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Content Type: 1
Title: Making Interpretive Tasks More Authentic
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From http://www.creativelanguageclass.com
Kara Parker writes, “Several years ago, I realized the following about traditional interpretive activities like comprehension questions, cloze-listening, matching, fill-in-the-blanks, etc.:
• Students were copying off of each other
• Students were just skimming for the answers, not really reading/listening
• It took me a long time to create them – Not an efficient use of my time
• I was deciding what was important – I’m doing all the thinking
• They were boring
• They don’t promote language growth based on proficiency
• They rank low on rigor/relevance scales and Bloom’s Taxonomy
• In real life, there are few times that these happen naturally
“So that explains ‘why’ I wanted to change. Then I was struggling with the “how” when I talked with Paul Sandrock a few years ago. It was a big ah-ha moment when he said to think about what is done in real life. When you read a news article, what do you do next? Hmm… Well, I might send the link to a friend and include a point that connects to something we had discussed. Or tell my husband about what I read during our walk to get his thoughts. Or write my opinion in the comment section.”
We at CASLS agree! Tasks should look like things that students do outside of the classroom as well. Read the full blog post for some lesson ideas for interpretive tasks: http://www.creativelanguageclass.com/making-interpretive-tasks-more-authentic/
Source: Creative Language Class
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Title: Giving Learners Feedback on Their Writing
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From https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk
Loli Iglesias writes, “I was working as a teacher of English for seventeen years in different High Schools in the Basque Country and I think I must start by saying that most teachers I met during those years agreed that they found their writing feedback highly time-consuming and not really effective because students would make the same mistakes once and again.
“After I had spent some years feeling quite helpless about this issue, I decided I had to choose between two options: accept that students disliked writing and teachers disliked “correcting” students’ written work even more or start to think of a different approach both to teaching writing and to providing students with feedback on their written work. Obviously, I chose the latter and I would say that through some simple but effective strategies both my students and the teachers who worked on this new approach together with me changed their attitude towards writing.”
Read about the essential features of her approach at https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/loli-iglesias/giving-learners-feedback-their-writing
Source: British Council
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Title: InterCom Archives
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We are grateful to have received your feedback on our InterCom survey. Several respondents inquired about archived articles. We do have an archive; it is available at http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu. Click on Search Content at the top of the page. Here are a few tricks for using the archive:
- The search field use % as a wildcard character. This means that if you search for %icebreaker% you'll get more and better results than if you just search for icebreaker.
- Each article has a permanent hyperlink, or URL. If there's a particular article that you'd like to share or save for later reference, you can enter the full title (or part of it enclosed in %'s) in the Title search field, and the tool will return a link to the article.
- If you're a special fan of our original content, such at Topic of the Week articles and Activities of the Week, you can also specify that in the Content Type Choices field.
We hope that you continue to enjoy your InterCom subscription! Please encourage your colleagues to subscribe as well, if they haven't already.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Content Type: 3
Title: What are Tests Assessing? Context-based Assessment as a Learning Tool
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Renée Marshall is an International Programs Specialst at CASLS. She has experience teaching high school and university level French and currently teaches a course for international internship program students.
When working towards my M.Ed, I noticed that the chapter tests I was giving my students often had little to no meaningful context or purpose. There were fill-in-the-blank grammar questions and vocabulary translation questions, neither of which required understanding of language or use of language in realistic contexts. Even students who had done well on the grammar and vocabulary section of the test would then later have trouble creating a skit using the same words and grammar. They were needing to look up the same grammar and vocabulary words again, not even realizing they had already been tested on the same material previously. As Wiggins (1993) stated: “We cannot be said to ‘understand’ something, in other words, unless we can employ it wisely, fluently, flexibly, and aptly in particular and diverse contexts” (p. 207). So I asked myself, what is the point of these assessments if they don’t give me information about how my students’ language proficiencies are developing?
