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Title: Writing and Young Learners
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From http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk
In this article, Wendy Arnold and Rosie Anderson provide a background on writing for young second language learners and some suggestions for effective practice. Although intended for English language learners, their suggestions apply to learners of any language.
Read the article at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/writing-young-learners
Source: British Council
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Title: Travel Unit Idea: Take a Trip with Us!
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From http://www.path2proficiency.com/
High school Spanish teacher Rosalyn Rhodes felt that her travel unit for her level 2 class had so much packed into it that it has become superficial and overwhelming at the same time. She revised her unit, first by using Ernesto Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries as a frame for exploration, and then with a creative twist on student projects that emphasize presentational writing and speaking.
Read what she did in this blog post: http://www.path2proficiency.com/take-a-trip-with-us/
Source: path to proficiency
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Title: Product vs. Process in Curriculum Design
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From http://www.path2proficiency.com/
Alyssa Villarreal, World Language Coordinator for Shelby County Schools, writes about the ongoing process of revising and refining their often-praised world language curriculum. She concludes,
“The debate between product and practice is not much of a debate for me. While I am pleased with the curriculum we use, what I am proud of is the growth of my teachers through the development and revision process district wide. Whether you are the curriculum developer or a new teacher, the process emanates from the resulting products allowing for everyone to engage in the process at some level. While I realize that many districts do not have the benefit of a district supervisor to guide the work, we can all engage in these conversations in our districts and departments. See a new product that catches your attention? How can you use it as a starting point for your own development process to ensure it has long-lasting benefits and not just a pretty product?”
Read her full blog post, especially if you are involved in shared curriculum development, here: http://www.path2proficiency.com/product-v-process/
Source: path to proficiency
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Title: Cleveland International Film Festival
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From http://www.clevelandfilm.org/
The Cleveland International Film Festival will take place March 30-April 10 this year.
Students from Northeast Ohio, grades 5-12, have the extraordinary opportunity to see new films by some of the world’s most innovative filmmakers, including short film programs in English, French, German and Spanish. Films will be shown at 9:30 am March 31, April 1, and April 4-8 at Tower City Cinemas in Cleveland, Ohio. French and Spanish shorts will be shown each FilmSlam day. A second film may be viewed after the general FilmSlam times. This is new this year. Film titles will be selected soon and registration is now open. The cost is $5 per student. Teachers and chaperones are free.
Transportation grants are available through the Ohio Arts Council’s Big Yellow Bus program.
Contact Beth Steele Radisek, FilmSlam Director, at 216-623-3456, X13 or beth@clevelandfilm.org for additional information.
Emch, R. [OFLA] Cleveland Film March 31-April 8. OFLA listserv (OFLA@LISTSERV.KENT.EDU, 27 Jan 2016).
For full details about the film festival go to http://www.clevelandfilm.org/
Source: Various
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Title: Motivation…The Result, Not the Reason
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By Julie Sykes, CASLS Director
As someone who studies digital games and language learning, I am often asked about motivation and the power of games to motivate students in the classroom. The impact cannot be denied. People are motivated to play games, especially the best-selling commercial games. However, the more I read and the more data we look at, the more and more convinced I am that, with or without games, motivation is the result of compelling experiences, and not the reason to consider a new tool or technique. A learner’s desire to continue is highly dependent upon a number of factors, and undoubtedly connected to the intrinsic and extrinsic variables described by experts in this area (see, for example, Dörnyei 2005, 2009; Gardner & Lambert, 1972). Yet, even the most challenging learners can be motivated to change their language learning path after a neighborhood visit or the most motivated can be discouraged from a less-than-exciting assignment. Three transformational learning behaviors, borrowed from digital games, have the potential to result in the motivation we seek through transformational experiences in, and out, of the classroom (Sykes and Reinhardt, 2012).
1) Goal-orienting behavior provides learners choices in their own learning process. This does not sacrifice the intended learning outcomes, but rather creates an environment in which learners themselves drive the pathway to the intended outcomes. For example, instead of being asked to memorize a list of pre-determined foods, learners can be asked to generate their own core list and then add to it three or four from a previously selected list. Much like a player who chooses between a variety of quests to get to the next level, learners can be empowered to take control of their own learning through choice and the promotion of goal-oriented behavior.
2) Individualized, just-in-time feedback, balanced with goal-orientation, allows the learner to immediately know their own level of expertise. Utilizing fail-states, digital games use just-in-time feedback (i.e., dying, having to restart a level) to let the player know exactly the moment they did not reach the intended skill threshold. The result of this type of feedback is the immediate desire to try again, often twenty or thirty times until a player gets it right.
