Blog #8 Professional Development #2

For my second professional development activity, I decided to take part in a #langchat conversation with other foreign language teachers on Twitter a few weeks ago. The conversation topic this time was “7 questions you should be asking about language speaking assessments.” The seven questions introduced prior to the chat were:

1.     What kinds of speaking assessments are there?

2.     How often should you have speaking assessment?

3.     How do we prepare students for speaking assessments?

4.     How do we keep them on task during speaking assessments?

5.     How do we provide them feedback?

6.     How do we have appropriate expectations about speaking assessments?

7.     What are some speaking assessment ideas that really work?

Of particular interest to me during this conversation were questions 3 and 7. I would have liked to try and keep track of all questions being discussed, but in the world of twitter it is often hard to track all tweets about a conversation without following all the right hashtags. When I was following question 3, two strategies stuck out to me: providing daily speaking warm-ups, and allowing practice with scripts. I believe warm-up speaking exercises are an important part of every lesson, which I pointed out in some of my tweets, and others pointed out that this is a good way to activate students’ prior knowledge to get them ready to use their speaking skills in the classroom. In addition this helps prepare them for a summative assessment that could be taking place. When teachers first mentioned that students using scripts was okay, I was a bit weary, but then it was made clear that this is really only for practice and formative assessments, this is okay and actually helped student learning. In regards to step 7, teachers tweeted a lot of activities that like students to complete for assessments. Some of my favorites were:

·            Speed Dating

·            Matching Games, a student has to get three of a kind by asking other students questions

·            Show and Tell presentations

·            Debates (the specific example was on school uniforms)

·            Giving students a scenario and asking them to record it using technology, then sending it to the teacher for assessment

This activity was a very enriching experience and I look forward to participating again in the future!

Blog #7 Grammar Instruction

Throughout the last two weeks, we have been focusing on grammar instruction in the foreign language classroom, and the different techniques used to teach grammar. Two methods have been presented to us both involve the art of story-telling: the PACE model (Presentation, Attention, Co-Construction, Extension Activities) and TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling). The PACE model involves a great amount of higher level thinking on the student’s part. The instructor begins the lesson with a story, which contains the desired grammar structure. After the story has been presented, the students are asked for their observations about the language, and together with the instructor, they create and define their own rule for that grammatical structure. TPRS on the other hand does not require as much thinking from the students, as there is a lot of translation done for the students, and the grammar rules are often introduced in English (or native tongue). Within my own placement, my CT takes a different approach to teaching grammar. He does this in a very direct way. At the start of each chapter, packets are handed out to all of our students. In these packets are specific instructions in English how each grammar rules works, and this is often done in mostly English. When the rule has been explained to everyone, this is usually followed up by some drill exercises for students to complete for practice. This is very similar to my own experiences when learning grammar in high school, as all rules were often lectured to us, and we then were told to complete exercises in the book for more practice.

After having time to consider these different methods of teaching grammar, the one I could see myself using most in my classroom would be the PACE method. To me, this is the most engaging way to have students learn grammar, instead of only lecturing. In addition, I find that students will retain the information much more when they have the chance to construct their own rule. Furthermore, this would be a good place to introduce a bit of culture into the classroom, as the story chosen could come from a country which speaks the target language. Overall, while time-consuming, I find the PACE method the best way to instruct students on grammar.

Blog #6 Professional Development Activity

For my first professional development activity, I signed up for the FLTeach listserv. Since I signed up about a week ago, I have been receiving daily emails from a variety of foreign language teachers across the country, with information regarding foreign language, questions about lesson planning, on to incorporate specific cultural aspects of a country into the lesson, and more. Most of the emails I have been reading have been quite interesting and informational. Over the weekend, I posed my first question to the listserv, which was directed at those who like to use technology in the classroom, and how they use it (I’m still highly interested in this topic, and wanted to get more opinions from other teachers about how it could be used). While there was not as much discussion as with some of the other threads, I did get quite a few personal emails back from other teachers, who recommended several different resources.

The first was from a Spanish/Computer/Technology instructor from Minnesota. She responded to the thread with a link to her own personal blog (link below), which includes her thoughts and several resources for technology use in the classroom, plus how-to steps for beginners. What I found personally useful is she lists a ton of iPad apps she finds useful in the classroom (Yay!). For any iPad users out there, some other cool apps to check out would be Storyrobe, Video Star, iMovie, and Picturebook. On her website, she has tons of other posts with about tech in the classroom, which are worth taking a look at.

