Affective Domain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaRdbP4Y9tY

When planning lessons for my students, I always integrate content that I know would be of interest to them. For me, the best part about teaching is watching my kids have their "a-ha" moments without even realizing that they're learning. I rarely use the textbook when lesson planning. Instead, I utilize resources from the internet such as YouTube and twitter, have my students read stories that are current and relevant to their age group, and use a variety of instructional strategies that appeal to all my learners. 

TPR teaching

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdJ4VziqC8s

This video reminds me of the game "Simon Says." I remember playing this game in elementary school as a way of learning the different body parts. Chamorro teachers also used the game to teach students the names of different body parts in Chamorro. Using such an interactive game is essential when learning a new language because it appeals to all types of learners-visual, tactile, and audio.

Language Acquisition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE4ce4mexrU

I found this video very interesting and quite related to Krashen's Natural Approach. Language acquisition is analysed by Deb Roy, an MIT researcher, who acquired more than 90,000 hours of  video and 140,000 hours of audio footage recorded over a span of 3 years in his house. Roy used the data to help him understand how his infant son acquired the ability to speak the English language. Although the clip is about 20 minutes long, it is quite astonishing to hear and watch the progress of how humans learn to speak.

Language Experience Approach video

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re enjoying the break. I have been reading your posts and watching your clips.  Your input has definitely helped me to understand our course content more clearly.  Our language experience approach analysis is due after the break.  After reading about your experiences, I made arrangements to work with an ELL that is still in the sheltered classroom.  This will be a new experience for me.  Last time I worked with a student that already entered my traditional classroom.  I'm looking forward to the experience and to see how we are able to interact with each other on our first meeting.  I found this short clip that reinforces much of what was shared in our forum.     

language experience video

Interactive Learning by Fina Leon Guerrero

The following post was provided by Fina Leon Guerrero. Due to technical difficulties with Gmail, she has used my account to post her blog. Please address all comments to her. Thank you!

Interactive Practices

Teacher is helping student identify items.

Interactive Activty: Grocery List

An example of an interactive activity is a grocery list activity, which can be used in different content areas (Math, Reading, and Language Arts). Students will be able to exercise their skills in reading, categorizing, spelling, addition, etc. Of course, this activity is open to modification depending on the skill that is being taught. Above are examples of different grocery lists that can be used for students at different levels of proficiency. As an enhancement to this activity: students can use ads from newspapers to complete lists and skill exercise, students can play store in the classroom and participate in different roles (cashier, stock person, greeter, customer, etc.) as well as use recycled boxes/packages of real products, or students can go on a fieldtrip to a grocery store (Kmart or Payless) and apply the learned skill. This grocery list activity is an example of relating learned skills in the classroom to life skills experienced by our students.

TPR: Guiding Principles

I found this image on some guiding principles of TPR. It is a simple way to remind us how to use this method in our classrooms.

Theory and Practice Combined: TPR

I found this 5 minutes long video clip relevant to what we read in Chapter 8 and 9. Krashen’s Natural Approach and comprehensible input is related to Asher’s underpinning theory of Total Physical Response. We can reinforce our reading by watching this short clip of brief explanation and demonstration of TPR.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJnW77vEz1E

Total Physical Response Example

As displayed by chapter eight of the textbook, 'Making it Happen: From Interactive to Participatory Language Teaching: Evolving Theory and Practice', the total physical response is a great method when combined with other methods to teach a second language. Being the student is involved in the language, they are able to connect the new vocabulary with their own actions. Whenever there is a new method or approach that the book discusses, I like to look up a video of it in use. Below is an example of TPR in the classroom.

-Kaylynne

Portfolios

Portfolios are great to use in the classroom for assessment purposes and beneficial for the students and the teacher.  The students can see their growth and achievements, they are actively involved with their learning, it allows them to reflect on their work and critique their assignments, and be able to establish short-term goals that they would like to achieve.  Teachers will be able to know what is going on with their students to see if they are progressing academically.  It is also a useful resource for teachers to see whether or not they have to adjust their instruction to meet their students' needs.

Active Engagement in Learning!

Central to the Affective Domain

The group that I was assigned with consisted of myself (Pedro), Gem, TinMar and Beauty.  The area that we covered was the Central to the Affective Domain.  There are three areas that involve this area and they are:

a.  attitude

b.  motivation

c.  anxiety

 

We covered Attitude and Motivation.  They made me the leader which at first I had built a little anxiety.  But, I found that cooperative learning is very effective and this is the attitude that I perceived as positive and being part of a group that gave me confidence to present to the rest of my colleagues/classmates in our class meeting and our assigned subject and participation.  Their moral support allowed me to confidently deliver the information with a positive attitude and gave me the motivation to want to deliver the information.  So this is my thought of how the many students that I may encounter, will be able to support the other students by group learning. 

Attitude and Motivation was basically applied by my group upon me.  My fellow group members made comments that helped to support me and make me feel like it wasn't impossible to present.

