Author: Monteagudo, Sal
Subject: Re: spoken vs written language
Hi Adrienne,
Is it ok to ask where did you grow-up, just for curiosity reasons. What I love about these discussion boards in getting to know each other through our responses. Thus, this is another life-learning incentive through these online courses!
I wanted to submit my reflections before I read others like yours, which I'm glad I did because I would've wanted to add more based on the topics you covered. For example, your response to the "second question"...
"In some ways, it is a matter of context, speaker needs and situational requirements. "
Yes, I believe it's "situational" too. It reminds me back in my "college days" when I would "speak" differently with my peers in college compared to peers back at home. Growing-up in the city of St. Paul, I could say I had a form of communication called "street talk" (e.g. slang, informal, and sometimes "cussing" to be honest). Then when I went back to this "secluded" prairie-rural-college-town-community (University of Minnesota-Morris, MN), my form of communication would be more "book smart talk" (e.g. intellectual, formal, etc....). Basically, I was trying to "fit-in" in the environment I was in, which we can call it "assimilate" (covered in our first chapter in the book we are assigned this week). As teachers (most or all of us) of ESL, we probably see one-side (e.g. personality based on form of communication) of our students that we don't usually see if they were in a different environment. I remember one student I had that was very "formal" in the classroom environment, but was more "informal" outside (e.g. with peers). I believe it's because of the comfortable environment. I'm learning through these online courses that teachers need to work towards that in their classroom."
Author: Monteagudo, Sal
BOOK:
Chapter 1: Working with Adult ESL Learners
Useful Websites:
Chapter #2: Approaches and Program Options in Adult ESL
Useful Websites:
Chapter #3: Contextualized Language Teaching
Useful Websites:
ASSIGNMENT
Name Introductory Assignment
Instructions
After the first 3 chapters of reading, here are just a couple...
1. Do you have any tips on using the Rosetta Stone software program? We try to not to have the student go more than 30 minutes if possible (depending how "busy" we "teachers"-"volunteer(s)" are). Then we practice individual/group exercises (reading, writing, and/or orally).
2. What are the most common "mistakes" or "errors" have you personally learned from over the years you've taught and/or observed others teaching?
COURSE CONTENT
1-The Beginning-Level Language Learner
As we begin to examine the teaching and learning of oral language, let's start by putting ourselves in our students' shoes.
How does it feel to be immersed in a new, unfamiliar language?
Feels like starting Kindergarten again! Like trying to learn the basics-walking, riding a bike, tying your shoe, etc... One has to listen carefully and work slow to better understand. It seems like all of your senses (eyes-reading, ears-listening, etc...) are high and focussed!
What can the teacher and students do to help or hinder the language learning process?
First of all-do an icebreaker to get to know one another or break that wall between each other. As the teacher in the video did, she smiled and shook as many of the the students' hands to ease each others' comfort level for one another. The smile shows the teacher enjoys teaching and this makes learning more enjoyable, which I didn't see in my professors during college!
A suggestion from my experience would be having food and drinks-especially water! The student(s) and teacher(s) can get a little thirsty after all that "talking". Also, having food (e.g. cookies, crackers for the "health freaks"!) provides a "break-time" to just have normal conversations to get to know each other after a lesson activity.
2. Learner-Centered Instruction
What do you think? What does it mean to be learner-centered? Why is it important? What are some characteristics of a learner-centered classroom?
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above question. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
3- Communicative Competence
Turn to page 8 in Parrish. Do Task 1.2 in the jot box below.
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above question. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
Category 1: Language Forms Category 2: Social Interactions Category 3: Language Skills Category 4: Learning How to Learn
Category #1: Language Forms
-Grammar, Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Spelling,
Category #2: Social Interactions
-Using Gestures to Demonstrate Meaning, formal & informal language, Language fuctions (e.g. complaining, greetings, etc...), Using colloquial (conversational) language, Body Language,
Catergory #3: Language Skills
-Writing for different purposes, Reading for Different purposes, Listening for the information you need, Appropriate intonation (pitch whilst speaking)
Category #4: Learning How to Learn
-Guessing meaning of new Words, Asking someone to speak slowly, Asking for definitions,
*When designing language lessons, it's important to consider all of these areas of communicative competence. As you identify objectives and design activities, think about how you will help your learners build competency in various areas
4- Integrated Language Lessons
Components of Integrated Language Lessons (31 Kb)
One way we can help our learners achieve communicative competence is by taking an integrated approach to language teaching. When planning an integrated lesson, consider the competencies learners need in English and the functions, skills, grammar, vocabulary, and cultural competencies they'll need to successfully use the competency.
Let's try a few examples...
Components of Integrated Language Lessons
5- Contextualized Language Lessons
Functional Lesson (39 Kb)
When many people study foreign languages in formal settings, perhaps in high school or college, the foreign language is seen as the "object" of study. It is a subject to be studied, much like geometry, biology, or art history.
ASSIGNMENT (This is NOT to be turned in.)
6-Reading Assignment
"Keeping It Real" (53.5 Kb)
DISCUSSION BOARD
1-In Your Students' Shoes...Reflecting on Being a Beginning-Level Language Learner
Reflect on the experience of being a beginning-level language learner. You may use these questions to guide your discussion.
The areas she taught were: Speaking and listening through the repetition drills as large group-mostly in the beginning. Pronunciation-how to greet people in Farsi. Reading from what she wrote on the blackboard. Also, more reading and then writing through the worksheets she handed out, which the students can use as "homework" to continue what was learned in the classroom.
* How does the instructor help you to understand the content of the lesson?
Smiling (appears very friendly and having fun!), she repeats the word or phrase several times until the student says it correctly. Then uses a flash card for one word. Then she gets very interactive (see Ch. 1 pp. 15-Parrish's) by using her hands (gestures) making a wave to show the "syllables" (spaces or breaks between pronouncing the letters of the word). In the beginning part, the teacher practices receptive skills (Ch. 2 pp. 28- by Parrish's) or a silent period (Ch. 2 pp. 29- by Parrish's) for the students. Later, she uses the blackboard for the word "Hal-e-shumoa" "che-tor-eh". As she gets the class to repeat (start's using the student's productive skills in Ch. 2 pp. 28- by Parrish's) these words, she uses her hand gestures again-like a composer of an orchestra! This gives cues to the student(s) when to repeat the word as a musician knows when to play their instrument! As she shows the difference between two people having a conversation, she changes roles by switching left to right in front of the classroom. This helps the student(s) know who is in the giving-end and receiving-end. She continues do more hand gestures (touches her neck and moves it forward, like playing a trombone), like a "sign-language" expression of continuing/stretching a word (sounds like "Cuba" 8:09) in the long form (stretching it as long as possible). When she wants the students to say it "boldly" or "masculine", she shows the "muscle-weightlifter" form (tightens both fists and broadens her chest). She continues to use more visual aids (pictures of fruits: apple, banana, etc...11:15), which she randomly-individually hands it to various students in the classroom. Then she points to that picture or student as she has them repeat that particular word-pictures. After reviewing all the material, she gets the students to teach amongst one another. During this time, she walked around the classroom to see if any of them have questions and to see how each pair-group is doing. Then she reviews all of it again for the classroom as a "whole" (35:00). She continued to do more "masculine-muscle" gestures to show possibly the "masculinity form" of the word. Then (43:00) she got the students to mingle with another again as she goes around. Again, she doesn't spend too much time on a particular pair/group (48:00). After, she continues to use more variety of "visual aid"-this time a traditional custom-wear (head cover). Also, a "mustache" to show the "masculinity" of the word. She does another surprise by showing more vocabulary words (w/drawn pictures-cup, etc..) in the blackboard behind a screen she "unveiled" or lifted-up (50:00). Later, she does a "show & tell" time as she passes the "head cover" (visual aid earlier) around the classroom (one student even wears it later on in the video 1:00:00) during another "student-student" learning session (55:00) with a worksheet(s) assignment. To show that it was time to finish, she waves a paper around in front of the class and coughs. She would then do a "role-play" (sample of several multiple intelligences: verbal, visual, and bodily/kinesthetic-pp. 27 Ch.2-Parrish's) activity by getting students to volunteer to wear the "head cover" and "mustache"-showing masculinity and femininity roles. This is somewhat a "Total Physical Response" (Ch. 3 pp. 72), which she has the learner perform what she modeled. It was very encouraging for her to lead the class to clap (important as "correcting" the learner-Ch.3 pp. 76-77) after certain students' participation a couple of times. Then she would continue to go on to the blackboard (e.g. underlining words, pointing to drawn pictures, etc..). She continues to laugh and smile (a great way to lower the "affective filter"-see pp. 14 Ch. 1-Parrish's) at this point of the class session, which encourages students to keep going (1:08:00). I can tell she is still has the students captivated with the camera pointing to the students' attentive-attention (e.g. no one sleeping or looking at the opposite direction) being shown. As you can see, all of the students were adult learners of this second language-Farsi, which is very hard to learn as they past that critical period (pp. 17 Ch. 1-Parrish's). Overall, there was a display of a lot of interactionsim (see theory by Long pp. 15 Ch. 1-Parrish's), which the teacher allowed by going through the classroom more than several times to answer students' questions. This being a basic beginning-Farsi language class, the teacher demonstrated the Natural Approach (pp. 30 Ch. 2-Parrish's), which she allowed the students (receiving end) to learn more of the language forms and vocabulary before it was produced at times.
* How does the instructor help learners to feel comfortable and willing to speak in Farsi?
She smiles and personally goes around the classroom meeting as many individuals she can. The she encourages the students to repeat what she teaches them to each other-peers. It's kind of a great "ice-breaker" to meet not only the teacher, but to each other-student peers. She would give a little clap (16:00) to show the student(s) doing a "good job", which is very encouraging.
* At what point in the lesson do learners begin to interact with their peers?
After teaching a few basic greeting words and phrases-almost immediately in the beginning of the class. Then there would be 2-3 more activities that the student would interact with one another before this video or lesson ended. All of the interaction activities would follow after the teacher gave repetitive lessons on a particular word, phrase, or subject topic.
* How does she handle feedback and check for learning?
She listens to various individual students and repeats what she is teaching as she moves to another student, so that particular student doesn't get all the attention to feel embarrass if they are saying it wrong. This would occur during the "large-group" session. Then when it came to "small-group" time, she would go around the classroom to see how the students are doing too. The camera or video was not able to record what she said, but she probably was doing the same "feedback" in a one to one or smaller group setting.
Please make at least 2 original, substantive entries and at least 2 reactions to others' comments. Please complete your postings by 5pm, Thursday, October 30, 2008.
-Others' Feedback:
2-Learner-Centered Instruction
I’ve set up 10 “threads” of discussion in the discussion board. They include characteristics of the learner-centered classroom:
-Others:
I've gotten feedback from the local community (e.g. committee groups) of the need of "hospital terminology" pertaining to the admittance and registration process. I was able to witness it myself when I was taking a friend to the emergency room. While waiting, I saw one of my past student (manager of the dairy farm now) and his wife during a hospital visit. The doctor was asking the nurse to contact the medical translator (Spanish-English) by phone to be able to communicate with each other. I notice how much time it took to communicate, which I can't imagine if it was more of a serious emergency situation. After this experience, I came up with this "rough draft" "Assessment Instrument" (my final paper from my last online class-ESL Assessment 6638) to evaluate students' hospital registration process using different language forms (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). I actually got copies of the local hospital's registration (a visual aid or "realia" material) form for new patients. I then have my student's fill it out and then evaluate or assess how they do. I've done this with a couple of students and realize there needs some further research and experimentation-evaluation on this particular class activity. I might possibly pursue this to be my final "oral class exercise" project to tune-up this "rough draft" that can be applicable for current-future students' "real-life" English skills.
4. Learners control the direction of activities.
5. The content of instruction is relevant to the students' needs and interests and draws on their experiences and knowledge.
Other's:
6. Classroom interactions are authentic.
9. Teachers listen actively for themes as they emerge from learners.
As I've continue to grow in experience teaching ESL the past 4+ years, I've learned that students' give "hints" on themes to have us "teachers" to expand their learning experience. When I meet ESL students individually and have them share how was their week/weekend, I try to "expand" the topic/theme more after their share. First of all, I like asking this typical conversation topic to encourage the students to ask this to others to break that communication barrier with strangers. Most people like to share about themselves and sharing about what they've done the past week/weekend gives them an opportunity to "open-up" about who (e.g. interests, hobbies, etc...) they are. Also, another reason I like asking this question is to have my ESL student practice their oral skills. Instead of reading a book or computer (e.g. Rosetta Stone) out loud, sharing an experience orally becomes more natural. Thus, I'm able to see (e.g. grammar) what the ESL student could improve on based on their "natural" conversational talk.
Now getting back to the question, I find the theme based on my knowledge so far of the learner's ESL background and personality overall. I'm usually not able to do this effectively until I've gotten some significant amount of "teacher-student" time. Here is one example, a student (Brazilian that worked at an area farm for his "host" family) this summer I've taught ESL for over a month (comes once a week every Wednesdays), shared about his trip to "Mount Rushmore-Black Hills"-famous for the President's faces embedded in rock formations (e.g. scene in the recent movie "National Treasure: Book of Secrets"). During his share, a "light-bulb" came over my head of a theme(s) to teach on. After his and the other students' shares, I began my "new" last minute lesson topic(s). The first topic was on "Geography", which I drew a map of our location (Morris, MN-located only 1 hour east from the SD-MN border) adjacent to our neighboring state of SD. I did this for the other students that may not know where the Black Hills were. The next topic was on "U.S. Government or Civics". I gave this question to the small group of students (3-4), what are the names of the U.S. Presidents featured on "Mount Rushmore"? I actually didn't know all of them, but was "saved" by a knowledgeable student present. I not only taught the students, they taught me.
From this exercise, the benefits that I saw that came out of this was the students speaking more than I did. This helped gain their confidence to speak English more. Also, to expand their recent knowledge (both geography and civics) of their travel experience. Instead of starting a new topic on this particular evening, I expanded a theme or topic they had some prior knowledge of already.
*incorporated #5 too when submitting this!
10. Teachers constantly assess teaching and learning in relation to learners' needs.
5-Contextualized Language Lessons
In the discussion board, I've created a thread for the grammar lesson and one for the functional lesson. Post a response to each lesson, using these questions as a guide:
I like the "Grammar Lessons", which the topic on "job occupation" is a real life applicable subject to our students. Just recently, I was assessing a "new" student of his "needs"-goals & expected outcomes (see pp. 166 Ch. 6-Parrish's). The lesson we came up on this particular class session was "Greetings". One of the most common questions asked when people meet for the first time is-"What do you do for a living?" (a possible "thread" from the theme "Greetings"-see pp. 173). I role played with this student on this question and he had a difficult time answering this. As he was trying to describe it, I quickly told him what it is. However, I look back and should've used display questions (see pp. 174) or a word web (see pp. 184) to promote "higher-order thinking skills". He was actually a "masonry" and didn't have much knowledge of the terminology used his field of work. I ended up sharing some with him and asked him to write these down for future references.
This lesson topic of "Job Terminology" has been an valuable lesson topic for me to teach now in the 4+ years I've been volunteering as an ESL teacher. I wished I started a lesson format earlier to be used as a curricular routine (see pp. 172 Ch. 6-Parrish's) I would recommend this to be further emphasized in this "Grammar Lesson" form. I remember 4+ years ago when our literacy program re-started in our community (Morris, MN) at the local community education department (in the Morris Area Elementary School), which we would have a growing number (now over 200+) of migrant workers from Mexico that worked in area (Stevens County population of 10,000+) dairy farms. A lot of them wanted to learn terminology they can use in their field of work, so I decided to "google" this subject online. I found this site and shared it to one of the students (now a manager of one of the dairy farm sites), which we both use (e.g. compensation strategies-"any tools or tactics that learners employ to learn more effectively and more autonomously"-see pp. 182 Ch 6-Parrish's) it to share with others now!
How might you modify the lesson to meet the needs or interests of your learners?
-Others Responses:
What questions do you have about the lesson?
I would like to comment on the "Functional Lesson", which reminded me of a couple situations I dealt with in this local-rural- small- college- town (Morris, MN) community. The first was "complaining of neighbors", which was the other way around. A family that is friends with me was complaining about their neighbor across the street, who happen to be a "Mexican-family". The complaint was "noise", which this family I'm friends with didn't know how to tell them this. Well, the family I'm friends with ended-up moving outside of town to the quiet country (farm site) two months ago. However, I feel I could've somehow provide a dialogue format between the two families earlier. I would highly recommend a lesson on "Social Cultural Manners" to our ESL students to prevent "complaints" or "issues" like these from happening.
Another situation was a legal issue, which I don't want to go into details because of the insensitive nature of the case. Anyways, there was a "Spanish-speaking" family member that was in this legal case and had a hard time communicating with local-law-enforcement. Several years ago, we didn't have the best translation services, which we are somewhat better now. Fortunately, the state legal system provided a translator for this guy and the case was taken care of.
Please post at least 2 original substantive comments, and at least one response to a classmate's posting. Complete postings by 5pm on Monday, November 3, 2008.
NOTE: There are a variety of example lesson plans in your book in this chapter and in the listening and speaking chapter (chapter 4). These lesson plans will serve as "templates" as you write your final lesson project for this course. Review them carefully and refer back to them as you work on your project.
Book: READING ASSIGNMENT
4-Review Parrish, Chapter 3, Contextualized Language Teaching, pages 51-88.
6-Reading Assignment
"Keeping It Real" (53.5 Kb)
ASSIGNMENT: Reflection Paper #1
Reflection Paper #1 (15% of final grade)
Smiling (appears very friendly and having fun!), she repeats the word or phrase several times until the student says it correctly. Then uses a flash card for one word. Then she gets very interactive (see Ch. 1 pp. 15-Parrish's) by using her hands (gestures) making a wave to show the "syllables" (spaces or breaks between pronouncing the letters of the word). In the beginning part, the teacher practices receptive skills (Ch. 2 pp. 28- by Parrish's) or a silent period (Ch. 2 pp. 29- by Parrish's) for the students. Later, she uses the blackboard for the word "Hal-e-shumoa" "che-tor-eh". As she gets the class to repeat (start's using the student's productive skills in Ch. 2 pp. 28- by Parrish's) these words, she uses her hand gestures again-like a composer of an orchestra! This gives cues to the student(s) when to repeat the word as a musician knows when to play their instrument! As she shows the difference between two people having a conversation, she changes roles by switching left to right in front of the classroom. This helps the student(s) know who is in the giving-end and receiving-end. She continues do more hand gestures (touches her neck and moves it forward, like playing a trombone), like a "sign-language" expression of continuing/stretching a word (sounds like "Cuba" 8:09) in the long form (stretching it as long as possible). She continues to use more visual aids (pictures of fruits: apple, banana, etc...11:15), which she randomly-individually hands it to various students in the classroom. Then she points to that picture or student as she has them repeat that particular word-pictures. After reviewing all the material, she gets the students to teach amongst one another. During this time, she walked around the classroom to see if any of them have questions and to see how each pair-group is doing. Then she reviews all of it again for the classroom as a "whole" (35:00). She continued to do more "masculine-muscle" gestures to show possibly the "masculinity form" of the word. Then (43:00) she got the students to mingle with another again as she goes around. Again, she doesn't spend too much time on a particular pair/group (48:00). After, she continues to use more variety of "visual aid"-this time a traditional custom-wear (head cover). She does another surprise by showing more vocabulary words (w/drawn pictures-cup, etc..) in the blackboard behind a screen she "unveiled" or lifted-up (50:00). Later, she does a "show & tell" time as she passes the "head cover" (visual aid earlier) around the classroom (one student even wears it later on in the video 1:00:00) during another "student-student" learning session (55:00) with a worksheet(s) assignment. To show that it was time to finish, she waves a paper around in front of the class and coughs. She would then do a "role-play" (sample of several multiple intelligences: verbal, visual, and bodily/kinesthetic-pp. 27 Ch.2-Parrish's) activity by getting students to volunteer to wear the "head cover" and "mustache"-showing masculinity and femininity roles. This is somewhat a "Total Physical Response" (Ch. 3 pp. 72), which she has the learner perform what she modeled. Then she would continue to go on to the blackboard (e.g. underlining words, pointing to drawn pictures, etc..). She continues to laugh and smile (a great way to lower the "affective filter"-see pp. 14 Ch. 1-Parrish's) at this point of the class session, which encourages students to keep going (1:08:00). I can tell she is still has the students captivated with the camera pointing to the students' attentive-attention (e.g. no one sleeping or looking at the opposite direction) being shown. As you can see, all of the students were adult learners of this second language-Farsi, which is very hard to learn as they past that critical period (pp. 17 Ch. 1-Parrish's). Overall, there was a display of a lot of interactionsim (see theory by Long pp. 15 Ch. 1-Parrish's), which the teacher allowed by going through the classroom more than several times to answer students' questions. This being a basic beginning-Farsi language class, the teacher demonstrated the Natural Approach (pp. 30 Ch. 2-Parrish's), which she allowed the students (receiving end) to learn more of the language forms and vocabulary before it was produced at times.
-Uses a question mark flash card to show whether the phrase was a question.
• How did you learn “rules” about the language? Was the language presented through repetitive drills, communicative tasks, or another way? Were you able to negotiate meaning when necessary?
