Second Professional Development

Recently, I went to the langchat website to check out some things that they have talked about in the past. I looked at a post from January of 2013 that talks about promoting writing proficiency in a foreign language classroom. A lot of what I see my students do creatively in classes is writing. For example, some students in my placement often ask me to read their poetry or raps. I would like to get students thinking in the target language and use this interest in creative writing that they have to build upon their understanding and use of the language.

The langchat participants talked a lot about the use of online blogging as an outlet for student writing and discussion. They serve for more than just a writing tool, but a way students can read other blogs and communicate their understanding and opinions with each other. It definitely promotes collaborative learning through discussion, and as I have seen in many classes, students are very connected to the web. Students are constantly researching information and communicating on the web, and they can be encouraged to use their knowledge from class to create blogs or twitter accounts discussing this knowledge. Admittedly, students often times are not very interested in doing school work at home, but getting them interested in cultural topics and communicating with friends from the class can really help get them motivated to use the internet to better their writing.

As I said, it is often difficult to get students interested in the foreign language, so the use of writing games can help to get the students into the groove of learning and writing in the target language. Teachers on the langchat suggest using fun games like Mad Libs and Five Card Flickr, but I don't really see these tools being very useful in the classroom. Really, I think that these games sacrifice learning for fun, when really they should be put together in an interesting and engaging activity. While reading this, I thought it might be fun to get students to write a sentence on a paper, then have the next student draw a picture, then the next student writes a sentence about what picture they see, and so on until everyone in the class has participated on any given piece of paper. This could help them practice their writing skills, and visualize what they are writing about with the picture. Obviously, these types of activities would need to be modified to exhibit the most genuine learning possible, but I could see them being engaging and useful in the classroom.

The langchat goes on to talk about students working together to help creative writing, and I'm all about the student collaboration. An awesome idea that the langchat provided was a "Picture Write," an activity in which an authentic image is put up an the students have three minutes to write as many details as possible. Then, the students are "paired together to develop complete sentences." I think this is a great activity, and it can really get students working together to create sentences. There is a lot of room for creativity with this writing activity, and at the end, the students are able to share their sentences with the rest of the class.

The teachers on langchat go on to talk about ways to support student writing. There are many tools available like graphic organizers and word banks, but one teacher goes on to say that students can be given paragraphs or stories and then they can complete tasks like reorganizing the paragraphs, summarizing the paragraphs, or interpreting graphics. I only somewhat like these ideas, and I really just think that writing can be developed the best through reading. By getting students reading, their writing can only improve. All in all, I think that some of these activities will really improve student writing in the target language. Through student collaboration and gaining their interest, I feel like I can really get students improving their writing intrinsically. 

Until next time,

Bradford

Instructing Grammar

In recent weeks, we have been talking about teaching grammar in a foreign language classroom, namely PACE and TPRS. Grammar is what really interests me most about teaching because it requires making many connections regarding the syntax, semantics, and other parts of linguistics in order to identify and fully understand the grammatical theme. Teaching grammar is definitely requires a higher level of thinking from the students, so it really makes it more meaningful when the students grasp the material. However, teaching PACE in a meaningful way may be more difficult, as the teacher has to have great questioning skills to get the students to almost self-discover the meaning of the grammatical topic. TPRS, on the other hand, is very easy to teach and almost no Spanish needs to be spoken. Students are simply given texts and they learn words by translating them into English. The teacher also does not need to explain any grammatical ideas or concepts in the target language because it slows down the class and is unnecessary. Personally, the more Spanish the better, but TPRS is definitely easier to teach.

In my experience, grammar is most often lectured to students with little interaction and participation from those students. I always learned grammar straight from the teacher, and I was very often confused on the understanding of how the grammatical parts of Spanish worked. Now, with my better understanding of some grammar methodology, I would have to say my preferred method is the PACE method for certain. I feel like the students make better connections with higher levels of thinking than with the TPRS method which mostly focuses on translation and repetition with little culture. The PACE method is extremely beneficial if used correctly and with an attentive class, as I will explain below.

