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Content Type: 1
Title: Inspiring Quotes for Language Learners
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Looking for fresh bulletin board or class décor content? Here are thirty inspiring quotations about language and language learning, from the Spanish Mama blog: https://spanishmama.com/language-quotes-for-language-learners
Source: Spanish Mama
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Title: Expanding Sentences with Young Learners
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Deb Hanson shares a lesson she uses to get elementary language arts students to expand their sentences with more details in this blog post. The technique could be used with second language learners of any language, at any level.
Read the blog post at https://www.upperelementarysnapshots.com/2018/11/writing-lesson-expanding-sentences.html
Source: Upper Elementary Snapshots
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Title: Website: Countries and Their Cultures
Body:
From https://www.everyculture.com
Your students can learn about the cultures of countries around the world in these English-language articles: https://www.everyculture.com/wc/
They can also learn about the diverse cultures of America here: https://www.everyculture.com/multi/
Source: Countries and Their Cultures
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Title: Envisioning World Language Goals that Go Beyond the Language
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From http://elmundodepepita.blogspot.com
Julie from Mundo de Pepita asks herself and us, how can goals in an elementary language program be aligned with a greater purpose than language proficiency gains? Here are a few examples of how she's changed language goals to greater goals, and then re-phrased them to be understandable to a young child:
"GO FROM a goal written like this: Student will use greetings & leave takings appropriately
TO: Students will reflect their partnership in our class community by brightening someone else's day via the greetings & leave takings they use with one another (in Kid Speech: Let's brighten someone else's day by greeting them!)
"...GOING FROM: Student can write a description of a familiar object or person
TO: Students' descriptions of their pets allow all of us in the class community to learn more about each other (Kid Speech: Let's learn more about each other's pets!)
"...GOING FROM: Student demonstrates comprehension of verbal directions
TO: Students take care of classroom materials by listening to, and following, classroom instructions (Kid Speech: Taking care of our classroom also takes care of our planet)"
Read the full post at http://elmundodepepita.blogspot.com/2019/05/envisioning-world-language-goals-that.html
Source: Mundo de Pepita
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Content Type: 5
Title: Julie Sykes Presents at International Pragmatics Association Conference
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Julie Sykes, CASLS Director, traveled to Hong Kong last week to present at the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) conference. She participated as part of a panel entitled L2 Speech Act Development in Virtual Worlds, organized by Marta Gonzalez-Lloret and Naoko Taguchi. Dr. Sykes’ presentation focused on the pragmatics of wayfinding in mobile, augmented reality games.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
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Content Type: 3
Title: The Unintended Consequences of Well-Intentioned Language Programs
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By Linda Forrest, CASLS Research Director
Language immersion programs in K-12 schools not only enable students to acquire proficiency in more than one language, they also lead to improved outcomes in other academic subjects, increased cognitive skill development, and improved employment benefits (Fortune, 2012). This sounds like a win-win all around, but as in many other situations, there may be unintended, unforeseen negative consequences for even the most optimistic and well-intentioned project. A case in point occurred when Oregon’s Portland Public School district (PPS) opened an immersion program in one of their elementary schools.
“When PPS selected Woodstock Elementary School as the site of the Mandarin Dual Language Immersion Program, the neighborhood school had seen years of declining enrollment. The immersion program sought to stabilize enrollments and ward off an ultimate closure. In this, the immersion program succeeded admirably...
“As the immersion program grew and received national attention, the modest middle-class neighborhood changed. Parents from other parts of the country who had economic means moved to Portland and purchased property in the neighborhood, which gave them priority status in the immersion enrollment lottery. The influx of families with higher socioeconomic status changed the character of the neighborhood and contributed to the perception of the immersion program as an elitist one designed for affluent families. Over the course of two decades, home values increased significantly and disproportionately to the city of Portland as a whole. Some of the gentrification may have happened anyway, but school personnel know of many families who moved into the neighborhood specifically to place their children in the immersion program.” (Sykes et al, 2016, p. 19)
This PPS case illustrates one avenue by which introduction of an immersion school unintentionally increased inequity. Research by Claudia G. Cervantes-Soon (2014) examined two-way immersion (TWI) in North Carolina. Her studies showed that, “for English-speaking children the benefits of learning a foreign language at an earlier age within the regular academic curriculum and with ample opportunities to interact with native speakers of the language are obvious. Nevertheless, focusing only on the potential of TWI to result in bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism and to generate higher academic achievement for all students may blur critical issues of equity that could continue to disadvantage Latin@ children despite well-intended efforts” (Cervantes-Soon, 2014, p. 1).
The above examples depict negative consequences, but they do not imply that immersion programs should be avoided. Rather, immersion program development needs to incorporate information about such outcomes and deliberately and intentionally work to design programs which anticipate and mitigate negative consequences. Ideally such work will create truly equitable language education.
References
Cervantes-Soon, C. G. (2014) A Critical Look at Dual Language Immersion in the New Latin@ Diaspora, Bilingual Research Journal, 37:1, 64-82, DOI: 10.1080/15235882.2014.89326.
Fortune, T. W. (2012). What the research says about immersion. In V. Stewart (Ed.), Chinese Language Learning in the Early Grades, p. 9-13. AsiaSociety.org/Chinese.
Steele, J. L. et al. (2015). The Effect of Dual-Language Immersion on Student Achievement: Evidence from Lottery Data. RAND Corporation. Retrieved from www.pps.net/immersion.
