MATSOL 2013 Conference Highlights (continued)

On May 3, I was able to attend two academic sessions at the MATSOL Conference. Compared to the annual TESOL convention, this event is on a much smaller scale. Even so, I found the experience of looking at the schedule to be the same: I wanted to be in two places at one time. That’s a very good indicator of  the range of topics being addressed. The healthy selection of sessions to attend made choosing difficult. I was very happy with my choices, though. Here are some highlights.

Sentence Frames to Promote Critical Thinking & Access Background Knowledge. Melissa DaPonte Katz works with younger ELLS, but the concept of sentence frames is useful to ELTs in general. Melissa demonstrated how she uses sentence frames to provide scaffolding and help learners move toward higher-order thinking. She explained that “frames” are different from “stems” in that sentence stems only prompt a complete thought. In contrast, sentence frames teach language patterns; they provide linguistic structures that are relevant to the given topic. For example, to help students identify and discuss author’s purpose, Melissa has given the sentence frame: I think the author’s purpose it to ___ because ___. Other frames can be created for predicting, identifying cause and effect, comparing, and contrasting.

The use of sentence frames can elevate class discussions and help ELLs build internal templates for expressive language. Melissa noted how sentence frames bring ELLs into a classroom discussion quickly and build a learner’s confidence. She has used them in partner work, for writing journals, as an activation or closing activity, and even as part of assessment.  Melissa explained how the sentence frames keep language demands down and free up energy and space for higher-order thinking.

You can visit her school’s wiki and find more examples of sentence frames.

Exploring the Talk of TED Talks for the Classroom. Helen Solorzano, author of NorthStar: Listening and Speaking 3 and Contemporary Topics 1, talked to us about going beyond  comprehension questions and exploring other aspects of listening materials to develop students’ listening skills and strategies. Helen promotes the idea that we L2 teachers must learn to listen in a new way. We must design our listening lessons to help students listen to what is said, how it is said, and what is not said (directly).

To illustrate her approach to in-depth listening, Helen turned to TED Talks, and specifically a talk by a Google engineer, Matt Cutts. TED Talks, as you may know, are brief, inspiring performances from global TED conferences, and as the tagline states, the talks feature “ideas worth spreading.” The videos are free under a Creative Commons license, making the resource a very convenient choice for teachers.

In terms of listening to what is said, we can ask learners to focus on main ideas and details. For example, we might use true-false questions or have them complete a template for an outline of the talk. We can also focus on vocabulary. Helen shared a vocabulary profile tool and suggested its use in order to identify word frequency and determine which vocabulary to pre-teach. She reminded us that we could also give attention to idiomatic words, so students could listen for context.

Listening for aspects of discourse help students focus on how things are said. For instance, student can learn to identify the structure of TED Talks, with their ever-present discourse markers and frequent personal experience openers. How exactly do the speakers introduce themselves? Does each speaker follow the basic structure: opener-body-closer? We could ask students to give their own talk using the same organizational discourse markers. Attention can be called to verb tenses through a cloze exercise. Students could also listen for stance markers (Actually,… / It turns out…) or asides (By the way,…).  How things are said also includes pronunciation aspects, such as intonation patterns and changes in speed and emphasis.

A lesson can also focus on what is not said during a TED Talk. From references made during  a performance to implied meanings through gestures, this aspect poses its own unique challenges. Teachers can create inference questions to tackle the unsaid. Helen pointed out that it’s okay for inference questions to have more than one correct answer. This actually encourages discussion.

Helen mentioned other sites that offer rich listening materials for ELLs:

• StoryCorps
• Public Radio Exchange

You can also visit her L2Listening blog.

I offer my sincere thanks to both Helen and Melissa for sharing their insights and suggestions.

MATSOL 2013 Conference Highlights – Keynote Speaker

I attended MATSOL for the first time last week. On Friday, I joined Pamela Vittorio, the lead author for Next Generation Grammar 3, to talk about our work on Pearson’s newest grammar series. I was thankful that I was able to hear one of the keynote speakers and attend a couple of sessions before the day was through. I’m happy I can share some highlights with you. I’ll start with the keynote speaker at the Friday luncheon.

Using Brain Research to Enhance and Energize Language Instruction: The Multiple Pathways Model. Dr. Janet Zadina was wonderfully engaging and delivered an information-packed presentation on brain research. Through her studies in cognitive neuroscience and with her experience in education, Dr. Zadina was able to help attendees better understand how we learn and how we can help students learn a language.  She began by highlighting the importance of one’s readiness to learn and the belief in one’s ability to learn. The existing state of the learner must be considered. While we want students appropriately aroused (with their interest in the lesson peaked), we can make lessons engaging and memorable without bringing in anxiety or trauma. A positive atmosphere facilitates learning, and teachers must make the environment as rich and meaningful as possible.

