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Contentid: 17584
Content Type: 4
Title: Informational Article
Body:

Outcome:  Learners will be able to write an informational article about a topic of their choice.

Resources:  Informational Article Resource Sheet

Procedure:    

  1. Pre-writing: (a) Have learners make a list of topics they are interested in knowing more about.  The topics can be sorted into categories, limited by domain, or expanded at the instructor's discretion. After the list has been made, have each student select one topic from their list. (b) After they have selected a topic, invite learners go to the library, a bookstore, or online to find three informational articles related to their topic. Have them use the models to pick out patterns related to genre, language, and audience.
  2. Give learners the prompt and individual time to work on their informational article.
  3. Peer Review: Have learners review each other's informational articles using analysis table in Step 2 as a guide for their comments. Students should revise their own articles based on the given dimensions. It is helpful to use the guide in order to steer students away from correcting each other's grammar or word choice, and instead, focus on the primary functions and other elements of the draft.
  4. Post Writing: Invite students to share their articles with one another and/or create a short response to a peer's topic. 

Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
Inputdate: 2014-04-17 08:46:58
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Contentid: 17585
Content Type: 5
Title: Peer Language Partners Build Language Learners' Skills at the UO
Body:

by Mandy Gettler, CASLS Associate Director

Many models exist to help students practice and perfect their language skills. To encourage students to use language outside of the classroom and attend to accuracy, the University of Oregon's Chinese Flagship Program uses peer language partners (PLPs). Peer language partners are native Chinese speakers who meet with students learning Chinese for a few hours each week.

"Partners are trained to help students build conversational language skills in Mandarin that's appropriate for social and academic settings," explains Chinese Flagship Program Coordinator Genevieve Beecher. For example, PLPs and Flagship students may discuss similarities and differences between Chinese and American cultures or work on a specific homework assignment together.

In addition, these pairs work together outside of class to use Chinese in meaningful ways. For example, the PLPs and the Flagship students may read magazine articles together and discuss them or conduct mock interviews to help students prepare for Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI). PLPs help students improve all areas of competency – reading, listening, speaking, writing, and cultural knowledge.

"Flagship students share that their PLPs are interesting to talk with and have been good friends to them," Genevieve states. "Students also recommend PLPs to others, because they encourage critical thinking, which students appreciate."

"I have other resources that would benefit Chinese students as well, but I really enjoy meeting my PLP each week," says one Flagship student. Other students advocate for adding additional PLPs to the program so that they can meet more often. 

The Oregon Chinese Flagship Program is funded by The Language Flagship through the National Security Education Program.


Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2014-04-17 09:06:57
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Contentid: 17586
Content Type: 1
Title: Book: Intercultural Pragmatics
Body:

From http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199892655.do

Intercultural Pragmatics
By Istvan Kecskes
Published by Oxford University Press

Intercultural Pragmatics studies how language systems are used in social encounters between speakers who have different first languages and cultures, yet communicate in a common language. The field first emerged in the early 21st century, joining two seemingly antagonistic approaches to pragmatics research: the cognitive-philosophical approach, which considers intention as an a priori mental state of the speaker, and the sociocultural-interactional approach, which considers it as a post factum construct created by both speaker and hearer though conversation. Istvan Kecskes, an early proponent of intercultural pragmatics, was among the first to propose merging the two to form the socio-cognitive approach now core to the field.

In Intercultural Pragmatics, the first book on the subject, Kecskes establishes the foundations of the field, boldly combining the pragmatic view of cooperation with the cognitive view of egocentrism in order to incorporate emerging features of communication. He argues that people cooperate by generating and formulating intention that is relevant to the given actual situational context. At the same time, however, because of their egocentrism they activate the most salient information to their attention in the construction and comprehension of utterances. Within this approach, interlocutors are considered as social beings searching for meaning with individual minds embedded in a socio-cultural collectivity, and intention is a cooperation-directed practice that is governed by relevance which depends on actual situational experience.

