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Title: Idea for Interpersonal Activities: Clashing the Personalities
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From http://www.path2proficiency.com
Elena Giudice describes an approach to establishing roles for different students in a language class. Each student receives a card stating his/her role (Cheerleader, Pessimist, Incredulous, Romantic, etc.) and some rejoinders typical of that personality. Although her first attempt to use them with Novice Low students didn’t go very well, her second attempt with Novice High-Intermediate Low students went very well. See how you can implement this idea in your classes at http://www.path2proficiency.com/clashing-the-personalities-in-the-target-language/
Source: path to proficiency
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Title: The Role of Salience in Language Learning
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From https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com
Gianfranco Conti writes, “The extent to which a target language structure is salient (i.e. is noticeable, stands out) is likely to affect its chances to be acquired by a learner. This is consonant with Schmidt’s (1990) Noticing hypothesis … which states that noticing a given grammar structure is the starting point for its acquisition.” He goes on to discuss what factors make word pieces and grammatical structures more salient, what the implications are for language teaching and learning, and strategies teachers can use to use salience to enhance learners’ language acquisition.
Read the article at https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/they-cant-learn-what-they-dont-notice-on-the-role-of-salience-in-language-learning/
Source: The Language Gym
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Title: 5 Steps to Make a Video Viewing Guide
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Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell describes how she uses backwards design to create a video viewing guide for her students based around an authentic video resource: http://musicuentos.com/2017/03/video-guide/
Source: Musicuentos
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Title: Rubrics for Interpersonal and Presentational Speaking
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From http://senoramthomas.blogspot.com
Melanie Thomas writes, “Using the IPA guideline proposed by ACTFL and has really led me to acceptance of different skills in speaking modes. Presentational mode and Interpersoal mode are quite different. … So I realized that I needed to use different rubrics. And I need to make them aware that we focus on different elements in the different modes.”
Access both rubrics that she created, based on text type, fluency, and language control, at http://senoramthomas.blogspot.com/2017/03/speaking-modes.html
Source: Señora M Thomas
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Title: How to Find Authentic Resources on Social Media
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From http://www.secondaryspanishspace.com
Jen Shaw shares how to find authentic resources on social media. Save yourself some time and find some great materials for using in your next integrated performance assessment after you read her post: http://www.secondaryspanishspace.com/2017/03/how-find-authentic-resources-on-social.html
Source: Secondary Spanish Space
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Title: Customized Email Newsletter for Each of Your Students
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From http://ditchthattextbook.com
Matt Miller shares how he uses Google Forms to send every parent an email with customized information about their child in this helpful blog post: http://ditchthattextbook.com/2017/03/07/customized-email-newsletters-for-every-kid-with-google-forms/
Source: Ditch That Textbook
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Content Type: 3
Title: Pragmatics in an Era of Globalization
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By Julie Sykes, CASLS Director
This week’s Topic of the Week was inspired by a question a graduate student asked me after a presentation earlier this week. It was both a profound question and one that warranted a response. I address it here as our discussion is both relevant and meaningful for language educators working in a variety of teaching and learning contexts. He asked (my paraphrasing):
“In this era of increased globalization, how do we help people on the local level understand the critical nature of pragmatics when meeting people from other parts of the world? While, in many cases, learners should adapt to the cultural norms of where they visit, the pure nature of co-constructing conversation would indicate the need to understand one’s own pragmatic behaviors as well.”
I couldn’t agree more. Incorporating pragmatics in the L2 pragmatics classroom must include a focus on the explicit development of learners’ awareness of their own pragmatic behaviors, in addition to common patterns and dynamics of the language and culture being studied. In addition to impacting learners’ second or third language interactions they will, in most cases, also change their interactional patterns in the dominant languages. With the development of pragmatic skills, learners become more adept at engaging in meaningful interaction, understanding the reasons for communicative misunderstandings, and analyzing different patterns of performing and interpreting language functions (e.g., apologies, requests, refusals).
