Day 9 Reading Brown (2011)

Brown, B. 2011. Powerpointlessness. Ben's Blog. Retrieved from http://bbrown-5.blogspot.ca/2011/03/powerpointlessness.html on 8 August 2012.

This article is quite spot on in derailing the easily achieved pitfall of using Powerpoint. I remember vividly a course we took in our present programme, in which the instructor would come in to class, encounter numerous setbacks in powering up her loaned laptop, and click through her loathsome Powerpoint presentation on the lesson's theme. She read through her Powerpoint, often muttering her surprises when a slide came up with texts scrawled down to all four corners of the screen. She would also read through the texts, and for three and a half hours, we were all bored to tears. Bored is not the right word - rather, we were uninspired, as we felt she was not inspired by her informative Powerpoint presentation. I am never one to "hide behind the Powerpoint", as my UBC Faculty Advisor coined the sad teaching strategy. I find that the article put this phenomenon to the front, and it is nice to know that we in that class had a voice on the Internet.

Image source: http://tricksforthetext.blogspot.ca/2009_11_01_archive.html

Day 8 Reading Skillen (2011)

Skillen, P. (2011). Collaborative Projects: What Does It Mean to ‘Co-construct’?. The Construction Zone. Retrieved from http://theconstructionzone.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/collaborative-projects-what-does-it-mean-to-%E2%80%98co-construct%E2%80%99/ on 6 August 2012.

The article argues for collaborative practices in learning, which seems to me that the writer focusses on its application on the levels of collaboration among students and collaboration between student and teacher. For collaboration among teachers and educators, the topic was as if dismissed with merely a sentence or two. It is an interesting topic, however. I have always had doubts about group work. I enjoy working with people towards a common goal, and I agree that many heads is better than one. Nonetheless, this is definitely not always the case. During my undergraduate years, I have worked with others in group work for which they showed lack of responsibility and maturity. The writer notes the problems of team work. He also outlines some ways to tackle these problems, quoting Saloman's suggestion that "the whole environment be designed to maximize mindfulness and interdependence."

I find the writer's suggestion on having students build "thoughtful environments" through social networking very interesting and equally implementable for my teaching practice. I am excited by the prospect of integrating student-centred learning with technology.

Day 7 Reading White (2012)

White, N. (2012). Understanding Content Curation. Innovations in Education. Retrieved from http://www.readability.com/read?url=http%3A//d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/07/07/understanding-content-curation/ on 1 Aug 2012.

I have never heard of the word "curation" used in an educational context before. The writer of the article makes a useful context to understand the term by bringing up the idea of a museum curator. Upon reading through the article, it seems the idea of "curation" of knowledge seems rather obvious. Learning does not necessarily occur when one simply collects facts without synthesizing them and turning them into meaningful elements within a context.

Day 6 Reading Payne-Smart (2008)

Payne Smart, M. (2008). Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom: Student-produced podcasts bolster knowledge and communication skills. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/podcasting-student-broadcasts on 31 July 2012.

This is an interesting article which does not only expound the fun and attraction of digitalizing learning (via podcasts as its example), but also the example of showing students that their work could be accessed by a worldwide audience. Mr. Coley’s mode of continual communication with his students via podcasts he makes, which students can listen to on their way to school or back, encourages learning that takes place outside of the classroom. I agree with the creator of the online Kidcast community that an important advantage of involving students in the publishing process of their progress and engaging students outside of the classroom is that these activities give the students a sense of purpose and direction, instead of viewing them as academic drills which should stay in the classroom and not bring with them to apply in their life outside of it.

Day 5 Reading Polio (2008)

Polio, C. (2008). Making the most of online translators in foreign language classes. CLEAR News 12(2). Retrieved from http://clear.msu.edu/clear/newsletter/files/fall2008.pdf on 29 July 2012.

The use of a machine translator has long been a problem with learning a second language. Perhaps the biggest reason for using online translator is a lack of confidence in one’s ability in the second language, which I have personal experience with. Another reason is perhaps laziness, although I think it plays a relatively much smaller part. The article suggests a number of strategies of twisting the potential pitfalls of using online translator into potential benefits of their utilization. I have learnt about a strategy which I will be able to implement in my classroom, which is to pick a text in the second language and analyze how it gets translated in one of those online translators, in order to raise students’ awareness of the potential pitfall of its misuse and learn to maximize the usefulness of the tool.

Day 4 Reading Tennant

Tennant, A. (year unknown). Reading matters: What is reading? One Stop English. Retrieved from http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/reading/reading-matters/reading-matters-what-is-reading/154842.article on 26 July 2012.