The rules I learned about the language were first learning the basic words and terminology before "whole" sentences. Learning (Ch. 1 pp. 13) bit by bit enables a learner to learn a "new" language slowly and easier, which was "consciously" (e.g. basic greetings) in my part as a student. The other learning process was through "acquisition" (Ch. 1 pp. 13), which was more natural and "unconsciously" (e.g. difference between masculine and feminine through role playing with visual aids) .
Yes, the language was presented through various ways. First, repetitive as the teacher had the students go through many series of drills (e.g. Audiolingual Method-ALM Ch. 1 pp. 11-12) repeating words and phrases. This was needed to get the student to make sure they really know it and it gets into their head. Second , communicative tasks as the teacher gave the opportunity for "student-student" (more down below) interaction. Lastly, she presented it with visual media (e.g. flash cards, role-play, and objects-clothing wear) as mentioned above.
Yes, I was able to negotiate meaning when necessary through the help of realia and visual aid objects as I stated above. The cultural clothing item-head cover (femininity) was very helpful in distinguishing the different roles (mustache-masculinity) the teacher played. When she wants the students to say it "boldly" or "masculine", she physically shows the "muscle-weightlifter" form (tightens both fists and broadens her chest).
• What kinds of interaction took place? (i.e., teacher-student(s), student(s)-student(s), and material-student(s)) What was the sequence of the different types of interaction?
• How did the instructor handle student errors?
The instructor handled errors in somewhat an a non-intimidated way, which kept the affective filter very low or non-existent! This was evident that my experience does support Krashen's hypothesis. When a student or group as a whole appeared to not pronounce the word or phrase right, the teacher would smile and repeated it again for that individual or even the whole group to say it again-making sure they get it "right" (e.g. of monitor hypothesis Ch 1 pp. 14). I notice when an individual didn't get it right, she would look to another student. This takes the attention and focus from this individual that may have pronounced it wrong. Thus, this individual will not feel embarrass or feel stressed. Then when the teacher is pleased about the student(s), she would give a little clap (16:00) to show the student(s) doing a "good job", which is very encouraging. It was very encouraging for her to lead the class to clap (important as "correcting" the learner-Ch.3 pp. 76-77) after certain students' participation a couple of times.
• What did you learn through this experience that will impact how you would teach absolute beginners?
I probably will try to smile more and show the "clapping" symbol that was in the video to let my students know that they are doing a "good job"! As Krashen proposed, students need that comprehensible input (Ch 1. pp. 13). I would like to get more visual aids (e.g. picture cards, flashcards, etc...).
She did a "great job" overall, which I can't compare myself to her well-done teaching techniques. One can always get some feedback, so mine would be:
-get bigger "visual-aid: flash cards", which the camera wasn't able to get-unless zoom in!
For my particular classroom, where I have mostly or all beginning level adult ESL learners, I would probably would like my students to be fully immersed in learning this second language (e.g. Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) Ch 1. pp. 16). However, I'm very passionately-culturally (e.g. love learning simple basic words in other languages-hello, thank you, good, etc...) aware and I speak a little Spanish (e.g. 3+ years of lessons back in high school and college) and would permit my students to speak just a little of their "native" language (e.g. Russian, Portuguese, etc...) to understand one another pertaining to the lesson. My students smile with surprise if I'm able to say at least one word in their "native" language. Even though they past that "critical period" (Ch. 1 pp. 17) of acquiring a second language as adults, they are capable and need that "meaningful and authentic opportunity to use it beyond the classroom" (pp. 18). I've been able to witness my student to use it in various settings-work and community.
COURSE CONTENT
1- Language Practice Activities
In the last unit, we examined the characteristics and components of contextualized language lessons. Now let's look more closely at one of those components...meaningful and communicative practice activities.
Once you have presented the target language in a real-world context, you need to give your learners ample opportunities to practice that language in meaningful ways.Practice activities fall on a continuum between controlled activities that have a greater focus on accurate use of the target language, and free activities that focus on fluency through more authentic and spontaneous uses of the language. Both types of activities are important to language development and should be included in your lessons. You'll need to choose and design activities with the following factors in mind.
An appropriate practice activity…
*
Involves genuine communication
2- Developing Speaking Skills
In the last section, you read about and examined a variety of language practice activities that focused on the development of speaking skills. In this section, you'll watch several videos of adult ESL learners taking part in speaking lessons.
Helping our learners develop their English speaking skills involves much more than just getting them to engage in English conversation. Effective speaking lessons have clear objectives and that are tied to learners' needs outside of the classroom. They give learners practice in communicating in various contexts and completing real-life language tasks. Speaking lessons should help learners develop the characteristics of language fluency listed below.
Characteristics of Language Fluency
*
The ability to handle unpredictable language
Remember, when choosing and developing speaking tasks that focus on fluency...
*
Assure students that there is a true communicative purpose to the activity.
VIDEOS:
Dialogue/Drill Video
Let's examine an oral skills lesson that focuses on a real-life dialogue and follow-up drill activities. As you're watching, consider these questions:
* What are the stages in this dialogue/drill lesson?
Lori Howard, teacher:
Large group (demonstration)->small groups (production-applying what they saw or learned)->large groups (show that they understood-performance)
*pp. 111 Ch. 4
Scenario: Lost n' found
* How does the teacher establish the context?
She does a series of 3 para practice activities (large-small-large group)
* How does she present the dialogue?
She first demonstrates it herself in front of the large group. Then she has the large group split into smaller groups. At the end, she has pairs demonstrate it in front of the large class as a whole.
What strategies does she use to convey meaning?
Some of them didn't fully understand the need of hiding the flash cards, so she had to announce this out loud and also go into some of the individual pairs to repeat this.
Using visual aid (flash cards), realia (role play using actual clothing-pictures come to life!-see pp. 107), etc...
* What did you like about this lesson?
The lesson served as a "real-life" (e.g. problem-posing acitivity Ch. 4 pp. 106) situation, which happens to many of us. Losing something would very traumatic-especially the value of what was lost and more challenging for someone that speaks in another language. This lesson is very life-applicable, which is a topic-subject any ESL student could use. She was smiling to reduce any "affective filters". Her comments (e.g. "very good", clapping, etc...) after students demonstrated what they learned.
* What would you do differently?
The teacher shared (4:50) how the pairs of students (representing the person that lost the clothing material) would sometimes unintentionally show the picture card to the other person (representing the "Lost & Found"). Thus, the communication activity was not effective or fulfilling the purpose. It wasn't until the teacher "corrected" them (picture of the teacher moving the student's hand that was holding the picture card) when the activity became meaningful or purposeful (e.g. "transactional dialogue".
* Other reactions?
Wow, lots of students! I thought it was so ironic that one of the students "lost" (forgot to get it at the end of class) her jacket (pink) after a lesson on "lost & found". Was this planned by the video production group?-lol!
#2-Role Play Video
Now, let's take a look at a fluency-focused activity. This video is of intermediate-level students participating in a role-play. As you're watching, consider these questions:
Jean Rose
· What did you like about this lesson?
Setting-up the classroom a role play, which presented what the topic of the lesson will be. Also, she used her personal experience or life challenge of returning an item back to the store, which many of the students can relate. This shows individual students that they are not the only going through these "life-challenges". I thought using different objects was useful. In the beginning, she used realia-own "short" clothes and visual aids-pictures of clothing afterwards. Overall, I like the production of this video as they had the teacher explain each classroom scenario throughout the video.
· What didn't you like?
At first, I didn't understand why the teacher wasn't correcting the students' grammar during the role plays. Then later in the video, she explains why and that is to focus on communicating the purpose of the situation-returning the clothing item. However, the students may never know what they are doing wrong until it is pointed out. In my classroom, I sometimes may never get that chance to "correct" them because they don't come in a regular basis or ever at all. I can see why the teacher shared that grammar can be taught later if the students come to class in a regular basis.
· What types of things are students doing throughout the lesson?
Gaining confidence by adding their own words to help the teacher finish the dialogue sentences the teacher was writing on the board. Learning how to be polite when making a "complaint", which is hard to do in this typical costumer's situation. The teacher seem to really emphasized the importance of politeness throughout this lesson. For example in one of the role plays, she role modeled as a "rude" clerk before a "polite" clerk with a student that was part of the role play.
· What's the role of the teacher?
Assessing the experiences and language of the students prior to the role play. The teacher was trying to build their confidence as she had them "actively" contribute to finishing the sentence dialogue on the board the teacher was writing. As the teacher stated, this was helping build their vocabulary. In one of the narratives, the teachers shared how she wanted to transition from "teacher controlled" to "student centered" (or less "teacher controlled") role-play activities.
· Comment on the progression of the lesson/activities.
I thought it was a good strategy that the teacher didn't try to finish the sentences quickly on her own, instead she got the students to "participate" and contribute to finishing the sentence. This was a sample of a "set dialogue" that she stated later that was "using their own language"-thus, building their confidence! Three importance: stating a problem, making a request, and reaching a solution. Divides the group into groups of 3-customer, clerk, and observer, which the teacher would go around the classroom to give any feedback. The teacher stated the purpose of the observer, which emphasizes "function" first and then "language" learning becomes an aftermath of this activity. Awhile later (13:20), the teacher stated why she didn't correct grammar or "accuracy" as she wanted the students to work on "fluency"-main focus an role play. The reason for this is to get the students know how to communicate in "real-life" scenarios and grammar can be taught later on. Towards the end of the lesson, the teacher is already having the students do the role play on their own. The teacher stated that role play-classroom learning serves as a "safe practice" environment before the "real world" environment.
Returning an item back to the store, which we can all relate!
· Other reactions?
I liked how she affirmed one of the students after the role play (10:55) by saying "good Martin" (included name), which made it more personal.
3-Responding to Learner Errors
What approach to feedback works best for you?
Think of a time you were learning something new (a language, a craft, a sport). What kind of feedback did you receive?
"keep going!"
What feedback was most beneficial to you and motivated you to learn?
Candy
What discouraged you?
Baseball-swearing
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above questions and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
Errors are part of any learning process, and this is true for language learning as well. Errors indicate that a learner is taking risks and trying out language that he/she hasn't mastered yet. Errors provide us as instructors with insight into our students' learning processes; they can tell us what they understand or what to focus our instruction on.
So, how do we respond to our learners' errors? We need to be selective and thoughtful about when to correct and the feedback strategies we use. One important consideration is the learner. Will he/she understand the correction? How will he/she feel about being corrected in a group? We all respond differently to feedback. If you compared your views on helpful and unhelpful feedback with your classmates', it's quite likely that there would be a range of responses. As you work with your learners, you will a develop a sense of their correction preferences.
Before correcting, you need to think about the gravity of the error and the context. Is the error causing a breakdown in communication? If so, correction will help repair communication. Is the focus of the activity on accuracy or fluency? It's often best to address errors made during fluency activities after the activity so you don't interrupt the flow of communication. Is the learner making an error in language you have already addressed in class? If so, they are more likely to understand and benefit from correction.
Whenever possible, try to help learners notice and self-correct their errors. You can do this by reformulating the utterance, giving them nonverbal cues, or eliciting the correct language by repeating the utterance up to the error or leaving a blank for the error. What other strategies have you used or observed?
Providing effective correction and feedback takes practice. You may want to audio-tape your classes occasionally so that you can go back and examine your own error correction strategies. Which ones help your learners notice their errors and self-correct? If certain strategies are less effective, how might you respond differently next time? This type of reflection will help you to refine and expand your error correction strategies.
Considerations in deciding when to correct learner errors...
Who is the learner?
Parrish, pg. 78-79
ONLINE DISCUSSION
2-Reflection on Oral Skills Videos
Go to the discussion board and respond to the videos of oral skills lessons. Use the following questions to guide your reflections:
*
What did you like about the lessons and activities you observed in the videos you watched?
"Lost N' Found"
"Returning an Item"
Did you have any ah-ha moments?
The "setting-up" classroom for a role play as explained in the next question...
What techniques did you observe that you would like to try in your own classroom? Why?
"Lost N' Found"
* What seem to be the principles behind the teachers’ choices?
"Returning Item"
What would you do differently if you were teaching these lessons?
"Lost N' Found"
Other comments?
"Lost N' Found"
-Others:
Please post at least 2 original substantive comments, and at least one 1 response to a classmate's posting. Complete postings by 5 pm on Monday, November 10, 2008.
3-Responding to Learner Errors.
Join the discussion on Responding to Learner Errors. Consider your own classroom and the feedback you provide to learners on their errors. (If you have not taught, think about language classes you've taken or observed.) Respond to the following questions:
*
How do you decide which errors and which learners to correct?
It depends on how much you know of the learner. As you get to know them, you somewhat gain some an idea on how and when to do it. First of all, I "respect my elders", so I would "correct" a student that's older than me in different way than someone younger. It's just a rule-especially when it comes to cultural sensitivity. I got this tip from a friend of mine doing Bible ministry work in my community. From this course so far, I'm learning about fluency, which Doug stated in the "Unit 3: Reflection on Oral Skills Videos". I never actually been taught about this strategy, which I'll "try" to apply it now to my teaching lessons.
What error correction strategies have you used?
Which ones seem to be most effective?
I wanted to remark the video from Unit #2 on Farsi. I noticed the teacher repeating a word or phrase after a student might've said it wrong. After reviewing Chapter #3-Part 3, I notice the teacher was using reformulation-"restating a learner's utterance correctly in a as naturalistic a way as possible" (pp. 80-81). It's a technique Parrish emphasizes to "encourage fluency".
-0thers:
Please make at least 1 original, substantive entry and at least 2 reactions to others’ comments. Please post by 5 pm Monday, November 10, 2008.
Book: READING ASSIGNMENT
1-Chapter #4-"Developing Listening & Speaking Skills"
Useful Websites:
3-Review Parrish, Chapter 3, Part III Correcting Learner Language, pg. 76-84.
ASSIGNMENT: Reflection Paper #2
Reflection Paper #2 (15% of final grade)
This assignment must be submitted by Sunday, November 16, 2008, at 5 p.m.
Observe and take descriptive notes of an oral skills lesson. Then, write a 2-3 page summary-response based on the observation and your knowledge of current principles and practices of teaching Adult ESL.
Just to give you some background of this particular classroom observation. I video taped the last 30 minutes of a 1 1/2 hour (@3-4:30p) class session on Wednesday, November 12th of 2008. This particular class meets twice (Fridays from 11a-1:30p) a week in the same amount of time, but different days. This class is located in the main office of one of the dairy farms that oversees other sites (3-4 in Stevens County alone and 2-3 already and newly developed outside of the county) owned by the same company. Each site contains around 30-50 migrant workers (depending on the number of cows in each site) with one manager. This class is only "mandatory" given to the managers, so there were about 7 present in this particular session I videotaped. The dairy farms also have "American" English-speaking employees, who also are "required" to take Spanish classes-taught by the same ESL teacher. These Spanish classes run for an hour each day-5 days a week early in the morning (7a-8am). The dairy farms just started offering these Spanish classes the beginning of 2008 and English classes the beginning of this Fall. The local dairy company has somewhat been "pressured" by the community to do these classes, so our community can "better communicate" with one another. I'm sure there are other factors for the dairy company to do this too. The teacher of this classroom I asked to do this video recording of is name Robert Frishmon. I first met him when he and his wife first moved to Morris, Minnesota. His wife (Rosa) is from Columbia and has been one of my ESL students (since the beginning of the year) in our ESL class site-La Tienda (means "The Store"-a local ethnic grocery store catering the Mexican community). Robert got his teaching degree at an intensive-rigorous school in Columbia.
Address these issues:
I had the opportunity to talk with the teacher after video taping the class, which he pretty much solidified what appeared to be the principles behind his choices. I was able to tape record the last 30 minutes (4p-4:30p) of the 1 1/2 hour class session. This was due to my unavailability in the beginning part because of my daily work schedule (8a-3:45p). The teacher recapped what I missed, which he first taught some basic "work-dairy farm-related" (e.g. workplace ESL-Chapter 2 pp. 45) terminology words. He hand-picked these words from this article he went over with the class afterwards. The article came out of this Spanish-English Dairy Farm publication called "Lecheria" (Dairy in English). The 30 minutes that I was there, he started to teach "phrases" using these dairy farm related-terminology words. As you can see schemata skills are being practice as these students have a fair amount of previous knowledge with this being a work-related ESL class.
• How are learners' knowledge and experiences validated?
Robert was teaching to a highly educated (advanced-level) group of students as they were all trained or current manager-level position employees of the dairy farms. These students pretty much know most of the basic dairy farm terminology words, they just needed to know how to "pronounce" them orally.
• In what ways is the content of instruction relevant to the students’ needs and interests?
The content of instruction is very much relevant to the students' needs and interest because it was work-applicable. The instructor has gotten somewhat a "thorough need assessment through his knowledge of the company" (Ch. 2 pp. 45). This is by his employment (since January of 08') through the company as he also teaches Spanish to the English-speaking "American" workers. Robert told me he teaches Spanish every morning Monday through Fridays, so he has grown to know what terminology "every-day" words and phrases they use in this particular field of work. What these students were learning was going to help them "succeed" in their current job and may accelerate their job status. These students didn't come voluntarily, but it was actually mandatory from the company they are currently working for.
The interest might vary from student to student, but whatever their "motivation" was in their job determined how much they wanted to learn from their teacher. In additional, what they were learning can be very helpful outside of work (e.g. home, community, etc...).
• How does the teacher draw on those experiences and knowledge?
The teacher shared some phrases from this particular article (realia) and had them "repeat" it. Then the teacher did an oral exercise that would draw some of their experiences and knowledge. Some example phrases were...
"We need to observe for downer cows"
Downer cow mistreatment
Robert then ask the class for some more examples of "common-used" phrases from their workplace.
"We need to increase pregnant cows."
Then he would ask the rest of the class to repeat these phrases too. Thus, applying their already known terminology to phrases they can pronounce at work. There were "student-student" interactionism (Ch. 1 pp. 15), each student had to ask another peer a question and respond with an answer statement using one these already taught work-related vocabulary words.
• How were learner errors handled?
The learner errors were handled very "indirectly"-decreasing their affective filter (Chapter 1 pp. 14). Robert would repeat the "right" pronunciation as "naturally as possible" of the phrases he asked the students to repeat-using reformulation (Chapter 3 pp. 80-81). He did this after a student "mispronounced" it. He would move on to the next student quickly as it was similarly displayed in the past videos we watched in Unit #3.
• How did the teacher provide feedback and assess learner proficiency?
Robert has "analyzed" my teaching in the past as he sat down with his wife (ESL student of mine) and then showed me "his way" to teach a lesson. It wasn't new to me of his feedback approach in the class I video taped. He would repeatedly say "good, good job, very good, again, etc.." after each student repeated a phrase. I've learned to do this in my class after Robert first taught me this personal technique earlier this year. When he can see an individual student is struggling with a certain phrase or word, he would have them repeat it until it was said "correctly" (e.g. of monitor hypothesis Ch 1 pp. 14). When it was a phrase, he would say part of it and let the student complete it. For example, one of the phrases was "Get out of my way". One student couldn't say this, so the teacher replied-"Get out _____?" (repeatedly). During half-way of this 30-minute end of the class, the teacher encouraged the students to bring a notebook and write what they were learning about.
• To what extent were the materials, tasks, and language authentic?
As I mentioned earlier in the beginning-the materials, tasks, and language were very authentic. The terminology and phrases that the student practiced in this particular class session came out of a magazine relating to their occupation-dairy farming. The teacher ended this particular class by inviting the class to ask any words or phrases they wanted to learn how to say. Some of the students asked about the meaning of certain terms or vocabulary words (rigor, partition, overcrowded, etc...). The teacher shared a tip to look for "root words" ("over load") or "cognates" (sympatico-sympathetic: similar latin root of "nice") of words they may not understood. The words were taken off an article/magazine and put in a worksheet, which was a handout for each of the students. They can take this home and review it after class. Before letting the class out, the teacher shared that they'll review this worksheet and practice discussion for their next class session (Friday @11:30a-1p). The location of the classroom couldn't be in a better place as it was in the main office (across the street from where the "live-smelling" dairy cows!) off the dairy farm site.
In conclusion, I thought this was a great learning experience. I've observed classes like these in the past 4 years since I started volunteering as an ESL teacher. I like to learn what other teachers do, so I can apply what I observe that can be applicable in my particular classroom. What I learn from this short video project is that I would like to learn more of my student's occupation and teach them work-related terminology words and phrases too. Not just work, but any type of setting (e.g. community) my students use English the most. It was also encouraging to see 1-2 managers that were students of mine 4 years ago, which shows how they have "progressed" in their career. I had the chance to talk to one of them and encourage him to keep going!
For each of these issues (and others if you wish), first describe what you observed. Then, provide your response/reaction. What would you change or do the same about the lesson or the teacher behavior? In your paper, be sure to focus on your response to and analysis of the lesson rather than providing a detailed description of the lesson.
You have two options for the observation. If you are currently teaching, you may video- or audiotape your own class. Then, conduct your “observation” using the tape. If you are not currently teaching, find an ESL class to observe. Consult instructor for assistance.
