Contents
Content Type: 1
Title: Advice for Teaching English Language Learners
Body:
From http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/sarah-powley/without-words-ell/
Teacher Sarah Powley writes about her experience teaching English language learners, starting with the first student she ever had who didn’t speak English when she arrived at school. She also talks about what she learned from interviewing English language learners about what helps them in school. This article is a nice, engaging articles to distribute to content-area teachers who may be unsure of how to teach their English language learners.
Read the article at http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/sarah-powley/without-words-ell/
Source: Teachers.net Gazette
Inputdate: 2015-08-30 18:21:03
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-31 03:23:18
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-31 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-31 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Back-to-School Idea: Classroom Scavenger Hunt
Body:
Here’s another back-to-school idea: a classroom scavenger hunt. Read how here: http://spanishplans.org/2015/08/27/classroom-scavanger-hunt/
Source: SpanishPlans.org
Inputdate: 2015-08-30 18:23:08
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-31 03:23:18
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-31 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-31 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Rubrics!
Body:
Rubrics are a great tool for assessing students’ performance. Here are two that you may want to use as-is or as a model for your own:
First, Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell’s frequently-downloaded and recently-revised performance assessment rubric, with a discussion of recent revisions: http://musicuentos.com/2015/08/rubric-201/
Second, Colleen Lee-Hayes’s thoughts on her own rubric with a rough draft of her work in progress: http://leesensei.edublogs.org/2015/08/24/my-rubric-descriptor-quandary-questions-and-maybe-an-answer/#.Vd4my3tyqRI
Source: Various
Inputdate: 2015-08-30 18:23:41
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-31 03:23:18
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-31 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-31 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: “Getting to Know Each Other” Activities
Body:
It’s time for students to come back to school, and teachers are looking for more ideas to get to know their students, for students to get to know each other, and to bond as a class. Here is a series of ideas from Teachers.net Gazette:
Part 1: http://www.teachers.net/gazette/AUG08/davies/
Part 2: http://www.teachers.net/gazette/SEP08/davies/
Part 3: http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/leah-davies/getting-to-know-each-other-activities-part-3/
Source: Teachers.net Gazette
Inputdate: 2015-08-30 18:24:41
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-31 03:23:18
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-31 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-31 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 3
Title: Taking the Next Step: What’s Missing in Our Current Approach to Curriculum Development in the Language Classroom?
Body:
By CASLS Director Julie Sykes
A few basic assumptions frame the ideas in this week’s summarizing piece. While exceptions can be found in any context, it is essential to acknowledge the following:
- Language teachers are amazing. They put in tireless hours and endless effort to create the best possible learning contexts for their students. Even in the face of wildly varying approaches to the same subject, teachers believe in education.
- Students are amazing. They are required to do more and more in the face of competing priorities, never-ending studies, and a world that changes quickly all around them. They are passionate and dedicated, even if that can be hard to feel sometimes.
- Researchers are amazing. We know a great deal about best practices for classroom learning, independent study, and language acquisition. This multiplies each year providing insights that are transformational if properly applied in the right conditions.
- Innovators are amazing. Because of innovation, each day presents increased opportunities for connections, collaborations, trade, and travel, making language proficiency more and more critical each day.
It is precisely the ‘amazing’ in the world languages field that keeps me up at night striving for something even better. This means acknowledging our weaknesses and finding solutions that are not just different, but rather transformational. Teaching is both an art and a science. We must embrace both elements of that equation for truly transformational educational practice.
As we examine our current approach to curriculum development, three elements seem to be missing. If we can find a way to collectively integrate each, students will not only increase their language proficiency, but also become better communicators able to interact with a variety of people from all walks of life.
First, pragmatics and the study of interaction are absent from the national standards on language proficiency, the curricula available, and teacher training programs. While we are highly proficient at teaching the structures necessary to, for example, greet people, apologize, and respond to compliments, we are not adept and teaching when, how, and in what order those structures should be used. A proficiency-based approach to language learning emphasizes functions, but, in the end, primarily rewards accuracy of form over accuracy of meaning. While the ultimate goal is both, we cannot reach this goal until we openly acknowledge success in multicultural interactions is impacted by much more than a missing structure or incorrect word use.
Second, the idea that there is more than one ideal native speaker model pervades everyday discourse, but is not implemented in practice. The majority of language educators would vehemently defend language variety; however, in currently existing curricula and assessments a ‘standard’ model still prevails. Transformational curricula must find a way to balance language variety, learner subjectivity, and co-constructed idealizations of expert speakers in order to build learners’ strategic skills for successfully interacting with the widest variety of people possible.
Finally, alternative assessments must reflect a way to measure pragmatics, interactional, and strategic competence in language learning. As we build curricular materials which include pragmatic behavior and a variety of native speaker models, we must also strive to create assessment to measure learners’ abilities.
I am optimistic about the future of language teaching and learning and look forward to continued collaboration with amazing teachers, students, researchers and innovators and we all work towards transforming both our art and our science.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-08-30 18:58:44
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-08-31 03:23:18
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-08-31 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-08-31 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Volume 19 Number 2 of TESL-EJ
Body:
From http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume19/ej74/ej74fromed/
The August 2015 issue of TESL-EJ, an electronic journal for English as a second language, is available online at http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/.
