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Title: English-Language Acquisition Gets Boost in Federal Spending Bill
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From http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2014/01/english-language_acquisition_g.html
English-Language Acquisition Gets Boost in Federal Spending Bill
By Lesli A. Maxwell
January 15, 2014
The $1.1 trillion federal spending bill released by Congressional leaders Monday night includes a modest increase in funding for states and local districts to support instruction for English-language learners. …
The measure calls for $723.4 million in spending for Title III—the provision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that sets aside money for English-language acquisition—an increase of more than 4 percent over fiscal 2013, but one that still falls short of returning federal spending on ELLs to pre-sequestration levels.
Read the full article at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2014/01/english-language_acquisition_g.html
Source: Education Week
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Title: Blog Post: Reflection in the Learning Process
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Formative assessment has been the theme of our January issues of InterCom. Here is a timely blog post about making student reflection a part of instruction, fro the Langwitches Blog: http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/01/22/reflection-in-the-learning-process-not-as-an-add-on
Source: Langwitches Blog
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Title: Ideas for Traveling Teachers
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Sometimes a teacher’s assignment doesn’t include a single classroom to teach in. Instead, the teacher must carry all of their materials from room to room with each class taught.
Recently a new traveling teacher sought advice on two language teachers’ fora, the Ñandutí listserv and the FLTEACH listserv. Reponses have been encouraging and have included tips as well as links to photos of teachers’ carts.
See the original query and its responses on the Ñandutí listserv at http://caltalk.cal.org/read/messages?id=57834
See the query on the FLTEACH listserv at http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1401&L=FLTEACH&P=R23835
Click on Next in Topic to see the responses.
Source: Various
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Title: High School Essay Contest in North Dakota
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From https://fland.wikispaces.com/Contests
Foreign Language Association of North Dakota Foreign Language Week Essay Contest
2014 Essay theme: "Don’t Let Learning a Language Slip Through Your Fingers!"
Winning essays may be printed in state newspapers during National Foreign Language Week (first week of March) and on the FLAND websites. This contest is for high school students.
Essays must be submitted by February 1st.
For full details go to https://fland.wikispaces.com/Essay+Contest
Source: FLAND
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Content Type: 5
Title: Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Reflections on LinguaFolio Online by CASLS Online Learning Specialist Krystal Sundstrom
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After serving many years LinguaFolio Online coordinator at CASLS, I felt very confident about the utility and power of LinguaFolio Online. I knew all the theoretical research behind the tool, I knew LinguaFolio Online from the inside out, and I provided instruction and support on how to implement the tool successfully.
Brimming with excitement, I sketched out plans for our STARTALK Swahili College Readiness Academy, a two-week residential summer program. I would introduce the ideas of goal-setting and reflective learning, thus motivating the students to become brilliant self-directed learners. The students would then unleash a storm of creative proficiency, documenting every vibrant aspect of their language learning journey. We would blaze new trails in learner autonomy!
Students in the STARTALK Swahili College Readiness Academy at the University of Oregon put on a final performance for community members.
And then reality happened. Logistics were sticky, as they frequently can be. The computer lab we booked was rescheduled for another group, so we scrambled to find appropriate computer access.
We wanted to capture as much natural interaction as possible, so we had a floating video camera that staff members used to film activities as much as possible. Filming was straightforward, but managing the subsequent video clips added another complicated dimension. I ended up uploading the videos to one single YouTube account, and then telling students which videos included their proficiency evidence.
Although the program went very smoothly and the students had a wonderful experience, LinguaFolio Online was not the most stellar aspect of the program. Some key lessons as I reflected on the program:
-Identify Purpose: Students want to know WHY they are working with LinguaFolio Online. What are the benefits for students? How is the information used? Who is it for?
-Encourage Creativity: Since LinguaFolio Online is intended to help facilitate self-directed learning, allow students to use the tool in novel and creative ways. Skits, poems, music videos, comic strips, and multimedia collages are fun ways for students to show off their language skills.
- Align with Curriculum: Spend some initial time identifying which CanDo Statements align with your current curriculum. CanDo Statements can be fairly broad, so they can apply to many different content areas and activities. The more specific sub CanDo Statements can provide concrete ideas for various language tasks. Provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate their proficiency in a variety of formats.