The presentation helped me retain the concept of how synapses are formed and how learning means making connections from existing neural information to new information. Dr. Zadina pointed out the importance of connecting to a learner’s background information and building a foundation. In the case of learning sounds, we received the suggestions to exaggerate contrast, provide multiple encounters with the sound spoken by different speakers, and allow for an extensive speaking-listening experience. As for grammar, Dr. Zadina recommends asking students to figure out grammar rules rather than giving the rules to them. Dr. Zadina went on to explain that people learn what is important to them.

Other take-away thoughts from this talk include the fact that our learners’ brains are working harder than ours during a lesson. That should prompt us to reduce their cognitive load and keep out distractions. I also appreciated the insight that we do not have the brain we are born with; we have the brain we create. The ability of the brain changes. Finally, we all left with the reminder to use information or it will get lost. In Dr. Zadina’s words, “Fire until you wire.”

You may visit Dr. Zadina’s site Brain Research and Instruction and sign up for a free newsletter. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you, Dr. Zadina, for sharing your insights!

More highlights to come!

Teaching to the Test: Thoughts on preparing learners for the U.S. Citizenship Test

I’ve never taught a preparation course for the U.S. Citizenship Test. As an English language teacher, I’ve only been asked once to help a learner study for the naturalization interview — and that was just last month. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve become more familiar with the English test and especially the civics test. I even looked at the translation of all the questions and answers in Russian to remind myself of the challenge of taking such a test in a foreign language.

My particular challenge as a teacher is rooted in the fact that the vocabulary and grammar of the civics test is high for my student. Nevertheless, it hasn’t been an impossible task. Perhaps if anyone else is ever faced with a similar situation and the pressure of an approaching interview date, these ideas might be of some help:

1. Look for repetitive words and learn them. There are 100 questions on the civics test. Often the applicant must only provide one or two short answers, but there could be a dozen possible answers. For example, Question 6 asks the applicant to name one of the freedoms given by the First Amendment. Among the five possible answers is religion. This is a longer word compared to speech, but it may be worth learning religion since the word is used again later. Question 10 asks the applicant to explain freedom of religion, and the expected answer is: “You can practice any religion, or not practice a religion.” (Provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.)

2. Look for cognates and take advantage of them. The logic here is clear. There are many new words to learn for this test, from declare to amendment. I tried to select the easiest answers to learn in terms of pronunciation and the ease of recalling word forms. Question 36 asks the applicant to name two Cabinet-level positions. One of those answers can be Secretary of Transportation. Although “transportation” is a 4-syllable word, “transport” is easily understood in many other languages. Compared to Transportation, other alternatives like Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs are a mouthful. Based on the ideas I’ve listed so far, I went through the list of 100 questions and highlighted the answer choices I felt were easiest to learn.

3. Practice the pronunciation that matters most. What counts during the interview is being understood. For that reason, I’m not correcting  slightly inaccurate vowel sounds right now. I’m focusing on problematic consonants for my student, like the /n/ in defines. We laugh when I remind her of the meaning of the words her pronunciation might cause the interviewer to perceive — defies, defiles!  After all, we don’t want to say that the constitution does anything other than define the government. Also, we work on word stress (as in DemoCRATic and RePUBlican) and proper rhythm (as in WE the PEOple).

4. Choose the resources that fit your schedule and budget. If I had had more time to prepare lessons and work with this learner, I might have suggested the purchase of a textbook with an audio component. However, the USCIS does provide a number of free resources online for learners and teachers. There are even free training seminars for adult educators. For those who plan to run a program or course on U.S. Civics and Citizenship, there is also a free toolkit. In recent days, I poked around on YouTube and found a number of training videos for the naturalization interview. I sent links to my student so that she could hear other speakers ask the same questions with different accents and at different speaking rates.

Has anyone else taught for the U.S. Citizenship Test or any other citizenship test? Please feel free to share your ideas.

MATSOL Conference 2013

For those attending the MATSOL conference this week, I’d like invite you to my session on Friday. I’ll be presenting with my lead author, Pamela Vittorio, at 11:00 at Middlesex East (40).  Our session title is “Principles of Change in Blended Learning: Next Generation Grammar.” We’re very excited to walk participants through our level of NGG (Book 3) and give a detailed look at the hybrid approach the series takes to grammar instruction.

An Effective Lesson on “Affect” and “Effect”

How do you know when an article lends itself well to a language lesson? I look for engaging topics that will tap into existing knowledge and expand on it. I think about the language contextualized within the text and consider its usefulness for the learners I’m currently working with. Sometimes, I don’t have the opportunity to use an article immediately, but I’ll set it aside along with my thoughts on how to use it. This practice reassures me that I have lesson ideas in reserve.

