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Title: Using News in Middle School Language Class
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From https://senorfernie.wordpress.com
Middle school students reading news articles in the target language? Learn how to scaffold and build up to students reading news articles in this blog post: https://senorfernie.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/using-news/
Source: Senor Fernie
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Title: Research Summary: Multilingualism as a Resource in the Foreign Language Classroom
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From http://www.eltresearchbites.com
It's not uncommon for students in a foreign language classroom to speak a first language different from the regular language of instruction where they live. Clare Maas summarizes this situation for English learners in other countries: "Students learning English in a country where neither their L1 nor English is the dominant language are ‘multilingual’ as they have a certain degree of proficiency in at least two languages. However, they are often faced with the challenge of learning English through the medium of the country’s dominant language." She goes on to summarize V. Illman and P. Pietilä's 2018 article, "Multilingualism as a resource in the foreign language classroom."
After summarizing the article and the study it describes, Maas concludes, "Most of the English teaching is happening in countries where the dominant community language is something other than English. Given that many countries, especially in Europe, have experienced significant increases in the numbers of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees over the last decade or so, multilingualism is a topic that should interest huge numbers of these English teachers. From my own context (in Germany), though, I’m aware that this topic is often not at the top of the agenda for teacher training programs, and maybe not even on some over-worked teachers’ radars. I agree with Veera Illman and Paivi Pietila in believing it should be given more prominence on both pre- and in-sessional training courses, and more consideration in teachers’ lesson planning and materials."
Read the full research summary at http://www.eltresearchbites.com/201809-multilingualism-as-a-resource-in-the-foreign-language-classroom/
Source: ELT Research Bites
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Title: Harnessing a Running Horse: An Essential Classroom Management Tool
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From https://mygenerationofpolyglots.com
Your InterCom editor loves spontaneous class discussions, but often found herself caught up in a rapid-fire English language exchange that was engaging but not helpful for Spanish learning. In this short video, watch Mike Peto demonstrate a technique for regaining class control while maintaining an engaging, positive atmosphere: https://mygenerationofpolyglots.com/2018/09/13/harnessing-a-running-horse-an-essential-classroom-management-tool/
Source: My Generation of Polyglots
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Title: A Framework for Understanding Interactional Pragmatic and Intercultural Competence
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By Linda Forrest, CASLS Research Director
What must learners be able to do in order to communicate effectively in the language they are studying? Of course, they need to know words and have the ability to organize them grammatically. But in addition, they need to be able to choose from among several options to meet the needs of a specific communicative encounter.
Consider the seemingly simple task of greeting someone. Learners could choose the ‘standard’ option, such as “Hello” in English. However, with a close friend, this might seem a bit cool. “Hey, how’s it going?” could seem friendlier for some learners. The ability to make such choices strategically is known as interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence.
Several projects at CASLS involve developing tools to support both teaching and measuring interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence. A first step in this work was to develop a framework to capture the various components of this competence. Our framework has four components and incorporates both analytical, i.e. objective, characteristics, and affective, i.e. subjective or emotional, characteristics.
The CASLS Interactional Pragmatic and Intercultural Competence Framework
- Knowledge (Analytical) refers to knowledge of cultural differences and how to deal with them in the specific languages that learners are studying. Can learners recognize and produce varying speech styles? For example, can they distinguish between formal and informal speech? Can they identify and produce routine formulae in multiple domains, interpret and produce implicature in multiple domains, and demonstrate knowledge of varying cultural dimensions and social distinctions?
- Analysis (Analytical) looks at the learner’s understanding of the illocutionary force of their own and their interlocutor’s statements, i.e. the communicative effect of what is said. For example, if an interlocutor says, “I’m thirsty,” do learners realize that the person may be making a request? The focus of this component is whether learners use conscious strategies to notice and repair miscommunication, identify and evaluate intended interlocutor meaning, and if they can describe dimensions impacting discourse patterns.