A key to the development of interlanguage pragmatic skills is self-awareness. This can be incorporated in a language classroom in a number of ways. For example, learners could be asked to keep a journal over the course of one week in which they write down any instances of miscommunication and then try to determine why that occurs, most often being attributed to differing pragmatic patterns within the L1 group. This journal can then be used as a starting point for jumping in to further exploration of target language behaviors. Also, common pragmatic missteps by learners of English who are target language speakers can be included to help learners begin to consider their own patterns. Regardless of the approach taken, self-analysis serves as a catalyst for the development of the pragmatic skills needed to engage in interaction and advance discursive skills. As we consider the impact of the integration of pragmatic skills, we see impact on both L2 pragmatic behaviors as well as influence on L1 interactions. Understanding one’s own L1 tendencies can have a profound impact on the way learners engage with others from all over the world.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: What Can We Learn from Talk with Babies?
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Patricia Rounds is retired from a long career in applied linguistics that includes, most recently, coordinating the University of Oregon's ESOL/Bilingual Endorsement Program, directing the Sapsik‘ʷałá program for American Indian educators, teaching math at Woodburn High School and at the American Cooperative School of Tunis, and travelling in North Africa.
Join me in exploring a short conversation between a caretaker and a young child. Since first language acquisition is nearly 100% successful, I suggest that thoughtful consideration of this simple conversation could be thought-provoking for our own classroom practice.
Child: Find dolly.
Caretaker: Hmmmm, you did.
Child: Dolly nice.
Caretaker: She is, isn't she?
Child: Dolly bed.
Caretaker: Wish I were in bed ...
Child: Drop blanky!
Caretaker: I did. Sorry. I'll pick it up.
Child: Dolly sleep?
Caretaker: Yes, she's sleeping now. (Peccei 2006).
This child could be any age from, say, 9 to 18 months and has probably engaged in interactions like this one hundreds or even thousands of times and has thus figured out a lot about how language works. She has learned to break up a continuous stream of speech into meaningful bits that we call words. She has learned to associate the sounds represented by b-l-a-n-k-y to a valued object in her environment. It is unknown how many times she heard that particular combination of sounds before she could make the appropriate association. Also, she has learned that she can re-combine these bits of sound to create new message using some very simple rules. For example, she says “Find Dolly” which indicates the basic (subject here deleted)/verb/object order of English, while a child learning Japanese, a language with predominant subject/object/verb word order would say “Dolly find.”
The child in our interaction has learned that there is something called turn-taking: caretaker says something; child responds. Early on in a child’s life caretakers will accept almost anything as a response: crying, burping, yawning, sneezing—but over time children learn to use words to satisfy their side of an interaction. There is characteristic give and take between the two parties as they make relevant responses to each other’s verbal contribution. Since the interaction continues the child is nicely rewarded.
In the natural course of a conversation with a child the topic would very likely be the here and now and shared experience. Short and pertinent “She’s sleeping now” is more expected than “Well, junior shall we invest in blue chip industrials or would grain futures offer better short term prospects?” By exploiting the association between what is heard and what is seen, participation in such seemingly simple interactions gradually furthers language development.
So we see how interactions provide the context for copious input, i.e. language that the child hears that is mostly understandable. Sometimes a distinction is drawn between input and intake, suggesting that the former is all the language generally in the child’s surroundings, while intake is the language the child “selects” to make meaning and advance language development. This distinction helps us understand why children cannot learn language by listening to TV or radio. Intake accelerates the pace of acquisition by strengthening the connections that create language systems in the brain.
Finally, let’s consider the quality of the child’s language, or output. It’s clearly not perfect. It doesn’t replicate the caretaker’s utterance. There are words missing. The content words are there such as dolly, blanky and bed. We have already seen that basic understanding of the rules of word order are there. What’s not there are the grammatical words—the niceties that string together content words and help to disambiguate meaning from time to time. E.g. “Dolly sleep?” in place of “Is Dolly sleeping?” The niceties are not there yet; however, we know that they gradually but eventually appear by the age of 4 years perhaps. More complex word order, such as that exemplified by English question formation emerges bit by bit.