COURSES CONTENT
1- Developing Listening Skills
Celebrations handouts.doc (28.5 Kb)
Think about all of the language you have heard today or over the past week. We spend a great deal of our time listening, so this really is a critical area to work on with our learners! Effective listening lessons help students develop the skills they need to understand the language they will hear outside of the classroom. As Parrish notes, the language learners encounter every day doesn't always reflect the textbook-perfect language they might see or hear in class. Real-life language has:
*
extensive use of slang and colloquial expressions (off the top of my head)
It's important, therefore, to use listening passages that incorporate the authentic use of language as much as possible so that learners are exposed to the language they will hear when they walk out the classroom door. The listening lessons you design should give your learners the opportunity to develop the skills they need to understand that language. In this section, we'll examine different purposes and skills for listening, the structure of listening lessons (prelistening, listening, and follow-up), and sources for listening passages. Let's get started!
First, let's think about getting students ready to listen. We must start with what they already know about the topic and how their previous experiences shape their knowledge. Let's take the theme of health as an example. What goes through your mind when you hear the phrase "going to the doctor"?
A "Caucasian Man" with a stetscope in a white trouser coat.
What images and events do you visualize?
He is using the scope to check my breathing.
Task 4.2 Images of Going to the Doctor
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question(s) and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
2- Listening Activities
An Immigrant's Story handout.doc (30 Kb)
Analyzing Listening Activities
Now let's examine some other listening activities. For each of the following activities, listen to the audio or watch the video as you complete the activity and answer the following questions:
*
What listening skills are being practiced?
What other prelistening (Chapter #4 pp. 91) activities could be used with the passage?
Download the Listening Activities Grid at the top of this section and use it to keep track of your notes. You will not need to turn it in, but it will be helpful as you complete the discussion board assignment below. Also download the handouts for the listening activities at the top of this section.
AUDIO:
1. Clerk at a store
What special skills are necessary in this job? What type of training?
What listening skills are being practiced?
Knowing what questions to ask for after the person you are interviewing answered the first set of questions
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What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
Interview other teachers in similar background to see any commonalities and/or differences
How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
The terminology or key terms to be taught prior the interview. Using a video to show what you plan to do.
VIDEO:
Ho Nou -Ne Lei Young goes Li Vang, a 30 year old-entrepreneur. Shouting out English words and phrases to break his low self-esteem. Teach in and out of the classroom (Great Wall learning the alphabet using hand gestures or sign language?) Shouting helps break that fear with foreigners. 14 millions. From Hong Kong.
What listening skills are being practiced?
What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
Find a little more about the learners' experience in similar ESL classes and see how comfortable are their learning styles (e.g. active or passive).
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
Related Sites:
crazy english
AUDIO:
50's to 60's song "Who got's the last laugh now"? (see They All Laughed lyrics from mp3lyrics.org) with band in background of lady (Ella Fitzgerald) singing. Singing about American history (Columbus-discovering "America", Ford, Whitney-Cotton Gin, etc...)
Related Sites:
What listening skills are being practiced?
Repeated intensive Listening (Chapter 4 Part I pp. 94) skills for American history "figures", which the student would probably have to listen to this song as many times depending on the individual's schemata. They'll be using the bottom-up processing (Chapter 4 Part I pp. 95) to understand word for word of the song lyrics.
What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
Find a little more about the learners' prior knowledge by having them share or write about each individual history "figure" mentioned in this video.
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
Explore more in-depth of each historical figure mentioned in the song. Also, to learn more related American history by exploring others in similar fields. For example, others mentioned about possibly discovering America "first" were the Vikings.
How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
For Lower or Beginning-Level learners, there can be more visual aid-pictures of these historical figures. For Higher or Advance-Level learners, use a video from the History Channel.
-Is This Yours?
"Who Owns these things ?"-Sara cleaning-up the classroom.
What listening skills are being practiced?
What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
Find a little more about the learners' prior knowledge by having them share about the vocabulary words or terminology mentioned in this video.
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
-News
NPR Headlines News: BMW, by Jeanne Cochran (Washington, D.C.) Iraq, Minnesota Public Radio: Minnesota Transportation Bill: Governor Tim Pawlenty, taxes, Minneapolis City Council layoffs-firefighters, police officers; Minnesota Public School-testing of basic writing,...by Cunningham
*
What listening skills are being practiced?
With the help of the teacher, a student will be using the top-down processing (Chapter 4 Part 3 pp. 95) of listening to focus on the key information they need.
What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
Find a little more about the learners' prior knowledge by having them share about terms or themes mentioned in this audio recording:
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
Other online radio site:
What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
Learn more on the issues or content covered in this audio news series through various resources (e.g. television, cable, internet, newspaper, etc...).
How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
For Lower or Beginning-Level learners, there can be more visual aid-maps and colorful pictures of content covered in lesson. For Higher or Advance-Level learners, use a video from local or national news media sources (e.g. WCCO, KSTP & CNN, FOX, etc..) or websites (e.g. U.S Military). Then have them listen for "detail, opinion and attitude, and making inferences about the meaning of the listening passage" (Chapter #4 Part I pp. 97).
VIDEO:
#1 (Male)
Q&A: Civil War; Clan system is very controversial-language is a commonality; Clan issues left at home and not talked about at work; more conflict with border nations (e.g. Somolians & Ethiopians), conflicts with African Americans-more than a "color" issue, but cultural; etc..
#2 (Female)
Q&A: Life expectancy of 47 due to lack of health care (e.g. malaria) and civil war; weather-gov't bldgs closed after 2-3 inches of snow in east coast (VA), religion is a personal and private issue, Hmong and Somolian youth need to ask qustions to each other,etc...
#3 (Male)
Q&A: why do I have to be friends with other Russians I meet?, have friends from other countries, open up and realize the commonalities,
#4 Huynh(Male)
Q&A: 2nd wave of immigration "unluckiest", 3rd wave-POW: ,
What listening skills are being practiced?
Schemata skills are being practiced depending on the amount of experience an individual has compared to each individual person in the panel. For example, a Somolian refugee can relate to the first two that shared since they both have similar backgrounds-Somolian. A refugee from another country (e.g. Sudanese, Liberia, etc....) can relate to with similar stories escaping civil war nations.
What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
Learn about the history of each country (e.g. Somolia, Vietnam, and Russia) represented in the panel. Find a little more about the learners' prior knowledge by having them share about their "refugee" or "immigrant" experience.
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
Have students listening or watching this video get a set of questions to focus on specific information to practice "top-down processing" (Chapter #4 Part I pp. 95). For example, have them look for "common challenges" as "newcomers" for each of the 4 members in the panel discussion.
What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
Explore more in depth of these countries represented in the panel and interview more individuals from these particular countries. Another alternative would be exploring other similar countries that are more current in the news-refugees coming from Iraq. For more personal interest, have students submit their own stories for local publication (e.g. Minnesota Literacy Council's "Journey-An Anthology of Adult Student Writings or local newspaper) for others to learn from their experience or life lesson.
How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
For Lower or Beginning-Level learners, the teacher can learn some "basic terminology" words prior to the panel. For Higher of Advance-Level learners, students can serve in a panel similar to the one on the video.
Personal Comments: I personally thought this was very intriguing as I've had a student from Somolia, who came for GED and not ESL. It was very educational for me to learn what the 2 students that represented from this country shared in the panel. With the recent influx of this particular group the past decade or so in Minnesota-more of our state needs to be culturally educated about our "new neighbors". There was a movie awhile ago called "Black Hawk Down" that had a one-sided view (mostly or all negative) about Somolians, which we need to be educated about "their side".
*see UMMAlpha: Immigrants
2-Developing Listening Skills
42Celebrations handouts.doc (28.5 Kb)
Think about all of the language you have heard today or over the past week. We spend a great deal of our time listening, so this really is a critical area to work on with our learners! Effective listening lessons help students develop the skills they need to understand the language they will hear outside of the classroom. As Parrish notes, the language learners encounter every day doesn't always reflect the textbook-perfect language they might see or hear in class. Real-life language has:
extensive use of slang and colloquial expressions (off the top of my head)
*
It's important, therefore, to use listening passages that incorporate the authentic use of language as much as possible so that learners are exposed to the language they will hear when they walk out the classroom door. The listening lessons you design should give your learners the opportunity to develop the skills they need to understand that language. In this section, we'll examine different purposes and skills for listening, the structure of listening lessons (prelistening, listening, and follow-up), and sources for listening passages. Let's get started!
Schema theory suggests that prior knowledge shapes our expectations and understanding of what we hear. The closer our schema is to the content of what we hear, the easier it will be for us to understand.
Schema (prior knowledge, experiences, emotions) is often very different for different students. When schema is not identified and further built by the teacher and his/her activities, students have mixed expectations, which leads to confusion. Our goal is to find out what schema students already have and add to it.
In listening lessons, we get learners ready to listen through prelistening activities.
Now, let's think about a listening lesson on making a doctor's appointment. What prelistening activities would help activate your learners' prior knowledge and provide the background knowledge necessary to understand a conversation between a patient and receptionist?
Task 4.2 Images of Going to the Doctor
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question(s) and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
How Do We Listen?
Listening Skills
*
Anticipating content
ASSIGNMENT - You do NOT need to turn this in.
Holiday Celebrations in Iran (Nowrouz-New Year) and France (Bestille Day-Independence Day)
Look at the activities and identify the listening skills that learners practice in each one. Consider other activities that you might do in each of the stages.
Sources for Listening Passages
3- Additional Video
VIDEO:
-Focused Listening Video -- OPTIONAL
If you are interested in seeing a listening lesson in action, take a look at this video of a class working on a lesson that focuses on listening to directions. As you're watching, consider these questions:
· What did you like about this lesson?
· What didn't you like?
· What types of things are students doing throughout the lesson?
· What's the role of the teacher?
· Comment on the progression of the lesson/activities.
· Other reactions?
4- Part 3
Early Production Video - OPTIONAL
As you're watching, consider these questions:
· What did you like about this lesson?
· What didn't you like?
· What types of things are students doing throughout the lesson?
· What's the role of the teacher?
· Comment on the progression of the lesson/activities.
· Other reactions?
Focused Listening Video -- OPTIONAL
If you are interested in seeing a listening lesson in action, take a look at this video of a class working on a lesson that focuses on listening to directions. As you're watching, consider these questions:
· What did you like about this lesson?
· What didn't you like?
· What types of things are students doing throughout the lesson?
· What's the role of the teacher?
· Comment on the progression of the lesson/activities.
· Other reactions?
ONLINE DISCUSSION
Join the discussion in the discussion board about sources for listening passages. I've created two threads, one for authentic passages and one for teacher-generated passages. For each category, discuss what listening materials you've used with students (or experienced as a language student.)
For the last 4 years, we've used the Rosetta Stone software program. However, we've gotten some feedback from folks from the community repeating what our past students' have "complained" about-it's boring and not very personal. Since then, we've tried to come-up with some other means of teaching them-more personal (based on their schemata-Ch. 4 p. 91) and interesting related-topics. We sit down with them and have more conversations (e.g. what did you do this weekend?), so our students can practice more naturally with informal dialogues.
When I was a student back in my high-school days, our teacher used entertaining music (cassatte tape player "back then"!). I still remember it-"Feliz Navidad" (Merry Christmas), which shows how this type of teaching has embedded me still today! Music seems to be a great "authentic material" for learning a second-language.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of authentic materials?
The advantages of authentic materials is that the students can relate to it and are very applicable (in and outside of the classroom). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to share my classroom experiences of using listening materials as I'm still learning about this form of teaching. I'm beginning to get some new ideas (e.g. music videos from the internet) in my head on what to use after this particular Unit this past week.
The only disadvantages I can see from this is the cultural sensitive materials (e.g. food-pork?) that we might not know about until it is presented in the classroom. This is just a trial and error learning experience we "teachers" just need to go through. Hopefully, we can learn it soon from each other, so it won't happen much or at all!
Teacher-generated materials?
Sometimes teacher-generated materials was created due to the personal knowledge and experience with past-current students. The materials pertain more to students in that particular geographic area of where the class is being taught. For example, I've used the Real-Life English book, which we learn about directions from studying maps. However, these maps are just "fictional", which I'm going to start using maps from our local community-more personal and related to our area.
The disadvantage can be our "lack of or less experience" of teaching, which we just need to learn by "trial and error". When generating our own materials, we can accidentally plan it the way "we" think is best. Our materials can be unintentionally "teacher centered" and not "learner centered" (Chapter 3). We just have to learn how (through prelistening activities-chapter 4 pp. 91) to get our learners more actively involved because that is the reason why they come to class-it's all a balance.
Analyzing Listening Activities
I've created a thread for each of the listening activities you just examined. Choose 2-3, and using your "Listening Activity Grid" as a guide, consider the following questions:
*
What listening skills are being practiced?
Please make at least 2 original, substantive entries and at least 2 reactions to others' comments. Please complete your postings by 5 pm on Monday, July 30, 2007.
Others:
My Reply:
Hi Laura,
I like your format in your attachment! Yes, I like the interview idea in the "Immigrant Story (Video)". To add more to this, I had a similar exercise back in high school. After interviewing our peers in one of the classes, we had to stand-up and briefly share what we learned about this new peer/classmate we just interviewed. This helped build our own self-esteem, confidence, oral & comprehension skills, and best of all-getting to know another peer/classmate in the same class!
READING ASSIGNMENT
1-Review Parrish, Chapter 4, Part I Listening Skills Development, pg. 89-100.
COURSE CONTENT
1- Online Discussions for this unit
ONLINE DISCUSSIONS for this unit.
1.
Unit 5: Peer Discussion fof Reflection Paper #2
2- Pronunciation Instruction
In this unit, we will look at pronunciation instruction in the context of adult ESL instruction. In order to effectively identify your learners' primary English pronunciation problems and help them achieve more intelligible pronunciation, it's important to understand the basic features of English pronunciation.
We'll examine both the individual sounds, or segmentals, and the stress, rhythm, and intonation, or suprasegmentals, of the English language. We'll also examine the stages of a pronunciation lesson and some examples of activities that can be used to address pronunciation in a communicative classroom. You'll also have the opportunity to practice identifying, prioritizing, and addressing the pronunciation issues of ESL learners through video analysis and discussion board activities.
First, let's examine our own views on pronunciation and adult ESL instruction.
1. Most adults have extreme difficulty acquiring a native-like accent (2-somewhat disagree)
Most of my students do pretty well acquiring a "native-like accent". However, I notice my students that don't have that "latin-root" (e.g. Spanish, Portuguese, etc...), their accent is "stronger" (easier to identify). For example, I have students from former Soviet Union eastern-bloc nations and China-they tend to have a "more" difficult time.
2. Yes, I agree (4-somewhat agree) that a pronunciation component should be included in most any ESL curriculum. However, this should not be added until a month or 4 classroom sessions of an ESL student to get that student more "comfortable" with any "error correction" or decrease of active filters. As past video observations in this course, we don't want to disrupt their "fluency".
3. Yes (3-maybe or "middle")), depending on your demographics (city, rural, suburb, etc...), "Native-English" speakers make negative judgments about people with a non-native accent." I hear this comment-"They need to learn more English","Wow, you speak good English",etc. However, I hear the opposite too, "We'love folks with an accent" (e.g. British). For example, there has been known increase in presence of shows hosted by folks with a "British accent" (e.g. American Idol and many other game shows).
4. Yes (4-somewhat agree), "Pronunciation drills are the best way to help learners acquire intelligible pronunciation." I don't think it is the "best", which there are always alternatives. However, it also depending on what type of "drill" it is. It remind me of the "repetitive" exercise demonstrated in our past video obsersevations (e.g. Farsi).
Now, think about pronunciation instruction in your classroom.
Do you focus on pronunciation with your learners?
I somewhat do as I have them start with using the Rosetta Stone software program, which has a lot of reading and listening exercises. When I have the chance, I "try" to listen to see how they are pronouncing the words or phrases. If they say it "incorrectly", I repeat it "correctly" several times depending on how comfortable I feel their confidence on saying it "correctly". I try to have my students repeat the words/phrases in Rosetta Stone 3x to get them certain and confident about what they are repeating is "correct".
How? Why or why not?
However, when they are in a group activity exercise, I don't want to increase their active filter amongst their peers. I sometimes approach them individually after our group activity on the "correct" way.
What do you think the primary goal for pronunciation instruction should be?
That our students know the "correct" pronunciation, which they need to know or they'll think they are saying a "word" or "phrase" correctly. Also, to build their confidence in their oral skills to better prepare them in outside-the-classroom social context conversations. When it comes to a large-group exercise, the students we might "correct" can teach their peers on similar "common" mistakes. This will show them that they are not the only one having the similar "pronunciation" challenge. They can learn from each others' mistakes.
Turn to Parrish, pg. 109, and do Task 4.9.
Which of the jobs have the highest lingistic demands based on the EEOC criteria?
teacher
Related Sites:
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question(s) and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
The Politics of Accent
It's important to consider the politics of accent - how accent and discrimination can go hand in hand. Native-like pronunciation is not our goal, but instructors need to pay attention to pronunciation and help learners achieve a level of intelligibility. Let's look at some of the ways poor pronunciation may affect our learners:
Factors Affecting Pronunciation
Let's consider some of the factors that may impact one's ability to achieve intelligible pronunciation.
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question(s) and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
Examining your own language learning and that of your students, you probably identified some of these factors that can impact intelligibility:
Video of Non-native English Speaker
Low fat cheese more favorable for consumers.
* What are his pronunciation issues?
I'm so used to meeting students like these, so I really didn't have too much a problem understand him. The prouniciation issues I notice were "slitering" his word, which I was able to get the context of what he was trying to say.
Pause the video before the instructor identifies his primary pronunciation problems.
1. Extra sounds between words
Touching adam's apple...Ahhh! (up and down) Lower pitch.."I'm in Food Science".
*see Goodnewseverybody: Asian-Chinese (Mandarin)
You will need the free Windows® Media Player® to watch this video clip.
Click here to view the video.
3- The Sounds of English: Segmentals
IPA for Consonants (114.297 Kb)
Segmentals: Individual Sounds
If you've ever studied another language, you know how difficult it can be to produce the sounds of a foreign language! What are some of the reasons that language learners may struggle with the sounds of English?
First, let's examine the parts of our mouth and throat we use to produce sounds.
You can download this worksheet (Sagittal Section) at the top of this section. Check your answers with the key (Sagittal Section Diagram Key) at the top of this section.
IPA for Consonants
Related Sites:
Since one sound may be represented by different letters, it is helpful to use special symbols to represent individual sounds. These symbols are called the International Phonetic Alphabet. Although many of the symbols resemble English letters, remember that they represent sounds not letters. For example, the sound /f/ may be represented by "f" or "ph".
Try to think of a word that contains each sound. If you get stuck, take a look at the IPA key at the top of this section.
You can download this worksheet (IPA for Consonants) at the top of this section.
NOTE: Unless your students have worked with it in their previous studies or are very advanced, it will probably not be appropriate to teach them the IPA. It is important, however, for instructors to recognize these symbols, as they are used in dictionaries and in pronunciation texts.
*see GoodnewsEverybody: Liberal Arts-Pronunciation
Sound Production - Place and Manner of Articulation
Now let's look at where sounds are produced, or the place of articulation, and how they are produced, or the manner of articulation. Try the following two quizzes - see if you can match the terms with the types of sounds they describe.
4-Place of Articulation
Instructions:
5- Manner of Articulation
THESE WILL NOT BE GRADED!
4-Segmentals, continued
Classification of Consonants (92.844 Kb)
Classification of Consonants - Key (67.424 Kb)
Production of Consonants (114.898 Kb)
So, how did you do? Were you able to match the terms with the types of sounds they describe?
Voicing
In order to be able to completely describe English consonant sounds, we need to consider one other feature --- voicing, or whether or not the vocal cords are vibrating during the production of the sound. In order to illustrate this phenomenon, let's examine the following pairs of sounds. As you say each pair, cover your ears or put your hand on your throat. Do you hear and feel the difference?
[Chart]
Both of the sounds in each pair are produced at the same place of articulation and in the same manner of articulation. The only difference is that one is produced without the vibration of the vocal cords and the other is produced with the vocal cords vibrating. Some of our learners' pronunciation difficulties stem from incorrect voicing. Luckily, this is a feature that is quite easy to demonstrate - try it with your learners who are using voicing incorrectly.
ASSIGNMENT - You do not need to turn this in.
Now that we've examined the three main dimensions of the production of English consonants, let's bring them all together. Download the file "Classification of Consonants" at the top of this section. Print it and see if you can fill in the chart using the IPA symbols for the English consonants. When you've done as much as you can on your own, download "Production of Consonants" and "Classification of Consonants - Key". Use these to check your work and finish filling in the chart.
Websites
Here are some useful sites for understanding how sounds are produced and for learning about some typical pronunciation problems for learners with whom you may be working.
This site has video recordings of the sounds of the IPA. Besides showing how a real person makes the sound, it also has an animated picture showing how the mouth changes. There are clips showing both the front and side views. When you go to the site listed above, just click on the blue button that says “Symbols” and then just click on the symbol that you want to see and hear.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html This site is similar, but you can also click to get step by step directions as well. This one also gives just the sound – it does not include an open ended vowel before and after like the previous site. This site has some errors in pronunciation, oddly enough. The problems are that 6 voiceless sounds are produced with voicing.
