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Content Type: 1
Title: Project LINC: Resources for Teaching Undergraduates with Disabilities
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From http://www.longwood.edu/projectlinc/
Longwood University’s Project LINC worked to create curriculum, staff development opportunities, and other resources for instructors, typically non-tenure-track faculty, who teach undergraduates (including those with disabilities) second languages. The project resulted in two technical reports (http://www.longwood.edu/projectlinc/24325.htm) as well as classroom resources, such as a checklist of inclusive strategies, a “Foreign Language Autobiography” that helps teachers and students get to know each other better, and some self-assessments for instructors.
Visit the project website to access these resources: http://www.longwood.edu/projectlinc/
Source: Longwood University
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Title: 4 Ways Art Can Make Your Activities More Interesting
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Nathan Hall writes, “Over the years, I found art lessons tended to be my students’ favorite activities, no matter what their ability level. The ones who get frustrated by complicated concepts are happy to see something they can understand and be asked what they think instead of looking for an answer. More visually-oriented learners have input catered to their natural ability. For classes where there is a wide range of levels between students, the teacher has a chance to create common ground by relying less on language.”
Read some suggestions for using art in your language classroom here: http://blog.tesol.org/4-ways-art-can-make-your-activities-more-interesting/
Source: TESOL
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Title: March Cultural Events around the World
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From http://www.creativelanguageclass.com/
Here is a list of cultural events all over the world in March, with links to information and resources: http://www.creativelanguageclass.com/authres/culture/march-inspiration/
Source: Creative Language Class
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Title: Interpersonal Boot Camp
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From http://mmeblouwolff.weebly.com
French teacher Rebecca Blouwolff uses a simple rubric based on the acronym TALK (Target language use, Accuracy on specific structures, Listening and responding appropriately to peers, Kindness in being an equal and inclusive conversation partner) to assess her students’ interpersonal performance. This rubric is from Donna Clementi and Laura Terrill’s 2013 book The Keys to Planning for Learning: Effective Curriculum, Unit, and Lesson Design.
Students in groups of 6-8 work through stations in the classroom so that Mme. Blouwolff can listen to a group talking about a given prompt and provide written feedback using the rubric. Prior to the activity she gives students a handout explaining strategies for interpersonal speaking.
Read how she does her “interpersonal boot camp” in this blog post: http://mmeblouwolff.weebly.com/revolutionized-teaching/interpersonal-boot-camp-using-the-talk-rubric.
Read teacher Maris Hawkins’ reflection about her experience with the first interpersonal boot camp in her own classroom for more ideas about adapting this assessment technique: https://marishawkins.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/reflections-on-my-first-interpersonal-bootcamp/
Source: Ma Revolution Française
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Content Type: 3
Title: IPIC Framework
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by Linda Forrest, CASLS Research Director
In recent years, language educators have become increasingly aware of the need for their learners to acquire ‘intercultural communicative competence,’ or ICC. Briefly stated, ICC is the ability to say and do the right thing, at the right time, in the right manner, depending on the culture in which one is operating.
Although the basic idea of ICC is easy to state, the specific details are rather vague. A theoretical framework provides a structure for understanding the vague idea, ‘the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately.’ The framework identifies and defines the subcompacts of the vague idea, providing users with guidelines for developing products, such as learning activities and assessments. Currently, CASLS is developing a theoretical framework, the Intercultural Pragmatic Interactional Competence (IPIC) framework, to guide their development of an assessment that will provide educators with a profile of students’ intercultural, pragmatic, and interactional competence.
The IPIC framework identifies four dimensions that are critical to successful multi-cultural interaction: knowledge, analytical abilities, subjectivity, and awareness.
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Dimension |
Indicators of competence |
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Knowledge |
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Analysis |
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Subjectivity |
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Awareness |
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Consider a situation in a Spanish culture where an apology is appropriate. Expert speakers prefer to use hearer-oriented strategies, such perdóname or discúlpame ('excuse me'), with an explanation. However, speaker-oriented strategies, such as lo siento ('I'm sorry'), are also possible. Learners have greater Knowledge when they know more strategies. They demonstrate Analysis when they can choose these strategies consciously based by pre- and post-mitigators, such as how serious the offense was, and can explain their choices. Subjectivity is shown when the learner makes choices such as not apologizing, with full knowledge of the likely consequences. Learners demonstrate Awareness when they reflect on the interaction, determine how effective it was, and why it was or was not effective.