The article is more interesting than its title suggests. I agree with Tennant that recognition of words does not constitute the activity we call reading. I also agree that we read in our first language more than we realised. We read announcements on the pole at a bus stop, lost cat notices, corny sayings on a stranger’s T-shirt, on a continual basis. Realising this, why should we as classroom teachers limit ourselves to introducing long texts or texts that are traditionally considered reading materials, in our L2 classroom? We run the risk of overloading students with information, the difficulty burden, etc. I will definitely take the suggestions of this article into account, and continue to be aware of the way I teach reading in L2.

Image source:  http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/l/lost_posters.asp 

Day 3 Reading Tomalin (2008)

Tomalin, B. (2008). "Making culture happen in the English language classroom". Teaching English BBC. Retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/making-culture-happen-english-language-classroom on 23 July 2012.

I find it interesting that the writer of the article links cultural awareness to emotional intelligence. It is true, of course, since the incorporation of the cultural elements of the target language in the language classroom not only makes the language intellectually relevant, but also emotionally evocative. This is especially true in the case of using universal languages such as art and music. I have found that using music in my Spanish classrooms became an enjoyable experience both for my students and me as a teacher. I have used calming music and uplifting music, and the atmosphere in the classroom was affected according to the type of music I picked. It was fun all around! My sponsor teacher, more so than me, successfully brought elements of culture into her classroom. For example, she had our students make tacos in class and eat them.

Reading 2 Canning-Wilson (2000)

Canning-Wilson, C. (2000). Practical aspects of using video in the foreign language classroom. The Internet TESL Journal 6(11). Retrieved on 24 July 2012 from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Canning-Video

Canning-Wilson’ article outlines some common knowledge about using video in the foreign language classroom. For instance, the use of visual cues, including video, improves students’ listening comprehension. A lot of her summaries about current theory on the use of video as an educational medium of instruction strike the reader as dry and uninspiring. She follows her summaries with a few interesting and less examined points.  For example, she points out the advantages in using video in the foreign language classroom becomes salient when audio passages involve relatively long stretches of conversation and generally a higher difficulty. Another interesting point that warrants further investigation is that teaching with video has affective advantages.

While Canning-Wilson introduces us to some interesting potential for using video in the foreign language classroom, her arguments for the practical implications of using video as a teaching tool are not sufficiently adequate to extricate the usefulness of video over pure audio materials. For example, she says,

“It can be argued that language found in videos could help nonnative speakers understand stress patterns. Videos allow the learner to see body rhythm and speech rhythm in second language discourse through the use of authentic language and speed of speech in various situations.”

On the other hand, another researcher she quotes makes an argument for using video that is more sound,

"Video can give students realistic models to imitate for role-play; can increase awareness of other cultures by teaching appropriateness and suitability; can strengthen audio/visual linguistic perceptions simultaneously; can widen the classroom repertoire and range of activities; can help utilize the latest technology to facilitate language learning; can teach direct observation of the paralinguistic features found in association with the target language; can be used to help when training students in ESP related scenarios and language; can offer a visual reinforcement of the target language and can lower anxiety when practicing the skill of listening." (Arthur, 1999, as cited in Canning-Wilson, 2000)

The article ends with a list of key considerations for using video in the classroom with language learners. Again, like much of the rest of the article, the list comes across as rather disappointingly cliché. Questions are asked such as “How is the video used in a classroom context?”, “How does video support the curriculum?”, “Can the comprehension of the video be measured without visual support?”, “Can the comprehension of the video be measured without auditory support?” and “How practical is the video to improve a learner’s academic listening and/or conversational listening skills?” I found this article to be grabbing clichés around language learning to form a recursive paper.

Reading 1 Aponte-de-Hanna (2012)

Aponte-de-Hanna, C. (2012). Listening strategies in the L2 classroom: more practice, less testing. College Quarterly 15 (1).

This article focuses on the needs for developing L2 learners' listening skills and provides some strategies in point form as to how L2 teachers can use to enhance listening skills as an active process in the acquisition of new languages. I have found it interesting that, in the history of Language Teaching, listening has been seen as a passive form of skill, as opposed to writing, reading, and speaking, that were seen as procedural and declarative knowledge in a second, or, foreign, language. It is also interesting the idea that students acquire listening skills through osmosis - do they? Perhaps they do! I have found in my practica experience that students do well in listening, while they could at the same time lag behind in the three other skills in new language mastery. It is useful to have an awareness, as teachers of languages, of the importance of developing students' "metastrategic awareness" with which they expand their autonomy as language learners.