It was my experience as a student in this participation to be able to understand exactly how a student would feel while trying to fit in and cooperate with students of the target language.  Because I experienced this hopeful feeling of knowing I was supported, I felt as if I couldn't fail to deliver is the feel every student should be able to feel.  We should all be knowledgeable of how to positively affect and motivate, when we are teaching our children of Guam.  



Some reasons why students hate school

This video lists some reasons why students would say "school sucks". Imagine how students of another language would act if they felt this way about school and were totally intidmidated by the new culture they must adjust to. As ESL teachers, we need to connet with our students on different levels. Like we discussed in class, it is important that we make an effort to get to know our students inside and outside of the classroom. This allows students to be more comfortable and willing to participate in the new language and culture. It also would lessen the anxiety that the students are experiencing. It is always good to assist students in establishing relationships with classmates as well. Through social activties in the classroom, students may be able to start relationships with one another that would assist in the adjustment to the new culture or language. Once students are motivated to come to school and have a positive attitude, they will be able to adjust better and progress in the classroom.

Extrovert vs. Introvert

In today's class our discussion about how personality affects language acquisition stood out to me the most. The book described extroverts as individuals who may learn the spoken language faster because of their risk taking behaviors. When I think about my ESL students who were quick to learn the English language, I recall several of the students being extroverts. These students would comment, ask questions, and make statements on a topic. My quieter ESL students were also learning the second language, but did not feel comfortable speaking and sharing it with the whole class. These students who were introverts were able to express themselves better in writing. After reflecting on this part of the chapter, I realized it's important to identify ESL students as introvert or extroverts because the information would help the teacher find the most appropriate and effective teaching strategy to use with them.

Affective Domain

I wish I remembered sharing this story in class, but thankfully we have the class blog to share our thoughts.  In one of my current classes, I had a Chuukese classmate (I had her in several classes as well) who is an intelligent girl.  On the 3rd or 4th meeting, our professor put her on the spot by asking her a question she did not know the answer to.  He made a ridiculous comment about how she's supposed to know this information already since there was a prerequisite for the class he's teaching.  It was obvious to me that response really affected her that day.  I remember thinking to myself "She's going to end up dropping this class because of how he made her feel" and sure enough, she hasn't returned to class since.  My professor inquired to the rest of us about her whereabouts because she's still currently registered.  I wanted to say to him, "She's going to drop this class because of YOU!"  But of course, I kept that to myself. 

This is evidence, just like the rest of the stories we shared in class, that negative comments from a teacher truly affects the learner's affective domain and cause demotivation.  My Chuukese classmate and I are majoring in the same content and she needs this specific class to graduate, but that still did not stop her from dropping the course and waiting until next semester to retake the class, most likely from another professor.

Learning with the internet

I found in my own studies that reading websites in the target language is a really great way to become better at the language. Of course, this wouldn't be for beginning students, but once a student can somewhat understand and read in the second language, I think that using the internet as a tool for reading is a good idea.

The issue comes about with the type of material the student would read and have access to. I came across a program called WebQuest that helps in this area. Usually this is done in a Word Document or a small website is created on a computer for the students to access the content from.

WebQuest is a learning tool that allows the teacher to create links to websites for the student to visit as well as goals for the student to accomplish at these sites. A teacher could link to English websites for the student to read and in a group they could analyze and discuss what they have learned. This could also help students see how English is used in a real world example.

http://webquest.org/

-Kaylynne

Recent (and Ongoing) Attempt to Learn a New Language Online

After posting for journal sharing and reading the shared journals and perspectives on the use of technology for ELLs, I browsed a little bit to see what else is out there on the internet for language learning. I found the website Digital Dialects: Lange Learning Games, advertising that "the website features free to use online game for learning languages. Language resources include games for learning phrases, numbers, useful words, spelling, verb conjugations and alphabet. Games use Macromedia Flash Player” ( http://www.digitaldialects.com/ ). Sounds great. There are a bunch of languages from the most popular foreign languages like English and Spanish to some languages I had never heard the name of (honestly speaking) being offered on the website.

 “Do we all not have quaint interests in life?” I thought, having chosen Tibetan language to give it a try. The alphabet at first sight was really intimidating with all those strokes with different thickness of ink for different letters! However, many letters sound similar or the same to my native language. Thus, if there is a transliteration, I can sound them out perfectly. I could be reading transliterated Tibetan with impeccable pronunciation without knowing the meaning for a word of what I would be reading. Then, my next question is “Do we just learn the spoken form to learn a language especially there is a written form for it? How long is it going to take me to learn just the basic Tibetan – its (unfathomable-looking) alphabet and to count numbers- together with the written form?” Language learning is very challenging, and I came to realize that the technology helps in many ways to reach the goal but the process to reach the goal also involves the learner’s motivation, time, effort and appropriate learning methods with a teacher’s guidance.