ESOL Teacher Reflections

Meaning before details

2010-01-26T07:41:00.000-08:00

...or the importance of schema/background activation. Someone on a listserv I subscribe to recommended John Medina's Brain Rules blog. I am so impressed with it, I want to share it here. His 12/30/2009 post, Meaning Before Details, is an important reminder that one should never introduce new information without first giving students a framework on which to organize it. Attaching something new to something old somehow makes it "stick" better. The schema video on their blog (and on Youtube) really brings this home. The first time I watched it, I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. With the schema activation they provide at the end, I understood it perfectly! What are the implications of this for language teaching? The first step of any lesson plan template is "schema activation" or "activate background knowledge," but too often I've thought of this step as a means of merely getting students' attention or getting them interested in what was to follow. I have a tendency to speed through the schema activation in order to get to the real lesson. I had never understood the connection between schema activation and memory by association. I am fascinated with how much is being done lately to apply the findings of brain research to classroom practices.

How I spent my Christmas vacation

2010-01-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

I suspect I'm not the only teacher for whom "vacation" means a time to rethink, reorganize, clear clutter, and make a new and better plan for the coming semester's classes. One habit I'm trying to break is the photocopying/handouts syndrome. It is costly in terms of both time and the earth's resources. When there are extra copies left over, it seems wasteful to just recycle them, so I file them away for future use, but there are problems with this system. First, by the time the topic comes up again, I'm likely to have forgotten about the file. Second, I find I quickly run out of places to keep those files. Third, and most significant I think, is that if I do remember I have the file, I discover that I want to tweak the handout to make it better, so the copies I've so carefully saved end up in the recycle box after all. It would have been better to start with recycling the extra copies or, even better, to not have made them in the first place. Less paper, less clutter, less waste. It's an ideal to work toward.

On the electronic front, I have to confess that I have not yet experimented with the Wii remote faux Smart Board (see previous post), but I did revamp my list of ESL links for students. Instead of having them on a page of our family website, I gave them a home of their own at esolfavorites.com. I've retested all the links and added new ones I've been keeping on a "to do" list for the site, including links to sites for speaking and pronunciation that I hadn't included before. I especially like the Google translation feature that I incorporated on the home page, along with a short summary of my current philosophy of how people learn languages.

Of cabbages and kings

2009-11-17T21:31:00.000-08:00

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages-and kings…" (Lewis Carroll). This post is a compendium of many things—three best-of collections, two comprehensive online ESL courses, and a finale of a site where you can learn how to create your own faux Smart Board.

First the lists…
Probably the best known collection of lists for teachers is Larry Ferlazzo's blog of Best Websites of the Day for Teaching ELL, ESL, EFL. He continually updates his Best of… lists, and his blog is one-stop shopping for ideas on almost any topic. Type keywords in the search box, and you will probably be served with a cornucopia of ideas and activities. For the best of his best-ofs, click the Most Popular Blog Posts tab in his header. Each entry is annotated, so the user has some guidance to avoid wasting time by going to sites that are not of interest. One site I like from his post for today (Best Websites for English Language Learner Students —2009) is the BBC Memory Share site. I searched for immigration and found this memory, which could be used for a class discussion of culture shock and/or preparation for students' writing about a memory of their own and posting it on the site.

If you find Larry Ferlazzo's site a bit overwhelming, Kim Oliver, ESOL instructor at Austin Community College, has a site that is helpful and a bit less intimidating in scope —Kim Oliver's Links and Resources. Last Saturday she presented her 20 Top ESL Websites at the TexTESOL III Regional Conference, but she has way more than 20 really useful sites! Her home page features a highlighted site of the week, and on the right are links to sites, organized by category and annotated to enhance targeted searching. The site is easy to navigate, with a sitemap and a search box for targeting a specific topic or issue. Looking for practice with count/noncount nouns? A click on the category on the left brings you four sites with explanations, quizzes, and activities.

