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Title: How to Find Foreign Language Newspapers and Use Them to Learn the Language
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Learn how to use NewspaperMap.com to find newspapers in your target language and how to learn from reading newspaper articles in this blog post, a great addition to our December theme of Independent Learning: howlearnspanish.com/2014/12/foreign-language-newspapers/
Source: How to Learn Spanish Online
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Title: Activity To Accompany Stories
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English teacher Eva Buyuksimkesyan describes an activity your students can do in groups of three while reading a story: Two students take on the roles of characters, while the third eavesdrops and takes notes on the conversation.
Read a fuller description of this activity at http://evasimkesyan.com/2014/11/03/a-fun-activity-for-the-story-youre-reading-in-the-class/
Source: A Journey in TEFL
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Title: CASLS InterCom
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This week's CASLS Spotlight is on InterCom itself! We started InterCom in 2003, a year before Facebook was founded. Participation in specialized listservs for language teachers was growing, and so was the number of useful resources on the Internet, but how could a person sort through all of the good and bad, relevant and irrelevant, to find information that he or she could use? How, especially, could a busy teacher find the time to keep up on professional opportunities, follow discussions of methods, find ideas for the classroom, and stay up-to-date in the field of language teaching and learning? We created InterCom to address this need by assigning a real human being the task of following listservs and monitoring websites to find gems worth passing along to language professionals. Thanks to customizable subscription preferences, our subscribers receive only content of interest to them: based on language, level taught, area of interest, and even state of residence.
Over the last thirteen years, online exchange of useful information has dramatically increased, and InterCom has made modest changes to keep pace with the changes in how people communicate with each other online. In addition to listservs, we follow quite a few blogs and many websites that are often good sources of information. We monitor state, regional, and national language organizations. We are constantly in awe of the collective wisdom of language professionals and are glad to help disseminate helpful information. We have also built up quite a large collection of articles, all tagged for convenient browsing. You can search our over 18,000 archived articles at http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/content/searchContent.
This year we moved beyond dissemination of existing resources to creating original content to send to our subscribers. Each month we choose a theme that we feel is important in the field of language teaching and learning. Each week we share an original feature article exploring the month's topic in more depth, an activity that exemplifies the theme, and a spotlight on an activity that CASLS is involved in.
We hope that you continue to enjoy your InterCom subscription. If you ever find yourself forwarding InterCom articles to colleagues, we hope that you'll encourage them to subscribe as well. Ours is a free service (although sponsoring organizations can have specific content that only their members receive), and anyone can learn more and subscribe at http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/site/index.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Title: Editor's Top Activities of 2014
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As we come to the end of 2014, our first year of including an original Activity of the Week in each InterCom issue, it's a good time to mention a few favorites. Here are my top 5:
Apologizing. Interlanguage pragmatics is a new area of concern for me, and I learned a lot from our director Julie Sykes's article, "Giving Feedback in the Service of Meaning," and this activity that accompanied it. I may be better at navigating apologies in any language now, too!
Meaningful Use of Online Translators. I know from the many listserv discussions I follow that many teachers are concerned about students cheating by using online translators, which tend to give them poor results anyway. I like this activity, which embraces the new technology and teaching students about both the limitations and the beneficial use of online translators.
Web of Similarities. One of my highlights in 2014 was getting to help teach Swahili to a great group of high school students in the College Readiness Academy. We did this activity as a way to get to know each other and to use the Swahili that we'd just begun to learn; re-reading it gives me fond memories of our students who came from all over the country to learn together.
Arriving in a New City: Creating a Vocabulary Mind-Map. I love the richness and depth of this activity, designed by our new research assistant Renee Marshall. It includes explicit teaching of strategies and authentic materials, with enough information that I could use it to create similar activities for languages other than German.
An Opportunity for Differentiation: Tiered Telecollaboration Project. Adrienne Gonzales wrote an article for us, "Enhacing Independent Learning with Telecollaboration," that left me inspired to try telecollaboration but still uncertain about where to start or how to organize it with a class, until I read her accompanying activity - containing exactly the information I was looking for!
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: InterCom 2014
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Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Five Principles for Teaching L2 Listening
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Larry Vandergrift is a Professor Emeritus at the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He has published widely on listening, particularly the role of metacognition in successful L2 listening.
1. Teach students how to listen.
Periodically, lead your students through the process of listening in order to develop their metacognition about listening. That will help them tackle listening practice (and real-life listening activities) with a clear sense of purpose. Help them set a goal for their listening; encourage them to generate predictions about what they will hear. Teach them to mentally review what they already know about the subject (see Principle 5), and to selectively attend to what is relevant. Make sure they maintain focus and refocus attention when their mind wanders. Remind them not to be thrown off by confusing or unfamiliar details but to make inferences on what they don’t understand, based on all the information available to them. Teach them to constantly evaluate their understanding of what they hear so that they can better resolve remaining questions. Metacognition can promote greater success, greater motivation and a greater sense of control over listening events (Vandergrift, 2003; Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010; Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). Two activities for developing student metacognition for L2 listening are featured here and here as the Activity of the Week in this week's InterCom.