3) Interaction, through and around games, is both natural and authentic. Players talk when they need to and for a large variety of reasons. Creating scenarios in which this type of intense interaction can happen, regardless of the learning context, offers a great deal of potential for those wanting to “get students talking." This can involve games, but doesn’t have to include something digital. For example, interactions can be created through scavenger hunt experiences, puzzles, trials, and other real world simulations. When connected with learner choice, opportunities for learner-directed interaction can add a great deal of authenticity to any scenario.
Regardless of the place of digital games themselves in the classroom, goal-orientation, just-in-time feedback, and authentic interaction have a strong motivating impact on learning experiences in, and out, of the classroom.
References
Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The Psychology of the Language Learner: Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Gardner, R. C., and Lambert, W. (1972). Attitudes and Motivation in Second Language Learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Sykes, J. & Reinhardt, J. (2012). Language at Play: Digital Games in Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. Series on Theory And Practice In Second Language Classroom Instruction, J. Liskin-Gasparro & M. Lacorte, series eds. Pearson-Prentice Hall.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Taking Learning into Your Own Hands: Evaluating Online Resources
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By Renée Marshall, CASLS Flagship Coordinator
The goal of this activity is to encourage students to take their language learning into their own hands by practicing evaluating an online resource. Online resources vary in genre such as websites targeted toward language learners, or websites in the target language, geared toward L1 speakers, such as newspaper websites, magazine websites, sport pages, blogs, etc. Not all resources are equal; so it's important for language learners to be savvy about evaluating the uses and usefulness of different sources of language practice. We also want students to take an interest in the language they are learning outside the classroom as well as inside the classroom. Good online resources give students a way to explore their particular interests in their L2 – music, movies, sports, fashion, nitty-gritty grammar explanations, etc. Students may even start participating in online blogs, fan fiction and gaming in the target language, making the L2 a fun language they use everyday instead of only something they do in the classroom and for homework. This example activity is very simple and has students practice evaluating one particular resource: the Korean language learning website, Talk to Me in Korean (TTMIK) http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/. This activity can be adapted for other online resources in any language.
Objectives:
- Students will be able to evaluate the usefulness & appropriateness of a language learning resource and discuss how they might use it in the future.
- Students will be able to pick out, write down & use vocabulary words, phrases or cultural information from a section of the website that is most interesting to them.
Resources: Evaluating an online resource handout
Procedure:
- In class have a whole class discussion about the importance of taking language learning beyond the bounds of the classroom. Are there websites in the target language that students are all ready using, such as news sites, magazine websites, sports websites, TV websites, etc.? Are there websites specifically for language learners that students are all ready using? What are some ways to identify if an online resource is useful and legitimate (Ex. NOT illegal, bogus, a scam, or inappropriate)?
- Give each student a copy of the Evaluating an Online Resource handout. Depending on your computer availability and how tech-savvy your students are, you can have students do this activity during class time with each student using their own computer or handheld device, or you can have students do this activity at home and then return to class with the activity completed.
- When students return to class, they discuss their findings with a partner (#7 on handout).
- Encourage students to keep what they learned in mind throughout the next few weeks to see if their vocabulary, phrase(s) or cultural information appears again in a reading, a video, or a conversation. Encourage them to try to use what they learned while speaking and writing. Encourage learners to seek out other online resources, those geared for L2's and also for L1's, in order to personalize and improve their language learning experience.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Content Type: 5
Title: Chinese Flagship Hosts Prospective Student Day
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The Chinese Flagship Program at the University of Oregon hosted a prospective student visiting day on March 3, 2016. Students interested in the program came to campus for a full day of activities. They participated in a customized one-hour campus tour, observed two Chinese Flagship courses, had lunch with current Flagship students, and attended a one-hour informational meeting with both the Co-Director and Academic Director of the program.