Recently, I came across an online article from Scientific American about the effects a language has on the speaker’s ability to make decisions about the future. In the comment section, other readers had posted remarks about the reporter’s word choice in the headline How Your Language Affects Your Wealth and Health. Some questioned the correctness of “affects.” Should it be “effects”? I actually agree with the word choice, but because those two words are easily confused, I think a look at the headline formatted as a an exercise item would be a nice lead-in for an advanced lesson with adult learners: How Your Language (Affects / Effects) Your Wealth and Health. You can allow students to consult dictionary entries on affect and effect and ask them to decide which verb is needed.

If Step 1 in this lesson is to think about the correct word choice in the headline, then the Step 2 is to make a prediction. Based on the headline, what will this article talk about? Your questioning may follow this line of thought: “How does the grammar in your native language differ from English? Do those differences force you to think different ways when you speak these two languages? How can the structure of a particular language make you see life a certain way?”

Step 3 moves into the actual article, and after the third paragraph you can introduce the noun effect by asking, “What are the effects of delaying gratification according to the report?” According to Keith Chen of Yale Business School, we can attain our desired outcomes when we learn how to resist the temptation of immediate gratification.

The article goes on to give examples of how speakers are affected by future verb forms (e.g., will or be going to in English) or the lack thereof. If you challenge students to identify these examples as Step 4, you will be able to contextualize the use of affected as part of a passive construction.

As Step 5, you can have students read the final paragraph on page 1 as a word gap, omitting affect and effect and all their related word forms. The task of completing the text will reinforce their understanding of the different meanings and highlight collocations, such as the effect of (something) on (another thing). Indeed, it is interesting to ponder why language has such a strong effect on people’s savings rates.

The article is a bit lengthy, so I would recommend covering page 1 in class and encouraging students to read page 2 at home. As part of the lesson, Step 6 could be to have students create short class surveys in order to see if their own ability to save money confirms or refutes the findings reported in the article.

Note: Scientific American has a Photocopying Permission Request Form.

Rethinking Coordinating Conjunctions: Are You a Fan of FANBOYS?

A colleague recently caught a mistake of mine on a slide. It was part of the first lesson in the series Improve Your Writing, which I host on my website. I needed to switch dependent clause with independent clause when I defined “complex sentence” (= one or more dependent clauses and only one independent clause). So sorry! The mistake has been fixed, and the video was reloaded. Actually, it was a healthy process to go through because while I was reviewing the video, I forced myself to rethink my explanation of using but at the beginning of a sentence. My original guideline seemed too strict. Should but only start a sentence in spoken English as learner dictionaries recommend? In recent weeks, I’ve read some academic articles, and but appeared on occasion in an initial position. The writing overall had a nice flow, and those independent clauses didn’t pull my attention in a negative way. Would they have distracted you?

When I redid my voice-over for but in that one video lesson, I decided to note that its initial position in a sentence was more typical of informal writing and isn’t generally recommended. However, I think that pattern is acceptable if not overused. I get a sense that there is more leniency with but than other coordinating conjunctions. For instance, And…  at the start of a sentence is still a big no-no in academic writing. Agreed?

Teaching grammar and punctuation forces language teachers to consider differences between rules and reality. Each teacher decides how much to lean in one direction or another. Rules can help keep language standard, and observing rules can give writers greater control over their tone. Certainly the purpose and  goals of a lesson or course also help us decide how strict we need to be. Then there’s the daily reality we are all exposed to. The language patterns being used in the texts around us show variations, and what may be “wrong” begins to gain more validity for a  greater number of readers as more writers repeat a structure. So where do we go from here? (Was that an incorrect use of so, by the way? The use was deliberate to force an opinion.)

I think it’s important to teach students differences between formal and informal English as well as spoken and written language. Rules should be taught, but exposure to variations can be beneficial. What we teach cannot seem completely separate from the language students encounter outside a lesson. For all these reasons, I’m now wondering if or how I will teach FANBOYS in a new series of lessons on punctuation. When I explained compound sentences the Improve Your Writing series, I chose only to highlight the more common conjunctions (and, or, but, so).

To be truthful, I didn’t know about FANBOYS  for a long, long time. When I learned about this acronym (F-for, A-and, N-nor, B-but, O-or, Y-yet, So-so), I felt embarrassed because I wasn’t aware of it earlier. It was like there was a secret handshake that I should have known to be in the club. I didn’t get the memo about this mnemonic device. Time passed. I pondered its value. Does knowing FANBOYS really help, or does it confuse writers?  (Could I have written that second clause as a second question?)

I suppose knowing FANBOYS is helpful if you understand that some of those conjunctions, particularly for and yet, are more formal and less frequently used than others. Also, in contrast to using So to begin a sentence, Nor in an initial position is considered a formal structure. Example: I do not fully support the idea.  - Nor do I. All this means that, unfortunately, presenting FANBOYS doesn’t necessarily allow a teacher to state a set of rules students can apply to all seven conjunctions.  In all likelihood, students will notice some of the variations on their own. For instance, why do some journalists start their sentences with So or even, So,…? Can and yet perform the same role as yet in a sentence? These are the kinds of questions we need to be ready to answer. I suggest we teach the rules and standard patterns, but we should also expose students to variations in authentic texts to help them gain a sense of how much variation is acceptable and when variation begins to affect tone.