If you're looking for learning games to liven up students' vocab work or grammar practice, Rong-Chaang ESL Games may be the site for you. The site is organized into five categories: Popular (non-ESL) games, Educational Games, English Learning Games, Grammar Games, and Vocabulary Games. It seems clear and easily navigable, but after you get onto the linked pages, you might find yourself entangled in a myriad of links with no clue as to where to go except Back. Many of the games are designed for children, but adult English learners don't seem to mind. I learned about this site from one of my students after she discovered Learning Chocolate, which is linked from the Rong-Chang site.

Free Online Multimedia Language courses… Is it really possible to learn a language online? I know of two free courses that do a pretty good job of facilitating online learning, including feedback on writing. USA Learns is a multimedia online course developed by the Sacramento County Ofice of Education with the support of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education of the U.S. Dept. of Education. Released in November 2008, the course is now used by many educators as a distance learning option. Learners can sign in independently or as part of a class. It is easy to set up a class, track the progress of individual students, and provide feedback. When learners register (even when they are not part of a class), the program keeps track of their progress so they don't have to start at the beginning every time they go to the site. The program is targeted for immigrant adults with beginning to high intermediate English language skills. It includes practice activities in listening, speaking, reading, and writing couched in life-skills themes to promote success at work and in the community.

I have also found a commercial multimedia course that seems to work well. http://www.busuu.com/ offers courses in English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian. I've been using it for Spanish for a short time and am impressed by the comprehensiveness of the free version. It's a combination social networking/language course site, where members help members via video chat. When I do a writing activity, I get feedback and correction within minutes. Of course there are ads and delicate pressure to sign on for the paid premium version, so there are some features that are not available in the free edition. It's necessary to pay for the premium version in order to hear the audio for the dialogues and download the podcasts. But, the free version does have the video chat option for talking with a native speaker. Another nice feature of the course is that users are reminded if they've been inactive for an extended period of time. Periodically, I receive an email telling me that my "language garden is drying up" and it's time to go back to busuu to do some more work.

Make your own Smart Board… I happened onto this site by chance. It's not something I would ever have dreamed of to search for. Johnny Chung Lee, a researcher for Microsoft with a PhD from Carnegie Melon, has posted instructions—with a video demo— for making any surface a Wiimote Interactive Whiteboard for about $50. Why would you want to do that? So you could project an image from your computer and write on the screen—without leaving any marks behind—and, from the demos I've seen, a lot more. All you need is a computer, projector, Wii remote control, and an infrared pen. The site gives instructions for making the pen, but if you're not that much of a do-it-yourselfer, you can buy one for $29. Lee's software (free) is for PCs, but he provides a link to a site where Mac users can download free software developed for Macs. There's also a users' forum you can go to when you have questions. I don't have a Wii, but I just checked online, and it looks like the going price is $35 for the remote control. Of course this homemade version won't have all the features of a bona fide Smart Board, but it looks like it might be worth playing with. Hmm… maybe that will be something to look into over the Christmas holidays!

Speaking Online

2009-11-15T18:31:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, I found a couple of good sites for speaking and conversation practice and remembered another one I hadn't visited in some time. There are many Internet resources for pronunciation, but I haven't found many that provide speaking practice with feedback. The first two sites listed below are for students to use to improve their pronunciation. The last three are not for students, but they provide ideas for teachers to encourage and facilitate conversation in the classroom.

To start with the basics, there is a fantastic site from the University of Iowa for practicing the segmentals of American English (or German or Spanish, if you prefer): fənɜtIks—the sounds of spoken language. System requirements are Flash 7 or higher and Firefox browser (preferred), but it's worth it for the animation and video. Each of the phonemes of American English is categorized by place, manner, and voice. When the user clicks a phoneme, there are options to hear it, see a video of its production, watch a flash animation of its production, and/or see a written description of exactly what is going on inside the mouth to produce the sound. The written descriptions represent very advanced reading for English language learners, but the animation, video, and sample words would be helpful to learners at any level.

The other pronunciation site I'm going to share is less academic and a lot of fun to use (my opinion corroborated by feedback from my students). It is Oddcast's text-to-speech site, which uses virtual characters to speak text entered by the user. Variations include type of English (US, UK, Scottish, or Australian), a variety of avatars, and special effects (pitch, duration, speed, and more). However, I recommend listening with the effects set to none, as the effects tend to distort the more natural pronunciation rendered with them. The appeal of this is that students enjoy having different avatars repeat a given phrase or sentence, with the result that they get multiple repetitions without becoming bored.