Somali: http://www.cal.org/co/somali/slang02.html
Hmong: http://www.cal.org/co/hmong/hlang.html
Spanish Language Pronunciation: Difficult Consonants http://spanish.about.com/library/beginning/bl-beg-pronunciation-hardcons.htm
5-Vowels
Vowel Chart (52.146 Kb)
Now that you understand how the consonant sounds of English are produced, let's take a look at English vowel sounds. Again, remember that we are talking about vowel sounds, not the letters that are used represent them - there are only 5 letters that represent many more vowel sounds in English.
You'll see that the English vowel system is somewhat more complicated that the consonants. What makes vowels more elusive than consonants?
*
Vowels have less precise articulatory descriptions.
We can classify and describe the production of vowels in four primary ways.
1. Height: Height refers to the position of our jaw and tongue during the production of the vowel sound. Put your hand under your jaw and say the words in the "front" column of the tables below - beat, bait, bat. Do you feel how your jaw drops with each word? This is because the vowel sound in each of the words has a different height. There are high, mid, and low vowels.
Note: All English vowels are voiced.
When thinking about vowel production and how you will describe vowel sounds to your learners, ask yourself the following questions:
• How open is the oral cavity?
Go to the top of the section and download "Classifying Vowels" and the "Vowel Chart" for future reference.
6-Teaching Pronunciation in a Communicative Classroom
Activities for Communicative Language Lessons (32 Kb)
Teaching Pronunciation in a Communicative Classroom
As Parrish notes in TAESL, pronunication instruction in early approaches to language instruction tended to focus on accuracy through mechanical drills and the production of sounds in isolation. Perhaps this is the approach to pronunciation you experienced when studying a foreign language classroom. So, how does pronunciation instruction fit into current communicative approaches to language teaching? While there isn't necessarily consensus on this issue, one can certainly argue that pronunciation instruction has a place within this approach because it can lead to greater intelligibility and improved communication. Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996) have proposed a very useful framework for teaching pronunciation communicatively. We'll be using this framework to analyze and design pronunciation lessons and activities.
A Framework for Teaching Pronunciation Communicatively
Planning Stage
Teaching Stage
ASSIGNMENT - You do NOT need to turn this in.
Download the pronunciation lesson plan (4 parts) at the top of this section. Review it and identify the various stages. What is the purpose of each? What other activities could be used in each stage?
[download docs below]
ONLINE DISCUSSION
1-
Author: P, Erin
Subject: Another -ESL Observation
2- Pronunciation Case Study
This week’s discussion board assignment will allow you to focus on the pronunciation issues of a particular learner and to demonstrate your understanding of the pronunciation concepts we’ve covered, as well as showing your understanding of various techniques to improve learners’ pronunciation.
In order to allow you to engage in a more focused and in-depth discussion on this week’s topic, I have placed you in groups of 4. Choose one learner or another non-native speaker and reflect on the following areas:
· Briefly describe the learner you have chosen (please change his/her name). Include his/her language background, age, time in the United States/other countries, educational background, and any other important information needed to understand his/her pronunciation “case.”
I have a student from Ukraine, who would be called "Fred", that has a very noticeable "accent". I actually personally love hearing him speak because I live (work with folks that have almost the same "background"-most or all of them grew-up around here!) in a very "homogeneous" rural town community and hearing him makes me feel like I'm back at "my former home" (St. Paul). Fred is around his mid-late 20's and has been in the U.S. for almost 3 years now. He has a college education background as he works with pigs at an Agri-business-"Genetic Pork". He has worked and currently lives and works with peers from a very much similar background (e.g. European Eastern-Bloc: Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine too). Thus, he really hasn't been able to practice much of his English and goes to class "once in a while" (mostly when he brings "new" students from his workplace or through friends in the similar "migrant type or field of work").
· What are this learner’s strengths in English pronunciation? What are the most pressing issues for improvement in English pronunciation? Your descriptions should include both segmental and suprasegmental issues.
Currently, he is very eager to learn "American Idioms (e.g. "Pull Someone's Leg") and intense Grammar (his choosing), which I consider himself past "beginning"-now "advance-level". He even helps me teach ESL to his peers-students he brings from his workplace or acquaintances through friends. Fred still somewhat stutters and always ask in the middle of his sentences if he is saying it "correctly". His segmentals or "sounds of the language" (pp. 111) are pretty decent, which I get the context of what he is saying most of the time. I at times have to "correct" him at times, which we have a long-time relationship that his active filter doesn't get bothered much. However, his suprasegmentals or "stress, rhythm, and intonation patterns" (pp. 111)- is the most pressing issue for improvement. Particularly, it's his "flow" or rhythm (Chapter #4-III pp. 112-113) of his English pronunciation.
· What is the impact of this learner’s pronunciation? As far as you can tell, are there intelligibility problems, academic issues, social or interactional concerns, self-image/confidence issues, or other areas of this learner’s life that are impacted by his/her pronunciation?
I really can't tell as I'm not around in his "out of classroom" social settings, but based on what he wants to learn-he just wants to fit around or assimilate around his American peers. We are located in a rural college-university town (5,000 pop.) and Fred loves "partying". His recent desire to learn "American idioms or sayings" makes me ponder that he feels "left out" (I can personally relate too as a "2nd generation" American). He wants to be able to understand the people he hangout with. I at times don't understand "American sayings", which I sometimes "feel left out of the crowd". I feel embarrassed at times asking my peers what it means, so I stay silent and smile-pretending I understood their joke or comment.
· What are some concrete steps you could take to help this learner with his/her pronunciation? Suggest specific techniques and activities you would use.
I've been sending him websites (recently from youtube.com) on some of these issues I've mentioned above. I created a website resource page on some of these topics, so I can use it as a future reference for other students facing similar challenges. In the past, I've already suggested him and others to watch some American movies and replay/rewinding it-repeating some phrases or lines.
Please make at least 2 original, substantive entries. Make at least two responses to each of your group member’s postings. (In your responses, address their analysis of the learner’s pronunciation and make additional suggestions for ways to help him/her address problem areas.) Please complete your postings by 5 pm on Monday, August 6, 2007.
Others:
Date: Fri Nov 21 2008 19:09
Celebrities
Comedy
Russell Peters, english accent joke
READING ASSIGNMENT
2-Pronunciation Instruction
Review Parrish, Chapter 4, Part III The Place of Pronunciation in ESL Instruction, pg. 107-117.
COURSE CONTENT
1- ASSIGNMENT: Classroom Activity
Before we move into our content for this week, carefully review the instructions for the following assignments. You will need to share your Classroom Activity by Wednesday, December 3 for peer review, and then turn it in to me by the evening of December 7.
ASSIGNMENT: Classroom Activity
Classroom Activity (25% of final grade)
For this written assignment:
*~*~*~*~ Do NOT submit this assignment via the assignment tab yet! First, you will be assigned to a small group to give and receive input on your activities. I'll post your groupings in the announcements page. Email a description of your activity and supporting materials to your group by Wednesday, December 3. Your peers will suggest ways to tweak the activity to make it as effective, learner-centered and interactive as possible. Provide feedback on your peers’ activities as soon as possible.
ASSIGNMENT: Annotated Lesson Plan
2-Suprasegmentals: Word Stress and Vowel Length
Compound Word Stress (132.141 Kb)
While segmental problems in learner speech are sometimes easier to identify and describe, it is often the suprasegmental issues that really impact a learner's intelligibility. Now let's examine some of these suprasegmental features - stress, rhythm, and intonation.
We all know what stress is, but what do we mean by "stress" in the context of pronunciation? Stressed syllables sound longer, louder, and higher in pitch. Why is it important for learners to use English word stress correctly? We use word stress to convey meaning - sometimes these stress patterns even distinguish words that look the same. For example, read these two sentences aloud, paying particular attention to the stress patterns in the underlined words:
I bought an old record at the garage sale.
My favorite band is going to record their third CD next month.
Even if a word is pronounced with accurate sound production, if the stress pattern is incorrect, it can be incomprehensible to the listener.
When you introduce new vocabulary, demonstrate the stress patterns for your learners by clapping, tapping, stretching a rubber band, making a quick hand motion, taking small and large steps, underlining, circling, or enlarging print. You can use a variety of these auditory, kinesthetic, or visual strategies to help your learners hear, feel, and see the stress.
Word Stress and Vowel Length
It's important to note that vowels in stressed syllables are longer, while the vowels in unstressed syllables are shorter or reduced. Unstressed vowels are often reduced to the most common vowel sound in the English language - /ə/ , or the schwa. The schwa sound can be represented by any vowel letter. Say the following words. Depending on your dialect, all of the underlined unstressed vowels may be pronounced as /ə/.
about
Learners frequently do not reduce unstressed vowels, and this can make their speech very difficult for a native English speaker to understand. It is often a real eye-opener when they learn that they do not need to produce the full vowel sound for every vowel! Help them practice reducing their vowels through activities such as the "Geography Quiz" below.
Video of Non-native English Speaker - Yukiko
looks down
Watch again if you need to and take notes on the areas of difficulty. Then watch as the instructor coaches her on these areas. What techniques would you like to try with your learners?
-have her use a mirror
Differently, I would have her say one syllable at a time "psy...chol..logy", soci...ology, lab..oratory, etc...Japanese have problems saying "l" and "r"
You will need the free Windows® Media Player® to watch this video clip.
Let's take a look at a few activities that address word stress. For each activity, think about the following questions:
*
What is the area of focus of the activity?
*
What stage(s) of a pronunciation lesson would this activity be used in? (controlled, guided, communicative?)
*
What level of language learner would this be most appropriate for?
*
How could you modify the activity so that you could use it with your learners?
Note: You can download the activities at the top of the section if you wish.
3- Suprasegmentals: Sentence Stress and Rhythm
Rhythm Lesson Plan (40.5 Kb)
Sentence Stress and Rhythm
Just as words have stressed and unstressed syllables, phrases and sentences exhibit stress patterns. Word and sentence stress combine to create the rhythm of the English utterance, or the regular, patterned beat of stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses.
Let's start our discussion of this feature by looking at an example. Say the following sentences aloud, tapping out the beat of the stressed syllables with your finger.
Birds fly south.
The birds fly south.
The birds will fly south.
The birds will have flown south.
The birds will fly to the south.
The birds will have flown to the south.
What did you notice about the number of beats per sentence and the time it took to say each sentence? There were 3 beats and each took approximately the same amount of time to say. Why is that? The beats fell on the stressed words, and there were the same number of stressed words in each sentence. The other unstressed words were "squeezed" into the spaces between the stressed words. English moves in regular, rhythmic beats from stress to stress, and syllable length varies depending on number of stresses.
English is what is called a stress-timed language - the length of an utterance depends on the number of stresses. This can be contrasted with s
yllable-timed languages, or languages in which the length of an utterance depends on number of syllables. (Examples of syllable-timed languages include French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and many African languages.) Learners from these syllable-timed language backgrounds may have particular difficulty with English rhythm.
So which words are stressed in an English utterance are stressed? Generally, the content words that carry information are stressed, and the function words that signify grammatical relationships are not stressed. See the chart below for examples of words that may fall into each category.
Content and Function Words [table]
Content Words: carry the most meaning in the sentence, stressed in natural discourse
Function Words: small words that are the glue of sentences; not usually stressed
Nouns
Articles
Note that these are just general guidelines. Stress patterns may vary depending on the context, especially when stress is used for emphasis or for contrastive information. In these cases, function words may be stressed. Here are a few examples:
"I asked you to buy milk and sugar!"
"It's not my fault. He gave me the directions."
For this reason, it can be more helpful to teach sentence stress and rhythm within the context of the larger discourse, rather than just with isolated utterances.
Download the "Rhythm Lesson Plan" at the top of this section. Identify the various stages of the lesson and the purpose for each. What other activities could you use to help your learners use English stress and rhythm correctly?
Video of Non-native English Speaker - Nafeth
Palestine-"B"alestine
Pay close attention to his sentence stress.
"p" & "b" and sentence stress
Pause the video before the instructor identifies his primary pronunciation problems. Watch again if you need to and take notes on the areas of difficulty. Then watch as the instructor coaches his on these areas. What techniques would you like to try with your learners?
We are starting to establish new laws.
[tapping on the table to prevent monotone sentence or clapping]
-word stress, emphasis, vowel accuracy (common challenges for Arabic speakers)
4- Suprasegmentals: Intonation
Using Authentic Materials to Teach Intonation (37 Kb)
Intonation
Basic Intonation Patterns
We use several basic intonation patterns in English. As you say the sentences below, listen to how your voice rises and falls to different levels of pitch. It can be helpful to think of a scale like the one below, with 1 being the lowest pitch and 4 being the highest. If you are having difficulty hearing the intonation pattern, try saying the sentence into a kazoo or humming it. These techniques also work well for demonstrating intonation patterns to learners.
4____________________
Rising-Falling
2-3-1
My name's Patsy.
Rising
Are you a teacher?
(2-3); 2-3; 2-3-1
We need rice, beans, and tomatoes. (lists)
2-3 or 2-1
tag questions
You're from Minnesota, aren't you? (rising to indicate uncertainty)
Ok, now it's your turn. Say the following sentences and see if you can identify the intonation patterns.
Here's an activity that focuses on English stress and intonation. How might you adapt it for use with your learners?
Authentic Materials for Intonation Practice
It is particularly effective for learners to hear and practice intonation patterns in an authentic context. Download the chart "Using Authentic Materials to Teach Intonation". What ideas have you already tried? What ideas could you add to the chart?
Video of Non-native English Speaker - Sanutm
Lack of...
Pay close attention to her intonation. Pause the video before the instructor identifies her primary pronunciation problems. Watch again if you need to and take notes on the areas of difficulty. Then watch as the instructor coaches her on these areas. What techniques would you like to try with your learners?
5-Videos
Now that we've reviewed some of the primary segmental and suprasegmental features of English, let's wrap up this unit by seeing how well you can use this information to identify and address pronunciation issues.
As you watch the following videos of non-native English speakers, try to identify their primary barriers to intelligibility.
If you were working with these learner, what would you focus on?
How would you help them improve their English pronunciation?
Video of Non-native English Speaker - Tesfaye
Watch this video clip of Tesfaye, a native Oromo speaker, and try to identify what pronunciation issues affect his intelligibility. Pause the video before the instructor identifies his primary pronunciation problems. Watch again if you need to and take notes on the areas of difficulty.
1. Sentence
Then watch as the instructor coaches his on these areas. What techniques would you like to try with your learners?
Lesson 10a - INTONATION - English Pronunciation,from youtube.com
Video of Non-native English Speaker - Khiet
1. Word endings
Other Problems:
Then watch as the instructor coaches him on these areas. What techniques would you like to try with your learners?
Video of Non-native English Speaker - Antonio
"d", "ed", etc..
Then watch as the instructor coaches him on these areas. What techniques would you like to try with your learners?
[used a mirror]
Other Problems
You will need the free Windows® Media Player® to watch this video clip.
ONLINE DISCUSSION
4- ONLINE DISCUSSION
Pronunciation Case Study: Supra-segmentals!
This week's discussion board assignment is just like last week's, only I'd like you to focus your attention on a non-native speaker's SUPRA-SEGMENTAL pronunciation issues (not just sounds, but intonation, rhythm, word stress, sentence stress, pitch, etc.) Instructions are repeated here:
*
Choose one learner or another non-native speaker (could be a co-worker, family member, neighbor, anyone with a non-native accent) and reflect on the following areas:
o
Wow, this has probably been the hardest assignement so far in the two ESL courses (this one is #2) I've taken so far. Pronunciation has been probably the most challenging activity (along with Grammar) growing-up as I was born and raised to parents from the Philippines with "obvious" English accents. They do teach English in the schools of the Phillippines, but it's not always clear. Watching the videos has been actually frustrating for me to pin point the "supra-segmental pronunciation issues" (e.g. intonation, rhythm, word stress, etc...). Growing-up in St. Paul, I have been so used to hearing all types of English accents, which I've learned to pick-up what people say despite the "unclearness" of "perfect" English.
I had a difficult time to choose my "subject" for this particular assignment. I was hoping to do this on a former high school classmate of mine from Vietnam, but wasn't able to find the time for each other to have a longer conversation. Due to the Holiday 4-day weekend vacation, I missed my weekly ESL classes (Wednesday evenings), so I wasn't able to observe our majority Russian-speaking students. Since I'm currently in my hometown (St. Paul), I "tried' to observe my former high-school classmate's wife (I'll call her "Maria"). She happened to just immigrate to America recently (beginning of this year) from the Philippines, which I thought would be an excellent individual to observe.
Briefly describe the learner you have chosen (please change his/her name). Include his/her language background, age, time in the United States/other countries, educational background, and any other important information needed to understand his/her pronunciation.
o
"Maria" speaks the Filipino dialect of Illocano (one of the 70+ dialects in the Philippines), but understand the national language of "Tagalog". She recently (2 years ago) graduated from "Hotel Management" from a 2-year college close to her hometown of Illocos Norte, Philippines (northern coastal town of the main island of Luzon). Currently, she is 22 years young and has been getting help from her Filipino-American husband (my former high school classmate).
What are this learner's strengths in English pronunciation? What are the most pressing issues for improvement in English pronunciation as far as SUPRASEGMENTAL ISSUES (intonation, rhythm, word stress, pitch, etc.)
o
Maria is ahead of most immigrants coming to America as she has learned English most of her life. They start teaching English in the Phillippines to children at a very young age, but with English accents from native Filipinos. I asked my friend what does "Maria" (wife) need to improve on. He told me her prounciation of vowels and speaking skills overall. I tried to "diagnose" other problems as well by having her "conversate" more. I did this by "interviewing" her-asking the questions above (what school did you go to?, why did you choose the particular field/major in college?). I was then able to somewhat find out what her "suprasemental issues" were: intonation, word stress, sentence stress, pitch, etc. I kind of wished I had a camcorder or audio recorder, but she was already nervous just by me asking these questions. Sometimes my friend had to repeat my questions to her-even though I was speaking English! However, as we went conversated longer, she felt more comfortable.
What is the impact of this learner's pronunciation? As far as you can tell, are there intelligibility problems, academic issues, social or interactional concerns, self-image/confidence issues, or other areas of this learner's life that are impacted by his/her pronunciation?
o
I'm not exactly sure what has been the impact of "Maria's" pronunciation, but from previous conversations-she has been having challenges in finding a job. Ironically, Maria and my friend live across the street from a Holiday Inn (hotel). They have "tried" applying there, but they said that the hotel isn't hiring (factors could be the "economy" too). I told my friend and "Maria" that speaking English well will help her find a "good" job, so I encouraged them to keep working on this. From my perspective, I shared with them (close friends) that "Maria" needs more practice in using English is "social or interactonal" environments. I even encouraged my friend to have his wife practice it in social context environments, such as: ordering food in a "drive-thru", checking out items in a "grocery store", etc...
What are some concrete steps you could take to help this learner with his/her pronunciation? Suggest specific techniques and activities you would use.
As I noted above, some other steps I encouraged my friend to help with his wife's pronunciation is watching movies (too make learning English more fun!). I told them to watch movies in English caption and stop, pause, rewind, etc.. to play back and repeat particular lines in the movie. I tried to give her practice using their family's labtop computer (with internet connection) by playing a music video (from youtube.com) with captions. Unfortunately, we had some technical problems-we weren't able to play the music video. From my own-family experience (some common Filipino pronunciation problems), I shared some common "letters" (e.g. "p") and had "Maria" pronounce "porch" and "porche" (shared a Filipino pronunciation joke too with these words!).
I decided to "google" some other commone ESL problems amongst Filipinos and found this...
"Yes, it can be understood but it can lead to confusion as well. Generally, the following differences can be noticed:
'V' is pronounced as 'B'. Television sounds like Telebision.
'F' is pronounced as 'P'. Fan sounds like Pan.
'TH' is often pronounced as 'D'. There sounds like Dare.
Sometimes the 'T' at the end of certain words are not clearly emphasized. So when one says can, they really mean to say can't.
Although a large majority of older Filipinos have such accents, the new generation of Filipino accent/English have improved.
11 months ago ...."
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071205200136AAeM1Eh
Some possible exercises that I could do suggested from the videos in this Unit would be using a mirror-show the use of the upper teeth (e.g. Antonio-Spanish), use 4 point scale
[hand scale], have her watch a "Sound of Music" scene (doe, rey, me, etc..), tapping on the table, or using paper, paper towel, or kleenex in front of mouth-less puff of air when pronouncing "b" and/or "v".
Please make at least 2 original, substantive entries. Make at least two responses to each of your group member's postings. (In your responses, address their analysis of the learner’s pronunciation and make additional suggestions for ways to help him/her address problem areas.) Please complete your postings by 5 pm on Monday, December 1, 2008.
5-Videos
Now that we've reviewed some of the primary segmental and suprasegmental features of English, let's wrap up this unit by seeing how well you can use this information to identify and address pronunciation issues.
As you watch the following videos of non-native English speakers, try to identify their primary barriers to intelligibility.
* If you were working with these learner, what would you focus on?
COURSE CONTENT
1- Classroom Activity
Peer Feedback Rubric (29 Kb)
REMINDER
ASSIGNMENT: Classroom Activity
Design an oral skills activity that demonstrates your understanding of the instructional principles we have discussed in class. This activity should be focused on oral skills (listening and speaking). Note: you do NOT need to create an entire lesson, simply one activity that would take roughly 20-30 minutes of class time.