One thing that I really took from recent articles and class meetings is to introduce grammar through a story, most often authentically. Both methods create a story, but the PACE story has more depth and isn't as on-the-fly as the TPRS style. In the PACE article, the author says to PRESENT the grammar in a "thematic way" that will capture the students attention (223). In addition, the story much be presented orally first so that the students receive oral input of the grammar. The story should use "natural occurring repetitions" of certain grammatical features in order to help the students hear the grammatical focus that the story presents, and the story must be within the students' zone of proximal development so they don't become frustrated reading the story. As I said before, the presentation MUST be interactive so that students are participating, asking questions, and answering questions. Getting the students to answer the questions, however, may be very difficult and require a lot of practice and effort. This is where I think the TPRS may engage the students more. With TPRS, students are constantly involved either translating, reading, writing, acting, or more. With the PACE method, on the other hand, students are only orally comprehending during the presentation portion, which very well could be the longest section of PACE, stretching to even 3 days depending on the lesson. Students must understand the story to move on, so once the students fully understand the story, the teacher must focus the students' ATTENTION on the grammatical aspect of the lesson.

This portion is not as large as I originally imagined, and the students basically just figure out what the main point of the story is grammatically. The teacher can give semantic clues for the students to arrive upon syntactic conclusions of what is being presented, and then the teacher may step in if students do not understand what they're supposed to be focusing on.

My favorite part, the CO-CONSTRUCTION phase, is really where understanding is brought together through teacher and student interaction. Really, as a teacher, we want the students to arrive upon the conclusion of the grammatical focus themselves with only teacher guidance to help them. Questioning is the most important part of this stage because the questions are what help solidify the understanding of the students. Therefore, it is essential for the teacher to create a classroom "conversation" to convey the message of the grammar topic. Through this conversation the teachers "move students to understand how grammar functions in spoken and written texts, such as stories, so that they understand why certain grammatical choices were made over others.." (226).

Finally, there is the EXTENSION portion of the PACE method in which students put what they learned about the grammatical exercise into use. This leaves a lot of room for creativity, which I love to give as a teacher. Letting students create interesting extensions that interest them and their involvement within the target culture are very important because students are able to create their own work of art that deals with the grammar.  The extension phase can also take a lot of time like the presentation phase because the students will need time to create something meaningful based on the grammatical theme.

All in all, the PACE method is an excellent way to teach students grammar because it gets students using higher-level thinking skills that wouldn't appear normally with traditional grammar approaches. The students probably don't enjoy this method as much as the TPRS method because that method is much easier. However, students really won't learn as much using TPRS as they will using PACE because PACE hits at those higher thinking levels. Furthermore, it helps the students practice problem-solving skills that can help them in other classrooms, and knowledge of language that can help them in English class or any other language classes they may be taking. Through the PACE method, students are able to discover the particular grammar rule through higher-level thinking and teacher cooperation. Together as a class, the students figure out the rules behind grammar in the target language, and they are much more successful when using this grammar in their writing and speech. Some authentic texts may be hard to find, but I can create my own if need be and relate it to the students, which may end up being meaningful for them. I am excited to use the PACE method this week when teaching ser/estar, and I believe that it will have a very positive effect on how the students use the verbs in and outside of class.   

Self-Sought Professional Development

For my personal professional development activity, I signed up with the FLTeach listserv. I have only recently signed up, so I have not received a lot of information. I wanted to look for something regarding assessment because I am really interested in assessing a foreign language classroom; I feel that it is a weakness of mine. I do great with formative assessments throughout each class, but final assessments are where I lack skill. However,  I did find an interesting post about an end of the unit assessment from a Spanish teacher who teaches in Florida. It has to do with an assessment activity that she created for a second year Spanish class in which the students go through a faux Spanish Market using their skills in vocabulary and grammar to communicate with the teacher at different stations. Students are able to talk about food, preferences, money, and characteristics of people and things at a variety of different stations in order to assess their knowledge. I thought this was an excellent idea because it puts the student in a situation that they could use in real life. They must communicate in order to order and pay for their food, and they must make idle conversation with the person to whom they are talking (the teacher). Students could use this in their real lives if they went to a Spanish market in the city, like for her class, Miami or another heavily Hispanic populated city. I could definitely see myself using this as a form of assessment for students, and I could explain the importance of it with regards to the Grand Rapids community.