In order to answer my M.Ed inquiry question, “What are tests assessing?,” I began doing both alternative assessments and chapter tests from the book and comparing the results. After examining three alternative assessments versus three chapter tests, I noticed that in terms of grammar accuracy, nothing really changed. Students made the same grammar mistakes on the chapter tests as they did in the alternative assessments (which included an advice blog, a poetry anthology, and a video newscast). However, the presence of context and the students’ ability to use the language in real-life situations was noticeably different among the two. Students were able to successfully engage in such tasks as giving each other dating advice in the target language and evaluating whether or not that advice was good. They were creating with the language on their own, and as a result, learning the grammatical conventions of giving advice in French. Even while the grammar accuracy did not appear to improve or change from the traditional context-less test to the context-rich alternative assessments, the students were actively learning real-world application of language from the alternative assessments, such as how to use the language to accomplish a task (giving advice) in different situations and also how to do other important skills (like creating and maintaining a blog), or as Wiggins (1993) puts it the “real, ‘messy’ uses of knowledge in context—the ‘doing’ of a subject.” (p. 207) In this way, providing a context and a purpose seemed to create an assessment that also served as a learning tool.
For a few examples of contextualizing test questions, see this week’s Activity of the Week.
References:
Wiggins, Grant P. (1993) Assessing student performance: Exploring the purpose and limits of testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Content Type: 4
Title: Contextualizing Assessments
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As discussed in this week’s Topic of the Week, a key piece of using assessments as a learning tool in order to help learners successfully navigate the “real, ‘messy’ uses of knowledge in context—the ‘doing’ of a subject,” is contextualization (Wiggins, 1993, p. 207). For the activity of the week this week, here is a sampling of some examples of contextualizing an assessment:
1.The book prompt: Listen to two friends talk about their families, then answer the multiple choice questions. The revised prompt: Your friend needs to plan a surprise birthday party for her grandmother. Listen as she talks about her family in order to help her plan a surprise party everyone will like. Fill in the chart of each family members’ likes and dislikes to help you organize your thoughts.
2.The book prompt: Describe the things in your house in one written paragraph. The revised prompt: Your friend from Japan is vising the U.S. for the first time next month and will stay with a host family. Since homes are different in Japan than they are in the U.S., your friend sends you an email to ask you what your home is like. Respond to your friend’s email and describe your home so your friend has a better idea what to expect.
3.The book prompt: Read the paragraph about San Juan, Puerto Rico and the paragraph about Guadalajara, Mexico. Answer multiple choice questions about the two destinations. The revised prompt: You are thinking about spending a summer in either San Juan, Puerto Rico, or Guadalajara, Mexico. You decide to read about each on a travel blog. After reading about them, make a pro and con list for each location based on the information you learned in the travel blog.
4.The book prompt: Describe your favorite actor/actress and why you like them to a friend. The revised prompt It’s almost the Oscars and you and your friends are excited! While talking about the Oscars you and your friend get into a discussion about who is the best actor/actress. They don’t think your favorite actor/actress is any good. Record your conversation with your partner as you try to convince them that your favorite actor/actress is the best.
5.The book prompt: Complete this paragraph about Jean’s last trip to Guadeloupe by filling in the past tense of the verbs. The revised prompt: You and your co-worker Jean are travel agents. You both put together a new travel package for tourists based on Jean's last trip to Guadaloupe. In order to convince people to purchase the travel package, you and Jean need to give a presentation about Jean's last trip there. Jean provides you with a basic list of things in Guadeloupe (e.g. aller à la plage de Grande Anse – go to the Grande Anse beach, manger des accras – eat accras, etc.), but it’s up to you to create the finished presentation describing what he did on his trip.
References:
Wiggins, Grant P. (1993) Assessing student performance: Exploring the purpose and limits of testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: June 2017 Issue of Language Learning & Technology
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Volume 2, Number 2 of the free online Language Learning & Technology journal is available online at http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2017/index.html. In this issue:
Articles
The Effects of Concordance-based Electronic Glosses on L2 Vocabulary Learning
Hansol Lee, Mark Warschauer, and Jang Ho Lee
Blog Posts and Traditional Assignments by First- and Second-Language Writers
Irina Elgort
Computer-based Multimodal Composing Activities, Self-revision, and L2 Acquisition through Writing
Richmond Dzekoe
Explaining Dynamic Interactions in Wiki-based Collaborative Writing
Mimi Li and Wei Zhu
Designing Talk in Social Networks: What Facebook Teaches about Conversation
Chantelle Warner and Hsin-I Chen
Investigating Linguistic, Literary, and Social Affordances of L2 Collaborative Reading
Joshua J. Thoms and Frederick Poole
Peer Interaction in Text Chat: Qualitative Analysis of Chat Transcripts
Ewa M. Golonka, Medha Tare, and Carrie Bonilla
Children’s Interaction and Lexical Acquisition in Text-based Online Chat
Yvette Coyle and Maria José Reverte Prieto
Asynchronous Group Review of EFL Writing: Interactions and Text Revisions
Murad Abdu Saeed and Kamila Ghazali
Plus announcements, calls for papers, columns, and reviews.