For this written assignment:
a. I'm focusing on one setting, which will be visiting a hospital/clinc (see GoodnewsEverybody: Health). The student will be assessed on how he/she does in the "pre-admission" (registration) process, for reasons stated as such:
"The more you can read and fill out ahead of time, the easier the admitting process will be. It will also give you more time to digest the information and to ask questions and get answers. The hospital also has copies of rules, regulations, and statements of patient rights for you to read. Many hospitals now make these forms and information available through their Web sites. Contact the hospital admitting or administrator's office to find out the easiest way for you to get this material in advance."-CalHospitalCompare.org
As I stated in the Discussion Board in Unit #2, which Terri commented that she planned to have a nurse come to her class as part of a "Medical" lesson topic in one of her classes...
3. Learners make choices about content and classroom activities.
"I've gotten feedback from the local community (e.g. committee groups) of the need of "hospital terminology" pertaining to the admittance and registration process. I was able to witness it myself when I was taking a friend to the emergency room. While waiting, I saw one of my past student (manager of the dairy farm now) and his wife during a hospital visit. The doctor was asking the nurse to contact the medical translator (Spanish-English) by phone to be able to communicate with each other. I notice how much time it took to communicate, which I can't imagine if it was more of a serious emergency situation. After this experience, I came up with this "rough draft" "Assessment Instrument" (my final paper from my last online class-ESL Assessment 6638) to evaluate students' hospital registration process using different language forms (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). I actually got copies of the local hospital's registration (a visual aid or "realia" material) form for new patients. I then have my student's fill it out and then evaluate or assess how they do. I've done this with a couple of students and realize there needs some further research and experimentation-evaluation on this particular class activity. I might possibly pursue this further to be my final "oral class exercise" project to tune-up this "rough draft" that can be applicable for current-future students' "real-life" English skills."
I'm hoping this activity will help students better explain to the nurse, doctor, and/or any medical staff their reason for their hospital visit. Before this "oral" role play exercise activity, I'll be teaching-health, medical, etc.. related terminology vocabulary. Also, there will be non-oral exercises, such as filling-out a hospital admittance-registration form (written and reading skills-using a realia).
c. -Students Profile: Many of our students (Mexico, Brazil, and Eastern Europen bloc nations) in the Morris Literacy Project are "migrant famers" that work in the surrounding area farms doing various work (e.g. dairy, hog, and typical field work). All of our students have been adults (late teens to the elderly); however, we currently have a student is only a teen. They like to come in groups (Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, etc..) , so the language barrier hasn't been a challenge. However, we they don't come in groups, they somehow work cohesively together.
The abilities/skills/instructional objectives are to be assessed:
Speaking
2. Describe the activity in detail in relation to the principles you have learned in class. In other words, describe both what will happen, and why you designed it that way.
I design this activity this way to see what changes can be made to improve this type of assessment in the future. See if we can develop some form that ESL students can bring in their next "hopital" or "doctor" visit to better communicate their reason of visit.
Below is a list of all the tasks that the student will have to carry out:
1. Know how to answer "Pre-Admission" Evaluation...
3. Explain how you will provide feedback to your students and assess their performance.
I'll be using a rubrics (Oral) , which I have already developed in a previous class. However, I have yet to use it in a classroom session.
4. Predict where you (or your students) might encounter difficulties in the activity, and project how you would address the problems.
Some of the constraints or obstacles that might be experienced are will vary according to the factor(s):
Do NOT submit this assignment via the assignment tab yet! First, you will be assigned to a small group to give and receive input on your activities. I'll post your groupings in the announcements page. Email a description of your activity and supporting materials to your group by Wednesday, December 3. Your peers will suggest ways to tweak the activity to make it as effective, learner-centered and interactive as possible. Provide feedback on your peers’ activities as soon as you can.
You will then reflect on their feedback, consider changes to your activity, and turn in your Classroom Activity Write-Up for grading (via the assignments tab) by Sunday, December 7.
To earn full points, your activity and underlying principles must be clearly presented. Additionally, you need to demonstrate the ability to reflect on your performance as a teacher and that of your students as language learners. Demonstrate that you are able to think critically about your activity and troubleshoot. Finally, the paper must be well organized. Feel free to explore questions you have about your activity or its underlying theoretical concepts.
ASSIGNMENT: Classroom Activity
2- Planning for Teaching and Learning
Lesson Planning
We’ve now examined the features of contextualized and integrated lessons as well as the stages of contextualized, listening, and pronunciation lessons. In this unit we’ll focus on planning for teaching and learning. What factors and issues do we need to consider when developing effective and learner-centered lessons?
I cannot stress enough the value of starting by developing clear lesson objectives that are directly connected to your learners’ needs and goals. These objectives will guide the rest of your planning. As Parrish notes in Chapter 6, it can be easy sometimes to get carried away with developing a series of activities rather than planning a principled coherent lesson. Activities and materials should be determined by objectives, not the other way around. It’s also important to remember that objectives refer to what the learners will be able to do in English as a result of the lesson. Objectives DO NOT refer to what the teacher will do in the lesson.
Effective lessons also incorporate relevant contexts, authentic materials and interactions, and real-life applications that prepare learners to use language outside of the classroom. They maximize student interaction and language production, and minimize teacher talk.
Just as we all have our own unique learning styles, teachers have a variety of planning styles. Some spend hours writing out everything they will say, while others jot down a few notes before class. That being said, new teachers, or experienced teachers working in a new context or with a new group of learners, often benefit from more detailed and extensive planning. Templates can also be very useful, especially if you are new to teaching. You’ve seen models throughout the course so far, and Parrish also illustrates a number of sample templates on pg. 171.
Lesson Planning Considerations
Turn to pg. 164 in Parrish and do Task 6.1
>>Take a moment to gather your thoughts and jot them down on a piece of paper.
Lesson Planning Checklist
Here are some of the primary areas to consider when planning lessons. What else would you add to this list?
*
What will the students accomplish in this lesson? = Learning Objectives
**Carefully review Table 6.1 "Lesson Planning Checklist" on pg. 168-169, Parrish and Table 6.2 on pg. 170, Parrish; refer to them often as you design your Annotated Lesson Plan and provide feedback on your peers' work.
Evaluating Sample Lesson Plans
Turn to pg. 170 in Parrish and do Task 6.2. Use the checklist to evaluate the lessons in Chapter 3. What might you do differently in these lessons?
*see GoodnewsEverybody: Liberal Arts-English "Lesson Planning"
ASSIGNMENT: Annotated Lesson Plan
Annotated Lesson Plan (35% of final grade)
(salsESL6634OralSkillsLessonPlanHealthFinal.doc)
This assignment must be submitted via the assignments tab by Monday, December 22, 2008 at 5 p.m.
Submit an oral skills lesson plan containing the appropriate stages of the type of lesson you choose:
* A contextualized lesson that focuses on a particular area of language (competency, function, vocabulary or grammar) should contain the stages of the contextualized language lesson outlined on page 57 of TAESL.
Include activities that you haven’t previously turned in for our class. Your objectives and students’ levels/background should be stated up front. If your lesson includes audio or videotape, you need not submit them if you include a transcript or detailed description of the text.
Along with your lesson plan, include annotations that demonstrate your knowledge of the principles behind your choices. Incorporate them directly into the body of the lesson plan using a distinctive font. The annotations themselves might look this: “The purpose of this initial activity is to activate learners’ background knowledge about the theme of the lesson so that the listening task is more comprehensible.”)
*~*~*~*~ You will be assigned a partner for peer review of your lesson plan. I'll post your groupings on the announcements page. Email a draft to of your annotated lesson plan and supporting materials to your partner by Saturday, December 13. Provide feedback on your partner’s lesson plan as soon as possible.
You will then reflect on his/her feedback, consider changes to your lesson, and turn in your Annotated Lesson Plan for grading via the assignments tab by Monday, December 22.
To earn full points on this assignment, you will have a minimum of three clear, complete, and principled activities that support your objectives. Your annotations will be accurate and clearly tied to particular aspects of the activities.
3- Teacher and Learner Interactions
Teacher Language
As you read in Parrish, teacher talk refers to the language that teachers use in class. One of the main ways that we can make input comprehensible to our learners is to minimize extraneous teacher talk. If you are currently teaching, try audiotaping one of your classes. (If you are not teaching, try focusing on teacher talk the next time you observe a class.) Listen to and analyze your teacher talk. Are you using a lot of language that isn't really necesary to communicate your message? Do you make side comments that aren't really related to the lesson? Do you find yourself "tourguiding", or narrating every step of the lesson? Especially if you are working with lower level learners, all of this extra language can be extremely overwhelming and confusing. While it's important to still keep our interactions with learners natural, being aware of and minimizing teacher talk can greatly improve the effectiveness of our instruction.
Learner Roles in the Classroom
When trying to maximize learner involvement in your lessons, it's helpful to think of yourself as a facilitator rather then a director. Ultimately, students must take responsibility for and an active role in their own learning. Think about all of the things that teachers typically do that learners could actually do:
*
write on the board
What else would you add to the list? All of these things give learners additional opportunities to use language and allow for increased ownership in the classroom.
Turn to pg. 176 in Parrish and do Task 6.3.
>>Take a moment to gather your thoughts and jot them down on a piece of paper.
***Now, look at the draft of your "Annotated Lesson Plan". What are the roles of the teacher and students?
Is there anything that the teacher is doing that the learners could do instead? Make adjustments to your plan to maximize learner involvement in the lesson.
Giving Directions
Parrish offers two great mottos to keep in mind when giving directions:
"Just do it!" : Model, model, model.
"Less is more." : Keep your oral instructions minimal and simple. Demonstrate rather than giving lengthy instructions. It can be very helpful to think through, write down, and practice the instructions for an activity you are doing for the first time.
Turn to pg. 177 in Parrish and do Task 6.4.
***Now, look at your "Classroom Activity". If you were using this activity with a group of learners, how would you give directions and model the activity? Think about (and write down) the exact words you would use and how you would demonstrate the activity.
Checking for Understanding
You've probably realized that asking "Do you understand?" is usually not an effective way to check for understanding. Instead of asking learners if they understand, have them show you that they understand. Ask checking questions or have them complete tasks that allow them to demonstrate their understanding.
Turn to pg. 180 in Parrish and do Task 6.5.
***Now, look at your "Classroom Activity" or "Annotated Lesson Plan". Identify 5 words used in the activity/lesson that may be new to your learners. How could you check for understanding of those words?
Keep these issues in mind as you provide feedback on your peers' classroom activities and annotated lesson plans.
*
How could they minimize extraneous teacher talk?
DISCUSSION BOARD
2-Lesson Planning and General Questions
Optional: ONLINE DISCUSSION
This discussion forum has been set up as a way to ask questions of the instructor, and also to share your professional wisdom regarding lesson planning. As you are working on this week's unit and developing your lesson plan, use the discussion board to reflect on lesson planning issues, ask questions, and share challenges & insights. You might want to consider:
*
How do you approach lesson planning? How has your approach changed over time?
This discussion is optional. Please drop in and share your own insights, ask questions about Lesson Planning, assignments, or other general questions regarding the course. This is a forum for you to interact with the instructor and each other as you work on your written assignments.
READING ASSIGNMENT
Read Parrish, Chapter 6, Parts II and III, pages 175-185.
COURSES CONTENT
1-Managing Adult ESL Classes
In some ways, adult ESL teachers are very lucky – we generally do not have to deal with many of the behavior and classroom management issues that K-12 teachers do. After all, most adult learners come to class because they are motivated to learn and want to be there! However, the fact that our learners are adults also means that they have complex lives and responsibilities - they must juggle their multiple roles of student, parent, spouse, worker, community member, etc. The result is that life can sometimes “get in the way” of learning, disrupting class attendance and outside study, as adult learners deal with changing work schedules, sick children, broken cars, and housing issues.
Adult ESL instructors face a number of big challenges. Most adult ESL classrooms are “multilevel’ in some sense – in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever taught or observed an adult ESL class that wasn’t multilevel to some degree. Many adult ESL programs have an open-enrollment policy, and learners may enter and leave at any point during the year. Classes may take place in borrowed or shared space rather than in dedicated classroom space. With the pressure of waiting lists and funding limitations, ESL classes are becoming larger and larger, sometimes with as many as 30 people in a classroom.
Although these issues certainly present challenges, if handled with creativity and a positive attitude, they also can bring benefits and richness to your classroom. Enlist your learners as partners in finding ways to address challenges that may come up and making the most of your time together.
2-Multilevel Classes
Strategies for Teaching a Multilevel Class (25 Kb)
What does multilevel mean to you?
-different English levels: Beginning, Intermediate, Advance, etc..
Before going on with this lesson, take a few minutes to brainstorm as many characteristics of a multilevel class as you can and write them on a piece of paper.
Working with Multilevel Classes
What does multilevel mean? Bell (1991) proposes the following four categories of factors that may contribute to a multilevel class:
1. Previous experience with education
These categories, along with factors teachers need to consider, are listed in Table 7.1 in Parrish, pgs. 191-192.
Which of the above factors have played an important role in the classes you have taught or observed?
-Native language: diverse-Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian/Eastern Bloc
How did you (or the teacher you observed) handle them?
-Fortunately, we have some volunteers to teach them in separate groups when there are a "diversity" in some nights. However, we do get them all-together at times, which we do a "simple" group-activity that doesn't cause too much confusion in each groups.
Which strategies have been most effective?
-As I write, this I would like to start use a new lesson I designed (Sharing of own cultural background for the annual book the Minnesota Literacy Council publishes). Thus, they can learn from one another.
Strategies for Teaching a Multilevel Class
* Be a facilitator rather than trying to micromanage. Invest some energy into cultivating leadership in your learners to help you conduct the class.
What other strategies would you add to this list????
You can download this list for future reference at the top of this section.
3- Evaluating and Selecting Textbooks
There are many benefits to using textbooks. They can provide structure, consistency and a sense of progression. Students often expect textbooks to be part of their studies and can use them for independent study and review. Textbooks can provide teachers with guidance on course and activity design, and they can help cut down on preparation time. No one textbook is going to meet all of your learners’ needs, though. You will need to supplement and adapt all texts you use, and you will probably only want to use the parts of each text that correspond to your learners’ goals and interests.
Most adult ESL instructors benefit from the use a textbook or a variety of textbooks, but remember…a textbook is NOT a curriculum, and it should be only ONE of your instructional tools! Realia and authentic, teacher-generated, and learner-generated materials also have very important roles in your classroom.
What do you look for in a textbook? Brainstorm all of the considerations you make and then identify the five criteria that are most important to you.
Take a few minutes and write them down.
Textbooks and Principles of Learner-Centered Teaching
When choosing a textbook, it’s important to consider to which it is responsive to the learners you are working with. Ask yourself the following questions:
* Does the text include activities that activate learners’ prior knowledge about the context or theme of the unit? Are there warm-up and previewing tasks?
From Parrish, Table 8.2, pg. 229
ASSIGNMENT - You do NOT need to turn this in.
Supplementing Textbooks
Choose a unit or a lesson from the textbook you evaluated. Then complete the following tasks:
*
Make a list of realia and visual aids you could use with this unit/lesson.
READING ASSIGNMENT
-2
Read Parrish, Chapter 7, Managing ESL Classes, pgs. 189-222.
-3
Read Parrish, Chapter 8, Selecting Instructional Materials and Resources, pgs. 223-255.
Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL)-"..refers to the English needed to interact with English-speaking customers or employees, to fill out job applications, and to use manuals or catalogues. The goal of VESL is to teach the language required for successful participation in training programs and for job performance. Occupational language demands are emphasized, such as training clerical workers to order supplies or to take phone messages, and occupational contexts are used to teach the English needed for employment or for successful participation in vocational classes. ..."
ONLINE DISCUSSION
1-
Ways of Managing Adult ESL Classes
What ideas do you have for managing the following aspects of adult ESL classes?
*
Adapting an activity for multilevels in class
Wow, reading Part I of Chapter #7 was very helpful! This was a popular common "challenge" with my peers in my last online-class, which was a discussion that never had a "real" answer. The one answer that Parrish gave was, "..to identify and negotiate shared goals.." (pp. 192). Yes, "...we can never meet everyone's needs all of the time.." (pp. 192). I don't want to waste the students' time when they come to our weekly (Wednesday nights @6pm-9pm) classes (we used to meet twice a week, but we change it due to recent patterns of attendance), so I want to make sure they leave what they came for. Recently, I've came up with a list of 10 different lesson topics (e.g. Health-Doctor Visit, Finding Your Way-Reading a Map, Cultural Gestures-Idioms, Grammar, Pronunciation, etc...) , which I felt are "learner-centered". After reading this particular section on this chapter, I'm going to work on various options (beg-inter-advance level) to give to students to pick.
The program I help coordinate (Morris Literacy Project) have students from various parts of the world (mostly from Brazil, Mexico, and European-Eastern-Bloc nations); diverse occupations (e.g. stay home "mom", Dairy Farm workers, Pig farm, etc..); and different educational levels (e.g. non h.s. grad, h.s. grad, college grad, etc..).
I also forgot to add that when students do ask me questions or suggest a particular lesson/topic that I can't quickly answer. I take note and e-mail them related resources, which I get a common theme; thus-a new lesson topic!
*
Handling open enrollment
We get an average of 2-3 students each week, which has varied from 12 as the highest to 0 as the lowest! Each week varies, which I have to come to class prepared to teach any lesson in my "back-up plan". Keeping track of learner progress hasn't been a big problem as we have a portfolio folder for each student. In these folders, we have a "short-term" goal sheet that we record what the students did the last time they were here. For example, when we use the Rosetta Stone software program, we "try" to record each lesson-level and the score they get. When they come back (next week or month later, etc...), we both know where we should start. The biggest challenge for our particular program is the "unknown" (e.g. students coming, numbers, etc...). We (my supervisor that is a paid staff through the community education program here) teach/tutor both the GED and ESL program, so we can get "unexpectedly" swamp of number of GED and ESL students. Thus, we get a low student attrition and we sometimes never hear (could be from various factors due to our large "migrant" working farm community) from our students ever again. From the section we read (Chapter 8), a tip I would like to apply is-"Develop...a set of visuals depicting needs and interest that they can choose from" (pp. 206)...the lesson themes I've picked-out already.
Working with learners with disabilities or physical handicaps
*
Managing large classes
*
Setting up the classroom
I was actually about to skip this section in this chapter (#8) because we really don't have our "own" classroom. We share our room with the local "Early Child Development" class (we need to hide our food/snacks-especially the "sweets" from the kids-we have a closet and we put everything in the top shelf). Since it was a small section, I read it! I'm glad I did because I found a great tip-"Display projects completed by previous classes and the current class" (pp. 203). Since we can't display any of our class-related material, I'll develop a portfolio 3-ring binder displaying (w/plastic sheets) this. I teach Sunday School at my local church, which I easily forget the names of the children. I decided to get a 3-ring binder to collect the childrens' photos and information (e.g. interests, favorite color, etc...) about each individual. I'll see if I can use this same idea for my ESL students (e.g. maybe not their favorite color)!
Managing pair and group work
In the discussion board, I've created a thread for each area. Choose at least 3 areas and add your ideas. You might want to discuss strategies you've tried or ideas from the chapter that you'd like to implement in your classroom.
Please post at least 3 original substantive comments, and at least 2 responses to classmates' postings. Complete postings by 5 pm on Saturday, December 13, 2008.
3-
Evaluating Textbooks
Use the textbook evaluation checklist on pg. 230 of Parrish to carefully evaluate a core, integrated-skills, or oral skills textbook. If you are currently teaching, evaluate the text with your current learners and teaching context in mind. If you are not teaching, consider using the text with the learners in the class you observed.
On the discussion board, address the following areas:
A skills textbook that I've, currently, and continue to use is the "Real-Life English: A Competency-Based ESL Program for Adults...
Why or why not? Would you recommend the text to your colleagues?
2. How could you modify and supplement the text to make it more learner-centered?
I would modify and supplement this particular core/basal series text (already "somewhat" done so with prior online course w/ new ideas from the chart-Table 8:3 on pp. 230) to make it more "learner-centered" by:
Review the whole text page by page and pick-out the particular lesson activities or exercises that identifies your paricular students. The students in our area (Morris, Minnesota) are mostly "migrant workers", so "looking for a job" would not be a particular lesson for them. Unless, they state this desire of a "career-change". For example, in "Unit: 9-Employment", there are 5 different sections (1-Identify kinds of jobs, 2-Give your work experience and skills, 3-Read help-wanted ads, 4-Complete job applications, and 5-Understand safety warnings) in this particular unit. In my "new lesson plan" (for an online course prior to this) I created recently, I decided to choose only section #2. Along with this text book, I've picked "content-based text" materials or realia (depending on their particular field of work-e.g. dairy farm workers => dairy farm terminology online; magazines available too that I have yet to use). However, my "current" students (ones that been in my classroom for close to a year or more...) are working with "pigs", which I have in the past offered them opportunities to learn this vocational English as a second language (VESL) topic, but they have refused. Instead (just recently the past couple of months), they have chosen other topics; ironically-"pronunciation" (suggest my secondary text-"Rosetta Stone" Workbook-supplements the software program) and "grammar" (suggest my secondary text-"All Star" Workbook of McGraw Hill Publication), "idioms", etc...