- Subjectivity (Affective) focuses on learners’ own feelings and perspectives. Can learners choose to act in a specific way because of their personality characteristics? Can they recognize that their interlocutors are also expressing subjectivity or personal perspective, rather than following a cultural norm?
- Awareness (Affective) focuses on learners’ ability to understand their interlocutors’ feelings and perspectives. Here, learners should demonstrate awareness of others’ perspectives. For example, do they understand that what they did or said might be offensive from another’s point of view? Do they recognize the motives and reasons for the actions of others? There is no judgment implied about whether their interlocutor should or should not feel a certain way, rather the focus is on the ability to recognize the emotional state of others.
This framework is guiding the CASLS team in the development of an assessment of learners’ interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence using online interactive simulated conversations in English, Spanish, and Chinese (for more about how online simulations can address many of the challenges involved in assissing interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence, see our Topic of the Week article from May 14). In today's Activity of the Week, you can try out one scenario of the English version several times to explore how simulations can assess all four elements.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Teacher Activity: Reflecting on Teaching Interactional Pragmatic and Intercultural Competence
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Use this link to access the online interactive simulated conversational encounter (the link can be reused multiple times and is unable to track identifying information). Go through the scenario several times, choosing different responses each time. Like real life conversations, the scenario will play out differently depending on the responses you choose. For example, in the opening scene, you have four choices for greeting your friend. One choice will be a bit off-putting to your friend. If you don’t repair the miscommunication on the next conversational turn, you won’t get the invitation to the party.
The greeting scene allows learners to demonstrate Knowledge about interactions with people they are socially close to. Since there are several choices that friends might use with each other, learners also demonstrate Subjectivity when they choose less common greetings which they personally prefer.
Here are other scenes that occur in the scenario. Try to identify them in the scenario. Then think about whether the scene allows learners to demonstrate Knowledge, Analysis, Subjectivity, and/or Awareness.
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Knowledge |
Analysis |
Subjectivity |
Awareness |
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Pre-invitation |
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Repair |
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Invitation |
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Refusal |
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Request |
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Leave-taking |
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Finally, consider the following reflection questions:
- What are some structures (for example, asking yes/no questions) or grammatical concepts (for example, formal vs. informal forms of address in some languages) that are relevant to this situation in the language that you teach?
- What other techniques might you use in your classroom to improve your students' interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence?
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: L2TReC Joins Title VI Language Resource Center Community
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Editor’s Note: Every four years, the U.S. Department of Education designates sixteen Title VI centers across the country to support language teaching and learning. The Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC) at the University of Utah, under the leadership of Director Fernando Rubio and Co-Director Jane Frances Hacking, was recently designated a Title VI center.
L2TReC was founded seven years ago to serve as a hub for second language teaching and learning research. One of its main missions is to support K-20 articulation, an important issue for language programs across the country and especially for those in Utah. With 40,000 students studying six languages in immersion programs and many adults who have lived abroad, Utah serves as a fertile landscape for articulation research.
Leveraging this context, L2TReC has three main goals:
- Identify and disseminate effective teaching practices in K-9 immersion programs
- Identify and disseminate effective bridge programs for 9-20 language learners
- Facilitate the Seal of Biliteracy in less commonly taught languages
L2TReC will first identify effective teaching practices in K-9 immersion programs and then develop video libraries that exemplify those practices. They will also use a corpus of learner language that has been developed over the past few years to document language learning. This corpus will serve as the basis for workshops and online modules for teachers to recognize and address patterns of difficulty in language learning.
L2TReC will also investigate Utah’s Bridge Program in which high school and college educators co-teach dual credit courses for high school students who have passed AP exams. Students earn high school credit and upper division college credit that counts towards a language major or minor. Similar to the K-9 articulation research and dissemination project, L2TReC will identify successful teaching practices and develop video libraries to illustrate effective practices in secondary programs.