Visit the publisher’s website at http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199892655.do


Source: Oxford University Press
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:01:21
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Contentid: 17587
Content Type: 1
Title: Report: Languages for All? Can All U.S. Residents Have the Opportunity to Learn a Second Language?
Body:

From http://www.languagepolicy.org/news

This Final Report Action & Plan is the result of a year-long collaborative effort on data and information collection as well as a national and international dialogue on language needs and capacity in the United States and other predominantly English-speaking countries (PESC).

The intent of the Languages for All? initiative was to spark a discussion of whether access to a second language is necessary for, and can be made available to all learners or only the more privileged learners in these countries. Our purpose is not the traditional mode of advocacy for more language-enabled Americans. While advocacy informs the recommendations below, the intent here is threefold:

  • First, to outline a vision and message that provides a solid base for unified efforts across the Language Enterprise, a coalition of constituents with vital interests in language representing education, government, heritage communities, industry, and overseas partners;
  • Second, to balance advocacy with empirical evidence; and,
  • Third, to propose a concrete action plan, with clearly defined strategic goals, objectives and milestones, for advancing language in the U.S. at all level of education, starting with K-12.

Read the report at www.languagepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Languages-for-All-Final-Report.pdf


Source: JNCL-NCLIS
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:02:19
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Contentid: 17588
Content Type: 1
Title: Brief: Improving Institutional Circumstances for Graduate Students in Languages and Literatures
Body:

From http://www.mla.org/comm_grad

The MLA Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession recently wrote the following brief:

"Improving Institutional Circumstances for Graduate Students in Languages and Literatures: Recommendations for Best Practices and Evaluative Questions"

The brief is available at http://www.mla.org/pdf/csgspguidelines_2013.pdf


Source: MLA
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:03:06
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Contentid: 17589
Content Type: 1
Title: April 2014 Issue of Reading in a Foreign Language Available
Body:

From http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2014

The April 2014 issue (Volume 26, Number 1) of the electronic journal Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) is now online and can be read at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

This issue has eight regular articles, first four of which focus on various aspects of extensive reading. In the first article, Jez Uden, Diane Schmitt, & Norbert Schmitt present four case studies following a small group of learners to investigate whether a particular graded reading series provides a bridge to reading unsimplified novels for pleasure. David Beglar & Alan Hunt follow with an investigation on the effect of three factors on reading rate gains of 14 Japanese university students. In the third article, Eunseok Ro & Cheng-ling Alice Chen replicate the methods and data analysis of Crawford Camiciottoli’s (2001) study on second language (L2) reading behavior of academic English-as-a- foreign-language (EFL) students, followed by an article by Victoria Rodrigo, Daphne Greenberg, & Don Segal who analyzed the effect of two reading interventions on reading habits by 181 low literate adults who read at the 3-5.9 grade levels. One intervention implemented extensive reading and the other one had direct instruction. Four more articles follow that focus more on various theoretical aspects of reading. Scott Crossley, Hae Sung Yang, & Danielle McNamara utilize a moving windows self-paced reading task to assess both text comprehension and processing time of authentic texts and these same texts simplified to beginning and intermediate levels. Cindy Brantmeier, Mike Strube, & Xiucheng Yu examine the relationship between pausal and idea units in scoring recalls for L2 readers of English in China. Xiaoxing Su & Young-Suk Kim examine the relation of knowledge of semantic radicals to students’ language proficiency and word reading for adult Chinese-as-a-foreign language students. And finally, Mark Shiu Kee Shum, Wing Wah Ki, & Che Kan leong compared alphasyllabary language users with Chinese students in comprehending elementary Chinese texts containing indicators hypothesized to differentially predict text comprehension.

In addition, there are two book reviews. Mike Misner reviews Teacher’s Sourcebook for Extensive Reading by George Jacobs & Thomas S. C. Farrell, and New Ways in Teaching Reading, Revised by Richard R. Day (Ed.) is reviewed by Kasey Larson.

There are also three discussion articles in this issue. In the first one, Stuart McLean addressed the importance of comprehension to reading based on his understanding of Chang (2012), that previously published in RFL (April 2012). Anna C-S Chang follows with her response to McLean, and finally Alan Taylor contributes a discussion on his understanding of the article by Robb and Kano (2013), also previously published in RFL (October 2013).