To make the learners relate to some of the given activities or exercises, I'll replace their (learners') name with the name given in the text. For example in Unit 1: Personal Communication-"Where are you from, Mei?; I'm from China. I'm Chinese, etc.." I would change this to-"Where are you from, Yuiry; I'm from the Ukraine. I'm Ukrainian, etc.." The workbook does have examples of application forms (Unit 1: e.g. Library Card, ID card, etc..). However, I'll probably use some actual "realia" materials (e.g. use local library card application) for practice. Lastly, Unit: 2 Our Community has examples of street maps, but I've already got actual local City of Morris maps (realia) from the Chamber of Commerce (Tourism Office) or found in local White-Yellow Phone Directory Pages.
Please post at least 2 original substantive comments, and at least 2 responses to classmates' postings. Complete postings by 5 pm on Saturday, December 13, 2008.
Tips
Oral Communication (2 of 8): True-False Cards
Subject: different backgrounds...Re: Spoken vs Written language
Hi Ken,
It's good to see you again (took classes last quarter)! I work with young adults with Aspergers-Autism and I'm trying to apply my ESL (volunteer one night a week) teaching skills with my "daytime" paid-job. I agree, the way you speak to them is different, which with any individual (depending on their background: social, cultural, age, mental, etc...). I'm trying to teach this young adult with Aspergers to say full sentences, which is very challenging. It seems like I'm able to teach easier with music, which would come handy in an ESL class too!
*see UMMAlpha: Immigrants
Worth a Visit
In a Word document, write two "burning questions" you have about teaching listening and speaking to adult ESL students.
I'll compile these from everyone, and hopefully your questions will be addressed during the course!
Please submit your two questions by Sunday, October 26 at 5 pm.
Unit #2
Watch the video of a group of learners participating in a foreign language lesson. Imagine that you are in the classroom with them and participate in the activities to the extent you can.
When you've finished the lesson, reflect on the experience through the discussion board activity and your first assignment.
Download and print the Word doc "Components of Integrated Language Lessons". It's just below the section title at the top of the page.
Take a few minutes to brainstorm the functions, skills, grammar, vocabulary, and cultural compentencies needed for each competency listed.
*see pp. 58 Ch.3
You do NOT need to turn this in.
Grammar Lesson (40 Kb)
Lesson Analysis (25.5 Kb)
But when we talk about "communicative" language teaching, we are looking at language study differently. Language study becomes a vehicle for language use, for real-life application. We are studying with clear purpose. The language classroom is not a place where a language is simply analyzed and drilled, it is a place where we prepare to live and function in that language.
In many ways, we are lucky to teach in the U.S. Our students are already living in the target language culture, and many of them have abundant opportunities to practice their English daily. What we teach can be immediately practical and holds real-life benefits for our students.
One way I like to think about the ESL classroom is that it is the "safe place" to take risks, gain confidence, and practice before going "out into the world" to use English. Our classrooms need to, as closely as possible, mirror the real-life English needs of our students.
Parrish writes, "We explore activities that promote natural use of language so that learners gain confidence in using English in the safe environment of the classroom. As with any type of lesson, teaching begins with understanding your learners' strengths, wants, and needs" (p. 51).
One way to create and maintain meaning in our classes is to keep lessons contextualized. This means that we strive to find real-life themes that our students are interested in and need, and we integrate language skills into those themes.
Here's a definition from Parrish, p. 54:
Contextualized Language Lessons-
"Lessons in which the teacher focuses on a particular language competency, function, grammar point, or set of vocabulary used in real-world contexts. While each lesson you teach may have a particular language focus (e.g. calling in sick to work, making polite requests, talking about the weather, or using the simple past tense), many skills and areas of language are integrated into each lesson."
1. Download the 3 Word documents at the top of this section:
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Grammar Lesson
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Functional Lesson
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Lesson Analysis
2. Review the Grammar Lesson Plan and the accompanying materials. Then use the Lesson Analysis questions to examine the lesson more closely. You do not need to turn this in - it is a tool for you to use in understanding the components of a contextualized language lesson.
3. Review the Functional Lesson Plan and the accompanying materials. Then use the Lesson Analysis questions to examine the lesson more closely. You do not need to turn this in - it is a tool for you to use in understanding the components of a contextualized language lesson.
4. Reflect on your observations through the Discussion Board activity below.
* What areas of language does she teach?
Author: B, Meghan
Subject: Teacher's demeanor goes a long way
"
This teacher's goofy, humorous and almost flirtatious approach in the classroom really seemed to make students feel comfortable with trying out the language. She was up in front of the class, making weird eating noises, playing two roles which could make her seem like she had some kind of personality disorder and deepening her voice to seem like a man. Some students are afraid they will make fools of themselves when trying out a language for the first time. By behaving kind of strangely and boisterously in the classroom, the teacher helps to create an environment in which students will get out of their own comfort zones and and take a risk by trying the language. They might think, "If my teacher can act like a goof, I'm willing to put myself out there enough to the point where I might make a mistake and look a bit foolish."....
Subject: Teacher adjusts after checking for learning
"To check learning after repeating and repeating a new phrase or word as a whole class, the teacher gestured for individual students to repeat the word to check pronunciation or she would ask the question to the student to illicit the proper response from them. If it seemed the students hadn't quite gotten the word right, she repeated more and then asked individual students to repeat again. I thought it was really cool when at the end of the lesson she began omitting words in the dialogue a couple at a time as the students role-played for the class. When she first started this and the students simply read the board I questioned the value this exercise had. But as she began replacing words with blanks and pictures, it became clear it was a very valuable exercise because she could check to see that they actually knew the words and weren't just repeating them...
*cloze exercise (see Week #5-ch5.5 GoodnewsEverybody: LA-English: Assessments)
Author: P, Adrienne
Subject: understanding content
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The teacher used nice, large picture cards/visuals as well as props (mustache/shawls) that did exactly what she intended for introducing new vocabulary/concepts. They were fun, everyday things that everyone could recognize/relate to. Equally important was how the teacher used her voice, her body, gestures, facial expressions and enthusiasm to illustrate new words and new ideas/dialog. She was extremelly animated and really fun to watch. Her movements were clear and everything she did was in context and directly related to what she was introducing."
Author: B, Meghan
Subject: Re: Advantages and disadvantates to look for..Re: Interacting with peers
"
Though this can be somewhat complicated, one way I have tried to shuffle up the "usual pairs" is to use vocab cards of commonly paired items, like salt and pepper, sun and moon, hot and cold. Ahead of time, I think of what I want the pairs to be, make sure to give paired items to the pairs I want and then have students mingle to find their partner. Doing a couple demonstrations of this at first is a good idea because sometimes students don't get at first that they have to keep their identity a secret and if they are the moon, they might ask their class mates, "Do you live in the sky?" to find their pair, the sun. It usually doesn't take long to do this and it's a fun, kind of sly way to mix up the pairs."
Author: P, Erin
Subject: Language Experience
"...The written paper handouts that the teacher provided with student in the classroom will also prove valuable as outside class aids to work with. I also was amazed how the instructor spoke no English until the end of the lessons. Since these were English speaking student learning another language, it might have been tempting to use a little English. Perhaps by not doing this the students work harder to understand?..."
1. Learners' knowledge and experience are validated.
Author: O, Jerehmy
Subject: Learners Prior Knowledge and Experience Validated
"
I think it is hugely important to validate our student's prior knowledge and experience. Often my students are coming to class with already a number of strikes against them. Either they are refugees forced to look for a better life, or drop-outs of the mainstream school, or here, bedu who feel they really don't have any place in a school and feel somewhat ashamed that they can't even read their own language.
However, the reality is that they each are bringing their own unique skills, abilities, and experiences to the table as they sit in my class. No matter what they have been told, what they think, or what society "pins" them with, they deserved to be empowered and respected for who they are and what they have, not what they don't have.
In my experience, once my students begin to feel that they do have some assets to bring to the table and that hose assets are recognized they are more engaged and more positive about learning."
2. Learners have active roles in the classroom.
3. Learners make choices about content and classroom activities.
Author: P, Erin
Subject: Listening and Teaching to Students Needs - Authentically
"
I do believe that it is important for teachers to actively listen to students and assess the needs of teaching and learning in relationship to the learners needs. Through through this assessment it is important that the lesson and instructor both authentic. I know sometimes this proves to be very difficult when there is a great degree of diversity of cultures and well as levels of literacy in the classroom. One example of an exercise that I helped with was the concept of calling in sick. We were originally working on a life skills unit that focused on what it meant to be a "good' employee. Because not everyone in the class was job seeking or currently working the teacher wanted to expand on the calling in sick concept. We discussed the need for this function and why it is important, what skills are necessary and the appropriate language to be used. We began with the task of calling school when you are sick. This was something that all students had in common, something that the school really want the student to do! The teacher/volunteered role played and also interacted with student volunteers. Then we looked at how the same skills could be applied to calling in sick to work, calling in sick for a scheduled appointment. By the end of the session each student was to role play the type of call they would most likely need to make. The language structure for each scenario was very similar, so transference could easily occur. We encouraged students to make a short list of phone numbers they might need to call in the event that they were sick."
7. Teachers use authentic language in their interactions with learners.
8. Learners acquire strategies that help them learn inside and outside of the classroom without the help of a teacher.
*see GoodnewsUSA: South Dakota
Choose 2-3 of the above characteristics that strike you as particularly interesting. Go to the thread in the discussion board for each of the 2-3 you’ve chosen.
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If you are currently teaching, provide examples of things you are doing in your classroom that correspond to each of the characteristics you've chosen. In what areas are you most responsive to your learners' needs? What are some areas that would benefit from further research and experimentation in your classroom?
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If you are not teaching, identify a few ways you may be able to respond to each of the characteristics you've chosen.
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Browse the other threads throughout the week.
Please post least 2 original, substantive entries and at least 1 response to a classmate's posting. Please complete your postings by 5pm, Monday, November 3, 2008.
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What techniques or activities do you think are particularly effective?
Author: M, Ken
Subject: Functional Lessons
"In my learners case, I imagine that I would want to give this exercise a critical reading objective by giving them actual examples of an apartment complex's complaints policy and asking them to discuss how each one discouraged or encouraged residents to file complaints. "
4-Read Parrish, Chapter 6, Planning for Teaching and Learning, Part I, pages 163-174.
In preparation for next week's unit, read Parrish, Chapter 4, Developing Speaking and Listening Skills, pages 89-121.
Download and read the article at the top of this section, "Keeping It Real."
(salsESL6634OralPaper1.doc)
This assignment must be submitted by Sunday, November 2, 2008 at 5 pm.
Reflect upon the foreign language immersion experience you observed in the video. Integrate your observations with the Second Language Acquisition concepts you learned in ESL 6631 or review TAESL Chapter 1, Part II. Describe how the instructor’s approach modeled (or failed to model) the principles we have discussed so far. Discuss your experience in terms of these issues:
• What techniques and strategies did the instructor use to make the input comprehensible?
The techniques and strategies the instructor used to make the input comprehensible were a variety of ways (mostly speaking and listening). The language areas she taught were: Speaking and listening through the repetition drills as large group-mostly in the beginning. Pronunciation-how to greet people in Farsi. Reading from what she wrote on the blackboard. Also, more reading and then writing through the worksheets she handed out, which the students can use as "homework" to continue what was learned in the classroom. In addition, below are some of my perspective that I shared on the discussion board:
The kinds of interaction or interactionism (Ch. 1 pp. 15) that took place was a mix, which helped made the input comprehensible (many samples stated above) . First, she started with "teacher-student(s)". Second, she had "student-student(s)" interacting with the greeting exercise. Third, she went back to "teacher-student(s)". Fourth, she mixed all the above with the "material-student(s)". Overall, she got the classroom's attention pretty much the whole class session! Mixing it up prevents the student(s) from getting bored or sleeping in class! She would pass the material to various students throughout the classroom, so she made sure each student were paying attention! After using all the "flash cards", she got all the students to interact one another again. As the students worked together, she would walk around the classroom to get that "teacher-student(s)" interaction at the same-time. This gave the student(s) an opportunity to ask the teacher for any clarification or questions. I remember from our MLC Volunteering Course, the teacher needs to "float" around the classroom to give the rest of the students a chance to ask her questions. I notice she tried to balance the time with the individuals and not spending too much time with one particular group of students.
• How did your experience support or defy Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis?
-I personally would do a "half-time" break with food and beverages. This would help "water" any dry throats and give another "icebreaker" for student(s)-teacher to get to know one another more. However, I notice there was a "break" in the video editing, so there could've been a break too! As I watched it towards the end (58:00), I notice disposable cups on chairs throughout the classroom.
-Back in my high school, we would site with friends or people we are familiar with. In our ESL classes, we tend to have students that speak similar languages to be close together. The disadvantage of this is they might start speaking the same language to each other and maybe talking about a topic not related to the lesson. This occurred back in high school too, which I've considered myself "guilty" of doing this too-we were teenagers! My suggestion would getting the class to sit with someone they don't know and then go split into groups from there.
To earn full points, your paper must demonstrate your understanding of the theoretical concepts from the readings and class discussions by integrating them with specific examples from the foreign language lesson. The paper should be clear and well organized.
UNIT 3
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Is meaningful, not mechanical
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Is based on a real-life task and authentic use of language
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Maximizes student-student interaction
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Integrates a variety of skills
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The ability to anticipate the direction a conversation will take
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The ability to make oneself understood and negotiate meaning (e.g. ask for clarification, paraphrase what one understands); use compensation strategies (point to something when you don’t know the word for it, describe an object for which you don’t know the name)
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The ability to convey meaning and “get things done” with the language, even with limited words or accuracy
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The ability to pick up on and use visual cues from the environment and other speakers/listeners
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Provide clear guidelines and outcomes for the activity.
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Assign roles according to learners' strengths and abilities. As learners become more familiar with one another and comfortable with fluency activities, they can self-assign roles.
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Use visuals and realia to provide context and add authenticity.
3 types of para practice
1-Repeating in pairs
2-Less controlled-With Materials (pieces of clothing)
3-Information Gap (less controlled-see Ch. 4 pp. 104)-"require that students exchange information (e.g. describe "lost" clothing item) in order to complete a task"
It's easy for me to say after observing the video, but I would recommend the students to sit opposite of each other. When they do this, the picture cards would be hidden in secrecy and the activity would become more purposeful.
A "small-little" scene I notice that may have been culturally offensive was that the teacher physically touched one student's (representing the person that "lost" the clothing material) hand without any warning. I'm sure the teacher wasn't doing this intentionally, but a simple reaction; however, the student might have felt this was threatening???
After reading Chapter #4, a suggestion would be using "Picture Stories" (pp. 103) to show time lapse of pictures of a "lost & found" scenario.
The last pair that role played shown in the video seem to have the most trouble-particularly the student representing the "Lost & Found". He seem to have trouble distinguishing the different colors. This reminded me of one student that was using the Rosetta Stone on the topic of colors. He/she didn't know what all the colors were. We "teachers" sometimes persume a topic like this is something all ESL student know, but they don't! I would reccomend a review of "color" terminology or doing an activity (e.g. "Practice in Meaningful Contexts" pp. 68 in Chapter 3-Color spelling practice: "complete missing letters and color in box with color pencils")
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Might the error cause the student embarrassment?
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Is the learner making a mistake or an error?
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Does the error cause a breakdown in communication?
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What is the stage of the lesson and the purpose of the activity?
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What is the focus of the instruction?
The lesson served as a "real-life" (e.g. problem-posing activity Ch. 4 pp. 106) situation, which happens to many of us. Losing something would very traumatic-especially the value of what was lost and more challenging for someone that speaks in another language. This lesson is very life-applicable, which is a topic-subject any ESL student could use. She was smiling to reduce any "affective filters". Her comments (e.g. "very good", clapping, etc...) after students demonstrated what they learned.
I thought it was a good strategy that the teacher didn't try to finish the sentences quickly on her own, instead she got the students to "participate" and contribute to finishing the sentence. This was a sample of a "set dialogue" that she stated later that was "using their own language"-thus, building their confidence! Three importance: stating a problem, making a request, and reaching a solution. Divides the group into groups of 3-customer, clerk, and observer, which the teacher would go around the classroom to give any feedback. The teacher stated the purpose of the observer, which emphasizes "function" first and then "language" learning becomes an aftermath of this activity. Awhile later (13:20), the teacher stated why she didn't correct grammar or "accuracy" as she wanted the students to work on "fluency"-main focus an role play. The reason for this is to get the students know how to communicate in "real-life" scenarios and grammar can be taught later on. Towards the end of the lesson, the teacher is already having the students do the role play on their own. The teacher stated that role play-classroom learning serves as a "safe practice" environment before the "real world" environment.
The topic of the lesson itself would be very informative. Using the 3 types of para practice:
1-Repeating in pairs
2-Less controlled-With Materials (pieces of clothing)
3-Information Gap (less controlled-see Ch. 4 pp. 104)-"require that students exchange information (e.g. describe "lost" clothing item) in order to complete a task"
Large group (demonstration)->small groups (production-applying what they saw or learned)->large groups (show that they understood-performance)
"Returning Item"
Setting-up the classroom to do role play, which the teacher presented what the topic of the lesson will be. Also, she used her personal experience or life challenge of returning an item back to the store, which many of the students can relate. This shows individual students that they are not the only going through these "life-challenges". I like this because it connects the students with the teacher with this similar problem. Also, the teacher was trying to build their confidence as she had them "actively" contribute to finishing the sentence dialogue on the board the teacher was writing. I would like to apply this to my teaching practice as this will get the students to be more challenged (e.g. congnitive-thought processing) and build my patience to not quickly do it by my own. As the teacher stated, this was helping build their vocabulary. In one of the narratives, the teachers shared how she wanted to transition from "teacher controlled" to "student centered" (or less "teacher controlled") role-play activities.
As shown in the video, the teacher tried to "assess" (e.g. prelistening Ch. 4 pp. 91) their experiences. Also, she wanted to assess the language of the students and also to probably show this "real-life" scenario is a common problem that happens to everybody.
Both:
Both teachers in the videos wants to show students how they can handle these common "real-life" problems-challenges. They both do it by "practicing" in the classroom environment before "applying" it in the real-world environment.
After reading Chapter #4, a suggestion would be using "Picture Stories" (pp. 103) to show time lapse of pictures of a "lost & found" scenario.
The last pair that role played shown in the video seem to have the most trouble-particularly the student representing the "Lost & Found". He seem to have trouble distinguishing the different colors. This reminded me of one student that was using the Rosetta Stone on the topic of colors. He/she didn't know what all the colors were. We "teachers" sometimes presume a topic like this is something all ESL student know, but they don't! I would recommend a review of "color" terminology or doing an activity (e.g. "Practice in Meaningful Contexts" pp. 68 in Chapter 3-Color spelling practice: "complete missing letters and color in box with color pencils").
"Returning an Item"
At first, I didn't understand why the teacher wasn't correcting the students' grammar during the role plays. Then later in the video, she explains why and that is to focus on communicating the purpose of the situation-returning the clothing item. However, the students may never know what they are doing wrong until it is pointed out. In my classroom, I sometimes may never get that chance to "correct" them because they don't come in a regular basis or ever at all. I can see why the teacher shared that grammar can be taught later if the students come to class in a regular basis. I'll try to balance between the two. Also,
I liked how she affirmed one of the students after the role play (10:55) by saying "good Martin" (included name), which made it more personal. I'll try to do this too!
Wow, lots of students! I thought it was so ironic that one of the students "lost" (forgot to get it at the end of class) her jacket (pink) after a lesson on "lost & found". Was this planned by the video production group?-lol!
"Returning Item"
Overall, I like the production of this video as they had the teacher explain each classroom scenario throughout the video. This helped me to stop to take notes of the lesson being taught and write my own reflections.
Forum: Unit 3: Reflection on Oral Skills Videos
Date: Thu Nov 06 2008 22:13
Author: L, Doug
Subject: Re: Doug + Ken + Sal
"
If I am on the right track with this thread, it appeared to me that we saw two different approches to listening and speaking teaching. One video dealt with a set dialogue with lots of repetition and emphasis on correct pronunciation and sturcture. The other dealt with fluency and student-generated dialogue with no emphasis on correct pronunciation.
Perhaps my ah-ha moment is realizing what I would be most comfortable teaching - definitely the fluency-type approach. I like how the students can practice real dialogue - and how it will be more realistic for them. As the instructor in that video said, she can always go back and clean up some of their pronunciation or structural errors at a later time.
One technique that I thought was very good was the fluency-style instructor starting the dialogue lesson with something that was personal to her, and even brought in the gift her husband gave her. I did like the lost and found concept the first instructor modeled, and I would guess her class was not as advanced as the intermediate class was in the third video (thus the need for set dialogue and repetition). I really liked how she used her students own clothing and had them role model the set dialogue to get their own clothes back from lost and found. I guess this resonated with me because in my current line of work I deal with an enormous amount of lost and found clothes!",
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What error correction strategies would you like to try? Why?
