Contents

From https://www.freetech4teachers.com

Richard Byrne has updated his PDF, Ten Great Tools for Telling Stories With Pictures. Within the PDF there are sections on digital collages and on making ebooks. The PDF also contains information on how to quickly and easily remove and replacing the background in an image.

Access this document at https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2019/08/ten-tools-for-telling-stories-with.html

• Produce and understand the different terms of endearment used in service interactions for distinct service providers (young, middle aged, old).
• Select an appropriate term of endearment for a given situation and service providers to elicit desired outcomes.
• Articulate how the recipient may/does react to terms of endearment.
• Explain choices to use terms of endearment. 

1.  爷爷—grandfather
2.  奶奶—grandmother
3.  阿姨—aunt
4.  叔叔—uncle
5.  哥哥—older brother
6.  姐姐—older sister
7.  妹妹—younger sister
8.  弟弟—younger brother

This week we would like to say thank you to Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor, who will no longer be working at CASLS after 13 years.  We will miss her greatly! When Lindsay started in 2006 she was the third InterCom Editor, following Janne Underriner and Sarah Butner as the previous two editors. In her time at CASLS, Lindsay has made InterCom what it is today.  A few of her accomplishments:

• In all of her time at CASLS, Lindsay never missed a Monday issue of InterCom, for a total of 676 weekly digests. This, in and of iteself, is a noteworthy track record!
• Lindsay grew the subscriber database from 623 subscribers at the time she started to the 3313 subscribers we have today. 
• Lindsay has edited over 26,955 articles, all of which are still available in our searchable archive.
• Starting in 2014, Lindsay wrote and curated orginal content each week, connecting and collaborating with experts from around the world. 

Most of all, Lindsay worked tirelessly to support langauge teachers, bring meaningful conent to the classroom, and make educators' lives a little better each Monday morning. She tells great jokes, especially puns, can help you find a resource on just about anything, and advocates fervently for the vitality of indigenous languages. We have all learned a lot from her. Thank you, Lindsay, for your expertise and dedication throughout your 13 years at CASLS! 

Each year at InterCom, we return to the topic of pragmatics (i.e., the communication and interpretation of meaning) to offer ideas and tips for classroom implementation and application. This month, we continue this tradition.

In June 2018, we first introduced the IPIC model https://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/content/viewContent/20944 as a tool for approaching interlanguage pragmatics in the classroom. This model contains four key dimensions:

When making an invitation, this would include, for example, the knowledge of the routine formulae needed to make an invitation to a friend, a colleague, and a boss (i.e., knowledge), the ability to decide which formulae to use when (i.e., analysis), the ability to articulate why you chose what you did (i.e., subjectivity), and the recognition of how the invitee took the invitation (i.e., awareness). For another example, see this week’s Activity of the Week, where the model is applied to the learning of terms of endearment in service encounters in Chinese.

From https://musicuentos.com

We love to feature new ideas for brain breaks on InterCom. These are quick activities that can re-charge and re-focus students between longer activities. This latest collection of ideas all involve movement: https://musicuentos.com/2019/08/new-brain-breaks-spanish-class/

Your InterCom editor is an enthusiastic follower of the FLTEACH listserv.
Did you know that the FLTEACH website at https://web.cortland.edu/flteach/index.html has additional resources for language teachers? One of them, an annotated collection of links to online resources, has recently been updated. Find general resources and language-specific resources (and a link to InterCom!) at https://web.cortland.edu/flteach/flteach-res.html. Happy exploring!

Looking for a new activity for the first day of class? This activity engages students in the content of the course and getting to know each other. This blog describes that activity as applied to U.S. History, but could easily be adapted for a language classroom.

See a full description of the activity at https://bluebook.life/2018/08/21/my-favorite-first-day-activity/

Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

Teaching pragmatics to langauge learners is achievable, but it can seem daunting. After all, many world language teachers have never received formal training in pragmatics. Additionally, language, meaning, and expectations related to communication are delightfully complex and dynamic. Not only do teachers need to help learners understand the formulae, contexts, and expectations related to speech acts, but they also need to train learners to actively negotiate an infinite, changing list of possible communication scenarios.

In order to support teachers, we have crafted a few tips for teaching (and learning about) pragmatics. These tips are an extension to other tips that we published earlier this year.  

1.      Access Free Resources: If you teach a language that has been widely studied, free resources are available online. The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition offers this resource for Spanish, and Kansas State offers this resource for Chinese.

2.      Engage with Information Exchange Websites: Even if you don’t teach a language for which free resources exist, there are various websites (like WordReference and Quora) in which users discuss language, meaning, and communication. To access information on those sites, identify a speech act (e.g., giving compliments, taking leave of someone, delivering an apology, or refusing an invitation), read existing threads, and post the questions that you have. Then, verify the information that you discover with a colleague, your own personal experience, or other resource that you can trust.

3.      Involve Learners in the Research Process: Expose learners to a speech act in class and have them find a few examples of said act in practice (either by recording target language use in the community or engaging in their own research). Then, as a class, analyze the langauge at hand to discern what formulae emerge. Pay attention to aspects like how candid people seem to be, how many times they repeat themselves, when they provide detailed explanations, and how contextual factors (such as the level of familiarity between the speakers) seem to impact the language used.

4.      Synthesize “Need to Knows” from Your Textbook: The cognitive load associated with gaining a profound understanding of any targeted speech act is considerable. Carefully examine the textbook that you use in your classroom and determine the content learners actually need in order to engage in the speech acts you have targeted. For example, some requests only require the use of familiar commands. For these requests, covering every single conjugation of any targeted verb is unnecessary.

Certainly, incorporating the study of pragmatics in the classroom requires considerable time resources, but the endeavor is worthwhile. This week’s Activity of the Week will provide some support in taking your first (or your 100^th) step towards this goal.