Sykes, J. M., Forrest, L. B., & Carpenter, K. J. (2016). Building a Successful and Sustainable Language immersion Program: The Portland, Oregon, Mandarin Dual Language Experience. Eugene, OR: Center for Applied Second Language Study.
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Content Type: 4
Title: Linguistic Diversity: A Concept-Based Activity using Parable of the Polygons
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By Isabelle Sackville-West, CASLS Fellow
This activity is a critical-thinking activity that engages students in analysis of their own values and internal biases as they relate to linguistic diversity. Depending on how discussions are scaffolded, It can be used for any proficiency level. It makes use of the wonderful game Parable of the Polygons by Vi Hart and Nicky Case which can be played in a variety of languages including English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, Italian, Russian, Hindi, and Arabic.
Objectives: Students will be able to:
- Think critically about the linguistic diversity of their home community
- Assess how important linguistic diversity is to them personally
- Discuss immersion schools and their impact on the community
- Argue for or against the integration of an immersion school in their community
Modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal, Presentational
Materials: Computers with Internet access, poster paper
Procedure:
- Pre-Activity: Conduct a class discussion that primes students for the rest of the lesson, asking about diversity and linguistic diversity in their community.
- What is diversity? What types of diversity are there?
- Do we live in a diverse community? How so?
- Is our community linguistically diverse? What languages and cultures are represented?
- Is linguistic diversity important for a community? Why or why not?
- How can we increase linguistic diversity? (Discuss immersion schools here)
- Game Play: Have students play their way through Parable of the Polygons (available at https://ncase.me/polygons/), asking students to think of the different shapes as representing speakers of different languages. As they scroll through the game, have students discuss the following guiding questions in smaller groups.
- Do you think that small biases affect the larger shape of society?
- In the second black board, what happens to segregation over time? Did you expect this? Why or why not?
- On the third black board, play with the scale adjusting how sensitive the shapes are to diversity. How sensitive do you think members of your own community are? What percentage would they fall at?
- Before you play the fourth board, what do you expect will happen in an already segregated society if you lower their bias?
- In the fifth board, individuals start demanding diversity. Is diversity demanded by members of your community and if so, how much? What percent range would you place your community at? Why?
- Why is it important to work together to increase diversity? And why is it scary to do it alone?
- After you play the final box a few times for fun, try to use it as a model for your own community and see how it behaves. What do you expect to happen and why?
- Analysis: Once students have finished the game, debrief on the concepts of the game as applied to linguistic diversity. In the game, it is proposed that it is not enough simply to be happy with diversity, individuals must actively seek it out (in other words, small individual biases yield larger group biases). With this in mind, discuss how immersion schools provide one method of actively seeking out linguistic diversity by attracting members of different linguistic groups into an area, thus increasing its diversity. Brainstorm ideas to combat and feelings of discomfort that might be associated with this increase in diversity. For example: Training in intercultural communication for parents, students, and school administrators; facilitated discussions between groups; persistence and patience in the face of cultural and linguistic challenges, etc.
- Extension: Now that students are familiar with the principles of the game, immersion schools, and the concept of linguistic diversity, ask them individually or in teams to make a poster that either argues for or against an immersion program at their school. For the poster, students should not only consider the pros and cons of immersion in the community, but also which language should be selected and why (students do not have to choose the target language if they don’t think it is most suitable for their community).This project will look different depending on the proficiency level of the students.
- Novice—simple commands, short sentences and phrases, and lists of words such as a pro/con list. Sentence frames might need to be provided by the instructor.
- Intermediate—more complex sentences and longer, sometimes connected discourse. Students should elaborate on their pros and cons and be able to provide simple explanations for their choices.
- Advanced—Students should incorporate persuasive language and utilize longer, connected discourse with more complex structures.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: June 2019 Issue of Humanising Language Teaching
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Source: Humanising Language Teaching
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Title: Book: Portraits of Second Language Learners: An L2 Learner Agency Perspective
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From http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781788923798
Portraits of Second Language Learners: An L2 Learner Agency Perspective
By Chie Muramatsu
Published by Multilingual Matters
Using second language (L2) socialization theory as a theoretical framework, this book investigates the ways in which four advanced learners of Japanese on an immersion program in the USA exercise their agency to pursue their language learning goals. The work presents their learner portraits and documents the different ways in which the four learners negotiate the meaning of their participations in the new community of practice, navigate and shape the trajectories of their learning and eventually achieve their goals of learning from their emic perspectives. The book re-examines Norton’s (2000) constructs of investment, investigates its applicability and argues that L2 learners’ desires and drives for learning an L2 are more diverse, unique and contextually situated than Norton’s notion of investment alone can explain. The research will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of applied linguistics, second language acquisition, foreign language education and language and literacy education.
Visit the publisher's website at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781788923798
Source: Multilingual Matters
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Title: Book: Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research
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From https://benjamins.com/catalog/lald.63
Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research
Selected papers from the 7th Meeting of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition
Edited by Tania Ionin and Matthew Rispoli
Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company
This edited volume contains a representative sample of papers presented at the 7th meeting of the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America (GALANA-7) conference. The book features three streams of research (Variation in Input, First Language Acquisition, and Second Language Acquisition), each of which investigates the nature of language acquisition from the generative perspective. A unique feature of the GALANA-7 conference, and of this volume, is the bringing together of research on generative language acquisition and research on the role that cross-dialectal input variation plays in acquisition. This volume should be of interest to scholars and students of first language acquisition, second language acquisition, and input variation.
Visit the publisher's website at https://benjamins.com/catalog/lald.63
Source: John Benjamins Publishing Company
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