Contents
Content Type: 4
Title: Writing Strengths
Body:
Stephanie Knight is the Language Technology Specialist for CASLS at the University of Oregon. This activity was developed to provide a systematic approach to helping intermediate-high and advanced-low Spanish learners improve their writing.
This activity draws students to focus primarily on their strengths when reflecting on written work rather than weaknesses. Such an approach allows students to be empowered by their language skills instead of discouraged by them. Furthermore, it allows language learners to know with confidence where their strengths lie before completing high-stakes assessments that involve choice of response. In completing this activity, students are engaged in metacognitive development and critical writing skills.
Modes: Presentational writing, Interpretive Reading
Objectives:
- Students will learn how to critically evaluate their own work.
- Students will learn how to identify specific strengths.
- Students will reflect upon learning.
- Students will make a concrete plan for improvement.
Resources: Portfolio of student work, highlighters in multiple colors, writing handout (in Spanish or English)
Procedure:
- Over the course of a unit of study, have students keep all written work in a portfolio of some sort. Given the wide-spread accessibility to mobile technology, we recommend using LinguaFolio Online in concert with the mobile app, LFO to Go (available for Android and iOS).
- Teach the students to evaluate their work using a Think Aloud (http://www.adlit.org/strategies/22735/) of an exemplar. Be careful to focus on form and function in addition to syntax. Though grammar is important, focusing on it too much will lead students to edit their work instead of evaluate it. A balanced approach to evaluation is best.
- After the Think Aloud is completed, walk students through grading the exemplar with a rubric. Make sure to cite specific evidence from the text when assigning a level of achievement.
- Next, tell the students to conduct an initial reading of their own work while thinking about the strengths and weaknesses that they see.
- After the students are done with the first read-through, they should read everything at least one more time and choose their three most prominent strengths and one opportunity for improvement using the writing handout (in Spanish or in English). Examples of each strength and the weakness should be highlighted in different colors for easy reference.
- Finally, students will use the highlighted texts to write a formal letter to the teacher in which they discuss their work and arrive at goals for the next unit of study. These goals must be directly related to the three strengths and one weakness. Before they write the letter, they should outline what they are going to say.
It is recommended that students conduct a similar analysis of work reflecting all communicative skills. While this specific task requires students to review writing samples only, it could easily be adapted to include samples of work reflecting each communicative skill. It would also be easy to adapt this activity to students with lower communicative proficiencies by permitting them to write the letter in their native languages.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-07-14 13:46:14
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-09-14 03:28:48
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-09-14 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-09-14 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 3
Title: Teaching Grammar with a Focus on Linguistic Variation
Body:
Naomi Shin is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at the University of New Mexico. Her two primary areas of research are: 1) Spanish in the United States and how it is shaped by bilingualism and language contact, and 2) the acquisition of Spanish during childhood (among both monolingual and bilingual children).
How do we teach grammar in classes that include both native speakers and second language learners? Challenges arise: native speakers intuitively know grammar rules, but often don’t know formal labels used to describe grammar. In contrast, second-language learners can often cite grammar rules, but rarely do they follow these rules consistently in their speech or writing. This scenario can trigger linguistic insecurity. As Krashen (2000:441) writes: explicitly teaching grammar rules sends “a message to the [native speaker] that he or she does not know his or her own language, while an outsider does.” Linguistic insecurity can lead to language loss because people who feel they don’t speak a language well tend to avoid speaking that language.
The first time I taught Advanced Spanish Grammar at the University of New Mexico, second-language learners breezed through the grammar topics, while native speakers struggled. I applied for a teaching fellowship, which gave me time and support to redesign the class. The solution I chose is to teach about how grammar varies depending on place, social group, and social situation. This new “Spanish Grammar in Society” class highlights differences between textbook rules and how people really speak in their everyday lives, drawing on examples like había versus habían to introduce plural nouns (había/habían muchas sillas en el salón ‘there was/there were many chairs in the room’). Understanding había versus habían requires knowledge of grammar: students need to grasp subject-verb agreement to understand why speakers often say habían muchas sillas even though the textbook rule requires había. Thus, the course covers core grammatical concepts, while also allowing Spanish speakers from diverse communities to understand how and why their own variety might differ from textbook descriptions of grammar. Moreover, the course aims to increase appreciation for all varieties by highlighting the sociopolitical contexts that lead to one variety becoming the so-called ‘standard’. The response so far has been profound and even moving. One student said: “the knowledge I gained in class was not only academic but also moral … I learned … [not to] judge people based on the way they speak ... when people don’t follow textbook rules, that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to speak.” To be sure, the grammar in society class covers fewer grammar rules than traditional approaches do, but the trade-off is clear: the coverage of grammatical concepts is deep, and the lessons about humans and society are even deeper.
