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Title: Education Department Pledges to Prioritize Needs of Language-Learners
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From http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2015/03/federal_education_departments_.html
Education Department Pledges to Prioritize Needs of Language-Learners
By Corey Mitchell
March 25, 2015
The U.S. Department of Education says it is developing a strategy to elevate the national focus on English-language learners, the nation's fastest-growing student population.
The plan, which touches on topics ranging from parent engagement to teacher preparation, is a "framing guideline for how we want to think about English-learners across different levels of the organization," said Libia Gil, the head of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of English Language Acquisition, or OELA.
Gil unveiled a draft of the plan Wednesday while addressing the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund's school governance conference in Washington. More than 70 Latino school board members, higher education trustees, and state lawmakers attended the event.
Read the full article at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2015/03/federal_education_departments_.html
Source: Education Week
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Title: Article: Integrating Culture in Business English Programs
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From http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=123049
Introducing cultural issues in the business English for specific purposes (ESP) curriculum is a daunting task, given the complexity and scope of the topic, as well as the perceived limitations of a business English course. Many practitioners avoid raising these issues as a result, or simply because they appear to be beyond the scope of a language course, especially business English. Nonetheless, creating a curriculum that does not acknowledge the importance of culture, including pragmatics and critical thinking, and its effect on communication would be irresponsible when preparing students for international business interaction.
Read the full article at http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=123049
Source: Language Magazine
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Title: Sample Materials from STARTALK Programs
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From https://startalk.umd.edu/
STARTALK is the newest of the component programs of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI) announced by former President Bush in January of 2006. The initiative seeks to expand and improve the teaching and learning of strategically important world languages that are not now widely taught in the US.
STARTALK’s mission is to increase the number of Americans learning, speaking, and teaching critical need foreign languages by offering students (K–16) and teachers of these languages creative and engaging summer experiences that strive to exemplify best practices in language education and in language teacher development, forming an extensive community of practice that seeks continuous improvement in such criteria as outcomes-driven program design, standards-based curriculum planning, learner-centered approaches, excellence in selection and development of materials, and meaningful assessment of outcomes.
STARTALK has compiled sample curricula from its different language programs, and you can search them at https://startalk.umd.edu/materials. Languages include Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu.
Source: STARTALK
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Title: ACTFL Global Engagement Initiative
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From http://www.actfl.org/advocacy/actfl-global-engagement-initiative
The World Readiness Standards for Language Learning provide a framework for the curricular integration of collaboration with communities beyond the classroom in order to encourage students, during and after the years of formal language instruction, to participate and engage in multilingual communities at home and around the world.
The ACTFL Global Engagement Initiative will feature outstanding community-engaged learning experiences within the world languages curriculum at all levels of instruction. ACTFL members who have actively engaged their students in using the language beyond the classroom to become globally engaged may seek recognition for their outstanding work. If you feel that your program is worthy of recognition, please take time to submit an application online for consideration.
Applications will be reviewed by a committee selected by the ACTFL Board of Directors. Programs that are selected will be recognized on the Global Engagement section of the ACTFL website, featured in The Language Educator magazine and listed in the ACTFL Convention Program Guide.
The deadline to apply is Friday, May 1, 2015.
For full details about this initiative go to http://www.actfl.org/advocacy/actfl-global-engagement-initiative
Source: ACTFL
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Title: Language in Motion: Outreach for Language Students
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Local students who have studied abroad or who are in upper-level language classes and international students studying locally may have a wealth of first-hand knowledge about the culture and language that you are teaching. Language in Motion is an outreach program that connects these people with local K-12 teachers so that they can create and present language and cultural activities in their classrooms.
The program began at Juniata College in Pennsylvania. Our local consortium is Language in Motion Northwest, which has programs at Willamette University, Linfield College, Pacific University, and Lewis & Clark College.
Contact a program near you to see how you can be involved, either by hosting a volunteer in your classroom or by volunteering yourself.
Source: Language in Motion
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Title: How To Draw People and Actions
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From http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk
Your InterCom editor has certainly had students laugh at her poor attempts to draw people and situations on the board. Here is a 7-minute video by Paul Braddock showing how he makes simple drawings to depict people and actions: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/how-draw-people-actions
Source: British Council
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Title: 15 Vocabulary Strategies
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From http://learningtasks.weebly.com/vocabulary-strategies.html
Here are 15 activities for learning and reinforcing vocabulary: http://learningtasks.weebly.com/vocabulary-strategies.html
Source: Learning Tasks
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Content Type: 3
Title: Why Should We Teach Language for Specific Purposes (LSP)?
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by Julie Sykes, CASLS Director
Research on the critical nature of language for specific purposes and genre/rhetoric studies offers a number of insights relevant to beginning, intermediate, and advanced level classrooms. However, the classification of LSP as a field in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition is not represented. In addition, the practical application of rich linguistic analyses is varied, inconsistent, and difficult to categorize (Swales, 2000). This month, we attempt to synthesize key takeaway points from LSP research to offer a variety of insights relevant to classroom practice.
