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Content Type: 1
Title: 5 Good Apps for ESL / ELL Students
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From http://www.freetech4teachers.com
Blogger Richard Byrne writes, “There are plenty of flashcard services on the web that students can use for rote practice of vocabulary words. The following five apps offer a little bit more than flashcards by providing some larger context for the words and phrases that students can study through them.”
Read about Mr. Byrne’s picks at http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/03/5-good-apps-for-esl-ell-students.html#.UyCusF5sgUQ
Source: Free Technology for Teachers
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Title: Five Activities for Monday Morning
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From http://evasimkesyan.edublogs.org
Here is a list of five activities for a language classroom for a Monday morning, from the Journey in TESL blog: http://evasimkesyan.edublogs.org/2014/03/15/5-fun-activities-for-the-monday-morning
Source: A Journey in TESL
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Title: Discover Languages Video Contest in Wisconsin
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From http://www.waflt.org
Discover Languages Video Contest: Making Language Matter: Essential Learning, Effective Teaching
For All Students Enrolled in World Language Classes in Wisconsin
Elementary (PK – 5)
Middle School (6 – 8)
High School (9 – 12)
Post-Secondary (Undergraduate)
As you learn more about our world, bring the world to Wisconsin. Show us how much languages mean to you and how important they are in your life!
Discover Languages is the national campaign to raise public awareness about the importance of language learning and the understanding of cultures.
Contest Begins February 14, 2014
Submission Deadline October 10, 2014
Contest Focus— Students will develop a video that promotes language learning and provides the audience with compelling reasons on how languages and culture link us all together in today's world!
Contest Purpose—To Promote and Educate the importance of language learning.
Prizes and certificates will be awarded in each submission category (elementary, middle, high, post-secondary). Award winners will be notified at the of October and will be honored at the WAFLT Fall Conference Friday Luncheon in November 2014.
For full details go to http://www.waflt.org/index.php?q=node/35
Source: WAFLT
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Title: Closers: Activities for Extra Time at the End of Class
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From http://bryankandeltprs.com
Teacher Bryan Kandel writes,
What happens when students finish an assessment and there are 10 minutes remaining in class? Or when the internet goes out, or for some other reason, you cannot do what you “had planned in class? Or your first activity took longer than expected and you do not have enough time for the next task? Here are some 5-10 minute activities that take no prep and can be used at any time. (Some may require a few minutes of prep the first time but are then available for future use.) Most are quick games.”
Read on at http://bryankandeltprs.com/2014/03/10/closers
Source: Bryan Kandel TPRS Blog
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Content Type: 4
Title: Spring Cleaning
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This activity is designed to have students, working in a simulated household, determine what spring cleaning chores need to be done, to assign different tasks to different people in their group, and to report on the completed tasks.
Outcomes:
- Learners will be able to verbally suggest household chores and add them to a written list.
- Learners will be able to negotiate as a group to assign different tasks to different people in the group.
- Learners will be able to report details about the tasks that were to be performed.
Resource: Spring Cleaning resource sheet. You may wish to translate the elements in the charts and the helpful expressions into the target language.
Procedure:
- Begin by talking about spring cleaning. How many students know people who do a deep cleaning each year in the spring? How many do this in their own households? What is the difference between everyday cleaning chores and deep cleaning chores?
- Put the students into groups of 2-5. Each group is a simulated household.
- Give each group a copy of the Spring Cleaning resource sheet.
- Students work together to generate a list of deep cleaning tasks for each room of the house, using the chart on page 1 and the helpful expressions on the top of page 2.
- Students negotiate within their group to determine who will be responsible for each chore and record that information on the chart on page 2 and the helpful expressions on the top of page 3.
- Students negotiate within their group to determine how they will celebrate.
- Students share at least two reflections each in their group about how the cleaning went: one positive statement about another member of the group, and one suggestion for how they might do things differently the following spring.
- As a whole-class follow-up, the teacher may ask members of each group to share some of their reflections from Part 4 with the rest of the class.
