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