The IPIC framework is designed to account both for interactions that follow the normative patterns of a culture and those that diverge due to individual preferences and deliberate flouting of “the rules,” but which are nonetheless successful. In this way, the framework attempts to account for the full range of human communicative interaction.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Building Intercultural Communicative Competence
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Jacqueline Van Houten was the 2015 president of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and 2010-12 president of the National Network for Early Language Learners. She is World Language Specialist for Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky and served as the World Language and International Education consultant at the Kentucky Department of Education. Prior to her state work, Jacque taught French at the elementary, high school, and university levels.
The goal in language classrooms across the country is to develop learners’ language proficiency and cultural knowledge in preparation for successful engagement in our increasingly global society. The NCSSFL-ACTFL Can Do statements, that clearly outline what learners can do with their language at each sublevel on the ACTFL Proficiency Scale, have proven to be practical tool for educators to set targets, guide Standards-based instructional decision-making, suggest performance assessments, and create rubrics. A similar tool is being used in 3 states: KY (2013), SC, UT, as part of their state standards, to determine learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC).
Intercultural (communicative) competence has been defined by Deardorff (2004) as the ability to interact effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations, and by Fantini (2000) in terms of 5 dimensions: awareness, attitudes, skills, knowledge (A+ASK), and proficiency in the host tongue (Fantini). Byram (1997) understands it to be comprised of 5 savoirs: attitudes, knowledge, skills or relating, skills of discovery and interaction and critical cultural awareness. The developers of the states’ ICC tool drew upon the work of these researchers and their own work on LinguaFolio, but intentionally focused on the linguistic aspect, which supports the revised World Readiness Standards’ Cultures’ goal of integrating culture into language instruction.
Educators and learners are asked to assess and self-assess ICC progress based on:
• investigating our own and others’ cultural products and practices;
• understanding cultural our own and others’ ways of thinking; and
• interacting, bridging one’s own and the other’s culture.
A series of benchmarks, indicators, and sample learning targets, aligned to the ACTFL Proficiency Scale levels detail how learners can participate in cultural interactions at survival, functional and competent levels. They are asked to demonstrate, for example, how they can:
a. identify characteristics of national identity (Novice), e.g., I can identify importance of historical events through celebrations or monuments;
b. recognize when they have caused a cultural misunderstanding and try to correct it (Intermediate), e.g., I can recognize when I have acted or spoken too informally and try to correct it.
c. analyze how peoples’ practices and behaviors reflect their cultures (Advanced), e.g., I can explain why practices of disciplining children differ among cultures.
As a result, districts are designing thematic curricular units around both language and intercultural learning targets and creating integrated performance assessments (IPA) that ask learners to demonstrate what they can do with the their language skills and cultural knowledge in authentic contexts. When ICC is included in the curriculum, activities and assessments, students gain an understanding of how their language and culture skills can result in meaningful intercultural relationships (Moeller & Nugent, 2014).
References
Byram, Michael (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Deardorff, D.K. (2004).“Internationalization: In Search of Intercultural Competence” in International Educator (vol XIII, no.2).
Fantini, Alvino E. (2000). "A Central Concern: Developing Intercultural Competence." in: Fantini, Alvaro ed. (2000), About Our Institution, 25-42.