 Another cool experience was after introducing myself as a student teacher (to save having to explain exactly what a TA was), who teaches German, I received a personally email from another German teacher, recommended me to join another listserv group exclusively for German teachers run by AATG (American Association of Teachers of German). This has also been an enriching experience, as I can now read discussions between other German teachers! I only just joined today, so there hasn’t been much activity, but I did get to read an interesting conversation between AP German IV teachers about how they try incorporate as much culture as possible into the lesson plans. Overall, this professional development activity was more enriching than I first thought it would be, and I plan to continue on being a member of both groups!

Link to blog: geekieteacher.blogspot.com

Blog #5 – Technology in the Classroom

In this day and age, I personally believe that technology has an important role in the foreign language classroom. With technology, as teachers, we have so many more possibilities of ways to teach material in the classroom than without it. With that said, it should be noted that technology shouldn’t take over the classroom, but rather should be used as a tool to enhance the student’s learning experience. Determining when and where to use technology can be a difficult decision for some, but I think if one asks themselves the right questions, they can determine for themselves whether the tech should be used for a lesson or not. One example of a question would be is the tech too distracting for the kids? And if so, what would be some ways to minimize that?

         
In determining the value of a tool, I believe it personally depends on what the end goal would be. For example in my current placement, in order to work on the listening comprehension with the students, we watched the news from a German website 3-4 times, and discussed as a group what was said and reported. I found this also really useful because it incorporated culture into the activity, and students were able to hear a little bit about current events in Germany.

In my own future classroom, provided I have the right resources, I will try and incorporate technology as much as I can. Thinking back on the reading about Facebook, rather than ignore what the students use everyday, I think it would be useful to incorporate it, since they are already often on the Internet. Furthermore, I am lucky enough to have my own iPad, which since I began TAing, has been a extremely useful learning tool. Before the tech panel however, I was only familiar with a few education apps, one of them being Educreations, which is very useful. It allows the instructor to give record virtual lessons using the iPad as a white board. Luckily there was an iPad expert in the panel, and after the presentation, I now have a lot more ideas of how I can use mine in the classroom. My personal favorite of all the apps was Sock Puppets. Using this app, I think I could challenge my students to be very creative with their language, and at the same time, this would be a good project for them to self-assess their own progress, which personally I find a better way rather than just having the students record their voices using a voice memo app. It’s a chance to use meaningful language, and have fun!  

Professional Article

The professional article I had chosen for this blog post is titled Culture Teaching in Foreign Language Teaching by Li Sun, a teacher in Changchun China. In this article, she addresses a common problem in foreign language classrooms: the incorporation of teaching the culture(s) of the foreign language. Because of this, this firs well with both standards 2.1 and 2.2 of the national standards for foreign language teaching, because of the focus on teaching culture in the classroom. The author first addresses that the relationship between language and culture is very dynamic, and language is an important part of culture because without language, there would be no culture.

The first connection she makes between foreign language learning and culture learning is that a common strategy employed by foreign language is linguistic transfer, which refers to the effect of one language, usually the native language, on the learning of another, usually the target language. She then moves into a discussion of how the hardest thing for learners is not actual language learner, but rather coming to understand cultural differences. Furthermore, while it is inevitable that the way of thinking and expressing influenced by the native culture will be unconsciously transferred to the target language during intercultural communication, defined as cultural transfer, learners should at some point develop cultural schema for the target language, in which they are more knowledgeable and have more of a comprehension of both the culture, and the language.

Sun then moves into the topic of theories on culture teaching. One she introduced that was interesting to me was that foreign language educators should include four fundamental components: language learning, language awareness, culture awareness, and cultural experience. In order to accomplish this, the learners must use their knowledge of their native language to have a comparative analysis with the new language, which will provide an integrative approach for teaching, and learning language and culture. This stood out to me because this fits in with more of our national standards; namely 4.1 and 4.2, which focuses on comparison. An example she takes from her own experience is Chinese language learners, who are from the west. In her experience, while some of these people may have had a good grasp of the language, they were not culturally aware of the customs of China, and often came across as very rude when communicating with others. In order to avoid this, she argues that when conversations occur in the classroom, they should be occurring exactly as they should in real life, which directly relates to our discussion in class the previous week.

Overall the article, while difficult to read at times, was an interesting, and demanding read. Sun did provide some interesting classroom techniques, which may prove useful in the future.

Source:

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp..371-375, February 2013

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