Software/Website Title: NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) ELL Website for Secondary Students
Website URL: http://www.ncte.org/collections/secell
Grade/Age Level: Middle and High School targets… Adults, too.
Language & Content: English Lesson Plan Strategies and Suggestions
The NCTE site is a wealth of ELL teacher resources. NCTE is a very large professional organization for English teachers… I think of it in the States, but this online presence makes them very international! This is one of hundreds of pages on their site, but it is specifically focused on the ELL secondary classroom. There are three columns of links to articles and sample lessons: teaching strategies, professional readings, and related resources. The most attractive aspect of this site is that NCTE’s staff has acted as an “aggregator” of current publications in a variety of professional journals that would take an unwieldy amount of time to sift through as an individual. I spent most of my time perusing the teaching strategy articles, a collection of recently published ELL teaching ideas. The variety of resources was impressive including ideas for guiding students metacognitively into using 4 strategies for spelling success and an article detailing a unit on having students update local/traditional idioms into modern, and more familiar, language. These ideas seem ready to be incorporated with minor adjustments for your local situation. The second column is a bit more dry… professional readings on a variety of ELL topics regarding the ultimate creation of an ideal ELL environment. These are useful as well, but they are more like a textbook than teachers’ resource book. The third column is a mixture of extra resources, including several that are plugs for books and other products. This seems like a great place for both beginning and experienced ELL teachers. Enjoy.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
NBLT and beyond
Hello-
At the end of this entry are some of the notes that I took from Kern & Warschauer and the Chao and Smith pieces. I definitely see the progression of the language teaching as it reaches from a past of isolation and drill into a present of meaningful iteraction in a real world situation. This definitely brings to mind my experience of living in Germany for 2 years. I had taken 4 years of h.s. German ending in 1986 and I was not about tot spend the time at a class in addition to my work as a teacher. I assume that my h.s. days were indeed cognitive perspective influenced and sturcturalist haunted! In Germany, however, I began to use the internet for banking, ordering takeout, etc. All of which provided the very real social purpose, but that gave me the additional time needed to interpret the incoming communication and then craft my own response. Additionally, I had to use the phone to perform business and the only thing missing was the time to really interact with the incoming communication... there was an uncomfortable pressure to produce immediately. That frustration was overcome by the reality of needs and the excitement of accomplishment.
I think this is an ideal way to proceed in ELL communities. I must admit I cringe a little bit every time I see a study from 1996 or that era used in the text. The trends in this arena are so quick that it must be impossible to even get a book to print before it is outdated. Obviously, Dan must be monitoring the field at a rate that allows him to make informed judgements about the validity of various texts, but it is funny to know htat the clock is ticking on so much research. I think about my own knowledge in 1996, 2000, or even 2 years ago. A blog or the idea that students would be able to practically join in discussion that were not just emails to a "sister school" and thus orchestrated by a teacher in at least a somewhat artifical manner.
I guess we will discover what types of ELL resources are out there to provide the authentic experience that language learners crave. As is stated in Egbert, Chao, Smith the resources that are most productive for any student will vary just as the ey will for each teacher. Variety and experimentation would seem to be a key. Younger kids must be ideal... with their ability and interest in play that would allow them to learn so quickly.
NOTES: Kern & Warschauer
NBLT represents a new and different side of CALL, where human-to-human communication is the focus
structural methodologists conceived of language learning as habit formation and thus saturated students with dialogues and pattern drills designed to condition learners to produce automatic, correct responses to linguistic stimuli
Cognitive/Constructivist Perspective
Errors came to be seen in a new light÷not as bad habits to be avoided but as natural by-products of a creative learning process that involved simplification, generalization, transfer, and other general cognitive strategies. Language learning had thus come to be understood not as conditioned response but as an active process of generating and transforming knowledge.
Sociocognitive Perspective
In a sociocognitive approach, learning is viewed not just in terms of changes in individuals' cognitive structures but also in terms of the social structure of learners' discourse and activity
Literacy has been increasingly seen as a key to developing not only language knowledge but also sociocultural and intercultural competence
Computers and CALL/NBLT
If our goal is to help students enter into new authentic discourse communities, and if those discourse communities are increasingly located online, then it seems appropriate to incorporate online activities for their social utility as well as for their perceived particular pedagogical value.
At the end of this entry are some of the notes that I took from Kern & Warschauer and the Chao and Smith pieces. I definitely see the progression of the language teaching as it reaches from a past of isolation and drill into a present of meaningful iteraction in a real world situation. This definitely brings to mind my experience of living in Germany for 2 years. I had taken 4 years of h.s. German ending in 1986 and I was not about tot spend the time at a class in addition to my work as a teacher. I assume that my h.s. days were indeed cognitive perspective influenced and sturcturalist haunted! In Germany, however, I began to use the internet for banking, ordering takeout, etc. All of which provided the very real social purpose, but that gave me the additional time needed to interpret the incoming communication and then craft my own response. Additionally, I had to use the phone to perform business and the only thing missing was the time to really interact with the incoming communication... there was an uncomfortable pressure to produce immediately. That frustration was overcome by the reality of needs and the excitement of accomplishment.
I think this is an ideal way to proceed in ELL communities. I must admit I cringe a little bit every time I see a study from 1996 or that era used in the text. The trends in this arena are so quick that it must be impossible to even get a book to print before it is outdated. Obviously, Dan must be monitoring the field at a rate that allows him to make informed judgements about the validity of various texts, but it is funny to know htat the clock is ticking on so much research. I think about my own knowledge in 1996, 2000, or even 2 years ago. A blog or the idea that students would be able to practically join in discussion that were not just emails to a "sister school" and thus orchestrated by a teacher in at least a somewhat artifical manner.
I guess we will discover what types of ELL resources are out there to provide the authentic experience that language learners crave. As is stated in Egbert, Chao, Smith the resources that are most productive for any student will vary just as the ey will for each teacher. Variety and experimentation would seem to be a key. Younger kids must be ideal... with their ability and interest in play that would allow them to learn so quickly.
NOTES: Kern & Warschauer
NBLT represents a new and different side of CALL, where human-to-human communication is the focus
structural methodologists conceived of language learning as habit formation and thus saturated students with dialogues and pattern drills designed to condition learners to produce automatic, correct responses to linguistic stimuli
Cognitive/Constructivist Perspective
Errors came to be seen in a new light÷not as bad habits to be avoided but as natural by-products of a creative learning process that involved simplification, generalization, transfer, and other general cognitive strategies. Language learning had thus come to be understood not as conditioned response but as an active process of generating and transforming knowledge.
Sociocognitive Perspective
In a sociocognitive approach, learning is viewed not just in terms of changes in individuals' cognitive structures but also in terms of the social structure of learners' discourse and activity
Literacy has been increasingly seen as a key to developing not only language knowledge but also sociocultural and intercultural competence
Computers and CALL/NBLT
If our goal is to help students enter into new authentic discourse communities, and if those discourse communities are increasingly located online, then it seems appropriate to incorporate online activities for their social utility as well as for their perceived particular pedagogical value.
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