Jefferson County Public School curriculum https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3zogFjY86wgfkdyTGNrVDdJNml2eS1NbU5oSnNLSExrenFiTzJvYmJRN3hoMnhUT0luaWc&usp=sharing
Kentucky Standard for World Language Proficiency. 2013. http://education.ky.gov/curriculum/conpro/Worldlang/Pages/Standards.aspx
Moeller, A. J. and Nugent, K. (2014). "Building Intercultural Competence in the Language Classroom" Faculty Publications: Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education. Paper 161. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/teachlearnfacpub/161
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Content Type: 4
Title: Listen Actively: Awareness and Strategies
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The Oregon International Internship Program (OIIP) hosts college students from China, Taiwan and Japan to intern in local Oregon elementary school classrooms. In addition to their internship, students take a course on English pragmatics and intercultural communication. Effective language use is much more than simply knowing the words and the grammar; knowing the context and the cultural cues are critical to successful communication. In this course students explore tasks such as: making requests, giving opinion and disagreeing politely, leave-taking, compliments, and active listening. Many activities for this course were inspired by and adapted from activities found on the website American English Teaching Pragmatics. This is a useful free resource for English pragmatic activity and lesson ideas. The following lesson on active listening skills and strategies combines content from two activities from American English Teaching Pragmatics: "Are You Listening? (Backchannel Behaviors) by Anne Berry, Georgetown University, United States and "Listen Actively! You Can Keep That Conversation Going!" by Sara Gallow, Clark College, United States.
To see the procedure and access the powerpoint click here.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: Assessing Interpersonal Communication with LinguaFolio Online
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by Stephanie Knight, CASLS Language Technology Specialist
Interpersonal communication is arguably the most important mode of communication to incorporate in the world language classroom. When learners interact with expert speakers of the target language, they are oftentimes intimidated by the dual influence of their own gaps in knowledge and the fluency of the expert speaker. Other modes of communication (Interpretive Reading, Interpretive Speaking, Presentational Writing, and Presentational Speaking) are unidirectional, and though they do require consideration of the audience or author and their perspectives, there is rarely a demand to respond to the communication in a timely fashion. Interpersonal communication, in both spoken and written formats such as texting, is largely synchronous and requires learners to engage in interpretive and productive functions simultaneously.
Still, the common division of the world language course into four skill sets (listening, speaking, writing, and reading) can make interpersonal communication difficult to assess. Interpersonal language functions are simultaneously written and read or heard and spoken. Thus, a learner’s productive and receptive language skills must be simultaneously assessed, and many rubrics neglect to account for the interactive nature of interpersonal language functions. As a result, learners may be evaluated in a way that inappropriately highlights their skills and deficiencies, potentially limiting learners in their abilities to understand how to improve. After all, as Wiggins (2012) asserts, "Information becomes feedback if, and only if, I am trying to cause something and the information tells me whether I am on track or need to change course."
In order to address this issue, CASLS is currently designing interpersonal rubrics to go along with LinguaFolio Online, an online language learning portfolio based off of the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements. This portfolio allows learners to capture evidence of their respective proficiency levels and to engage in self-reflection regarding how well they are performing. When learners upload evidence, they have to rate how well they feel that the evidence proves that they can engage in the target language functions. In order to help learners to truly understand the difference between the markers on the scale used for self-reflection (what evidence might be more indicative of "Can Do with Help" and what evidence might be more indicative of "Can Do," for example), we are developing descriptors that fully describe each of those aforementioned markers. Not only will these rubrics aid in the development of a common academic vocabulary to use to in the classroom when engaging in self and peer evaluation, but they will also to help to crystalize the skill sets that are required when building language proficiency for learners.
In order to view an example rubric for a Novice High learner, please see this week’s Activity of the Week.
In order to check out the teaching and learning tools already available for LinguaFolio Online, please check out lfonetwork.uoregon.edu.
Reference
Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 10-16. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational- leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Content Type: 4
Title: A Novice High Interpersonal Rubric
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This week, we are featuring an activity designed to work with LinguaFolio Online for Novice High learners that was previously published in InterCom. We revisit this activity in order to highlight how educators might use rubrics in order to heighten their learners’ abilities to engage in self-reflection of their communication skills.
Learning Objectives:
Learners will be able to:
- Engage in introductory conversations.
- Prove the ability to engage in critical self-reflection.
Modes: Interpersonal Speaking, Interpretive Listening
Resources: Two student survey/reflection sheets, Novice High Interpersonal Communication Rubric, mobile devices, LFO to Go app
Procedure:
- To begin class, engage learners in a class discussion in which you work together to analyze the descriptors listed on the Novice High Interpersonal Communication Rubric. In working together, help learners to come up for their own definitions and, more importantly, examples of key terms including "formulaic questions," "highly predictable questions," "high-frequency vocabulary," "basic structures," "familiar structures," "register," and "culturally appropriate gestures."