2. Provide listening practice without the threat of evaluation.
Much of classroom listening practice is really disguised testing, focusing on the product (the correct answer). Focusing on what they have not understood makes learners anxious about listening activities. However, when listening practice is divorced from any form of evaluation, the affective filter is lowered, allowing students to allocate more of the limited capacity of working memory to the listening text (Krashen, 1985; Vandergrift & Goh, 2012).
3. Offer written support only after students have had an opportunity to activate real-life listening strategies.
Captions, subtitles and transcripts can help learners develop word segmentation skills and gain insight into their comprehension errors; however these aids do not help learning how to listen. Any written support should only be used after learners have first attempted to understand the text using prediction, inferencing and monitoring strategies that help to compensate for gaps in understanding (Diao, et al. 2007; Vandergrift & Goh, 2102; Winke, et al. 2010).
4. Develop target language vocabulary.
L2 vocabulary knowledge plays a huge role in L2 listening success (Mecartty, 2000; Staehr, 2009; Vandergrift & Baker, 2015). In fact, Staehr noted that over 51% of listening variance could be explained by L2 vocabulary. Researchers also noted that many participants with low vocabulary scores were able to use compensatory strategies (their metacognition) to make up for what they did not understand.
5. Build on students’ prior knowledge.
The research on prior knowledge provides ample evidence for its crucial role in listening comprehension (Long, 1990; Macaro, Vanderplank & Graham, 2005; Tsui & Fullilove, 1998). Activating this vital resource before a listening activity helps learners to draw on a wide range of prior knowledge to facilitate comprehension. This is why it is so important to choose listening texts appropriate to the age and life experience of the learners.
References:
Diao, Y., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2007). The effect of written text on comprehension of spoken English as a foreign language. The American journal of psychology, 237-261.
Krashen, S. (1985), The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications, Longman.
Long, D. R. (1990). What you don’t know can’t help you. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12, 65–80.
Macaro, E., Vanderplank, R., & Graham, S. (2005). A Systematic Review of the Role of Prior Knowledge in Unidirectional Listening Comprehension. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London.
Mecartty, F. (2000). Lexical and grammatical knowledge in reading and listening comprehension by foreign language learners of Spanish. Applied Language Learning, 11, 323–348.
Staehr, L. S. (2009). Vocabulary knowledge and advanced listening comprehension in English as a foreign language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31, 577–607.
Tsui, A. & Fullilove, J. (1998). Bottom-up or top-down processing as a discriminator of L2 listening performance. Applied Linguistics, 19, 432–451.
Vandergrift, L. (2003). From prediction through reflection: Guiding students through the process of L2 listening. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 59, 425–440.
Vandergrift, L., & Tafaghodtari, M.H. (2010). Teaching learners how to listen does make a difference: An empirical study. Language Learning, 65, 470–497.
Vandergrift, L. & Baker, S. (In press). Learner variables in second language listening comprehension: An exploratory path analysis. Language Learning.
Vandergrift, L. & Goh, C. (2012). Teaching and learning second language listening: Metacognition in action. New York: Routledge
Winke, P., Gass, S., & Sydorenko, T. (2010). The effects of captioning videos used for foreign language listening activities. Language Learning &Technology, 14, 65–86.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Sample Activity for Listening: Top-Down
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by Larry Vandergrift
This week's InterCom features two Activities of the Week focusing on listening.
In both activities, students are led through the process of listening: predicting, monitoring, problem solving and evaluating. They are developing their metacognitive awareness of listening, leading them to become the smart listeners envisioned in Principle 1 of the Topic of the Week article. See the key stages and the related metacognitive process illustrated in the Figure below.
Key stages in the metacognitive pedagogical sequence, and the corresponding metacognitive processes, for listening instruction as exemplified in the two listening activities.
Activity 1:
This generic activity can be used with any text to lead students through the process of listening. Have students divide a sheet of paper into three columns: Predictions, First listen, Second listen. Leave room at the bottom of the sheet for some reflective notes after the activity.
After choosing an appropriate text, proceed as follows:
• Students enter the date and the topic (e.g., an advertisement for an Italian restaurant) of the text at the top of the page.
• Based on their knowledge of the topic and the type of text, students brainstorm the kinds of information they might hear, as well as any related vocabulary, and enter this information in the ‘Predictions’ column. Students are reminded that they should consider all logical possibilities. This prediction phase can first be done together as a class, then with a partner and, eventually, on their own.
• After completing their predictions, students listen to the text for the first time. As they listen, they place a check mark beside the predicted information and words, if they heard these elements. In addition, they note any other information that they may have understood under the ‘First listen’ column.
• At this point, students work in pairs to compare predictions and information understood thus far. They are encouraged to discuss points of confusion and disagreement, to consider other logical possibilities, and to identify parts of the text that would require careful attention during the second listen.
