ENG 345: Week 12

            In Brown chapter 23, Brown talks about Language Assessment. He talks about formal and informal assessments and their purposes for each. There are a lot of different things to consider when dealing with assessments, such as practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and washback. Brown talks about the different types of validity, which are content, face, and construct. When I took Spanish in high school, we had a few quizzes during the semester that tested listening by watching an English movie in Spanish. However, it was really testing reading comprehension because there were subtitles and we had a multiple-choice worksheet that could be solved if you had already seen the movie. This is an example of perhaps a reliable test, but it is not valid. Brown continues to talk about the different kinds of tests, which are proficiency, diagnostic, placement, achievement, and aptitude. Each kind of test serves a different purpose for the language teacher. Brown ends the chapter with talking about current issues with language assessments and some possible ways to help with the solution. It is important for teachers to make a test as authentic as possible and to be testing what is meant to be tested. Teachers should use their own tests as much as possible and continue to make changes on it from year to year.

            In Brown chapter 24, Brown talks about classroom-based assessment. He talks about the difference between norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests. It is important to use both types of tests, depending on the purpose that a teacher uses the test for. Brown then talks about the steps to test construction. Brown gives ways to help with making a test that really goes along with the standards of the course and to try and make it as authentic as possible. It is important for teachers to go through their own test and pretend that he or she is a student and make sure that every item is worded carefully, the directions are clear, and there is enough time for students to finish the test. It is also beneficial for teachers to edit their test and make changes to it. Brown ends the chapter talking about alternatives in assessment, which are portfolios, journals, conferences, observations, and self- and peer-assessments. Brown stresses that these should not be viewed as alternatives meaning optional compared to the traditional test. Teachers should have ongoing assessments throughout classroom time in multiple and in a variety of different ways.

ENG 345: Week 10

           In Brown chapter 26, he talks about being a socially responsible teacher and how to develop a personal set of ethics for language teaching. Brown also brings up the guidelines for dealing with controversial issues in the classroom. Controversial issues will come up in the classroom, it is only a matter of time. It is really important how you handle these situations and that you don’t let anyone feel inferior because of their beliefs. One of the main themes of this chapter is making sure the first language is still a part of their identity while learning their second language. I remember learning French in high school and all my teachers promoting French so much and teaching lessons on why it is so important to learn French and how it is one of the “best” languages to learn. It definitely makes an impact on students, whether positive or negative, and it should still be taught in the context of the real world.

            In Kumar chapter 11, he talks about ensuring social relevance. He talked about what English means as a global language and therefore, how it should be treated. No one can own English if it is a global language. He also talks about the “standard” of English and all of the different varieties of Englishes. Kumar then talks about appropriate teaching materials. Materials should have activities that will make sense to people of all different cultures and backgrounds. It should include target culture materials and native culture materials.

            In Kumar chapter 12, he talks about raising cultural consciousness. He talked about the complexity of culture and how it is hard to define and hard to describe. Everyone has their own culture that they are a part of and it is important that while learning another language they continue to have an identity in their own culture. Kumar gives the example of the Color Purple from Robinson, where your culture lens (blue) and another person’s culture lens (red) can be overlapped (purple).  Neither can be changed to another color, but you can learn and grow as person by knowing more about another person’s culture, which in turn you learn more about your culture. I thought the microstrategies at the end of the book were really helpful and I think it is fun if you give language learners a chance to display their culture within the context of another culture, especially in a multicultural classroom.

ENG 345: Week 9

            In Brown chapter 17, he talks about integrating the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. He talks about why the skills have not been integrated before, which include that it is easier to separate courses and that not everyone is learning English for the same reason. He then gives reasons why it is beneficial to include all four skills of learning a language, such as written and spoken language often bear a relationship to each other; to ignore that relationship is to ignore the richness of language and often one skill will reinforce another by learning to speak we model it off of what we hear. He then shows models of the skills integrated, which are content-based instruction, task-based language teaching, theme-based instruction, and experiential learning. He ends the chapter with an integrated lesson outline that includes all four language-learning skills. The warm-up (5 min.) focuses on listening, the presentation (10 min.) focuses on listening, reading, and speaking, the listening focus (10 min.) focuses on listening as well as reading, writing, and speaking, the grammar focus (15 min.) focuses on listening, reading, writing, and speaking, the focus on types of workers (15 min.) focuses on reading, speaking, listening, and writing, and finally the wind-down (5 min.) focuses on listening and speaking. The four language learning skills should be combined and integrated into the classroom. It helps reinforce the subject areas and they can each help get an overall language learning experience. It helps students be well rounded in their second language as well.