Source: CASLS
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Title: Job: Japanese Language Instructor, Portland State University
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The School of Business Administration at Portland State University seeks candidates for a fixed- term instructor position in the Master of International Management (MIM) Program beginning September 16, 2014.
The Japanese language instructor is a 9-month appointment and covers two basic areas: (1) serving as the coordinator and lecturer for the Japanese language series in the MIM Program, and (2) serving as faculty liaison to the Japanese community in Portland and vicinity.
Candidates will have a Master’s degree, or higher, from an accredited institution, and experience teaching students whose native language is not Japanese.
Review of applications began March 1st, 2014. The search will continue until the position is filled.
Download the full position announcement at http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/uploads/contentUploads/201403/20/Japanese Instructor Job Description_03-20-14.pdf
Source: COFLT
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Content Type: 5
Title: In Press!
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A chapter by CASLS' Director, Julie Sykes, will be published in June 2014. The chapter, TBLT and Synthetic Immersive Environments: What Can In-Game Task Restarts Tell Us About Design and Implementation?, is an empirical examination of how quest restarts were or were not actualized in participants' choices while playing a virtual simulation. The chapter demonstrates that restart elements of in-game tasks for language learning are critical to the successful design of synthetic immersive environments. The chapter is part of an edited volume - Technology and Tasks: Exploring Technology-mediated TBLT - edited by Marta González-Lloret and Lourdes Ortega. The volume "opens up a new framework that the authors call 'technology-mediated TBLT,' in which tasks and technology are genuinely and productively integrated in the curriculum according to learning-by-doing philosophies of language pedagogy, new language education needs, and digital technology realities." More information on the volume can be found at: https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/tblt.6/main
Source: CASLS
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Title: Technology and TBLT
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by Marta González-Lloret
Marta González-Lloret is an Associate Professor at the Spanish Division of the Department of Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas at the University of Hawai`i, Manoa. Her main areas of interest are the intersections of technology and TBLT and technology and L2 pragmatics; Conversation Analysis for L2 interaction; teacher training; and assessment.
In schools and colleges, in most of the western world today, many students have grown up surrounded by computers and laptops and by an array of increasingly sophisticated communication devices that support personal, portable, wirelessly networked communication. Many students now consider tablets, e-books, and smartphones essential to their daily existence. They are known as the Generation Z (iGeneration / Net Generation): They were born in the early 2000s or later and do not know anything other than life with the full extent of the Internet and the gadgets and technologies that support its use. The technologization of our societies and our children and youth has meant that teachers are keen on integrating digital technologies into their expertise (Nussbaum-Beach & Hall, 2012). Foreign language education is no exception to this trend (Grgurović, Chapelle, & Shelley, 2013; Sauro, 2011; Zhao, 2003). Language educators are increasingly interested in welcoming into their teaching current Web 2.0 technologies which include chats, blogs, wikis, synthetic immersive environments, virtual worlds, and gaming environments. Yet, no matter how exciting new technologies for language learning may seem, they can become nothing more than entertainment unless their design, use, and evaluation are guided by educational and language developmental rationales.
The approach to curriculum known as task-based language teaching (TBLT; see Norris, 2009; Samuda & Bygate, 2008; Van den Branden, 2006) seems ideal for informing and fully realizing the potential of technological innovations for language learning. Web 2.0 technologies create unprecedented environments in which students can engage in "doing things" through technology-mediated transformation and creation processes, rather than just reading about language and culture in textbooks or hearing about them from teachers. It is this potential of new technologies to engage students in active learning and holistic tasks that makes them excellent candidates for their integration in TBLT as a well-theorized approach to language education. However, according to González-Lloret and Ortega (2014) full effective integration of technology and TBLT requires three conditions:
(1) 'Tasks' need to be clearly defined to avoid a translation of exercises and activities into a computer platform. Tasks in the context of technology should primarily focus on meaning (rather than on grammatical forms), should be learner-centered, holistic and authentic (real world authentic), and should bring reflection to the learning process;
(2) There has to be an awareness of the implications that incorporating technology has on the construction of knowledge and learning. The mere incorporation of technology on a curriculum brings about a whole new set of real-world tasks which in and of themselves become target tasks and part of the curriculum;
(3) The relationships of technology and tasks to a full curriculum must be articulated clearly. Technology must become part of the full programmatic cycle that shapes a TBLT curriculum, from needs analysis all the way to explicit learning outcomes for assessment and evaluation.