Getting back to your question on how I know how to respond to my students. I "try" after getting to know my students well-through my "people skills" (majored in Human Services in college); however, I make mistakes too, so I learn from my past experiences! Yes, everyone wants to be treated with "respect", which teachers need to learn how to do this.
Author: M, Ken
Subject: Re: Doug + Ken + Sal Elaboration
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I'm not expert at this, but what I prefer to find myself doing and hope to do more regularly is to avoid interrupting the learner. Interruption is ineffective; it distracts the speaker. If one leads the learner into a conversation, one should not interrupt the flow of speech to correct errors. If the learner pauses for help, or indicates that he or she is unsure, one can offer a prompt or clarification, but to stop the learner to correct develops a stop-start rhythm which throws the learner off and often annoys him or her. In a drill which is focusing on pronunciation, the learner expects correction, but waits for the teacher to do so. The correction is "natural" to the exchange and does not interrupt it. If the learner just isn't ready for the correction, it's best to let it go, because, again, the pause to correct will become great enough to slow the pace of learning to the point of interrupting the process."
Ken
(salsESL6634OralSkillsReflectionPaper2.doc)
• What seem to be the principles behind the teacher’s choices?
"How many cows should we cull (verb)?"
"How many cull cows do you have for Monday?"
*The teacher asked each student to ask this particular question individually to each other-taking turns around the classroom.
"Mistreatment of a downer cow at Greencastle livestock market, USA 2006. Documented by Animals´ Angels. "
"We need to reduce lameless."
"We need to reduce dead cows."
"We need to reduce navel infection."
"We need to reduce downer cows."
*One of the students boldly asked what downer cows mean after it has been used previously.
"Get out of my way"
UNIT 4
Celebrations Lesson Plan (1,019 Kb)
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ungrammatical utterances: There’s people in the room.
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reduced speech: wanna, gonna
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hesitations, false starts, and fillers such as well, you see, um…
Crazy English handout.doc (30 Kb)
Is this Yours? handout (421 Kb)
Listening Activities Grid.doc (30 Kb)
News Headlines handout.doc (22.5 Kb)
Song handout (454.5 Kb)
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What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
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What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
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How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
-Job Skills
2. Server at a local restaurant
3. Jeff-Data Entry
4. Spanish teacher
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Click here to play audio clip (will open in Windows Media Player).
-"Crazy English" CNN Video Clip
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What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
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How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
"Shanghaiist has collected reports and videos of Li Yang teaching his Crazy English. If you watch the video by muting the sound, you may think you’re watching a religious gathering with fervent worshipers waving their arms in spiritual communion. ..."
"..A few months ago, Li Yang was criticized in the Chinese media after he got 3,000 students to bow down on their knees in front of him in the traditional kowtow to show their "appreciation". But the students say he is popular for his "effective" teaching..."
"Li Yang's method for teaching English
Li Yang's method starts with pronunciation rather than grammar. Li Yang has developed hand symbols to correspond with different vowel sounds. These are effective in teaching pronunciation, especially with large groups of people.
Once the students have mastered pronunciation, they begin to prepare short speeches. The speeches are usually not prepared by themselves, but taken from a book or other source. Speeches are always memorized."
Crazy English
The national scramble to learn a new language before the Olympics.
by Evan Osnos April 28, 2008
"
“Conquer English to Make China Stronger!” Li Yang’s cosmology ties the ability to speak English to personal strength, and personal strength to national power...
To his fans, Li is less a language teacher than a testament to the promise of self-transformation. In the two decades since he began teaching, at age nineteen, he has appeared before millions of Chinese adults and children. He routinely teaches in arenas, to classes of ten thousand people or more..."
-Song
Blue moon Ella Fitzgerald
"Blue Moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue Moon
You know just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for..."
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What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
Calculator-Michael
Sunglasses-Nicole
Book bag-
Hairbrush-Jennifer
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What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
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Use other objects in a classroom: pencil, paper, pen, etc...
Basic Iraq war, Republican Guard, Iraqi geography (e.g. capital city-Baghdad), other terminology (e.g. etc..., U.S. military (e.g. divisions, brigadere, bombardment, Colonel-Collin Powell, Jessica Lynch-Army private soldier, 507 Maintenance Company, etc...), Turkey, Kurds, etc...Minnesota: status quo terminology
-Mission Network News
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"An Immigrant's Story" Video
Country: Somolia
28,000 + immigrated to Minnesota
Languages: Somali, Italian, Arabic, and English
Religion: Islam-5 prayers daily (3 prayers during work-day),
History: Civil War started in 1990
Country: Somolian
Residence: Italy, France, etc..
Education: Masters Degree
*education doesn't help after moving to America because English wasn't her first language, so she had to bag groceries to support 2 kids
Culture:
-no physical contact (e.g. handshake) with the opposite sex, so "Americans" should wait for a Somolian to make the first physical initiative contact
-rude to be called with the "finger"
-workplace:
Country: Russian
"fine"
Television: don't watch talk shows
English: Prefer writing than speaking
Challenges: Status: downsized from home country to new country. Anxiety issues. "Asking questions": repeatedly-e.g. Getting lost in "unknown" world; hopefully will be picked-up by police-lol! Americans don't have to ask questions, but should travel to a foreign country to see what it is like. Generational: older man raised in a "socialist" society, so didn't work hard compared to his co-workers, younger-"lost generation" vacuum between two systems
Country: Vietnam
State Population: 20,000
Families: "very strong". live with parents until they get married (25-26)
Education: very similar to American alphabet-easier to read and write
Holidays: New Year
42Celebrations Lesson Plan.doc (1,019 Kb)
42Celebrations Lesson Plan.pdf (93.92 Kb)
ungrammatical utterances: There’s people in the room.
*
reduced speech: wanna, gonna
*
hesitations, false starts, and fillers such as well, you see, um…
Turn to Parrish, pg. 93 and do Task 4.3.
How do you listen to each of the following?
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question(s) and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
Messages on your answering machine? A weather report? The news? Advertisements? An announcement at a store? An announcement at an airport? Directions from a supervisor? A lecture?
* Listening to confirm predictions
* Listening for gist
* Listening for specific information
* Listening for details
* Making inferences
Analysis of a Listening Lesson
Go to the top of this section and download the plan and handouts for the lesson on Celebrations described in Chapter 4.
Click here to play audio clip (Windows Media Player will open).
Carefully review the lesson plan and the description in the chapter. Identify the 3 primary stages of the lesson and the purpose for each.
Carefully review Table 4.1 Stages of Listening Lessons and Suggested Activities in Parrish, pg. 97-98. While every lesson may not include all of the stages, every listening lesson should begin with prelistening activities and end with a follow-up activity. This table will be an excellent resource for you as you develop your own listening lessons.
Turn to Parrish, pg. 99, and do Task 4.6 in the box below.
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question(s) and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
Authentic texts
Teacher-generated texts
-Early Production Video - OPTIONAL
As you're watching, consider these questions:
· What did you like about this lesson?
· What didn't you like?
· What types of things are students doing throughout the lesson?
· What's the role of the teacher?
· Comment on the progression of the lesson/activities.
· Other reactions?
*
What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
*
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
*
What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
*
How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
<>
Author: B, Meghan
Subject: Song
I once used a song to focus on a grammar point. This made an otherwise boring topic a favorite of my students. Setting up to use a song can be a lot of work, but the enjoyment students get make it totally worth it!
What listening skills are being practiced?
They are listening for specific information. They are not expected to get every word, but pull out the main ideas by matching the inventor with the thing he invented. With the follow-up questions, students are also asked to make inferences about the meaning of the song.
What other prelistening activities could be used with the passage?
What it means to "discover" something might be important to review. Pictures of items mentioned in the song, along with other famous inventions could be shown and students could be asked to name the item and try to name the inventor. Students could also be told that they are about to listen to a song with the names of inventors in it. They could then brainstorm a list of inventors they've heard of to predict content.
What other listening activities could be used with the passage?
Students could be given a picture of the inventions and inventors named in the song. As they are mentioned together in the song, the person with the picture of the name of the invention would have to stand next to the student holding the picture or name of the matching inventor.
What other follow-up activities could be used with the passage?
Students could do internet research on one of the inventions or an inventor and report back to the class at the next meeting.
How could the activities be adapted for lower or higher level learners?
Higher level learners could fill in gaps in the song with the actual words sung.
UNIT #5
1.
What were some highlights from your outside observation of an ESL class? What do you think is worth sharing with someone from class?
Please tell someone about your observation, and give your reaction to what you saw.
Please post your own brief "highlights" of your observation and respond to your partner's posting by next Monday, November 24, 5pm.
2.
Questions for Patsy (optional)
3.
Unit 5: Pronunciation Case Study
1.
Please complete your postings by 5 pm on Monday, November 24, 2008.
As I mentioned in the announcements, try not to get overwhelmed by the new terminology and concepts in this unit. Take your time, ask questions, and enjoy the facinating world of pronunciation instruction!
Turn to Parrish, pg. 108 and do Task 4.8.
Note: This is a "jot box." It's for you to jot down your immediate thoughts on the above questions. Your comments will not be saved, graded, or seen by anyone. Take a moment to gather your thoughts on the above question(s) and put them in writing below. If for some reason you feel you'd like to print what you've written, you'll need to print this screen.
receptionist
Restaurant Server
doctor
nurse
nursing assistant
supervising manufacturing
manufacturing line operator
dental hygenist
truck driver
landscaper
housekeeper
dishwasher
Language.
About 18% of America's population speak a language other than English at home, and 4% of Americans speak little or no English. Because language is closely related to national origin, employers' policies and practices regarding language can create exposure to liability for national origin discrimination. [8]
If English proficiency is required for the effective performance of a job, then such a requirement is permissible. Such fluency requirements, however, must be tailored to each job, and a general requirement applying to a broad range of dissimilar positions is not allowed. For example, a person whose spoken English is good enough to qualify for a waiter's position in a restaurant may not have sufficient written English skills to qualify for a managerial position in the same restaurant, and an employer is permitted to take these differences into account. [9]
As an illustration, the Compliance Manual offers the example of Jorge, a Dominican national, whose spoken English is not good enough to sell home appliances in an exclusively English-speaking community. If Jorge applies for a job, the company should allow him to compete for any other job that does not require proficient English, such as a position in the stock room. [10]
Employers whose needs include fluency in more than one language may assign different employees to those jobs based on language proficiency without running afoul of national original laws. [11]
Some employers have instituted "English-only rules," restricting communication in other languages in the workplace. Such a rule must be justified by business necessity and must ban all languages other than English, not just one or two. Business necessity could include the need to communicate with customers or coworkers who speak only English, or to communicate during emergencies, or to enable an English-only supervisor to monitor her subordinates. An employer thinking of adopting such a rule should make sure to marshal evidence of business necessity. [12]
As an example, the Compliance Manual offers the case of an employer that banned spoken languages other than English throughout the workplace, even in the cafeteria and when employees spoke privately on the telephone during work breaks. The employer tried to justify the policy as promoting better employee relations but could produce no proof that poor relations existed or that speaking English everywhere improved existing relations. This employer violated Title VII. [13]
Foreign accents may be the basis for adverse employment decisions only when the accent materially interferes with the employee's ability to communicate orally in English. Thus, a concierge with a heavy Ghanaian accent cannot demand to remain in his position when numerous customers complain they cannot understand him when he discusses their travel arrangements and gives directions to tourist sites. [14] Generally speaking, however, adverse customer reaction to ethnic or national characteristics affords no lawful basis for employment decisions. [15] "
*see UMMAlpha: Immigrants
* Complete breakdown in communication: Speech is incomprehensible. Pronunciation prohibits functional oral communication.
* Ineffectual speech performance: Speakers are judged to lack credibility and do not inspire confidence in either their knowledge of the content or their persona.
* Negative judgments about personal qualities: Speech patterns result in negative judgments about personality traits and "foreignerism" stereotyping. Errors viewed by native-English speakers as cute, comical, incompetent, not serious, childish (Beebe 1978).
* Anticipatory-apprehensive listener reactions: Native speakers report having uncomfortable apprehensive feelings as they interact with non-native speakers (NNS).
* Pejorative stereotyping: Listeners judge NNS as to their personality, ethnic group, race, social status, even without meeting them (Morley 1993).
So, what is the goal of pronunciation instruction?
It's not necessarily realistic, nor desirable, to strive for native-like pronunciation. As adult ESL instructors, our goal is to help our learners improve their intelligibility, or their ability to make themselves understood.
If you've studied another language, think about what factors have impacted your intelligibility. Jot down your thoughts here:
I took three years of Spanish back in high school. The reasons for this was due to the high school requirments in order to get to college. This requirement motivated me to pursue this languge, which I would not picture the benefit of this until now-teaching ESL to Spanish-speaking migrant workers. I had great teachers, which I tried to personally e-mail them some years ago to show my gratitude for a teaching job well-done! Then I took a year in college, which really enforce what I learned to application.
*
First language
*
Age
*
Motivation
*
Expectations
*
Exposure to English
*
Attitude and identity
*
Innate phonetic ability
For a more detailed examination of these factors, review Parrish, pgs. 109-110.
Before we start examining the sound system of English, let's listen to an adult ESL learner to get an idea of the range of pronunciation issues we'll be looking at in this unit.
Watch this video clip of Jian, a native Mandarin Chinese speaker, and try to identify what affects his intelligibility.
aaa, ay, etc..
2. Key Terms
3. Vowel length before sonorants
(e.g. cheddar->ched)
4. Overall high voice quality
staccato, unintelligible, cheese & flavorable-vowel too short pitch
* Watch again if you need to and take notes on the areas of difficulty.
* Then watch as the instructor coaches him on these areas.
* What techniques would you like to try with your learners?
Make vowels longer by using a rubber band. "I make lowfat cheddar cheese" (stretch rubber band for lengthening "cheddar" and "cheese")
Nine-Line (work on their "l's"
Refer him to "consonants"
IPA Key (25.5 Kb)
Sagittal Section Diagram Key (24 Kb)
Sagittal Section (150.691 Kb)
* They may not be able to hear differentiations between sounds.
* They may not be able to visualize what the mouth and throat are doing when sounds are produced.
* Certain English sounds may not exist in some languages.
* Even if a certain English sound exists in your student’s language, that particular sound may only occur in certain positions of a word.
We'll begin our examination of English pronunciation by looking at the segmentals, or individual sounds, and how they are produced. This knowledge can be extremely helpful when instructing your learners on the pronunciation of English sounds; if you understand how a particular sound is produced, it will be much easier to help your learners produce it accurately.
" is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language.[1] The IPA is used by linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, foreign language teachers and students, singers, actors, lexicographers, and translators.[2][3]
The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are distinctive in spoken language: phonemes, intonation, and the separation of words and syllables.[1] To represent additional qualities of speech such as tooth-gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft palate, an extended set of symbols called the Extensions to the IPA is used.[2].."
Voiceless, Wikipedia
"describes the pronunciation of sounds when the larynx does not vibrate. .."
Voiced, wikipedia
"Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate. This is its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds. It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but need not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. This is the term's primary use in phonology when describing phonemes, or in phonetics when describing phones.
At the articulatory level, a voiced sound is one in which the vocal cords vibrate, and a voiceless sound is one in which they do not. Voicing is the difference between the pairs of sounds that are associated with the English letters "s" and "z". The two sounds are symbolically written [s] and [z] to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations depending on context. If one places the fingers on the voice box (ie the location of the Adam's apple in the upper throat), one can feel a vibration when one pronounces zzzz, but not when one pronounces ssss. (For a more detailed, technical explanation, see modal voice and phonation.) In European languages such as English, vowels and other sonorants (consonants such as m, n, l, and r) are modally voiced."
*Place of articulation, with diagram
Labial consonant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"..are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). English [m] is a bilabial nasal sonorant, [b] and [p] are bilabial stops (plosives), [v] and [f] are labiodental fricatives..."
-Bilabial consonant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"...a consonant articulated with both lips.."
-Labiodental consonant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth."
Coronal consonant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"...articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical (using the tongue tip), laminal (using the tongue blade), domed (with the tongue bunched up), or sub-apical (with the tongue curled back), as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such dexterity. Coronals also have another dimension, grooved, that is used to make sibilants in combination with the orientations above...."
-Dental Consonant
"..a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as /t/, /d/, /n/, and /l/ in some languages. Dentals are primarily distinguished from sounds in which contact is made with the tongue and the gum ridge, as in English (see Alveolar consonant), due to the acoustic similarity of the sounds and the fact that in the Roman alphabet they are generally written using the same symbols (t, d, n, and so on)...."
-Alveolar Consonant
"..are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (so-called apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the "blade" of the tongue; called laminal consonants), as in French and Spanish. The laminal alveolar articulation is often mistakenly called dental, because the tip of the tongue can be seen near to or touching the teeth. However, it is the rearmost point of contact that defines the place of articulation; this is where the oral cavity ends, and it is the resonant space of the oral cavity that gives consonants and vowels their characteristic timbre...
The bare letters [s, t, n, l], etc. cannot be assumed to specifically represent alveolars. The language may not make such distinctions, such that two or more coronal places are found allophonically, or the transcription may simply be too broad to distinguish dental from alveolar. If it is necessary to specify a consonant as alveolar, a diacritic from the Extended IPA may be used: [s͇, t͇, n͇, l͇], etc.. Nonetheless, the symbols
-Postalveolar consonant
"are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants)...."
-Retroflex consonant
"..are consonant sounds used in some languages. (They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in indology.) The tongue is placed behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar to palatal region of the mouth..."
Dorsal
"are articulated with the mid body of the tongue (the dorsum)..."
-Palatal consonants
"... are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex..
The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant [j], which ranks as overall, among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages."
-Velars
".. are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).
..Palatalised velars (like English /k/ in keen or cube) are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have labialized velars, such as [kʷ], in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips..
-Uvulars
".. are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants
...English has no uvular consonants, and they are unknown in the indigenous languages of Australia and the Pacific. Uvular consonants are however found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably Arabic, and in Native American languages...
Radical consonants
".. are those consonants articulated with the root (base) of the tongue in the throat. They include the pharyngeal and epiglottal places of articulation..."
-pharyngeal consonant
".. is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx..
Pharyngeals are known primarily from two areas of the world: in North-Africa/Mideast (in the Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, Circassian, and Dagestanian families) and in British Columbia (in the Wakashan and Salish families)"
-epiglottal consonant
"... is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds (see larynx) against the epiglottis. They are occasionally called aryepiglottal consonants...
Epiglottals are primarily known from the Mideast (in the Semitic languages) and from British Columbia ("pharyngeal trills" in northern Haida), but may occur elsewhere"
Glottal consonants
"...are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, the glottal stop at least behaves as a typical consonant in languages such as Tsou...
The "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis (phonation) without a specific place of articulation. [h] is a voiceless transition. [ɦ] is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as [h̤].
*Manner of articulation
"...describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants. For any place of articulation, there may be several manners, and therefore several homorganic consonants..."
-Nasal consonant
"...s produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue..."
-stop, plosive, or occlusive
"..is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are oral stops with a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The term is also used to describe oral (non-nasal) stops. Many use the term nasal continuant rather than nasal stop to refer to sounds like [n] and [m]. One should be aware that this article treats these "nasal continuants" as nasal stops.."
-Fricatives
"...are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of [f]; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German [x], the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh [ɬ], appearing twice in the name Llanelli. This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English [s], [z], [ʃ], and [ʒ] are examples of this..."
-Approximants
"... are speech sounds (phones) that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Approximants are therefore more open than fricatives. This class of sounds includes lateral approximants like [l], as in lip, and approximants like [j] and [w] in yes and well which correspond closely to vowels and semivowels..."
IPA Homepage
INTERACTIVE
SAGITTAL SECTION, from chass.utoronto.ca
*added during Unit #6
Try to match the terms with their descriptions.
Multiple Attempts: Not allowed. This Test can only be taken once.
Force Completion: This Test can be saved and resumed later.
Show Question Completion Status:
*added during Unit #6
Classifying Vowels (225.484 Kb)
*
There are more vowels in English than there are in many students’ L1s.
*
There is significant dialectical variation of vowels in North America.
2. Frontness: Frontness refers to the position of the tongue during the production of the vowel sound. Look at Table 2.14 below. Say pairs of vowel sounds from the "front" column and the "back" column.
(/iy/ - /uw/, /ey/ - /ow/) Do you feel how your tongue humps up in the front of the mouth for the front vowels and humps up in the back of the mouth for the back vowels? Vowels can be described as front, central or back vowels.
3. Tenseness: We can also classify vowels as tense or lax. Tense vowels are produced with more tension in the mouth and tongue. The mouth and tongue are more relaxed during the production of lax vowels. Try saying the pairs of tense and lax vowels in Table 2.14 below. Do you feel the difference in tension?
4. Lip shape: Finally, vowels can be distinguished by lip shape. During the production of front vowels, the lips are unrounded. Try saying these vowels while smiling. You can do it, right? Now try saying the back vowels while smiling. It's not possible, is it? That because the lips are rounded.
• Where is the tongue?
• Are my lips rounded? Spread? Neutral?
• Are my muscles tense or lax?