This week we ask the question – Why LSP?
While the answer is complex, ultimately LSP research offers a great deal in terms of both content and skill set.
In 2007, the Modern Language Association released a detailed report highlighting the critical need for interdisciplinary language studies in which content, domain, and skills are built together. LSP research represents a key resource for deciding what to teach and identifying potentially problematic contexts and language patterns across specific domains. Detailed needs analyses include the identification of patterns across a number of professional domains (e.g., business meetings, scientific publication, digital discourse, and institutional talk). These patterns can inform curricular development efforts as well as everyday classroom practice. For example, a teacher might consult LSP summaries for information about how their students should write resumes for internships in Mexico or an international business summit. In addition, learners can be asked to dive into LSP research and discern relevant discourse patterns for themselves. Exploration allows for a deductive approach to language structures, patterns of interaction, and contexts most closely tied to their own interests and professional goals.
In addition, LSP research offers an approach to language in which language learning becomes highly contextual, relevant, and specific to particular domains. This helps learners build a body of knowledge relevant to their context of use and, at the same time, the skills to consider ways in which close analysis and attention to domain can add to a more general linguistic repertoire in any language. We look forward to the rest of the month where a number of guest contributors explore ways in which these affordances can best be applied in the classroom context.
Swales, J. (2000). Languages for Specific Purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2000) 20, 59–76.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Content Type: 4
Title: Responding to E-mail Requests
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By Kelsey Hertel, University of Oregon graduate student in the LTS program.
This activity begins with an e-mail response homework assignment. The purpose of this assignment is for students to write their own response e-mail with a given prompt and later assess and revise according to L2 pragmatic standards and format expectations. Because the teacher will receive these e-mail responses before the pragmatic lesson is instructed, the teacher may be able to find common pragmatic issues in students' work. These points may be focal areas of pragmatic instruction in the following lesson.
Students will rate sample e-mail responses on a scale from terrible to excellent. Students will discuss with a partner about their reasoning for each ranking choice. Then the teacher will facilitate a class discussion without imposing his or her personal opinions. Following the class discussion, students will revise their personal response e-mails and will discuss with partners why they chose or chose not to change specific aspects of their e-mail.
The handout, assessment rubric and further information about the context, rationale and background can be found here in one file.
Objectives:
By reading, analyzing, and rating a variety of pragmatically varied e-mail responses and by discussing how the recipient's response would vary based on the e-mail responses, students will be aware that:
- there are successful and unsuccessful pragmatic responses to e-mail requests.
- a pragmatic misstep may cause conflict or customer dissatisfaction.
- American e-mail etiquette may differ from their own culture's e-mail etiquette.
At the end of this unit, students will be able to:
- identify successful and unsuccessful responses
- write response e-mails that adhere to L2 pragmatic norms
Procedure:
1. E-mail responses assigned as homework.
a. Teacher distributes Loretta's e-mail to each student.
b. Students write a professional response to this email and send it back to the teacher by due date.
c. Teacher assigns a due date (allowing a few days for students to respond will increase the likelihood of better-written responses)
d. Teacher prints out all of the students' e-mail responses on individual sheets.
2. Ranking activity
a. Teacher distributes the handout to the students.
3. Analysis of e-mail responses
a. Individual rating activity: Students read each e-mail response and circle excellent, good, poor, or terrible.
b. Partner discussion: Students explain their ranking choices by telling their partner at least one clue in each e-mail that helped them decide their ranking choice.
c. Class discussion: Students explain their ranking for each e-mail response. Teacher allows students to express their opinions. Teacher asks students what/how they think Lorette would respond to each e-mail.
4. Revision of students' original e-mail responses
a. Teacher passes out printed versions of students' individual responses.
b. Students work for 10 minutes to revise their own e-mail response message.
c. Students talk with partner about why they changed or didn't change specific things and answer these questions:
How do you think Loretta would respond to your first e-mail response? Why?
How do you think Loretta would respond to your second e-mail response? Why?
Which e-mail response do you think is a more 'successful' response? Why?
d. Teacher uses the rubric to assess students' work.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: Book: Teacher Cognition and Language Education
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From http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/teacher-cognition-and-language-education-9781472532060/
Teacher Cognition and Language Education: Research and Practice
By Simon Borg
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
The study of teacher cognition - what teachers think, know and believe - and of its relationship to teachers' classroom practices has become a key theme in the field of language teaching and teacher education. This new in paperback volume provides a timely discussion of the research which now exists on language teacher cognition.
The first part of the book considers what is known about the cognitions of pre-service and practicing teachers, and focuses specifically on teachers' cognitions in teaching grammar, reader and writing. The second part of the book evaluates a range of research methods which have been used in the study of language teacher cognition and provides a framework for continuing research in this fascinating field. This comprehensive yet accessible account will be relevant to researchers, teacher educators and curriculum managers working in language education contexts.
Visit the publisher's website at http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/teacher-cognition-and-language-education-9781472532060/
Source: Bloomsbury Publishing
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