Me And You And A Dog Named

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ME AND YOU AND A DOG NAMED ME AND YOU AND A DOG NAMED “BLUE”“BLUE”

FLAVA FORUMFLAVA FORUM

October 14, 2005October 14, 2005Frank Medley, Jr.,West Virginia Univ.Frank Medley, Jr.,West Virginia Univ.

Judith L. Shrum, Virginia TechJudith L. Shrum, Virginia Tech

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Old Paradigm and New Paradigm (“Travelin’ & livin’”)

Objectives

Stated in terms of grammatical knowledge as provided in textbook

Stated in terms of what learners should know and be able to do with the language

Content/Culture

Content limited to bits and pieces of cultural information included in textbook; connections to other disciplines absent

Interdisciplinary and cultural connections; integration of cultural and academic content; culture explored by means of products, practices, and perspectives

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Old Paradigm and New Paradigm (cont’d.)

Skills Practice of individual skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing

Integrated practice of three modes of communication, which build on one another

The Learner

Mostly passive and learns the material presented by the teacher

Actively engaged in learning and has opportunities to explore her/his own interests

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Old Paradigm and New Paradigm (cont’d.)

The Teacher

The center of instruction and the audience for learners; students work to impress the teacher

Facilitates instruction and guides student learning; designs opportunities for cooperative learning; audience includes peers and community

Materials

Textbook as primary material

Textbook as one of many tools; others include authentic materials (tape recordings, videos, magazines, short stories, folklore), World Wide Web, visuals, realia

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Old Paradigm and New Paradigm (cont’d.)

Assess-ment

Purpose to evaluate student achievement; focus on discrete-point grammar items, often out of context; primarily paper-and-pencil testing; learners provide one right answer

Purpose to assess progress in meeting standards and to improve instruction; assessment strategies include integration of modes for meaningful purposes, exploration of content, completion of real-world tasks, self-assessment by learners

Other?

Source: Shrum & Glisan, 2005, p. 68

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Asking the right questions can provide direction

• Language learning as an individual achievement

• Language learning as a collaborative achievement

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Language Learning as Individual Accomplishment (“I

did it my way”)

Empiricist Theory: Learner’s experience is more important than any specific innate capacity.

• observable• behavioristic• operant conditioning (Skinner, 1957)

• stimulus-response• habit formation• classical conditioning (Pavlov, 1927)

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COGNITIVE THEORY

• emphasizes KNOWING rather than RESPONDING,

• emphasizes mental structure or organization, and• views the learner as one who acts, constructs, and

plans, rather than as a receiver of stimuli.

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THE “LAD” (Chomsky, 1965)

• Innate properties of a LAD (as envisioned by Chomsky) include:– the ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds;– the ability to organize language into a system of structures;– the knowledge of what is possible and what is not possible in the

linguistic system;– the ability to construct the simplest possible system based on the

linguistic data to which one is exposed (i.e., a transformational or generative grammar).

•  universal grammar comprised of a set of basic grammatical elements that are common to all human languages and that predispose children to organize the input in certain ways.

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Communicative Competence

• Communicative competence (Chomsky, 1965)

• Communication within meaningful contexts (Bachman, 1990; Campbell & Wales,1970; Canale & Swain, 1980; Swain,1985; Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, & Thurrell, 1995)

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Communicative Competence (Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, & Thurrell, 1995)

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Keep on rollin’ (“Proud Mary”)

Learner’s use of the target language is a system in development characterized by

• Hypotheses• Noticed features• Errors and revisions• Input intake uptake output

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Role of Input: Monitor Model (Krashen, 1982)

• acquisition-learning hypothesis • monitor hypothesis • natural order hypothesis • input hypothesis (i +1)• affective filter hypothesis

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Role of Input: Interlanguage, modified input (Selinker, 1974; Long, 1983; Pica, Holliday,

Lewis, & Morgenthaler, 1989; Gass & Selinker, 1984).

• Comprehensible input• Language of the Learner• Interaction hypothesis• Negotiate meaning

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Role of Input: Processing (Wong & VanPatten, 2004)

• to make sense of grammatical forms and be able to use them in communication, learners need to be engaged in attending to meaningful input

• mechanical grammar practice does not help learners attend to and use form in meaningful output

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Traditional Practice in Grammar

input intake developing system output

focused practice

“...traditional grammar instruction, which is intended to cause a change in the developing system, is akin to putting the cart before the horse when it comes to acquisition; the learner is asked to produce when the developing system has not yet had a chance to build up a representation of the language based on input data.”

Source: Lee & VanPatten (1995), p. 95

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Processing-Oriented Grammar Instruction

Input Intake Developing System

Output

Processing mechanisms

Focused practice

Source: Lee & VanPatten (1995), p. 9; VanPatten (2004), p. 26

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Role of Output (Swain, 1985, 1995; VanPatten &

Cadierno, 1993)

• Meaningful• Purposeful• Motivating

– Are forms being processed in the input?