Reference
Krashen, S. 2000. Bilingual education, the acquisition of English, and the retention and loss of Spanish. In A. Roca (Ed.), Research on Spanish in the United States: Linguistic issues and challenges, 432-444. Somerville, CA: Cascadilla Press.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-07-14 13:59:22
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-17 03:24:37
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-17 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-17 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 3
Title: Four Simple Steps to Creating an Integrated Performance Assessment
Body:
Lisa Shepard is a National Board Certified French teacher and author of Madame’s Musings, a blog dedicated to proficiency-based language teaching. She has a Bachelor’s in French from the University of Toledo and a Master’s in Education from Ohio Dominican University. She currently teaches high school French in Hilliard, Ohio.
Integrated Performance Assessments are used by many proficiency-oriented language teachers to assess their students’ language skills across all three modes of communication. The following steps will guide language teachers to create their own IPA’s.
Step 1: Choose the authentic text
The first step in designing an IPA is to select an authentic written and/or recorded text that will provide the language input and cultural content for the communicative tasks in the IPA. Because Novice learners are only able to interpret practiced language in simple sentence with strong visual support, infographics, picture books, and cartoons are suitable for these learners. Intermediate students, who are able to interpret paragraph-length discourse, can be assigned a wider variety of print or online written and recorded texts.
Step 2: Create the interpretive task
Having chosen the authentic resource, the teacher will design the tasks which allow her to evaluate the students’ comprehension of this text. The ACTFL guide, Integrating Performance Assessment, provides a useful template for assessing both literal comprehension skills, such as identifying key words, supporting details and the main idea and the higher-level skills required to guess meaning from context, make inferences and identify the author’s perspective. Depending on the targeted proficiency level, the students may be asked to respond either in English or in the target language on these assessment items.
Step 3: Design the interpersonal task
In this section of the IPA the teacher assesses the students’ ability to negotiate meaning in a non-rehearsed conversation. Because Novice learners are dependent on memorized language, their conversations will generally involve giving basic personal information and asking questions they have practiced. The teacher can ensure spontaneous conversation at this level by assessing pairs of interlocutors who have not rehearsed together. Interpersonal tasks for Intermediate students can be more closely integrated by assessing conversations in which the students specifically discuss the information given in the authentic resource they have just interpreted.
Step 4: Develop the presentational task
For the final portion of the IPA, the students create a written and/or oral message which incorporates cultural and/or linguistic content from the authentic text. By designing a product in which the students present what they have learned in the form of an e-mail, blog, or note, a teacher can create a more authentic context for written presentational tasks. Many educators further integrate presentational tasks by requiring that students present information gleaned from the IPA’s interpersonal task.
See this post (http://madameshepard.com/?p=316) for additional suggestions for designing IPA’s.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-07-15 14:55:37
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-10 03:23:27
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-10 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-10 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 4
Title: Leisure Activities: An Integrated Performance Assessment
Body:
Lisa Shepard is a secondary French teacher in Hilliard, Ohio. This Integrated Performance Assessment was designed to assess her French 1 (Novice Mid) students after a unit on leisure activities. Throughout this unit the students completed a variety of interpretive, interpersonal and presentational activities designed to provide opportunities for them to practice the vocabulary and structures they would need to accomplish the performance tasks on the IPA. See this link (http://madameshepard.com/?p=557 ) for the instructional resources and materials that were used during this unit.
Modes: Interpretive Reading, Interpretive Listening, Interpersonal Communication, Presentational Writing
Objectives: This IPA was designed to assess the following NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements:
- Interpretive Reading: I can recognize words and phrases for leisure activities I have learned when I read.
- Interpretive Listening: I can sometimes understand some basic words and phrases when I hear them spoken
- Interpersonal Communication: 1) I can talk about what I do, 2) I can ask simple questions about what others do
- Presentational Writing: I can write simple sentences about what I do after school, on the weekend, and during vacations.