Although the study of technology and TBLT is still in an infant stage, we are going to witness more and more research and pedagogical applications of technology and TBLT informing educators of best practices for the integration of both in their curriculums as interest for the convergence of these fields grows.
Cited references
González-Lloret, M. & Ortega, L. (2014). Towards Technology-Mediated TBLT: An introduction. In M. González-Lloret & L. Ortega (Eds.) Technology-mediated TBLT: Researching technology and tasks (Task based language teaching series). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Grgurović, M., Chapelle, C. A., & Shelley, M. C. (2013). A meta-analysis of effectiveness studies on computer technology-supported language learning. ReCALL, 25, 165-198.
Norris, J. M. (2009). Task-based teaching and testing. In M. H. Long & C. J. Doughty (Eds.), Handbook of language teaching (pp. 578-594). Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell.
Nussbaum-Beach, S., & Hall, L. R. (2012). The connected educator: Learning and leading in a digital age. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Samuda, V., & Bygate, M. (2008). Tasks in second language learning. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sauro, S. (2011). SCMC for SLA: A research synthesis. CALICO Journal, 28, 369-391.
Van den Branden, K. (Ed.). (2006). Task-based language education: from theory to practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Zhao, Y. (2003). Recent developments in technology and language learning: A literature review and meta-analysis. CALICO Journal, 21, 7–27.
Source: CASLS
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Content Type: 4
Title: Technology Mediated TBLT
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By Kai Liu and Eun Young (Ariel) Kim, University of Oregon
Interaction with online discourse communities can have a significant advantage for advanced learners. Technology facilitates interaction with authentic discourse in unique ways. Thorne and Reinhardt (2008) offer a unique model for engaging advanced learners. The sample here is targeted at a Chinese language movie review site, but could be adapted to any similar site in the target language.
Outcome: Learners will be able to observe online discourse, explore and analyze discourse features, and create with language to participate in the community.
Procedure:
Observation and Collection
- Students go to Douban's movie section: http://movie.douban.com
- Students sign up for a Douban account.
- Students navigate through the movie section page to observe features this webpage is comprised of and various ways to find several movies they might like or want to watch. Learners collect movies they like.
- Learners observe how people interact with each other (what kind of language people use, e.g. discourse styles: casual, formal, internet language).
Guided Exploration and Analysis
- Students bring their sample sentences to the classroom and discuss various discourse styles with classmates (e.g. what discourse style is used and why it is used)
- After students watch the movie they chose, they can rate the movie and write short/full reviews.
- Students go to the forum/discussion board to answer other people's question regarding this movie or to post their own questions.
Creation and Participation: Possible Activities
- Have learners look at the reviews/discussion posts in the target language and their native language. Compare the cultural similarities and differences between Chinese and viewers from other countries.
- Have learners create their own movie review based on the target language model.
- Have learners make recommendations to their peers based on reviews they have read.
Source: CASLS
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Title: Spring 2014 Issue of the CLEAR Newsletter: Authentic Materials
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Our sister LRC the Center for Language Education and Research has its spring 2014 newsletter out and available online at http://clear.msu.edu/clear/newsletter/2014-Spring.pdf
The theme for this issue is Authentic Materials. Learn what counts as an authentic material and different ways to use authentic materials in your classroom, as well as what upcoming professional development opportunities CLEAR is offering, in this latest newsletter.
You can sign up to receive future issue of the CLEAR newsletter at http://clear.msu.edu/clear/newsletter.php
Source: CLEAR
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