As many states across the country have experienced, issuing Seals of Biliteracy for less commonly taught languages can be a challenge and represents a significant barrier for learners. L2TReC will train native speakers of Nepali, Tongan, and Samoan and develop a proficiency assessment so that learners of these languages have access to the Seal of Biliteracy.
All of L2TReC’s work will be documented and shared with others across the country who face the same articulation issues and Seal of Biliteracy challenges. Please visit their website directly at https://l2trec.utah.edu/.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Title: The Grammar at Hand: Looking at Gesture in Language Learning and Teaching
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Keli Yerian directs and teaches in the Language Teaching Studies MA Program at the University of Oregon. She has extensive experience working with teacher candidates in both undergraduate and graduate university programs, and has taught ESL/EFL in the US, Europe, and Africa. Her research interests are in teacher professional development in language and interaction, most specifically in the use of gesture in language teaching and learning.
Imagine you are speaking in a second language and can’t remember how to say a verb in the past tense. What would you do? Maybe you would say it in the present tense with a small wave of your hand over your shoulder to show the action is ‘behind’ you in time. Maybe your teacher had used this gesture in this way. This small movement might help you finish your story without fumbling for words. Or it might jog your memory, or even elicit the missing information from your listener.
Communicating in visible interaction involves much more than language, at all levels of proficiency. Our bodily orientation, stance, gaze, and hands are resources that allow us to indicate, describe, evaluate, and create, functions language teachers are already very familiar with. And unlike cell phones or other external resources, our hands are always, well… handy!
Research on language and gesture has blossomed in the last few decades, revealing the important functions of gesture in all domains of second language acquisition and instruction. Some of this research has focused on how gesture can facilitate learners’ understanding of grammar. For example, Kimura and Kazik (2017) show in detail how a learner adopts her English teacher’s use of a circling gesture to show progressive aspect, while moving her hand laterally to evoke a timeline that the teacher had drawn earlier on the board. In other words, she spontaneously combined the notions of ‘past’ and ‘progressivity’ using elements scaffolded by the instructed setting. Similarly, Peltier and McCafferty (2010) videotaped four Italian classrooms with teachers who frequently used gestures, and showed that many of their students spontaneously mirrored these gestures in ways that seemed to build L2 identity as well as proficiency.
What does this mean for language teachers?
- Engage your body in teaching and encourage your students to engage theirs. Include games, simulations, and projects that allow learners to embody the L2.
- Observe yourself, observe your students. Research shows that less experienced teachers tend to look less at their students than experienced teachers, and gesture both less and less meaningfully (e.g. see Tellier & Yerian, 2018). How transparent is the meaning of your gestures when teaching lower levels? How consistent? How natural are your gestures at higher levels? How are your learners using gesture to help process meaning or co-construct meaning with others?
- Be explicit with students about the meanings of key gestures. Some gestures that seem fully transparent to you may be confusing to learners from other languages and cultural backgrounds. That small wave over your shoulder may not mean ‘in the past’ to everyone!
References
Kimura, D., & Kazik, N. (2017). Learning in-progress: On the role of gesture in microgenetic development of L2 grammar. Gesture, 16(1), 126-150.
Peltier, I., & McCafferty, S. (2010). Gesture and identity in the teaching and learning of Italian. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 17(4), 331-349.
Tellier, M. & Yerian, K. (2018). Mettre du corps à l’ouvrage : Travailler sur la mise en scène du corps du jeune enseignant en formation universitaire. Les Cahiers de l’APLIUT, 37(2).
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: What Does the Body Say?
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This week’s activity suggests a way to take some time to focus on gesture in the language classroom. It can be integrated with other objectives that are already part of a class plan. It focuses on observation and exploration, rather than any right answers. Discussions can be in pairs or groups as well as whole-class. Note that accommodations will need to be made for students with visual impairments.
Objective: Learners will be able to recognize and provide interpretations for target gestures or other communicative actions in L2 audiovisual texts through guided discussion and analysis.