Resources – You will need copies of the IPA document, including the infographic “Le Weekend tel qu’il est et tel qu’il pourrait être.” (It will be easier for the students to complete the interpretive activity if the infographic is photocopied separately from the IPA document.) You will need each student to have access to a computer from which YouTube can be accessed. (Alternatively, you can project the video and play it several times to the whole class.) In addition, you should have a class set of the rubrics you will use to assess each performance task.
Procedure:
- Pass out a copy of the IPA document and the infographic to each student.
- Instruct the students to complete the Interpretive Reading section of the IPA individually and without references.
- As students complete the Interpretive Reading, they can be directed to complete the Interpretive Listening using an individual device or classroom computers. Alternatively, when all students have finished the Interpretive Reading task, the class as a whole could complete the listening task in a computer lab or the teacher can play the video multiple times for the whole class.
- When students have completed the Interpretive tasks, they should be instructed to begin the Presentational Writing task.
- While the class is working on the Presentational Writing task, call randomly-selected pairs to your desk or a corner of the room and instruct them to perform the Interpersonal Communication task. Set a timer for three minutes and provide written feedback to the students as they converse. See this link (http://madameshepard.com/?p=620 ) for checklists that can be used to provide feedback while assessing interpersonal speaking tasks.
- Depending on the number of students and the resources available, 2-3 50-minute class periods will be required to complete this IPA. You may wish to provide an enrichment activity for early finishers to complete, especially with larger classes which will require more time for interpersonal communication assessments.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-07-15 16:45:30
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-10 03:23:27
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-10 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-10 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 2
Title: Week Two of Curriculum Development Series
Body:
Last week we kicked off our July-August series on curriculum design with a top ten checklist of best practices. The first item on the checklist is, “The curriculum demonstrates evidence of backward design and proficiency-oriented instruction.” In this week’s issue CASLS’ Language Technology Specialist Stephanie Knight goes into detail about backwards design, especially as it relates to cross-curricular connections. We hope you are inspired to try these ideas in the coming school year.
Source: CASLS
Inputdate: 2015-07-16 16:55:13
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-07-20 03:20:19
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-07-20 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-07-20 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 5
Title: LinguaFolio Online Now Available for Android!
Body:
CASLS is excited to announce the newest mobile application for LinguaFolio Online is now available for Android devices. As of July 2015, look for the mobile LinguaFolio Online application, named LFO To Go on Google Play. This application keeps all the functions that learners use on the web-based version of LinguaFolio Online and adds new features to the experience. Most notably, learners will now be able to take and upload pictures and video as evidence directly from their mobile devices, making documentation a fluid part of language learning! Users can now use their devices to take pictures of written work and other materials in their target language and record video interactions. By allowing users to upload images and video directly from their mobile devices, learners are empowered to make learning a second language a more personal and accurate reflection of their abilities.
When a learner logs into LFO To Go and goes to a specific Can-Do Statement, they first see the evidence that they have already uploaded for that Can-Do. They can then upload evidence by touching the “+” at the top of the Evidence List. From there, learners select what kind of media they wish to upload. This allows learners to be selective with their evidence in regards to what they choose to upload in creating their personal language portfolio.
To download the newly released Android application, go to: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.uoregon.casls.classic_lfo_togo_android
LFO To Go is also available on iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lfo-to-go/id585745302?mt=8
The STARTALK program, administered by the National Foreign Language Resource Center at the University of Maryland, supports the development of this project.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2015-07-17 09:04:45
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-10 03:23:27
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-10 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-10 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 5
Title: ECOPOD Piloting Underway!
Body:
CASLS is proud to announce an exciting new project to engage learners in academic residential communities — ECOPOD. Using ARIS, a development platform for mobile delivery, ECOPOD brings together both technical expertise and an immersive language environment to produce a game that pushes second language learners to interact with each other and their environment. Through a choose your own adventure style of game play, learners must complete a series of community objectives to increase and maintain the health of their pod. This can be done through social collaboration, place-based scavenger hunts, and problem-based tasks designed to connect academic
In one community objective, tied to the UO Common Reading, players must survive a global pandemic in both their local context and in a location where the target language is spoken. Players must think and act in their target language in order to escape death from the pandemic.