ESL Flow has hundreds of ideas for teachers to use to promote dialogue in the classroom, grouped by Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, and Intermediate. Most activities are in downloadable PDF or MS Word format, but there are also some can be used online. It includes assorted speaking and icebreaker activities, interview topics, and information gap activities. I found some files to be better than others, and there's no way to preview before you download, so it may be necessary to download a few files you don't want before you find the gem you're looking for.

The online journal from TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) has more topics for classroom conversation than I care to count and many, many questions for each topic to keep the conversation going. So if you have a topic you want your students to discuss, it's probably on this site, and the questions provided will help you keep the conversation going without running out of steam. My favorites include What if… and Gender Roles.

An excellent conversation/interview modeling site for teachers shows a series of videos from the Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly (CLESE), a project to help elderly refugees in Chicago learn English. Heide Wrigley, Jim Prowie, and their colleagues created three videos as part of the Bright Ideas project. In the first video, the teacher poses a problem (e.g., Your landlord says you did not pay the rent) and asks "What would you do? What would you say?" Students discuss possible solutions to the problem. The second video, Coming to America, shows Heide Wrigley in individual interviews with students, prompting them to tell their stories. Be prepared for tears because these stories are highly emotional. Heide provides good examples of recasting and paraphrasing in this video. The third clip is a comprehensive lesson plan on shopping for fruits and vegetables, which culminates in beginning-level students going on an actual field trip (they pick their own food in the field) and asking questions in English. When they return to the classroom, they discuss differences in prices at the farm they visited with prices advertised in supermarket flyers. I find it helpful to see the student/teacher interactions in these videos. They are valuable models that I can carry with me into my own teaching.

Reading and Writing for English learners

2009-10-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

One of the cornerstones of my ESL classes is reading in English — independent reading of self-selected books for pleasure. I do not have any requirements for how long a student takes to read a book, there is no competition. and there are no comprehension questions or tests. The only accountability criteria I hold students to are (1) keep a reading log with a listing of book currently being read and brief comments about books completed and (2) participate in occasional "book talk" sessions by talking about books they have read or are reading now, or about their reading experience in general. I structured the extensive reading component of my class after the model suggested by Stephen Krashen. See, for example, his article titled "The Case for Narrow Reading." I use leveled readers such as those published by Cambridge and Penguin (actually Pearson Longman), supplemented by finds at garage sales and second-hand shops. After more than two years, it is still successful. I've had students tell me that they go to the library now and read more at home. One student bought books, read them, and then contributed them to my class library. During Book Talk in my beginner class last week, a student was telling the story of her book to her group. She told it in Spanish, but she had all the essential elements of the story, which she had read in English. I wrote about the nuts and bolts of my reading program in February 2008, and I still manage it basically the same way. The major difference now is that meet with one class only nine hours a week instead of fifteen, and with the other class six hours, so I have had to reduce in-class reading time and started a card catalog system for them to check out books to read outside of class in addition to our limited in-class reading.

An activity that involves speaking, writing, grammar review, and reading is the classic Mad Libs, which you can buy in most bookstores. You can also find some online versions that are devised specifically for English learners, such as this lesson plan from Kenneth Beare at about.com. These are fun to do in class for parts-of-speech review. There are many examples of mad libs for children, but here's a site that has mad libs for adults. You can also create your own from a paragraph of your choice.

Topics Magazine is an online journal written by and for English learners. The list of contents includes international themes, writing, travel, food, speaking out on controversial issues, learning English, idioms and expressions, and more. Reading of a selected article could be used as a stimulus for discussion, role play, or writing in the classroom. Oh! There's also a Teacher's Corner with teaching ideas and projects.

Want to give your students a showcase for their writing? Try the pbs.org Destination America site. Students can put in their own stories about their immigration experience. For example, here's Jesus's story, posted by one of my beginning-level students from several years ago.