Cassie & Cathy (45.882 Kb)
Country Names (24.5 Kb)
Front Vowels (145.902 Kb)
Past Tense Endings (55.992 Kb)
Lesson Plan - page 1 (164.138 Kb)
Lesson Plan - page 2 (197.639 Kb)
Lesson Plan - page 3 (233.044 Kb)
Lesson Plan - page 4 (244.601 Kb)
Word Search A (47.118 Kb)
Word Search B (24.659 Kb)
(from Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin, 1996)
1. What the teacher needs to know
1. information about the features
2. potential problems for students (often based on typical errors by learners from particular language backgrounds)
3. pedagogical priorities (how important a given feature is for students given their communicative needs)
2. What the student needs to know
1. Description and analysis (e.g., oral and written illustrations of when and how the feature occurs in order to raise learner consciousness)
2. Listening discrimination (focused listening practice with feedback)
3. Controlled practice and feedback (e.g., oral reading of minimal pair sentences, short dialogues, etc., with special attention paid to the highlighted feature)
4. Guided practice and feedback (e.g., structured communication exercises that enable the learner to monitor for the specified feature)
5. Communicative practice and feedback (e.g., less structured activities that require the learner to attend to both form and content of utterances)
One other thing that the instructor uses every day with the students is a conversational worksheet. The class works together to fill in the following questions each day. The day that I observed was November 11th. This really helped to get the students warmed up for class. Below are the questions used and some of the responses.
Todays Date? November 11, 2008 or 11-11-08 (They talked about writing the date in different formats)
Weather Today? Cloudy, overcast (defined what overcast means) Predicting measureable snow (defined what measurable means)
Something that happened in the news? One student offered the story of a 57 year old grandmother gave birth to her daughters triplets. (Needless to say this led to a very interesting conversation!?!?!?)
Last time we were in class we? Computer lab practice, practice test, worked on conversation with superlatives - examples one of the best teachers
Upcoming Things? Visiter today - Erin she is studying too. Thursday - reading test Today is a holiday Veterans Day, No Mail - Lots of sales - (discussed where ) No school for children in the district tomorrow.
Words for today?
This was a really good exercise - provided review and preparatory information as well as gave the student a chance to practice oral skills.
*see GoodnewsUSA: English
Author: P, Adrienne
Subject: joining your group
"
Hi. I don't think my partner is still in the class so I'm jumping into your group.
I have a 28-year-old male student from S. Korea that I work with twice a week. He’s been in the U.S. since August of this year. He has a Masters Degree in physical education (it’s more specialized than this, but I’m not sure how). He plans to go to graduate school in the U.S. to obtain a similar Masters Degree in English. He explained that he will get a better education here and it will be in English, so he doesn’t feel like it will be redundant to get a so called equivalent degree. His wife is S. Korean as well and she lived in Australia for 8-10 years I think and he says her English is excellent. They are going to have their first baby in the next 2 weeks.
His general strengths as a learner are many, including having a consistently positive attitude, not being shy or inhibited, he’s very good at monitoring himself and hearing errors in pronunciation (he doesn’t always know the correction needed but he has no difficulty asking for help), and he’s extremely motivated to do well for himself and his family.
Things I’ve noticed and things I asked my student about that he confirmed: He has trouble with [th]. He used “Thank you” as an example and said in the beginning of his learning it would sometimes come out as “Sank you.” He also said that [r] and [l], [v] and [f], and [t] and [d] are often difficult for him and for Koreans in general. These sounds are both difficult to make and also get switched, i.e. [l] is pronounced where an [r] is needed and vice versa, [v] is pronounced where an [f] is needed and vice versa, and [t] is pronounced where an [d] is needed and vice versa.
I’ve been working with him since the end of August. In the beginning, I often had to ask him questions to discover what he was saying. His pronunciation interfered with his intelligibility at that time. As I mentioned, he’s incredibly motivated and interested and he has worked very hard on listening, speaking, reading and writing. He has improved tremendously and now I never struggle with his pronunciation. Now he has more difficulty because he lacks the larger vocabulary to express exactly what he wants. Academically speaking, he’s in a good environment for learning and no one is judging his pronunciation. All his teachers are dedicated to helping him. He likes to be social and he’s not inhibited so I’ve never observed him forgo an interaction because of his speech. He’s hungry to learn and improve. Given his personality, I don’t think pronunciation challenges have interfered with his life. That said, I’ve not seen him outside of school. I don’t know if he gets shy/frustrated at the grocery, etc. However, he’s very talkative and likes to tell me about his life and his family and I think he would have mentioned something like this to me.
He told me that several things have helped him learn pronunciation. He listens very attentively to native English speakers and practices what he hears. He finds watching movies and listening to the radio also very helpful and from these he practices (out loud) what he hears. It doesn’t matter to him if he doesn’t understand the meaning of something, he can hear the word and practice the sounds. I encouraged him to continue this. Admittedly, I don’t have much experience directly working with only pronunciation. In our textbook (pg 114), there is a discussion on listening discrimination tasks. The first one has to do with [l] and [r] which would be appropriate for my student. He has an excellent ear for sounds and picks up on things very quickly, integrating them quickly as well. He really likes to read for pleasure and I think the controlled practice activities (pg 116) would work well for him, including the strip stories and picture stories. As he will be a new father imminently, he and his wife have been buying English children’s books and reading to her tummy. It’s great for his English and he really enjoys stories. If we weren’t currently completely focused on getting him ready to pass the TOEFL exam in a few weeks, I would start implementing some of these. He’s one of those dream students though who is working so hard on his own and improving rapidly. "
Adrienne
English Accents
"Faking an accent can even be seen as cool, not unauthentic or un-American. Cue Justin Timberlake, the ultimate Disney white boy, talking like a hip-hop dude in his music and performances — and getting away with it...
Communication experts say some accent changes are normal "linguistic accommodation." Madonna, for instance, started talking like a Brit when she was hanging out with English actor Rupert Everett, and it intensified after she moved to London and married Scottish director Guy Ritchie. Many foreigners who live in the USA for years often lose their accents, at least partly; Bono, for instance, doesn't sound quite as Irish as he did when U2 first appeared in the USA...
Carmen Fought, a linguistics professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., says Americans' bias for Brit-speak is illustrated in the hilarious/pathetic scene in the British film Love Actually, in which a working-class English schlump in a Milwaukee bar attracts a gaggle of American sexpots.
"He's got a lower socio-economic accent, the equivalent of our 'redneck' accent, but these women drape themselves all over him because of the way he talks — they think he's sexy," she hoots. (Or, as the character, Colin, boasts, "Over there, I'm Prince William — without the weird family.")
Why the inferiority complex? It dates back to Colonial days, when everything from the mother country was esteemed, except for England's aristocrats and anti-democratic class system...
Some foreign-born performers work to banish their accents, while others either can't or don't care: South African-born Charlize Theron watched American TV to bury her Afrikaans accent, but actor-turned-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger still sounds Austrian after decades in the country...
"
"England...AHH"
UNIT 6
This assignment must be submitted by Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 5 p.m.
Design an oral skills activity that demonstrates your understanding of the instructional principles we have discussed in class. This activity should be focused on oral skills (listening and speaking). Note: you do NOT need to create an entire lesson, simply one activity that would take roughly 20-30 minutes of class time. If you like, this activity can be part of the larger annotation lesson plan you will do for your final project.
1. Describe the setting for this activity. Where does this activity fit into the larger lesson or unit? Also, include information about your target students, such as their proficiency levels and backgrounds.
2. Describe the activity in detail in relation to the principles you have learned in class. In other words, describe both what will happen, and why you designed it that way.
3. Explain how you will provide feedback to your students and assess their performance.
4. Predict where you (or your students) might encounter difficulties in the activity, and project how you would address the problems.
You will then reflect on their feedback, consider changes to your activity, and turn in your Classroom Activity Write-Up for grading (via the assignments tab) by Sunday, December 7.
To earn full points, your activity and underlying principles must be clearly presented. Additionally, you need to demonstrate the ability to reflect on your performance as a teacher and that of your students as language learners. Demonstrate that you are able to think critically about your activity and troubleshoot. Finally, the paper must be well organized. Feel free to explore questions you have about your activity or its underlying theoretical concepts.
Annotated Lesson Plan (35% of final grade)
This assignment must be submitted via the assignments tab by Monday, December 22, 2008 at 5 p.m.
Submit an oral skills lesson plan containing the appropriate stages of the type of lesson you choose:
* A contextualized lesson that focuses on a particular area of language (competency, function, vocabulary or grammar) should contain the stages of the contextualized language lesson outlined on page 57 of TAESL.
* A listening/speaking lesson should contain the stages outlined in chapter 4, including a pre-listening task, at least one listening activity, and a follow-up activity.
* A pronunciation lesson needs to include the stages outlined on pages 114-117 of TAESL. Consider developing your lesson with the pronunciation issues of a particular learner or class in mind.
Include activities that you haven’t previously turned in for our class. Your objectives and students’ levels/background should be stated up front. If your lesson includes audio or videotape, you need not submit them if you include a transcript or detailed description of the text.
Along with your lesson plan, include annotations that demonstrate your knowledge of the principles behind your choices. Incorporate them directly into the body of the lesson plan using a distinctive font. The annotations themselves might look this: “The purpose of this initial activity is to activate learners’ background knowledge about the theme of the lesson so that the listening task is more comprehensible.”)
*~*~*~*~ You will be assigned a partner for peer review of your lesson plan. I'll post your groupings on the announcements page. Email a draft to of your annotated lesson plan and supporting materials to your partner by Saturday, December 13. Provide feedback on your partner’s lesson plan as soon as possible.
You will then reflect on his/her feedback, consider changes to your lesson, and turn in your Annotated Lesson Plan for grading via the assignements tab by Monday, December 22.
To earn full points on this assignment, you will have a minimum of three clear, complete, and principled activities that support your objectives. Your annotations will be accurate and clearly tied to particular aspects of the activities.
Geography Quiz (137.435 Kb)
USA map (220.562 Kb)
Word Stress Suffixes (136.176 Kb)
pocket
pupil
contain
circus
Watch this video clip of Yukiko, a native Japanese speaker, and try to identify what pronunciation issues affect her intelligibility. Pause the video before the instructor identifies her primary pronunciation problems.
repeats "professor"
jaw stiff
doesn't anaunciate
-use a rubber band
-for "l": sing la, la, la, la, etc..
-for "r": "lect...turrre"
-used words they already know "lect" & "cher"
Click here to view the video.
Verbs
Prepositions
Adjectives
Short conjunctions (and, but, so)
Adverbs
Auxiliary (helping) verbs
Conjunctions (however, therefore)
Pronouns
Watch this video clip of Nafeth, a native Arabic speaker, and try to identify what pronunciation issues affect his intelligibility.
"I'm from Palestine"
[using paper,towel, or kleenex in front of mouth-less puff of air]
"They will pass the bill"
You will need the free Windows® Media Player® to watch this video clip.
Click here to view the video.
Basic Intonation Patterns (27.5 Kb)
Tag Questions (148.938 Kb)
Intonation refers to the rising and falling of our voice, or the pattern of pitch we use to convey meaning. Language learners may struggle with English intonation patterns because they do not match those of their first language. When our learners use incorrect or flat intonation, it can interfere with intelligibility. You can help demonstrate English intonation patterns using a variety of techniques including: humming, "playing" the utterance into a kazoo, moving your hand or arm up and down, and drawing arrows over the utterance. Let's take a look at some of the basic intonation patterns we use in English.
3____________________
2____________________
1____________________
statements, wh-questions
I'm a teacher.
What's your name?
Where do you live?
Get into groups.
2-3 (or 2-4)
yes-no questions
Do you like cake?
He left town?
lists, choices, multiple clauses
Would you like juice or milk? (choice)
If you go to Chicago, you can stay with my friend. (two clauses)
You're from Minnesota, aren't you? (falling for confirmation)
When John left the house, it was raining.
Give her a sweater.
Does he want to go home?
He bought apples, peaches, pears, and oranges.
He wants to go home.
Couldn't she have seen him?
What do you want to do with it?
Watch this video clip of Sanutm, a native Thai speaker, and try to identify what pronunciation issues affect her intelligibility.
1. Linking
e.g. "we help each other out", "we smile a lot"
2. Phrasal stress and intonation
too flat, so work out her intonation
"in the United States, everybody is busy"
"we are very busy" [mountain shape wave using hands]
3. Addition of sounds
mirroring, body language
L&R sounds, breathing techniques, and segment
You will need the free Windows® Media Player® to watch this video clip.
Click here to view the video.
2. Word Stress
3. Linking
4. Lack of emphasis
Lesson 10b - INTONATION - English Pronunciation,from youtube.com
Lesson 10c - INTONATION - English Pronunciation
"PART THREE of a lesson in FOUR parts. Topic: Falling and Rising Intonation. Part THREE presents the second intonation pattern: rising intonation. Exercises follow. Levels: intermediate to advanced."
-Intonation
Have him speak his own language
"We are not Ethiopians, but Oromo"
too flat
use 4 point scale
[hand scale]
*have them watch Sound of Music scene (doe, rey, me , fa ,so,la, tee, do)
*see GoodnewsEverybody: European-Austrian
Watch this video clip of Khiet, a native Vietnamese speaker, and try to identify what pronunciation issues affect his intelligibility. Pause the video before the instructor identifies his primary pronunciation problems. Watch again if you need to and take notes on the areas of difficulty.
borow->borrowed a book
2. Drops final consonant in consonant cluster
"s" , sentence, "The only sentence I can say is, how are you?",
3. Nasalized "L" (school=>hmong) "typical Vietnamese problem"
tip of tongue [tip of tongue-"la la la la...."), while, "staricase technique"
"n", spoon, hold nose
"I went to school yesterday"
-stress
-Intonation
-thought gropus
-phrasal stress
-final consonant sounds
You will need the free Windows� Media Player� to watch this video clip.
Click here to view the video.
Watch this video clip of Antonio, a native Spanish speaker, and try to identify what pronunciation issues affect his intelligibility. Pause the video before the instructor identifies his primary pronunciation problems. Watch again if you need to and take notes on the areas of difficulty.
"She invited me to come here"
invited-use upper teeth-"th"
reduce vowel sounds: chocolate
"a", "appropriate", vowel accuracy,
1. vowel accuracy
2. vowel length
3. stressing adverbs of time
4. Wh question intonation
*typical
5. Insert "uh" before initiatl "s"
e.g. snow, sneakers, etc..
6. emphasis
[put hands in adam's apple for pitch; ]
"In Mexico, they stay close to the family"
(emphasize "In MEXICO...."
high voice in English
Raise pitch-uh! uh!..dah dah! up and down...
[4 levels]
Click here to view the video.
'TH' can also be pronounced as 'CH'. Tuesday sounds like Chooseday.
* How would you help them improve their English pronunciation?
UNIT #7
Classroom Activity (25% of final grade)
(salsESL6634OralSkillsClassActivityHealthDrVisit.doc)
This assignment must be submitted by Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 5 p.m.
1. Describe the setting for this activity. Where does this activity fit into the larger lesson or unit? Also, include information about your target students, such as their proficiency levels and backgrounds.
I'll watch and evaluate their conversation (role-play) with the person behind the desk" during the "admission" or "registration" process. As I stated in the Online Discussion Board in Unit #6: Some possible exercises that I could do suggested from the videos in this Unit would be using a mirror-show the use of the upper teeth (e.g. Antonio-Spanish), use 4 point scale [hand scale], have her watch a "Sound of Music" scene (doe, rey, me, etc..), tapping on the table, or using paper, paper towel, or kleenex in front of mouth-less puff of air when pronouncing "b" and/or "v".
Pre-Admission Steps, from calhospitalcompare.org
"What Information Does the Hospital Need from You? By providing the following information to the hospital before you are admitted, your days before and immediately after entering the hospital will be less hectic, the admitting process will be smoother, and your stay will be safer. The information to provide to the hospital admission office includes:
-list below is more likely to be communicated in written format:
* Your personal contact information;
* Contact information for the person who will act as your spokesperson;
* Names and contact information of your doctors;
* Details of your health insurance;
* List of your medications, including over-the-counter and vitamins;
* Facts about your health, such as allergies and prior or existing conditions;
* Special needs you may have, such as diet or language assistance; and
* Copies of your Advance Directive and any other health care-related documents.
* Miscellaneous: Health Check-up questions (e.g. where are you hurting? how are you feeling?, etc...)
-list (taken from Lesson Planning online course with Minnesota Literacy Council) below is more likely to be communicated in oral format:
* make an appointment and/or cancel an appointment
* talk about the body, express pain, explain symptoms
* follow the doctor's/nurse's instructions
* ask questions of the doctor/nurse
* express confusion/ask for clarification
* read medicine labels
* and more!
Content: diet & nutrition, importance of regular exercise, managing chronic health problems (diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.), talking with your doctor, understanding prescription and OTC medicines = Goal: Improve adult learners' health literacy.
*see Goodnewseverybody: English-Assessment
-time: The time period of visit by the ESOL student will vary depending on the medical reason for visiting the clinc or hopital-if they will even have to visit overall.
-location:
-student population: -english level: Each of our ESOL students have various educational backgrounds (e.g. high school graduate, college graduate, etc...), so not all students will be able to perform each task.
-confidentiality: each student's comfort "level" will vary during each step, which indviduals would probably don't want to share any personal health-medical issues. I'm hoping to be as "general" as possible and don't use any specific health issues.
*
What specific target language do I want the students to produce? Is there any vocabulary they'll need?
*
If this a grammar or functional lesson, what do I need to know about the form and meaning of the language?
*
If this is a reading, writing, listening, or speaking lesson, what sub-skills do I want learners to practice?
*
Have I integrated a variety of skills?
*
What contexts or themes could I use that are relevant to my students, the objectives, and the target language?
*
What are some authentic materials, visuals, realia, etc. that I could use related to this context?
*
How does this lesson relate to previous lessons? What do students already know? What can I recycle?
*
What activities best serve to move learners towards meeting the lesson objectives?
*
Is there a balance betweeen whole group, small group, and individual work? Is the grouping appropriate for the task at hand?
*
Did I include activities and materials that will appeal to a variety of learning styles?
*
How will I evaluate learner success and the success of the lesson?
* A listening/speaking lesson should contain the stages outlined in chapter 4, including a pre-listening task, at least one listening activity, and a follow-up activity.
* A pronunciation lesson needs to include the stages outlined on pages 114-117 of TAESL. Consider developing your lesson with the pronunciation issues of a particular learner or class in mind.
*
give dictations
*
correct tasks
*
call on the next student
*
look up a word in the dictionary
*
choose the next task or activity
*
create materials
*
lead activities
*
Are they doing things that their learners could be doing?
*
Do they give clear directions and model/demonstrate tasks?
*
How are they checking for learner understanding?
*
What are your most important considerations when planning a lesson?
*
What is the most challenging aspect of lesson planning for you?
*
How do you evaluate the success of your lessons?
*
Do you need advice about aspects of your final annotated lesson plan?
UNIT #8
-# students' backgrounds (e.g. education, economic class, age, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, status overall, etc...)
* Formal vs. informal education
* Expectations about learning/teaching
* Literacy skills
2. Country and culture of origin
* Classroom behaviors and expectations
* Tensions among groups in the class
* Native language
3. Individual factors
* Personality
* Motivation
* Attitude to new culture
* Age
* Learning-style preferences
4. Situational factors
* Situation in the new culture
* Access to English outside of class
* Encourage learners to become more independent learners. Teach them to read directions, ask for clarification, and use a tape recorder and/or computer.
* Establish classroom routines and ask learners to help you create a set of rules or guidelines for how the class with operate. For example, allow the class to determine where to pick up and put back the tape recorder, or establish a sign-up list for questions during class.
* Encourage your class to work in pairs or small groups. Learners who are accustomed to a teacher-centered classroom may struggle with this at first. However, if you allow the learners time to adapt and if you give them cooperative learning activities with clear directions, it will make your job much easier. Assign varying roles based on learners’ strengths.
* Assign different tasks (or different versions of the same task) to different ability-level students.
* Provide opportunities for choice and individualization by sometimes allowing learners to choose the material/task they want to work on.
* Organize your class around themes, such as employment, health, and food, rather than around grammatical structures or set vocabulary lists. Teach the same theme for all levels and allow learners to work with the same topic at their own level.
* Choose materials that have visual support to aid lower-level learners’ comprehension.
* Use tasks that are versatile and open-ended.
* Provide self-access materials for independent, level-appropriate study.
* Get input from learners about topics and materials. If possible, ask one of the higher-level speakers to be a translator and spokesperson for the lower-level learners.
* Does the text provide a variety of interactions and sufficient pair and group work?
* Do the activities allow learners to take direction of activities, or is everything written with a teacher-led mode of learning in mind?
* Are the contexts and themes in the chapter relevant to learners’ lives? Who are the people represented in the text? In what ways are they represented? Are they depicted in roles to which learners could relate and that are respectful to adult learners?
* Does the language produced through the activities in the text represent authentic use of language?
* Are learners presented with and given practice learning strategies they can use outside of class?
*
Identify some authentic materials (texts, audio, video, etc.) that would enrich the lesson/unit.
*
Think about how you could modify the activities or add activities to give learners more speaking and listening practice.
*
Adapt/expand one activity to make it more appropriate for a range of levels and learning styles.
*see GoodnewsEverybody: Liberal Arts-Employment
Recommended Resources
"Teacher demonstrates how to use True-False cards to check comprehension. "
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