What I was most interested with, though, was how the teacher graded the students on their knowledge. I thought that this would be very hard to grade because almost all of what the students are doing is based on oral output and comprehension. The teacher accounted for this and also had the students complete a smaller-written portion beforehand. The teacher emphasized that the writing portion would be more of a longer, creative piece. It seemed like a lot of work for the students to do, but really if the students just studied the material and wrote a page or so, they would have a good grade for the final. The teacher didn't specify too much as to what the writing piece entailed, but I assume that it would include concise and specific instructions to assess the students. For the Spanish Market activity, the students will be guided through the dialogue so that they are hitting at all of the main points that are covered in the assessment.

Overall, I think that I would use this in a class, but maybe just as a "fun" day and not for assessment unless I could plan way ahead of time. By planning ahead, I could really figure out how I am going to assess the students, and I will be able to ask them specific questions to help elicit their knowledge of the given unit. I am curious as to what other educators think about this type of assessment and its benefit compared to the standard norm of written exams. 

Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom

Technology is an absolutely essential part of every classroom, including foreign language classrooms. In fact, I think that the foreign language classroom receives more benefit from technology than many other subject areas. The technology doesn't have to be anything extravagant like the Pixten program that was discussed to us by one of the panelists, but just a simple video or picture found online would be extremely beneficial to the students. However, when larger projects do occur, Pixten and Wikis would be a great option to look at. I believe that technology can be incorporated into every class if you find it necessary, but really you only want to implement technology if it is more pedagogically useful than your original lesson strategy.

I think that getting students using technology is beneficial to both the teacher and the students. Both become familiarized with the different programs like Edmodo, Prezi, and Screen Chomp, as mentioned in the So You Say article and by one of the presenters of technology. Through programs like Edmodo, and also wikis for larger research projects or classroom projects, students are able to collaborate and build a community via technology. Websites like YouTube also provide the students with a valuable tool that they can also explore on their own. These video sites have plenty of auditory and visual input that is authentic or made by students just like them. While teacher assisting, my CT and I have used several online videos to introduce new vocabulary and the verb gustar. Most of them are catchy songs that get the students at least a little more interested in the material, and of course they get stuck in the students' heads!!! Really, technology can be used in a variety of ways. Authentic material can be found all over the web, and is a genuinely useful tool when teaching students a foreign language. Students can listen to songs to improve their comprehension, watch videos to experience the culture of foreign countries, collaborate as a class to make a project, and record dialogues through programs like Pixten or Sock Puppets, as presented during the panel meeting on technology, to improve their speech.

When determining the value of a tool or strategy, I really look at whether the technology will grasp students' interests and give them a break from standard lecture and discussion, which I believe is a crucial part of instruction. Technology is also useful and should be implemented in situations where you want students to have an authentic experience of the foreign language. Of course the sites will have to be screened for authenticity, but students will really be able to apply what they know navigating through sites in the foreign language or by writing a paper about some possible themes of a movie completely in the foreign language. Students could even make their own foreign language rap and record it! The possibilities are endless, really. Although there is so much technology out there, I don't think I would use it all of the time in my classroom. I am kind of old-school in the way that I like to learn (and teach), and I really like it when things are hand written or made by hand. I think that students learn a lot by actually writing things down on paper, or creating a poster about their favorite Hispanic author. There's also nothing wrong with reading every now and again with the higher level foreign language classes. Overall, I think that technology should always be used as a resource, but only used in actual activities if it is absolutely necessary and the students will reap the benefits of the technology. Amazing collaborative projects can be made through Wikis, and communities can be built online with Edmodo's easy, interactive, social interface. I will continue to try to implement technology in my placement when it seems to improve the lesson. I'll continue to research different technological techniques and strategies that I will be able to apply in my placement and future classroom.

Vocabulary Acquisition: Some Ideas and Experiences

Vocabulary is really a part of language that is constantly being built upon. Even in my native language, I am learning new words every day like the word "pernicious," which I just learned last week. Constantly building on our vocabulary makes us a better writer and speaker because we are able to create speech and writing in many different ways. Perhaps we don't know the word for teacher, but we could say "a person who teaches." They both have the same significance, but the wording is different. Vocabulary is extremely crucial, especially in learning a second language, and I have found, through the reading, several ways to help students build their vocabulary. The text reads, "Learning vocabulary might even be considered the most challenging component of learning a language," therefore as teachers we must figure out ways for students to really retain and understand vocabulary (75).