• Students now listen to the text a second time. They attempted to resolve points of difficulty raised after the first listen, and they also enter newly comprehended information in the column ‘Second listen.’ When students finish entering this information, the instructor engages the class in a discussion, to confirm their comprehension of the text and to enable the students to share how they succeeded in comprehending. Any accompanying comprehension activity (if the text comes from the course text) could also be done at this time, with a focus on resolving comprehension breakdowns.
• A third listen allows students to verify their perception and comprehension of what they may have missed earlier. This third listen may be accompanied by verification with the text transcript (or part of it) in order to resolve difficulties in sound-form connections.
• Finally, each student in encouraged to complete a personal reflection on the activity, noting any strategies that they would try to use the next time. This can be prompted by a class discussion.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Content Type: 4
Title: Sample Activity for Listening: Bottom-Up
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by Larry Vandergrift
This week's InterCom features two Activities of the Week focusing on listening.
In both activities, students are led through the process of listening: predicting, monitoring, problem solving and evaluating. They are developing their metacognitive awareness of listening, leading them to become the smart listeners envisioned in Principle 1 of the Topic of the Week article. See the key stages and the related metacognitive process illustrated in the Figure below.
Key stages in the metacognitive pedagogical sequence, and the corresponding metacognitive processes, for listening instruction as exemplified in the two listening activities.
Activity 2:
While Activity 1 focused on a ‘top-down’ approach to listening; that is, using the context and text-type to predict content, based on world knowledge, discourse knowledge and metacognition to arrive at reasonable interpretation of the text, Activity 2 focuses on a ‘bottom-up’ approach to listening. In this case, students use a decoding approach to complete a listening activity based on a text where words have been deleted. This kind of ‘cloze activity’ is commonly used but students are not often encouraged to engage in a metacognitive approach to task completion.
The activity below, ‘Camping,' is only a suggestion for illustration purposes since teachers will likely use a text related to the theme currently under study and geared to the language proficiency of the students. If a recorded text is not available, the teacher can read the text.
While teachers often begin such an activity without any preparation other than ‘Listen and fill in the missing words’, it can be made more meaningful and more metacognitive in orientation. Teachers are encouraged to proceed as follows:
- Teachers ask students to read through the text with the gaps in order to arrive at a general understanding of the text.
- On the basis of this general understanding (the context), students are encouraged to fill in tentative word possibilities for each one of the blanks (using pencil) based on logical inferences.
- At this point, students can share with peers their word choices, making changes as required or leaving their choices as they are, if the cannot reach agreement. This will result in more active monitoring as students listen and verify.
- At this time, students listen to the text for the first time to verify their word choices and/or make appropriate corrections.
- Final verification can now take place either 1) between peers or 2) through a class discussion. If you opt for students to verify with each other first, a final class discussion should still take place to verify final word choices and to discuss how students resolved the more difficult choices.
Camping
When the weather starts to get warm, many families like to experience the __________ air of the country away from the ______________ of the city. They pack up their ____________ and a _____________ full of food and head out to the woods near a body of water such as a ___________ or a _______________. After arriving at the _____________, the first thing to do is ___________ up the _______________.
At night, people sit around the ____________ and __________ scary stories or _____________ songs. Somebody has to ____________ wood for the fire. To do this, they’ll need an _______________. If anybody gets hungry, they can ____________ hotdogs or ______________ over the fire.
One thing people like to do in the woods is put on their boots and go ______________. Another thing they like to do is grab a rod, some hooks, and some worms and go ________________.
(Adapted from www.bogglesworldesl.com)
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: CASLS Looks Forward to 2015
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At CASLS, we are looking forward to 2015. It promises to be an exciting, challenging and rewarding year as we continue our work with the UO Chinese Flagship Program, U.S. Department of Education Title VI Language Resource Centers, and the Oregon International Internship Program. We will be embarking on a number of new projects related to our four cornerstone areas – (1) place-based learning, (2) articulation, (3) innovative assessment, and (4) professional development – and will also continue to work on a number of existing projects such as STARTALK LinguaFolio and InterCom. When asked about 2015, CASLS Director, Julie Sykes, says, "We are at a unique place in the field of language education. At CASLS, we are looking forward to designing, implementing and assessing innovative solutions for transformational language teaching and learning. Most of all, we look forward to working with educators around the country to meet their needs in the classroom and beyond." You will find a complete list of CASLS projects on our website http://casls.uoregon.edu. In addition, this newly revised site includes a search feature in the Teacher Toolbox where you can find relevant projects related to your level, language, and project type. Thanks to all for your ongoing support of CASLS and its mission and we can't wait to work with you in 2015!
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Title: January 2015 Issue of Language Magazine
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The January 2015 issue of Language Magazine is available online at http://languagemagazine.com/?p=122841
In this issue:
Managing Diversity
Anne Scatchell argues that administrators need specific training to successfully manage culturally diverse classrooms
Making Reading Your Own
Todd Brekhus, president of myON, extols the benefits of students developing their own personal digital libraries
Speaking by Numbers
Martha Edelson and Lori Langer de Ramirez share the consequences of motivation and affect in teaching Middle School World Language and Math
Reviews: Jobshop Source and more.
Source: Language Magazine
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