The April 2014 issue is available at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2014


Source: NFLRC
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:03:45
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Contentid: 17590
Content Type: 1
Title: Call for Papers: 25th Conference on Spanish in the United States and 10th Spanish in Contact with Other Languages
Body:

From http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-1675.html

25th Conference on Spanish in the United States and 10th Spanish in Contact with Other Languages
City College of New York
March 26-29, 2015

The organizers invite submission for papers in all areas of language research related to any aspect of Spanish in the United States or Spanish in contact with other languages including but not limited to the following: bilingualism, educational policies and practices, formal aspects of US Spanish, heritage language learning and teaching, language and identity, language and the law, language change, language contact, language ideologies, language in politics and politics of language, language maintenance, language planning, language policy, language rights, linguistic variation, mass media and Spanish, Spanish in the professions, and Spanish and the economy. Multidisciplinary, multimethods, and collaborative cutting-edge scholarship is welcome.

The conference will include a series of Special Sessions on the teaching and learning of Spanish as a second and/or heritage language.

Deadline for submissions: October 15, 2014.

View the full call for papers at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-1675.html


Source: LINGUIST List
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:04:49
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Expdate: 2014-10-15 00:00:00
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Contentid: 17591
Content Type: 1
Title: June 2014 Professional Development Courses from the Berkeley Language Center
Body:

From http://blc.berkeley.edu/index.php/blc/post/june_2014_professional_development_courses

Here are two upcoming professional development courses from the Berkeley Language Center:

Integrating 21st Century Technology to Enhance Communication
June 16, 17, and 18, 2104

Leadership Skills Symposium: Developing Teacher Leaders
June 19, 20, and 21, 2014

Targeted audience for both courses: All teachers and interns of World Languages, Heritage Languages, and English as a Second Language.

Learn more at http://blc.berkeley.edu/index.php/blc/post/june_2014_professional_development_courses


Source: Berkeley Language Center
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:05:53
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Contentid: 17592
Content Type: 1
Title: Workshops from the Institute for 21st Century Teachers in New York and San Francisco
Body:

Teach 21, the Institute for 21st Century Teachers (Columbia University) is offering a workshop, "A Progressive Approach to World Language Instruction" on June 16th. …
https://teach21.theschool.columbia.edu/workshop/progressive-approach-world-language-instruction-k-8th-grade-0?destination=/workshops/new-york

On June 17th, they are also offering "Creating an Environment for Communication in the World Languages Classroom." This workshop will give you many, many activities, games and strategies that you can use in your classes.
https://teach21.theschool.columbia.edu/workshop/progressive-approach-world-language-instruction-k-8th-grade-0?destination=/workshops/new-york
 
The same two workshops are being held in San Francisco 6/23/14 and 6/24/14:
https://teach21.theschool.columbia.edu/workshops/san-francisco

Lutz, N. [nandu] WL PD opportunities in New York & San Francisco. Improving Early Language Programs listerv (nandu@caltalk.cal.org, 16 Apr 2014).

Both workshops are intended for K-8 teachers.


Source: Improving Early Language Programs
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:07:08
Lastmodifieddate: 2014-04-21 03:09:27
Expdate: 2014-06-24 00:00:00
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Contentid: 17593
Content Type: 1
Title: Oklahoma Breath of Life, Silent No More Workshop
Body:

From http://nal.snomnh.ou.edu/okbol

Oklahoma Breath of Life, Silent No More Workshop
May 18 – 23, 2014

The Oklahoma Breath of Life, Silent No More Workshop is a week long (Sunday through Friday), intensive workshop in linguistics and language renewal. The workshop is especially designed for indigenous people from communities who no longer have any fluent, first language speakers. With motivation from community members, archival documentation, and training in how to use this documentation, these languages can have a new breath of life and can be spoken again.

Learn more at http://nal.snomnh.ou.edu/okbol


Source: Sam Noble Museum
Inputdate: 2014-04-19 17:08:35
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