Is this a relevant model for second language acquisition? Older learners already know about words and basic grammar—although this knowledge may affect the hypotheses learners make about how the new language works. Older learners know how to engage in everyday conversations. So in some ways the job of second language acquisition should be relatively easy. But those of us who have been challenged to learn and/or teach a second language are only too aware of how often our efforts are less than 100% successful. Our brief examination of first language learning is suggestive of the basic elements that need to be present in order for language acquisition to proceed. Learners need to have lots and lots of meaningful input/intake and they need to hear it again and again. Learners need a chance to interact with target language speakers in contexts that support understanding of what they are hearing, as well as their attempts to express themselves however imperfectly. Perhaps most importantly, we are reminded that grammar emerges slowly over time as it is needed. Caretakers know this and allow for it to happen—patiently.
Reference
Peccei, Jean Stilwell (2006). Child Language: A Resource Book for Students. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Content Type: 5
Title: Flagship Linkages Comes to a Close
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The joint project between the University of Oregon Chinese Flagship Program and the Portland State University Russian Flagship Program, funded by the National Security Education Program, is coming to a close. The goal of this grant was to bring together Chinese and Russian classroom teachers, curriculum designers and experts in pedagogy in order to strengthen articulation between programs and develop clear pathways for students to continue their language learning throughout their academic careers. Working collaboratively with Portland Public Schools (PPS), Woodburn School District, Anchorage School District (ASD), and Portland Community College (PCC), the project had four major initiatives:
- A Strategic Planning and Advisory Board to review and evaluate project activities and to evaluate articulation needs related to the Portland State Russian Flagship Program and the University of Oregon Chinese Flagship Program.
- A K-16 Flagship Articulation Document for Russian and Chinese to inform stakeholders of the various pathways to graduation from either the PSU Russian Flagship Program or the UO Chinese Flagship Program.
- A Community College Network plan to identify areas of need in preparing students for Language Flagship Programs and to provide proficiency training and pedagogical support to Russian and Chinese community college instructors in the Pacific Northwest.
- A weeklong Summer Teacher Professional Development Workshop entitled, "Assessment, Curriculum Development, and Articulation" hosted in summer 2016 for Russian K-12 teachers with the goal of creating an online repository of documents and materials for other Russian teachers to benefit from, as many of the teachers and instructors often make all their own materials, particularly in K-12 immersion programs. The professional development workshop also was expanded to include the creation of STEM curriculum in Russian as a collaboration between PPS and ASD.
This was a unique grant as it was the only one of six other Language Flagship Linkages grants that involved community colleges in regards to strengthening articulation. CASLS would like to thank everyone who contributed and participated in this project and made it possible. To see our past spotlights on this project, please see July 4, 2016 and September 9, 2015.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Title: Book: Synergies of English for Specific Purposes and Language Learning Technologies
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Synergies of English for Specific Purposes and Language Learning Technologies
Edited by Nadežda Stojković, Milorad Tošić, and Valentina Nejković
Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Bilingualism and multilingualism both make a major contribution in cross-cultural interaction, but, at the same time, improve various cognitive abilities, such as better attention and multitasking. Meaning in the world around us is represented by means of the language that is used for communication and knowledge exchange between intelligent individuals. The phenomena of human interaction and communication are recently experiencing unprecedented influence from digital technologies. Language learning is part of the global revolution, meaning that language learning technologies are playing an increasingly important role in learning English for Specific Purposes. This volume addresses theoretical and practical aspects of learning, technology adoption and pedagogy are in the context of English for Specific Purposes.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.cambridgescholars.com/synergies-of-english-for-specific-purposes-and-language-learning-technologies
Source: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
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