Reading Reflections~ Week 8

Critical Issues:
Professional Development
(article by Philip Hubbard)

For the language teacher, regular professional development is necessary if he or she is to stay current in the field of computer assisted language learning (CALL). Hubbard gives three reasons for this:

1) Teachers were insufficiently trained in this area when they were first trained (presumably at the university level).
2) Both software and hardware are changing so quickly that if you don’t keep up, quickly your knowledge is out-of-date.
3) Both technology and support can be quite varied between schools (and school districts,states, and in our cases, countries!)

All of this to say, if a teacher wants to stay current in the field of CALL, it will take effort, essentially on the part of the individual teacher to find the appropriate professional development.

I found two things mentioned by Hubbard to be quite ironic. First of all, he stated that in a directory of job listings for ESOL teachers on a TESOL website, the majority of listings either specified a requirement of CALL proficiency or at least mentioned it. Obviously, it is becoming increasingly important for the ESOL teacher to have some expertise in computer assisted language learning. The irony followed on the next page when he stated that “for many teacher preparation programs the position seems to be that a teacher does not need to know anything about computers” (p.279). This astounded me. I graduated from university, in a teacher preparation program, twelve years ago. As a student in the early 90’s, we were given virtually no training on computer use as a student or as a teacher. Since over a decade has passed, I would have assumed that much had changed in this area of teacher training. Since it is important to those who are hiring ESOL teachers that the teachers be capable in the area of CALL, it needs to be a priority at the collegiate level to provide appropriate pre-service training.

The good news for me, and my fellow classmates of L530 CALL, is that we are doing the necessary professional development to help us be knowledgeable and marketable. But the rest of the story I believe, is that if we want to remain competent in this area, it will take a conscious and consistent effort on our part to remain so.

Hubbard stated that “motivation will perhaps best emerge from engaging in a project relevant to your local teaching context.” I heartily agree with this. Anything that is learned and then applied and used in the classroom immediately will be much more useful, and in the end, of greater value.

Website Evaluation #2

Software/Website Title: Interesting Things for ESL Students
Website URL: www.ManyThings.org
Grade/Age Level: not age or grade specific

This week I reviewed the language learning website entitled, “Interesting Things for ESL Students”. This site appears to be written by two men, Charles Kelly and Lawrence Kelly, who, according to the website, are teachers at the Aichi Institute of Technology in Japan. While the purpose of this website is not stated, it seems that it is intended to be used as a tool to improve and practice the student's American English.

This website has many pages, covering a wide variety of English learning. These include: Vocabulary, Grammar, Sentence Patterns, Proverbs, Sayings & Idioms, Pronunciation, Listening, Hearing, Reading, Spelling, Podcasts, Songs, Jokes, Crosswords Puzzles, Tongue Twisters, a collection of easy things for beginners, and a link to Voice of America's Special English program (this is, incidentally, how I stumbled upon this website.) This site is organized well and clearly laid out. You won't get lost going through these pages. However, this is not a very attractive website. While there is something to be said for simplicity, this site is visually unappealing. I nearly “judged the book by its cover” and passed this site on by as it just did not grab me by its graphics (or lack thereof). However, on a whim I just tried one of the pages and I was instantly impressed by the activity. Since I like one, it led me to check out many of the other games and activities.

Some of the activities I liked included one on pronunciation (like listening to different words that sound quite similar to the untrained ear-- like “ferry” and “very” and then selecting which word was said) and another game under “Audio Concentration/Memory Game” which is an excellent activity for improving concentration and distinguishing between similar sounds in the English language.

Each different page does provide guides to give you the instructions on how to accomplish the activity. However, I found them to be fairly self-explanatory. Also, the menu is available in Japanese, for the Japanese ESL student. The average language learner would find this site to be interesting, if given a chance. As previously stated, it is visually uninteresting and so a student might not even give it a first chance. I think this website can be very helpful for the student who is wanting to sharpen his/her skills. It offers many opportunities to practice, offering immediate assessment on nearly every activity (telling you which answers were correct and what percentage were answered correctly) . Navigation and it's layout are simple enough to use.

The strengths of this site include a wide range of activities, supplying hours and hours of interesting ways the student can practice to improve listening, reading, spelling, understanding idioms and slang, etc. Another strength could possibly be the lack of graphics. Because of this all the pages should load fairly quickly for the student, regardless of the quality of his Internet connection. But, as I stated earlier, I think this website would be greatly improved upon by seriously upgrading in the “graphic design” area. The content is high-quality, it just needs to improve its looks.

How can it be?

I thought my fellow students/teachers might find this interesting. The local language we speak here is Albanian. In the Albanian language, there is just ONE word for both teaching and learning. When I was first learning the language, I went round and round with my tutor. How can this be? Teaching and Learning are two totally different concepts! When I hear people use the word for it now, I usually know whether they mean teach or learn by the context, but occasionally it is a bit ambigous and I am left wondering, "Did he say he is learning. . .or is he teaching?"

Reading Reflection~ Week 6

Text and Task Authenticity in the EFL Classroom
by William Guariento and John Morely

“Authentic” activities is a definite buzz word in the field of education and the area of EFL is not any different. The authors present a case for using authentic materials in the language classroom that will benefit the language learning process.

As I was reading this article, my husband asked what I was reading. I told him it was about using authentic materials and activities in teaching. He asked me what is meant by “authentic”. I responded with, “Well, um, you know, um. . .real”. Realizing that this explanation didn't really cut it, I looked back to see what the authors said: “An authentic text is one 'created to fulfill some social purpose in the language community in which it was produced.” The purpose of using these authentic tasks is to “bridge the gap” between things normally learned in the language classroom and the student's ability to partake in the language in the “real world”.

In my teaching, I have noticed that it is easier to bring authentic material in to an intermediate or advanced class. The difficulty is using these texts in beginner classes. If it is authentic, often the language is just too advanced. Guariento and Morley say that it is justifiable to simplify the text , but that it is difficult to do it “seamlessly”. They also state that it is not necessary for total understanding of the text to occur; instead the students must learn to use what they gained from partial comprehension.

The authors posit that not only should the text be authentic but so must the task. They go on to outline four school of thought regarding authentic task, that authenticity come from: 1) a “genuine purpose”, 2) “real world targets”, 3) “classroom interaction” and 4) “engagement”. I think the case is strongest for the first two. When students understand the purpose and can see that this skill is both practical and necessary, learning somehow becomes easier. When learning new languages, from my own experience, I have seen that I learn most easily those things that I will need to use, and use soon. Activities and text used in the EFL classroom need to show that they are meaningful, not just for the classroom's sake , but for use on the street, in the target language.