Procedure:
- Preparation: Find a video that shows a speaker or speakers using the target language and also gesturing or using other meaningful embodied action during communication. The video can come from a movie, a talk show, an advertisement, a YouTube channel, etc. Choose a clip that seems interesting to you in terms of how gesture is being used, for example if it seems typical or atypical, appropriate or inappropriate, important to the meaning of the specific clip, and/or socially meaningful in some way.
For example, if you are teaching polite ways to say ‘no’ in Japanese, you could choose a clip such as this one that includes a common Japanese gesture for negation (see Jungheim, 2006 for research on this gesture). If you are an Italian teacher the ‘mano a bursa’ gesture can be a great one to look for in any Italian media. Both of these gestures have discourse-grammar as well as pragmatic functions and are rich in potential for analysis.
- Without mentioning gesture, ask students to watch the video holistically first for content. What are the participants talking about, and what is the context? Watch and listen again for additional detail (these details can be related to any other curricular goals you and your students may have in the class).
- Turn off the sound and play the video again. Ask students to watch carefully for aspects of embodied action and communication that they may or may not have noticed with the sound on. What do they see? Do these gestural elements seem to complement, enhance, or even contradict the verbal messages in their meanings or functions?
- If necessary, draw attention to the specific elements of gesture or other embodied action that you would like them to notice, and discuss these. If the gestures are known within the community or have been studied in research, you can share this information too. Invite students to compare and contrast similar gestures and their functions within or across other languages and cultures, if relevant.
- As an extension out of class, ask students to do a visual "treasure hunt" for the gesture or similarly functioning gestures in the target language, and see how many they find. For example, they can look for it in movies or other online videos or channels. These do not only have to be specific, well-known gestures, but can be any patterns of movement, eye gaze, or posture that may be associated with gender, age, social status, and so on.
- As an additional extension, ask students to consider whether they would feel comfortable adopting these gestures or embodied actions in the L2, like the Italian students mentioned in today's Topic of the Week article. Whether or not they do, research indicates that L2 speakers and bilinguals tend to have subtle gestural ‘accents’ from their other languages in any case!
References
Jungheim, N. O. (2006). Learner and native speaker perspectives on a culturally-specific Japanese refusal gesture. IRAL, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 44(2), 125-143.
Peltier, I., & McCafferty, S. (2010). Gesture and identity in the teaching and learning of Italian. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 17(4), 331-349.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: Some Thoughts on Grammar, Accuracy, and Our Quest for Perfection
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By Julie Sykes, CASLS Director
As a researcher and language teacher invested in second language pragmatics and the fundamental importance of creating shared meaning, I am often asked my take on grammar instruction, the role it plays in language teaching and learning, and ways in which we might approach it in our everyday practice.
My response almost always includes three key ideas, captured here as part of a month-long InterCom series examining the role of grammar in world language classrooms.
- Grammatical structures are fundamental to creating shared meaning and expressing ideas. We cannot “do” pragmatics without grammatical structure. The assumption they are in some way in opposition is a false dichotomy that we need to reframe. For example, the conditional morpheme at the end of a verb is more than a structure needed to perform a function in the hypothetical future. Instead, it is a vital form to express politeness, but often social distance, in some language varieties. Learning to wield its power can be included earlier in language instruction sequences, highlighting the critical role politeness, as expressed in a morpheme of two or three letters, plays in human interaction while also emphasizing the need for accuracy.
- In formal instructional contexts, we often overemphasize accuracy and adherence to a “standard” model which can inhibit language use and human interactions, the very thing which, in the end, leads to more learning. It is rare we, as language teachers, don’t agree on the value of interaction, the expression of meaning, and language variation. Nevertheless, when assessed, grammatical and lexical accuracy often supersede other critical components of language, or, in some cases, are the only elements on which the high stakes scores are given.