Coming back to Krashen, he has extended his support of Free Voluntary Reading to include Free Voluntary Surfing of the Web as a source of comprehensible input for intermediate and advanced English language learners. For those who doubt, he suggests this test: try it with a language of which you have an intermediate level of knowledge. Search for topics in which you have a compelling personal interest—not professional development, not academic—"something genuinely interesting, but not essential." When you become sufficiently involved in what you are reading, you will eventually lose your compulsion to look up the meaning of unknown words. As in Free Voluntary Reading (aka Narrow Reading), you will forget you are reading in another language.

Internet Resources for Listening

2009-10-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

A few of my favorite sites for (mostly) authentic English listening practice:

Audio Concentration is like the card game Concentration, or Memory. There are five games in the Similar Sounding Words section for discrimination of minimal pairs. One of the things I like about this site is that it is audio only. It relies totally on listening; there is no text. This is a good site for students to use during computer lab or outside of class. The fact that the games are timed encourages repetition for reinforcement of the phonemes presented. There are also games for vocabulary related to family members and months of the year, which I assign for a computer lab activity when we are studying those topics in the classroom.

ELLLO (English Listening Lesson Library Online) is an excellent site for intermediate/advanced listening (with or without text) to dialogs on various topics. Most dialogs have a Hide Conversation option, but users can also choose not to scroll down the script so the text is not revealed. The content is intended for college students, but there are many conversations on themes that older adults can relate to. Speakers are American, British, Australian, and non-native English speakers to provide experience listening to a variety of accents. Each conversation is accompanied by a short quiz so the listener can check comprehension. A very nice feature of the accompanying text is that idioms are highlighted and linked to explanations with examples. This is an ideal site for independent study, but some of the topics also lend themselves to reinforcement/expansion on classroom content. For example, topic #990 Next Step is a discussion of job options. Even though the conversation is between college students nearing graduation, it would be appropriate for anyone who is seeking employment.

English LingQ: This Canadian site provides a variety of listening options for intermediate/advanced English learners. Interviews, excerpts from audiobooks, and other authentic listening are presented with readalong text on a variety of topics with natural pace and intonation. English LingQ for beginners has a slower, less natural, pace. It is a serial story titled as "a simple story in 26 parts," about a woman looking for her brother. However, only the first 10 parts are posted, so by the end of Part 10, she still hasn't found her brother. There is also an option to subscribe to these audio files as podcasts. These audio files can be used for independent study or in the classroom as the basis for discussion or writing assignments. The beginner's serial story could be used in the classroom to reinforce ways to ask for information, narrative discussion, and predictions for next installment.

Street interviews with English speakers: This site is rich in authentic listening to actual interviews of people on the street. In each video, the interview question is repeated multiple times, with multiple demonstrations of ways to answer. In addition to its value for independent listening practice, various conversations can be used to reinforce classroom content, such as telling time or asking directions. The conversations represent both British and U.S. English, and the pace is appropriate for intermediate and advanced English learners.

Listen to any tex t: This is an incredibly useful text-to-sound site! Users are required to register to open an account, but it's free and the registration is not arduous or personally invasive. The user can enter or paste text or choose to convert from a file (.txt, .doc, .pdf, .html, .xml). Options include voice selection (M/F, British or U.S. English) and speed. There also controls for modifying pronunciation of selected words and for view text while you listen to the file. Files are saved in the user's account and can be downloaded as podcasts or mp3 format. The speech is somewhat robotic, but realistic enough to be useful, with a surprising range of stress, rhythm, and intonation. I am excited about the possibilities presented to me as a teacher. I can convert reading passages for students to hear, and students can open their own accounts and enter their own text for listening. Here's a sample of text converted from this blog post: voice, AT&T US Mike; speed, normal. It's not perfect, but I think it does surprisingly well overall.

Let's Share!

2009-10-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

In my first years of teaching I was constantly "reinventing the wheel"—crafting activities and materials that were already available somewhere. I just didn't know where. Now, the proliferation of search engines, blogs, youtube, and listservs has made sharing a given. This blog will be a compilation of insights and resources intended primarily for teachers of adult English language learners in a nonacademic setting. Please feel free to comment, especially if what I post here resonates with something you are using or have used in your teaching, either positively or negatively. It is my hope that we can all learn from each other.