The Chinese Flagship Program is a certificate program for undergraduate students wishing to achieve superior-level Mandarin fluency by graduation. Students enroll in atleast one Chinese class per term, participate in Flagship events, and complete a Capstone year abroad, including an internship in their area of interest, at Nanjing University. Flagship students are eligible for generous scholarship support for summer study abroad and their Capstone year abroad. The Language Flagship, an initiative of the National Security Education Program, funds the University of Oregon Chinese Flagship Program. For more information about the Chinese Flagship Program at the University of Oregon, click here. To learn more about The Language Flagship and programs at other universities, click here.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Title: New Content Added to Games 2 Teach Website
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One of the projects that we work on over at CASLS is the Games 2 Teach website, which serves as an online gathering of curricular resources and professional development opportunities involving the intersection of games, pragmatics and language learning. For teachers, keeping students motivated and engaged in the target language can be a very daunting challenge, but games have been proven to lend themselves very well to this end. Like any kind of authentic material, however, games can be effectively used to complement teaching a particular language feature, or they can be an unproductive distraction depending on several factors, such as the content of the game, the acceptance of the students, and the scaffolding of the teacher. Games 2 Teach strives to provide helpful resources for teachers so that they can make informed decisions about which games would be appropriate to use given their particular context. Some of these resources include:
- Reviews of popular games based on their relevance and suitability for L2 teaching and learning
- Classroom materials for L2 learning activities using widely available games in Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish
- White papers and academic-level working papers on issues related to digital game-mediated L2 teaching and learning
- A manual for L2 teachers and education professionals on evaluating, designing, and implementing game-enhanced L2 learning activities
- Announcements of summer workshops on digital game-mediated L2 pedagogy
In their most recent blog post, Games 2 Teach discussed some of the advantages and challenges of using Never Alone: Kisima Inŋitchuŋa, winner of the 2015 ‘Games for Change’ award. The game itself is essentially an interactive fable of the Iñupiat people, where players guide a young girl named Nuna and an arctic fox that becomes her companion on a journey through the Alaskan tundra. The blog post discusses several aspects of the game from various angles, but most importantly brings up some best practices for using this game in the language classroom. One point that stands out from the post is to be aware of cultural values and the inherent world view of the target culture. While Never Alone gives great insight into the ideology of the Iñupiat people, an instructor has to be mindful not to bundle everything taken from the game as a comprehensive depiction of the culture. Rather, the teacher should have the students compare and contrast the cultural values found in the game with their own. If you would like to read more about best practices using Never Alone: Kisima Inŋitchuŋa, click here. We would love to hear your input on your experience with using games to teach. Write to us at info@uoregon.edu, follow us on https://twitter.com/CASLS_nflrc, or like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/casls.nflrc.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Title: A Day in the Life of CASLS' Chinese Flagship Coordinator
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Since she started working for CASLS in November 2014, Renée Marshall has worked in various capacities. Currently she is the Chinese Flagship Coordinator and Oregon International Internship Program (OIIP) Coordinator. Renée also serves as co-investigator of a LFO to GO pilot study in two K-12 language classrooms. Before her current position, Renée worked at CASLS as a Curriculum Consultant.
“I love working at CASLS because everyday I feel like I am making a difference in the lives of language educators and learners,” Renée says when asked about her job. “I strongly believe in our core values, that everyone has the ability to learn a second language and should be provided with that opportunity, and that teachers and learners play a vital role in language learning.”
On a typical day Renée helps support University of Oregon (UO) Chinese Flagship students by answering questions about scholarships, study abroad, testing, the program in general, and application questions, as well as helping the student leadership team plan and execute events for other Flagship students. She also works on recruitment by organizing prospective student visiting days and by visiting high schools in Oregon to share information about the program. “I really enjoy working with the Flagship students,” she says. “It’s a wonderful program and a great opportunity for UO students who want to become proficient in Chinese by graduation.” The Language Flagship, an initiative of the National Security Education Program, funds the University of Oregon Chinese Flagship Program.
For OIIP, Renée offers similar support to interns, homestay families, and mentor teachers about the program, intercultural communication strategies, the U.S. education system, English pragmatics and teaching pedagogy. On Fridays she co-teaches a class with the OIIP Director, Li-Hsien Yang, for the OIIP interns on Language Pedagogy and Cross-cultural Communication. “This is a transformative program for these international interns,” she says. “It’s really rewarding to work with aspiring language teachers. I learn at least as much from them as they do from me!”
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Title: Virtual Pen Pals with ANVILL
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A Natural Virtual Language Lab (ANVILL), created by the University of Oregon’s (UO) Yamada Language Center, has been making social media and other forms of online communication for cultural exchange more accessible since 2004.
For 5 years now, UO French instructor Melanie Williams and Stéphanie Meunier, an English professor at Université Lumière Lyon 2, have been collaborating so that their students can meet virtually with each other using ANVILL. Students from both universities record a message in English and in French to communicate. In this way, each student is both an expert speaker and a language learner, with the UO students as expert speakers in English while learning French, and the Lyon students as expert speakers in French while learning English. Often the topics of conversation are left up to the students to decide.
ANVILL is available to language educators across the globe, and free to qualified language educators. Interested in learning more? Visit the Yamada Language Center and ANVILL.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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