- As language teachers, we are in a critical position to place emphasis on the co-construction of shared meaning, while also ensuring learners have the critical language skills to do so. This means, for example, attaching grammatical structures to meaning in salient and meaningful ways, which, in some cases might require us to rethink the approach to the structures being taught. In other cases, it might mean doing just what we have been doing to situate grammar within the communicative scenario in which it is most useful. This week’s Activity of the Week is an attempt to do just that.
Regardless of the approach one takes, grammar and pragmatics are intimately connected and warrant collective attention, not as elements on opposing sides of a continuum. In InterCom this month, we attempt to do just that.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Can You Lend Me Your Pencil?
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Objectives:
- Students will practice the use of the conditional and the simple present tense when making requests from a peer with varying levels of closeness.
- Students will adapt their choice of verb form based on their perceived social closeness to their conversational partner.
Level: Novice Mid
Mode: Interpersonal
Materials Needed: Buddies sentence strips, En mi clase (in my class) worksheet, school supplies props or images (optional)
Today’s Topic of the Week article mentions the use of the conditional to indicate politeness along with social distance. In Spanish, a student might use the more polite, distant form to ask a classmate for help, when they don’t really know the classmate well, especially if it’s more than a very casual request.
Example: ¿Me podrías prestar tu libro? Could you lend me your book?
On the other hand, this form might feel off-putting to a close friend in class, where using a less polite but friendlier simple present tense form would more likely result in help.
Example: ¿Me puedes prestar tu lápiz? Can you lend me your pencil?
Today’s activity helps students practice choosing which form to use based on how well they know their classmate. In order to avoid social embarrassment or isolation that may result from using actual classroom social networks, we start with a mixer activity to establish fictional social networks. From there, we move on to the core activity, in which students ask to borrow things from each other. Finally, we close with a reflective discussion to help students connect their experience during the activity to the grammatical and pragmatic distinction between present tense and conditional.
Part 1: Buddies
- Cut the buddies sentence strips printout into strips of three sentences each, and give one strip to each student. Tell students that they and their closest friends have the same taste in school supplies.
- Students will read their sentences to each other. If they share the same sentence, they respond with “Yo también” (“Me, too”); otherwise they respond with “Yo no” (“Not me”).
- Students need to find three good buddies who have the exact same school supplies, three classmates who don’t have any of the same school supplies, and three friends who have one or two school supplies in common with them, and write their names on the En mi clase worksheet.
Note: The set of sentence strips is enough for 16 students. For larger classes, make two or three copies of each strip. You may want to subdivide a large class into two subgroups to limit student interactions to the same group of ~16 in each part of the lesson.
Part 2: Borrowing
- Remind students that they would use “¿Me puedes prestar...” with a buen amigo/buena amiga (good friend) from their list, but ¿Me podrías prestar...? with a compañero/a de clase (classmate) from their list. With amigos (friends, but not best buddies), they could use either form, depending on how polite or chummy they want to sound in order to get what they want to borrow.
- Students will circulate around and ask to borrow other students’ actual classroom items, such as books, paper, and pencils. If their partner feels they are too chummy or too formal given their relationship based on the previous step, they should refuse to lend the item.
Note: If you are concerned that students won’t feel safe lending their possessions to classmates, you can also print out pictures of school supplies and give sets of cards to each student, or distribute your own set of classroom props. You can find images to print on websites such as this one: https://www.eslgamesplus.com/school-supplies-flashcards/.
Part 3: Reflection
As a whole class, debrief the activity:
- Who was able to borrow the most items? What was the secret to their success?
- Did anyone refuse to lend an item because their classmate was being too chummy? Did anyone refuse to lend an item because their buddy was being too formal?
- When asking an amigo/a for something especially valuable, did it seem better to use the present tense or the conditional? (Answers are likely to vary depending on each individual’s preference in these situations.)
- What are some different ways to ask to borrow things in English, depending on how friendly or polite you want to be? (Answers may include “can” vs. “could,” the use of “please,” and direct commands such as “give me”.)
Ask students to return all items to their original, actual owners.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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