-Plan for Technology: For every unit of instruction, plan for an initial goal-setting session to discuss the unit outcomes with students. They can set up their accounts and select the appropriate CanDo Statements as goals. Then plan for periodic sessions to update CanDo Statements and upload evidence throughout that unit. Finally, plan a session for students to reflect on their progress, update CanDo Statements, and upload final culminating evidence. Think about how students will capture evidence, especially for audio or video evidence.
Do you have strategies or stories to share about LinguaFolio Online? Email us at info@uoregon.edu or join our conversations on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: CASLS
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Title: Digital Games as an Example of Goal-Orienting Behavior
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by Julie M. Sykes, CASLS, University of Oregon
Have you ever wondered why so many people spend so much time playing digital games? What gets them playing? What keeps them playing? What does this mean for us as language teachers? Among the many complex components that make games engaging, a core element is goal-orienting behavior. In other words, good games are especially effective at pushing people to meet a long, complicated, integrated series of goals in their own way.
Whether or not we actually use digital games in the language classroom, what we know about goal-orienting behavior and its critical role in game play experiences can inform our own teaching and learning in a number of ways.
- Goal setting as a dynamic, negotiated, and continuous process. Helping students become self-driven learners engaged in the learning process is key to successful long-term outcomes. Good digital games engage their players right away by offering a series of level-appropriate tasks from which learners can choose. From this perspective, players drive the experience, but ultimately arrive at the same intended outcomes as those presented by the designers. Furthermore, they are permitted to change course midstream if the task is not meeting their larger goals. In the classroom, this behavior can be facilitated through learner choice and learner-driven goal setting that informs classroom activity. For example, after having learners identify relevant CanDo statements for the coming month, they could each be asked to create an activity that would target the specific language function. They would then engage in a series of the five or ten peer-created activities that were most relevant to them. The instructor would then have the opportunity to ensure the required objectives were being met through a larger task at the end of the unit. In this way, learners would know their target and be assessed on their ability to meet the target, but would have freedom in how they chose to reach the target.
- Failure is a critical learning mechanism. The goal-orienting behavior found in digital games demonstrates an important lesson about failure – it is key to learning. Players are encouraged to take risks and fail through the presentation of goals that may be a little above their gameplay ability. As a result, players learn the skills necessary to complete the tasks, often by repeating the activity multiple times in multiple ways. As instructors, we can encourage risk taking by creating space for failure to result in learning. For example, we can allow the repetition of certain tasks throughout the week or month leading up to a unit assessment. This encourages learners to keep trying until they are able to complete the tasks and allows them to take risks prior to arriving at a high stakes assessment. In addition, they build the skills to “constantly reassesses abilities, risks, challenges, and rewards” (Sykes and Reinhardt, 2012, p. 20) as part of their language learning experiences.
While these two elements are not the only components of goal-oriented behavior, they are noteworthy examples of goal-orienting behavior in digital spaces relevant to classroom practice.
Reference:
Sykes, J. & Reinhardt, J. (2012). Language at Play: Digital Games in Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. Series on Theory And Practice In Second Language Classroom Instruction, J. Liskin-Gasparro & M. Lacorte, series eds. Pearson-Prentice Hall.
Source: Julie M. Sykes, CASLS, University of Oregon
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Content Type: 4
Title: Engaging Learning in Goal-Orienting Behavior
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This activity is a strategic activity to help learners reflect on their own goal-orienting behavior
Objective: To engage learners in goal-orienting behavior in order to highlight self-directed learning as a productive skill for learning language
Resources: My Pathways (download here)
Procedure: 1. Identify one CanDo statement or learning outcome that is central to your curricular plan. For help, visit the NCSSFL-ACTFL Global CanDo Benchmarks.
2. Present learners with the relevant outcome and give them examples of what success at three target proficiency levels might look like. Include possible activities that can help them reach their goal(s).
3. Have learners map their path of learning activities and tasks to reach the target goal.
4. After each has done their task individually, have them work in pairs to compare paths and modify their own path(s) using the guiding questions on the My Pathways Sheet.