Source: LLT
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Title: Book: New Perspectives on Translanguaging and Education
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From http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781783097807
New Perspectives on Translanguaging and Education
Edited by BethAnne Paulsrud, Jenny Rosén, Boglárka Straszer, and Åsa Wedin
Published by Multilingual Matters
This edited collection explores the immense potential of translanguaging in educational settings and highlights teachers and students negotiating language ideologies in their everyday communicative practices. It makes a significant contribution to scholarship on translanguaging and considers the need for pedagogy to reflect and embrace diversity. The chapters provide rich empirical research and document translanguaging in varied educational contexts, with studies from pre-school to adult education in different, mainly European, countries, where English is not the dominant language. Together they expand our understanding of translanguaging and how it can be applied to a variety of settings. This book will be of interest to students and researchers, especially in education, language education and applied linguistics, as well as to professionals and policymakers.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781783097807
Source: Multilingual Matters
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Title: Book: The Socially Responsible Feminist EFL Classroom
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From http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?k=9781783098019
The Socially Responsible Feminist EFL Classroom: A Japanese Perspective on Identities, Beliefs and Practices
By Reiko Yoshihara
Published by Multilingual Matters
This book explores the realities of feminist EFL teachers’ lives through interviews and classroom observations with eight EFL teachers at Japanese universities. The data contained in the book broaden our understanding of feminist teaching in the language classroom while also providing suggestions for practice. The book examines not only how the teachers’ feminist identities influence their pedagogical beliefs and practices but also how the teachers actually practice feminist teaching in their classrooms. The tensions, dilemmas and pleasures of feminist teaching converge in this book, which attempts to shed light on a question that is often asked in either ESL or EFL teaching contexts: is teaching about gender-related topics (including controversial sociopolitical topics) in the language classroom education or indoctrination?
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?k=9781783098019
Source: Multilingual Matters
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Title: Book: Reconsidering Early Bilingualism
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From https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/26078?format=HC
Reconsidering Early Bilingualism: A Corpus-Based Study of Polish Migrant Children in the United Kingdom
By Marcin Opacki
Published by Peter Lang
This book investigates the language of Polish–English bilingual children raised in the United Kingdom and their Polish monolingual counterparts. It exemplifies the lexico-grammatical knowledge of both groups and uses corpus-based grammatical inference in order to establish the source of the impediment of the minority language of the bilingual group. The author applies the methodology of corpus linguistics and narrative analysis to study the language of young bilinguals. He presupposes the caveat that a child-type competence exists and can be contrasted with an adult-type competence. He uses a variety of corpus frequency measures to compare the specific stylometric features of bilingual child narratives and their monolingual counterparts. The book focuses on how bilingual and monolingual language differs in areas such as the lexicon, morphosyntax, and semantics.
Visit the publisher’s website at https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/26078?format=HC
Source: Peter Lang
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Title: Call for Proposals: American Association for Applied Linguistics
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From http://www.aaal.org/page/2018CFP
American Association for Applied Linguistics 2018 Conference
March 24-27, 2018
Chicago, Illinois
Nationally and internationally, the AAAL conference has a reputation as a comprehensive and stimulating conference including in-depth colloquia and paper sessions, topical and thought-provoking plenary presentations, excellent book exhibits, and plentiful opportunities for networking.
Submission Deadline: August 16, 2017
View the full call for proposals at http://www.aaal.org/page/2018CFP
Source: AAAL
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