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.