Source: CASLS
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Content Type: 3
Title: A Look at Pragmatics
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By Julie Sykes, CASLS Director
Pragmatics, or “meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader) (Yuul, 1996, pp.3-4), is critical for successful communication. While often the source of funny anecdotes, pragmatic missteps can cause frustration for learners as they interact with expert speakers of their target language. Take, for example, the common English greeting, “Hey, how are you?” with the typical response of “I’m well.” or “I’m fine.” For a speaker who interprets “How are you?” to be a sincere inquiry into one’s well being, their response can extended beyond a short phrase and can be interpreted as too much sharing. This pragmatic misstep, due to mismatched expectations, can cause frustration on the part of both speakers. If one is expecting to talk about their day and the other is expecting a short greeting sequence both are not interacting in the way they had hoped.
Explicit pragmatic instruction and attention to pragmatic behaviors in the language classroom can help learners avoid miscommunication, and, when missteps occur, analyze their implications. In InterCom this month, we will explore issues relevant to the teaching and learning of pragmatics. This includes key principles for teaching and learning pragmatics, technology in the service of interlanguage pragmatic development, and pragmatics in study abroad contexts.
Source: CASLS
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Content Type: 5
Title: Small Steps to Build Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence in Language Classrooms
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by Yifang Zhang, OIIP Director
During the five years I have worked with the Oregon International Internship Program (OIIP) at CASLS, I have been surprised to witness how many students from China and Taiwan speak fluent English with very high TOEFL or GRE scores but fail to communicate with people in the United States effectively. There are many reasons students miscommunicate, of course. Even communicating with people who share the same language and culture is difficult.
In this article, I would like to talk about the issue of miscommunication from a language teacher’s perspective. How can we, as language teachers, help our learners to become better communicators in the target language? What kind of strategies and knowledge do learners need in real-world situations when they try hard to build a relationship? This topic is too large to tackle in a short article, but I would like to share a real case from the OIIP students. Their voices made me reflect on language teaching and realize there are small things language teachers can do to help their students be better intercultural communicators.
For example, when Chinese teachers teach xie xie to students, they tend to explain it means "thank you" in English and then spend a lot time practicing the tone with their novice students. The same thing happens in English classrooms in China. However, xie xie and thank you are not equal to each other in terms of usage and function. Compared to thank you in English, xie xie is not used as often within group members, such as family members and close friends. It is considered a polite word meant for outsiders. When you are really close to somebody, you almost want to avoid using it so that people won’t think you are treating them as an outsider. It is common to hear the following conversation in China:
Person A: Thank you very much.
Person B: Don’t treat me as an outsider. We insiders don’t need to say thank you.
The OIIP students, who have passed many difficult English exams, didn’t know that thank you in English is one of the most common words used with family members on a daily basis. They are surprised to find that their host parents thank each other so often that they start to feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, some of the host parents feel they are under appreciated because they don’t hear the variety of thank you’s from the students they open their home to.
This issue probably can be easily solved by showing the usage of xie xie or thank you in a variety of settings from movies. Then, you can have the students analyze the relationship between the interlocutors and come up with the rules on their own. In this way, students get to learn the target culture and language using their own analytical skills.
I believe intercultural communication competence can and should be taught in language classrooms. It can be thoughtfully included in teaching objectives in every lesson.
While living with host families, students in the Oregon International Internship Program begin to understand the importance of pragmatics in language education.
Source: CASLS
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Content Type: 4
Title: An Introduction to Pragmatics
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Before delving into specific pragmatic behaviors of the target language, it can be very helpful to get learners thinking about pragmatic issues in their own language. This activity targets speakers of English, but could be adapted for expert speakers of any language.
Objective: To introduce beginning level learners to interlanguage pragmatics.
Resources: A Introduction to Pragmatics (click here to download)
Procedure:
1. Work as a class to brainstorm situations in which pragmatic knowledge is important. Some specific examples could include:
- Asking someone to switch seats on a plane or a bus. Is it appropriate to ask? If so, what do you say and how do you ask?
- Greeting people. How do you decide what to say?
- Apologizing for breaking something. How do you decide when and how to apologize? What do you actually say?
- Complimenting a friend or coworker. Is it appropriate to give a compliment in this instance? If so, what do you say? How might what you say vary?
2. Use the previous discussion to have learners work in groups of three to complete the activities on the Introduction to Pragmatics Resource Sheet.
3. As a class, make a list of areas where pragmatic missteps might be especially tricky in the target language. For example, in Chinese, the overuse of thank you could be problematic for learners or in Spanish the use of lo siento to apologize might not convey a proper apology.
Source: CASLS
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