– Are learners attending to grammatical information?

– Are correct form-meaning connections being made when attending to input data?

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Language Learning as a Collaborative

Accomplishment (“Islands in the Stream”)• Sociocultural theory• Language learning is

social as well as cognitive (Wertsch, 1991)

• Interactions between experts and novices (Appel & Lantolf, 1994; Rogoff, 1990; Wells, 1998, 1999)

• Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978)

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Sociocultural Theory (cont’d.)

• Scaffolding and Guided Practice (Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994; Rogoff, 1990)

• Mediation (Vygotsky, 1986, Antón & DiCamilla, 1998; Brooks, Donato & McGlone, 1997)

• Language Play (Lantolf, 1994; Broner & Tarone, 2001)

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Expanding our Perspectives (“Don’t worry

be happy”)

National context

National Standards

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Basic Components of the Standards- Based Curriculum

– Performance Standards– Assessment– Content– Language Skills in Use– Language Components– Think globally, Act locally

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Standards are the Wind Beneath Our Wings (Met, 2000; Shrum

& Glisan, 2005) (“Hero”)

• Concept of proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, writing

• Communication in three modes to emphasize content and purpose of communication

• Student pair and group work• Tasks that provide opportunities for students

to negotiate meaning and develop interactional competence (e.g., ability to manage discussions)

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Standards are the Wind Beneath Our Wings (cont’d.)

• Oral teacher-to-student exchanges that are communicative in nature

• Classroom interaction that is intellectually meaningful and stimulating (i.e., encourages students to ask questions, expand on their talk, take multiple turns in conversations)

• Grammar as a component of communication rather than an end itself

• Grammar that serves communication needs

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Standards are the Wind Beneath Our Wings (cont’d.)

• Use of authentic materials and commercially produced materials organized around communicative topics/situations

• Central focus on developing interpretation skills - pivotal to acquiring new information, cultural knowledge, and connections to other disciplines and target-language communities

• Classroom activities that are meaningful, purposeful,and communicative

• More central role for inquiry-based activities (e.g., cultural investigations, authentic text exploration, research- and technology-based projects) to foster a sociocultural community of learners engaged in meaning making and acquiring knowledge through the foreign language

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Standards are the Wind Beneath Our Wings (cont’d.)

• Integration of various aspects of culture into language learning

• Approach to culture that emphasizes the connection of cultural products and practices to their philosophical perspectives, enabling learners to develop more relevant cultural insights into the target culture and their own

• Ways of measuring student learning that focus on performance, on knowledge in use

• Performance assessments that go beyond paper-and-pencil tests, have an expanded role in determining student progress in meeting the standards, and offer a more useful link between teaching and learning

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How does a standards-based curriculum address:

• Articulation

• Recruitment

• Mentoring

• Retention

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Articulation

• 88.89% of Virginians speak English• Of the 11.11% who speak LOTE,

– 316,274 Spanish (43%)– 40,117 French– 32,736 German– 31,918 Vietnamese– 29, 837 Chinese– 25,984 Arabic

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Recruitment

• 38% of Virginia’s teaching force will retire in the next 10 years

• Great Virginia Teach-In Job Fair, job bank, electronic hiring hall

• 22 reasons to be an FL teacher (Long, 2005)

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Mentoring – Four Basic Questions

• What could we do?

• What should we do?

• What will we do?

• Who will do it?

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Mentoring – “Lean on Me!”• What could we do?

– Role modeling– Electronic mentoring– On-site mentoring

• What should we do?– Create a “mentoring” mindset– Recognize the need for collaboration among colleagues

• What will we do?– Only WE can answer this!

• Who will do it?– Individual teachers– Retired colleagues– Professional organizations– School districts and higher ed– Departmental units

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Mentoring – Building the Relationship

• The mentor should NOT be in the performance evaluation “loop,” since this would tend to inhibit the open discussion between the individuals involved.

• Regardless of the level at which mentoring occurs, there should be established guidelines for both mentor and mentee, including selection of individuals to be involved in the process.

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Retention (“Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown”)

• 1/3 of new teachers leave in the first 3 years

• 50% of new teachers leave in the first 5 years

• Virginia Middle School Teacher Corps - math, and L2?

• Teacher-to-teacher Training Corps

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Retention - Rewards (Material Girl)

• From the AFT (2002-2005):

– Salary ranges from $28,143 to $57,087;

avg. $40, 510

– 1.19% , 3.15% inflation• 2005 Virginia DOE:

– $46,034 Avg. budgeted salary

– 4.8% over 2004; 2004 was 3% over 2003

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Preview to the Workshop• Authentic materials

• Information Gap

• Assessment

• Brainstorming commitments across agencies Photo credit Willa Dios, 2004