            In Kumar chapter 9, he talks about contextualizing linguistic input and the four main contexts. The first context he talks about is the linguistic context, which is to understand the meaning of grammatical or lexical items. He gives the example of the word table, which has multiple definitions when used in different contexts. He also gives the example of sentence cohesion. He talks about the use of removing redundancies to make it cohesive.  The next context he talks about is the extra-linguistic context, which deals with prosodic signals such as stress and intonation. He gives the example of stressing the word him even after the question asked is a “what” question. The third context is situational. The situational context is about words and utterances having different meanings in different contexts. Kumar gives the example of “I now pronounce you man and wife” as only having meaning if it is in a church and spoken by a priest. If a store clerk says the same sentence, it does not have the same meaning. The last context is extra-situational, which deals with context. He gives the example of a woman from Zambia greeting another woman and telling her that she looks like she has put on weight, in Zambia that is seen as a compliment, whereas in America it is seen as an insult. These contexts make a lot of sense and there are a lot of different meanings that language learners have to pick up on when they are learning a second language. 

ENG 345: Week 7

            In Brown chapter 20, it talks about teaching reading. He starts off talking about the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing and some of the other research that has been done on reading in a second language. He then talks about all of the different genres of written languages and the characteristics. The differences between written language and oral language are permanence, processing time, distance, orthography, complexity, vocabulary, and formality. Some of the reading strategies for comprehension that Brown talked about are similar to reading comprehension in a person’s native language with emphasis on different things. There is more emphasis on visualizing what written words say and previewing the text so the readers know what and why they are reading. Brown also explains the SQ3R sequence which is survey, question, read, recite, review as a strategy that all second language learners should do before they read a text. Overall, chapter 20 had some really great strategies on how to teach reading to second language learners and why it is important. It is good to keep in mind that students read differently in their first language and in their second languages as well as the different types of texts they are reading.

            In Brown chapter 21, it talks about teaching writing. The chapter is very similar to chapter 20 and gives a lot of different strategies. Brown first talks about writing in second language learning and the different types of texts in different languages. In most texts there is a point, but in different languages and cultures there are different ways of getting to that point. Brown talks about English usually having a direct way of getting to the point whereas Chinese writers usually “spiral” around the point. Although that was Kaplan’s study, many people did not really agree with him. Brown goes on to talk about the different principles for teaching writing skills such as connecting reading and writing, provide authentic writing, balance process and product, and prewrite, draft, and revise. Brown ends the chapter with giving some examples of writing activities and describing how a teacher can assess writing. Students have a lot more to think about writing in their second language rather than their native. A key component to both chapters is the different emphasis on reading and writing that second language learners need to focus on. Also, reading and writing is something that is taught and it is not natural. Teachers should keep that in mind as they give out writing assignments and reading materials for their class.

ENG 345: Week 6

In Kumar chapter 5, he talks about facilitating negotiated interaction. He talks about the three different types of interactional activities, which are textual, interpersonal, and ideational. Kumar talks about the input hypothesis where Krashen believes that listening and reading are of primary importance and the ability to speak or write will come automatically. Listening and reading are really important parts of learning a second language, but I do think that speaking and writing need to be addressed in the classroom. In order to become fluent and native-like in a second language then all components of a language need to be practiced and developed. Kumar continues and talks about input modifications and some studies done by Long “that demonstrated that learners who were exposed to linguistically unmodified input with opportunities to negotiate meaning understood it better than learners who were exposed to a linguistically simplified version of the input but offered no opportunity for such negotiation”. Students had more understanding of unmodified speech than when speakers try to modify what they say and make it easier for non-native speakers. Kumar then finishes the chapter talking about the impact of language teaching and the two types of management, which are talk and topic.

In the article How do I support a student’s first language when I don’t speak the language? is about a teacher named Dolores and how she teaches English. It starts off sharing that she has most of her students share other languages with the class. Usually sharing key phrases such as please and thank you, the students get to teach a part of their own language or their ancestor’s language. Dolores then talks about how her students tell jokes and then declare a winner for the funniest joke. Some students tell really funny jokes, but not all the students understand pragmatically what the joke means so it does not end up winning. Dolores talks about how she tries to help support the student’s first language even though she teaches in a multilingual classroom where not everyone’s first language is the same. Overall, the article gave a great overview of tips to use in the classroom and how to create a supportive environment for L2 learners.