Gricean approaches, relevance theory, theory of mind, meaning, role of context, grammaticalization, semantics-pragmatics interface, explicature, implicature, speech act theory, presuppositions, im/politeness, experimental pragmatics, etc.
▪ Intercultural, cross-cultural and societal aspects of pragmatics: research involving more than one language and culture or varieties of one language, lingua franca, technologically mediated communication, bilinguals’ and heritage speakers’ language use, intercultural misunderstandings, effect of dual language and multilingual systems on the development and use of pragmatic skills, language of aggression and conflict, etc.
▪ Applications: usage and corpus-based approaches, pragmatic competence, teachability and learnability of pragmatic skills, pragmatic variations within one language and across languages, developmental pragmatics, etc.
Abstract deadline: April 15, 2014
View the full call for papers at http://ampra.appling.ucla.edu/about-the-conference/call-for-papers
Source: AMPRA
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Content Type: 2
Title: Email and the New InterCom
Body:
Does your new InterCom look strange in your email client? Our new version uses formatting tools that are well-suited for reading email on a variety of devices, including cell phones and tablet as well as laptop and desktop computers. Unfortunately, some email clients don’t support all of the formatting. If you use Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo! you are especially likely to miss out on some of the formatting. We suggest that you click on the link at the very top of your email, which will allow you to view your customized version of InterCom online in your default web browser.
As we hear from our subscribers, we will continue to make small improvements in readability and navigability in the coming weeks.
Finally, congratulations to Brigitte Storey and Sharron Herring, who each won 50 free subscriptions to LinguaFolio Online last week after reading our Activity of the Week and responding by email. More information about LinguaFolio Online is available at https://linguafolio.uoregon.edu
Source:
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Title: Book: Codeswitching in University English-Medium Classes
Body:
From http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781783090891
Codeswitching in University English-Medium Classes: Asian Perspectives
By Roger Barnard and James McLellan
Published by Multilingual Matters
In the complex, multilingual societies of the 21st century, codeswitching is an everyday occurrence, and yet the use of students’ first language in the English language classroom has been consistently discouraged by teachers and educational policy-makers. This volume begins by examining current theoretical work on codeswitching and then proceeds to examine the convergence and divergence between university language teachers’ beliefs about codeswitching and their classroom practice. Each chapter investigates the extent of, and motivations for, codeswitching in one or two particular contexts, and the interactive and pedagogical functions for which alternative languages are used. Many teachers, and policy-makers, in schools as well as universities, may rethink existing ’English-only’ policies in the light of the findings reported in this book.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781783090891
Source: Multilingual Matters
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Title: Book: Attitudes to Endangered Languages
Body:
Attitudes to Endangered Languages: Identities and Policies
By Julia Sallabank
Published by Cambridge University Press
Language attitudes and ideologies are of key importance in assessing the chances of success of revitalization efforts for endangered languages. However, few book-length studies relate attitudes to language policies, or address the changing attitudes of non-speakers and the motivations of members of language movements. Through a combination of ethnographic research and quantitative surveys, this book presents an in-depth study of revitalization efforts for indigenous languages in three small islands round the British Isles. The author identifies and confronts key issues commonly faced by practitioners and researchers working in small language communities with little institutional support. This book explores the complex relationship of ideologies, identity and language-related beliefs and practices, and examines the implications of these factors for language revitalization measures. Essential reading for researchers interested in language endangerment and revitalization, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and language policy and planning, as well as language planners and campaigners.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/attitudes-endangered-languages-identities-and-policies?format=HB
Source: Cambridge University Press
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Title: New Issue of Scenario
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From http://www.ucc.ie/en/scenario
Scenario is a bilingual (English–German), fully peer-reviewed on-line journal. The journal's main focus is on the role of drama and theatre in the teaching and learning of foreign / second languages, including the literatures and cultures associated with these languages.
The 14th issue of Scenario is now available online at http://research.ucc.ie/scenario/current
Source: Scenario
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Title: Call for Proposals: Southwest Association for Language Learning Technology Conference
Body:
From http://swallt.org
Call for Proposals
Southwest Association for Language Learning Technology
2014 Conference @UCLA
Language Alliances: Building Communities of Practice Across Languages
April 11-12, 2014
Los Angeles, California
Deadline for proposals: February 7, 2014.
View the call for proposals at https://sites.google.com/site/swallt2014
Source: SWALLT
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