            In my placement, my cooperating teacher and myself have different techniques in teaching vocabulary, but now I will be able to implement more techniques that are suggested by the text. The real goal is to get students to retain the vocabulary into their long term memory. However, there are several ways in which students can retain this information. Students must receive input visually and audibly, and the material must be presented in a meaningful context. The visuals, such as pictures, to associate with the vocabulary should be as authentic as possible. Teachers should try to use authentic texts like restaurant menus and pictures of people from actual Spanish-speaking countries, although these may be somewhat difficult to incorporate into lower level classes. These types of input provide cultural experience for the students as well, which is a crucial aspect of foreign language. The visuals are usually better for association with vocabulary, but auditory learning should not be forgotten. Auditory learning can be harder to implement into a classroom, but it is very important for the students to be able to hear native speakers and real speech.

            In addition to using real native speakers with the auditory input and real cultural pictures and texts for visual input, it's great to contextualize the vocabulary to students' lives and make it interesting. When introducing numbers, we could say, "Now you can ask a cute girl/guy for their number!" These kinds of things get the students excited to learn vocabulary.

            Some things that I find my CT doing is playing music during exercises which can be very distracting for the students when they are acquiring new vocabulary. However, she definitely makes up for it when she acts out vocabulary words in a manner that makes sense to the students. She uses the TPR method, which I think is great for beginner language learners when it is more difficult for students to retrieve vocabulary meanings from authentic texts. Something that really stuck with me is when the text said, "Rich levels of encoding can be achieved by asking students to manipulate words, relate them to other words and their own experiences, and to deduce the meaning of new words by immersing them in contexts that are familiar to them" (83). I do this all of the time, and I have found it very useful in my own learning! For example, I will say, "Think about how a fork has tines. Tines is similar to tenedor, the word for fork in Spanish." These mental connections really store those vocabulary words into long term memory. I will continue to try to use different techniques for vocabulary acquisition, really hitting home at contextualizing the vocabulary in authentic, interesting settings with very good visuals and body movements. 

Journal Article tied with Brown readings

Recently, I found an interesting article written by Thomas Huckin of the University of Utah and James Coady of Ohio State University titled "Incedental Vocabulary Acquisition in a Second Language." The article was very interesting, and got me thinking about how I personally picked up my vocabulary from reading, and how students in my class learn vocabulary incedentally.
Much of vocabulary acquisition, as stated in the text, comes from "extensive reading, with the learner guessing at the meaning of the unknown words." Students have to contextualize the words they are learning to fully understand what the word means. Students often times cannot determine the significance of the word simply given the first contextualization of the word. The word must appear several times in several different contexts for the student to fully understand the given vocabulary word. Also, many new vocabulary words in a 2nd Language are recognizable as cognates. These types of words are much easier for students to understand and learn, but students also over generalize meanings given certain words and contexts. There are false cognates and they are most often skipped over by students because they automatically assume the false cognates to be real cognates. Some strategies in teaching have arisen to fix such problems. As educators, we must teach students about certain word-families so that students can better understand the types of words and how they are used in given contexts. We must teach students to be good educated guessers, as that is what most of reading a foreign language is: guessing.

Students also need to be questioned and given feedback with new vocabulary, but also with the a foreign language in general. As Brown states in the feedback text, the best method is not necessarily giving direct feedback and correction, but rather try to get students to self-correct their errors. Educators of foreign language should use positive feedback such as confirmations and encouragements when things are said correctly in class. These will boost the students' confidence, and give them drive to continue learning and speaking in the TL. Personally, I think that teachers should not be so blunt when correcting students, and should do it in the nicest way possible. Students, in my experience, are often very timid in a foreign language classroom, and they can be easily discouraged. Something that was cited from a Brandl text states, "He finds [low-level learners] are more likely to engage in trial and error behavior and randomly guess about a correct answer, while not being able to benefit from any kind of feedback that is given." I have definitely noticed this in my classes while teacher assisting, and I find it very frustrating. The students need to have a foundation within the language before feedback becomes extremely successful. This, however, does not mean that feedback should be elimated, but rather that it should be more creative and thoughtful for lower level foreign language students. Repeating is also a very good method to get students into the habit of saying the correct phrasing. I believe it's most beneficial to have both the students and yourself repeat the correct phrasing.