Benefits of ECOPOD do not come strictly from the pragmatic excitement elicited in trying to survive a pandemic or increase the health of one’s pod, rather, it exists in the interactions between the players and their environment, as well as solving complex, real-world problems. Players must physically go to certain locations in order to pick up items, prompt the next part in the game, and survive, all the while competing and trading with other players for game resources.
ECOPOD is the newest addition to the bourgeoning field of placed-based language learning. ECOPOD will be available in English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Japanese, and German with activities linked to the University of Oregon campus; the goal is for students to play in their target language. In doing so, players reinforce their language skills in order to successfully navigate the multilingual world of a pandemic. This adds to the currently existing body of work in this area, accompanying projects such as Mentira and Chrono Ops at Portland State University. For additional projects see pebll.uoregon.edu.
The U.S. Department of Education, under grant #P229A14004, supports development of this project. Contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education nor imply endorsement by the federal government. Sponsorship is also provided by the University of Oregon Division of Undergraduate Studies, the Office of Academic Affairs, and the Office of International Affairs.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2015-07-17 09:20:29
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-24 03:24:24
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-24 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-24 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 5
Title: CASLS Launches New Website
Body:
CASLS proudly launched its new website on August 13. The website includes expanded content on current projects like Ecopod, Games 2 Teach, and LinguaFolio Online. The site also highlights popular and relevant previous projects, such as Burning Questions about Language Learning. In addition, the website sports a new, modern design and user friendly menu.
The website launch represents months of work by a collaborative team comprised of Graphic Designer Lara Higgins, Technology Assistant Colin Riegler, Educational Software Developer Carl Burnstien, and Associate Director Mandy Gettler.
“Design is a form of communication, and I wanted to make sure that the new website clearly communicates the mission of CASLS as a resource for a diverse range of language learning students and professionals,” shares Lara. “It was fun to work together and build a site that emphasizes functionality and accessibility.”
Upcoming improvements include a reconfiguration of the site’s search engine optimization so educators can better find resources. The team will complete the search engine optimization process by September. Visit our website at https://casls.uoregon.edu/.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2015-07-17 09:28:08
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-17 03:24:37
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-17 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-17 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 5
Title: CASLS Introduces New Chinese Flagship Coordinator
Body:
CASLS is pleased to introduce Renée Marshall as the new Chinese Flagship Program Coordinator. Renée previously worked for CASLS as a curriculum consultant and coordinator for the Oregon International Internship Program.
“I’m looking forward to recruiting and supporting Flagship students this year, and I am excited to become a part of such an outstanding language and culture program,” Renée says of her role with the Flagship Program. “I have always believed in the importance of educating and encouraging a new generation of globally minded citizens.”
The Chinese Flagship Coordinator plays a large role in creating a welcoming environment where students can thrive. As the coordinator, Renée will lead student recruitment and student support initiatives. She will support students’ learning, prepare students for their yearlong study abroad program, and develop and implement recruitment strategies.
Renée earned her B.A., California teaching credential, and M.Ed. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned her M.A. in romance languages from the University of Oregon. Renée has experience teaching French, Spanish, and ESL. She enjoys working at CASLS and living in Eugene, Oregon. In her free time, she likes walking, hiking, learning languages, and traveling.
Renée will serve as the Chinese Flagship Coordinator for one year. Thereafter, the University of Oregon will conduct a full search for a coordinator who will serve the program throughout the next grant funding cycle.
The Oregon Chinese Flagship Program provides students with an opportunity to develop professional-level proficiency in Chinese while studying any academic major of their choice. The Oregon Chinese Flagship Program is an initiative funded by the National Security Education Program through the Institute of International Education.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2015-07-17 09:34:44
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-07-27 03:24:15
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-07-27 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-07-27 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Book: On the Dynamics of Early Multilingualism
Body:
From http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/432217?
On the Dynamics of Early Multilingualism: A Psycholinguistic Study
By Barbara Hofer
Published by de Gruyter
This book contributes to current issues in TLA and multilingualism research. It discusses multilingual learning and development from a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective. The author argues that trilingual education does not harm or confuse young learners but that the teaching of three languages from an early age carries positive implications for children's linguistic, metalinguistic, and crosslinguistic awareness.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/432217?
Source: de Gruyter
Inputdate: 2015-07-18 10:32:30
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-07-20 03:20:19
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-07-20 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-07-20 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