In this issue:
Roland Sussex, TESL-EJ: Conception and Potential of an Electronic Journal
Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg: A Description
Kent Hill, Integrating Instruction, Curricula, and Assessments in the L2 Classroom
Ross Forman, When EFL Teachers Perform L2 and L1 in the Classroom, What Happens to Their Sense of Self?
Kei Mihara, Effects of Phonological Input as a Pre-Listening Activity on Vocabulary Learning and L2 Listening Comprehension Test Performance
Liv Thorstensson Dávila, “Dare I Ask?”: Eliciting Prior Knowledge and Its Implications for Teaching and Learning
Joy Egbert, David Herman & HyunGyung Lee, Flipped Instruction in English Language Teacher Education: A Design-based Study in a Complex, Open-ended Learning Environment
Ilka Kostka & Robyn Brinks Lockwood, What’s on the Internet for Flipping English Language Instruction?
Reviews:
Tri Hoang Dang, Web-based Vocabulary Learning with Quizlet
Susan M. Reinhart (2013), Giving Academic Presentations, Second Edition; Reviewed by Ashley Gatens
Brenda J. Overturf, Leslie Montgomery, & Margot Holmes Smith (2013), Word Nerds: Teaching All Students to Learn and Love Vocabulary; Reviewed by Laura Handler
Source: TESL-EJ
Inputdate: 2015-09-05 13:56:47
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-09-07 03:27:02
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-09-07 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-09-07 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Book: Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
Body:
From http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/research-methods-in-applied-linguistics-9781472525017/
Research Methods in Applied Linguistics: A Practical Resource
Edited by Brian Paltridge and Aek Phakiti
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
Research Methods in Applied Linguistics is designed to be the essential one-volume resource for students. The book includes:
* qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods
* research techniques and approaches
* ethical considerations
* sample studies
* a glossary of key terms
* resources for students
As well as covering a range of methodological issues, it looks at numerous areas in depth, including language learning strategies, motivation, teacher beliefs, language and identity, pragmatics, vocabulary, and grammar. Comprehensive and accessible, this guide to research methods is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students in applied linguistics and language studies.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/research-methods-in-applied-linguistics-9781472525017/
Source: Bloomsbury Publishing
Inputdate: 2015-09-05 13:57:45
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-09-07 03:27:02
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-09-07 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-09-07 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Book: Designing Research on Bilingual Development
Body:
From http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319115283
Designing Research on Bilingual Development: Behavioral and Neurolinguistic Experiments
By M. S. Schmid, S. M. Berends, C. Bergmann, S. M. Brouwer, N. Meulman, B. Seton, S. Sprenger, and L. Stowe
Published by Springer
This volume offers an in-depth description and discussion of research design for a large-scale investigation of bilingual development. It introduces and justifies a range of theoretical and methodological innovations, discusses some of the problems that come with these and proposes practical solutions. The present volume introduces a research design intended to capture a wide range of linguistic data, elicited by means of behavioral tasks, neuroimaging data and free speech from both second language learners and first language attriters of two languages (Dutch and German) representing a wide range of language combinations and ages of onset. Gathering and analyzing such a range of data comes with a multiplicity of problems, many of them linked to the fact that similar tests have to be designed across a range of languages and measurements will have to occur in various locations. The current volume presents a research design appropriate to these questions, discussing the methodological challenges of such a study. It offers advice on how to construct experimental materials which are parallel across different languages set up a protocol for additional measures which can be applied across a wide range of participants combine data from different labs when using different ERP equipment and different eyetrackers.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319115283
Source: Springer
Inputdate: 2015-09-05 13:58:25
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-09-07 03:27:02
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-09-07 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-09-07 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Book: Creativity in the English Language Classroom
Body:
From http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/creativity-english-language-classroom
Creativity in the English Language Classroom
Edited by Alan Maley and Nik Peachey
Published by the British Council
The activities will help teachers to explore the role of creativity in the classroom both in the sense of helping students to express their unique creative identity and also by helping them to think about and use language in a creative way. The activities are suitable for a broad range of students from young to old and from low to higher levels and can be used alongside your existing syllabus and course materials to enhance your students’ experience of learning English.
This book is available as a free download at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/creativity-english-language-classroom
Read a recent review of this book at https://juergenkurtz.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/out-now-creativity-in-the-language-classroom-maley-peachey-2015/
Source: British Council
Inputdate: 2015-09-05 13:59:30
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-09-07 03:27:02
Expdate:
Publishdate: 2015-09-07 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-09-07 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
Content Type: 1
Title: Call for Papers: Learning Language Journal
Body:
The National Network for Early Language Learning is seeking articles for the Fall/Winter issue of Learning Languages. The theme of the upcoming issue is "Exploring Creativity and Innovation through Language Learning." The deadline for proposals has been extended to September 15, 2015. Author guidelines can be found on NNELL's website: http://www.nnell.org/
Source: NNELL
Inputdate: 2015-09-05 14:51:11
Lastmodifieddate: 2015-09-07 03:27:02
Expdate: 2015-09-15 00:00:00
Publishdate: 2015-09-07 02:15:01
Displaydate: 2015-09-07 00:00:00
Active: 1
Emailed: 1
Isarchived: 0