- Next, explain that learners will be engaging in a variety of introductory conversations in a speed dating format. Lead the learners in a brainstorming session of basic questions to ask when meeting someone for the first time. Review expectations and conventions regarding the use of register and physical gestures (for example, a handshake or a peck on the cheek) in such a situation.
- Students will fill out one survey/reflection sheet with information about themselves. After filling out the information, they are guided to rank how well that they think that they will be able to achieve the listed Can-Do Statements by using the rubric that you discussed as a class in Step 1. As the students engage in this pre-activity self-assessment, encourage them to think critically about the descriptors that justify their self-selections.
- Set the classroom up so that two rows of students are facing each other. Explain that the students will engage in speed dating with 7-10 different members of the class. Each conversation will last for 1-1.5 minutes. At the end of the time, students will all move one spot to the right to change partners.
- After the students complete the first round of interviews, give global feedback to the class regarding trends that you heard. Each student should also fill out the remaining self-evaluation questions on the survey/reflection sheet.
- Next, students will fill out a second survey sheet with information about an alternate personality that they have invented for the second round of speed dating. They will engage in the same self-reflection as they did for the first round.
- During the second round of speed dating, students should record each of their 7-10 conversations on their mobile devices to upload to LinguaFolio Online.
- At the end of the interviews, have students complete the survey/reflection handout and upload their best interviews as evidence for the relevant Can-Do Statements using LFO to Go. Students will evaluate how well they can engage in the statements by considering the descriptors on the rubric.
- Review student samples before the next class period to determine whether or not you agree with the students’ self-assessments. Use what you review to focus the following day’s lesson plans and to continue to deepen your learners’ understanding of the descriptors on the rubric.
Notes:
It is easy to adapt this activity to higher proficiency levels by having learners discuss more complex topics.
Remember that this rubric is designed for Novice High learners and will need to be adapted if you wish to use it for other proficiency levels.
Lastly, though this activity was built with LFO to Go in mind, learners without access to the app can easily participate in this activity by using another digital recording device and transferring the files to their computers and then uploading them to LinguaFolio Online.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: Authentic Interactions
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Alisha Dawn Samples is the World Languages and Partial Immersion Coordinator for Lexington School District One in Lexington, South Carolina.
In today’s world language classrooms, it is essential that our learners experience authenticity through the use of authentic resources; however the need for authenticity also extends into how authentic the task itself is and how it serves to prepare our learners for true meaningful communication.
The focus of this article is on the importance of authenticity in terms of how authentic the tasks and assessments are themselves within the interpersonal mode. For example, turning to your partner in 9th grade, whom you have known since preschool, and asking them their age and likes and dislikes is not usually an “authentic task.” You already know them! How is that high interest and motivating? However, having an exchange with a secret pal or someone you don’t know where you have to figure it out who they are based on their age and likes/dislikes, IS an authentic, engaging task that requires the similar content knowledge.
The interpersonal mode is perhaps the crown jewel of the three modes of communication. Interpersonal exchanges of information embody aspects of both interpretive as well as presentational skills. These exchanges are real, meaningful and impactful on decision-making and relationships.
Preparing our learners to be capable of exchanging information that is purposeful and motivating is authentic. You might consider the following when planning for a task or assessment in the interpersonal mode:
- What are the interests of my learners?
- What is their proficiency level? What are their proficiency targets for this task?
- Where and how do their interests intersect with the “I can” statements (standards or objectives) for my unit of study?
- What motivates my learners to use language?
- Why will they want to share information about this topic?
- Will the learner learn something new about the other person through this exchange?
- Will my learners have options to practice non-verbal communication strategies?
- Will my learners have opportunities to interpret cultural language and expressions, including non-verbal language through this exchange?
- How will this exchange be engaging to both parties?
- How will they show their engagement and/or interest if they are not able to express it verbally or written?
- Will the task allow both parties to show what they are capable of if one of them is not able to sustain communication?
- Will the task leave my learners wanting to continue the exchange beyond the task?
These questions help us frame the value of the task, its authenticity, and allow us to consider multiple means of expressing feelings and information.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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