Furthermore, questioning is a very important part connecting students with feedback and vocabulary acquisition. For vocabulary, we would want to use lots of knowledge based and comprehension based questions, such as "Qué significa 'calle' en Español?" or "Quién es el poeta famoso de Chile que ganó el premio nobel?" Higher level questions, with my experience, can only be used with higher level classes because they involve much higher levels of thinking and speech production. Having students answer Synthesis and Evaluation based questions requires self-assessment and heavy explanation. These types of questions are very beneficial because students are able to critique the language and question why certain parts of the language are how they are. Why isn't this word different? Why would it sound "bad" if the accent were in a different location? Questions like these, when answered in the TL are very beneficial to students for learning and teachers for assessment.

Lesson Planning Strategies from 2 Foreign Language teachers

For this blog, I have interviewed two Spanish teachers; one teaches at Union High School and the other teaches at Grand Valley State University. I thought it would be interesting to see the differences in planning styles based on the very different schools, and how I believe I will use these techniques in the future.

With Union High School being somewhat chaotic in the classroom, planning is essential, but often times does not go as planned. The teacher at Union High School, Ms. C, really tries to plan a week in advance for all of the lessons. She says that many times, however, she will only plan one to two days in advance because the students do not get to everything that she had originally planned. She decides what to do based on the curriculum, textbook material, weekly objectives she has made, and most importantly, student abilities. She writes down all of her objectives, and checks them regularly to make sure that her students have clear objectives every day. Ms. C has a lesson plan notebook that she uses to quickly plan out what she is going to do on a given day. She also uses the lesson planning notebook for ideas and organization. At Union, however, they do not need to submit lesson plans, so she does not create anything formal. She uses the lesson plans she made as notes for herself during the class. The objectives are on the board not just for the students, but also for the teacher. She constantly checks her notes throughout class and believes this is a good skill to model for her students. After classes, she likes to reflect on what she did that day and journal.

The atmosphere at Grand Valley is very different than at Union because the students genuinely want to learn. For Mrs. G's classes, she usually prepares a semester or summer ahead of time, and then prepares specific assignments that she would like to do based on the type of class. For other courses, however, she already has a general sense of what she's doing, so she will just plan a few days ahead of time. For literature classes, she tries to divide the readings up so students have enough time to finish the material, and then in class students discuss what they had difficulties with in the readings. Mrs. G does not write down her objectives, but she keeps them in mind throughout her lessons. She doesn't have notes exactly, but she does have an outline of what she is going to do for each class. To stay organized, she uses powerpoints and also uses notes that she has already collected from the in-class texts. She always plans her own lessons unlike Ms. C, and doesn't really like to use teacher manuals. At the university level, the administration is less strict with the lesson planning, and there is much more freedom academically. In addition to the powerpoints, Mrs. G also uses index cards to take notes on the texts. During the lesson, though, she does not look at the notes with much frequency aside from the notes in her textbook or on the powerpoints. After the lesson, this teacher does not reflect so much on paper as she does mentally. She usually keeps all of her notes in a folder, and then just updates them as needed for the next classes she will teach.

Overall, I expected a lot more planning from both teachers. We always talk about how important it is to have a concise plan ready for the students, but with the chaotic life of a teacher, it is not always that easy to achieve a beautiful plan for every class. I have always been more for "winging it" in academics, and I feel that I may do the same during classes. At first, my planning will have to be day-by-day, but as the years go on, I can build off of my already planned material to make it better. I believe that the students are an important part of planning, and every class cannot be the same, so I will definitely take that into account when teaching in the future. I think that it is crucial to at least have some sort of notes ready for the class in case of a difficult student question or a misinterpretation of the material. I also like how Ms. C reflects after each day, that way she can go back and see how the lesson went and what things she needs to change. As I said before, I love to teach on the fly and build upon student interests, which may just completely destroy my original plan. However, I think that this is a good technique for getting students interested in learning.