Your thoughts?

TESOL 2013 Highlights – Day 3 – Part 4 (Electronic Village)

Integrating Google My Maps and Language Learning: The collaborative creation of virtual tour guides by Brazilian students. I sometimes wish there were two TESOL conventions, one for academic sessions and one for workshops in the Electronic Village. There simply isn’t enough time to visit every presentation you want to hear. I had hoped to spend more time in the EV, but I found only one morning in my busy schedule to devote to this room, which is like a smorgasbord of ideas for using technology. I wasn’t disappointed, though.

First, I heard from Marcos Racilan from the Federal Center of Technological Education of Minas Gerais. Marcos works with high school students, and he shared samples of group projects using Google My Maps. His students were beginners, and the two-month project he led was designed to be meaningful, use authentic materials, promote autonomy, and engage students in collaborative work. Google My Maps allowed students to plan and present virtual tours. They chose their destinations, set their own budgets and itineraries, and made use of images, texts, audio, and video. Imagine each destination point being marked on the map and accompanied by a description with rich media both selected and created by the students. This one sample will help you consider your options if you would like to design a similar project.

Re-Animating Pronunciation Using PowerPoint. After hearing about the Google My Maps project, I headed over to another station being run by June Rose of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. June was demonstrating an effective use of PowerPoint to improve both vocabulary and pronunciation. She explained how her activities were designed to apply MI (multiple intelligences) theory and allow for a greater variety of ways for students to learn and demonstrate their learning.

Basically, June’s project had students create customized slide presentations to practice problematic sounds at the word and sentence level. The files served as an electronic progress record, which the teacher could use to assess individual student performance and which the learner could use for future reference and practice. June reported the high gains in confidence she observed in her learners.

The project begins with an assessment of the learner’s pronunciation problems. Two individual sounds per students are identified, and the students confirm the choices for targeted instruction. Students are directed to resources, like Rhymer.com, and they are asked to create a set of PPT slides for each sound. Each sound should be practiced via 30 words (three charts with 10 words for initial, medial, and final positions). Students must also create 30 sentences with those words. The word lists and learner-generated sentences are recorded. Both the learner and the teacher assess the recordings and follow-up instruction is offered. That includes attention to suprasegmentals. The teacher encourages self-monitoring through additional recordings. It was truly wonderful to hear the progression and the increase in accuracy in the samples June played for us.

A heartfelt thank you to Marcos and June for sharing their creative ideas!

I look forward to TESOL 2014 and all that we can learn.

TESOL 2013 Highlights – Day 3 – Part 3

Smart Use of Smart Phones. Michael Jones packed the room with teachers eager to learn more about using technology in the classroom. Michael is currently teaching at Woosong University in Korea, and he has had much success in using smart phones to deliver content to his students. His presentation introduced practical and engaging uses of QR codes.

We got a 30-second history lesson when Michael explained how quick reaction codes were originally invented by Toyota back in 1994 to control inventory. These matrix barcodes proved to have faster readability and larger storage capacity than UPC barcodes. Today many outside the automotive industry are using QR codes as a content delivery method.

Michael demonstrated how to generate a QR code on QR Stuff, a free online code generator.  The website offers a clear 4-step process, and the output choices include downloading, printing, and emailing the code. Michael pointed out that all TESOL attendees had QR codes on their badges, and indeed it seemed the in thing was to have a QR code on a business card or even in place of a business card.

Those participants who had yet to install a QR reader app did so quickly, and Michael then demonstrated possibilities. He warned that there were limitations, of course, as there are with any piece of technology. Do all your students have smart phones and know how to use QR codes? Will some pre-teaching be necessary? How is the Internet connection? (I mentally added, “What if batteries are running low?”) Once everything is in place, however, QR codes can be used for:

• administrative uses = Save paper. Post a single-sheet printout at the door and let students scan and download the homework assignment as they leave.
• paperless tasks = A website URL or Dropbox link can easily be converted into a code. Michael asked us to do a poll, complete a quiz, and submit ideas on a Google Docs all via QR codes.
• content delivery in the classroom = Delivering content to students’ phones can replace the use of slides on a projector.
• class projects = Michael has had his students exchange movie reviews and surveys via QR codes.

One of my favorite activities in this session was Michael’s use of two similar pictures. Working in pairs, one partner scanned code A and the other scanned code B. We each had a line drawing on our smart phones and were instructed to try to identify the differences without showing our partners our versions of the picture. A lot of language was produced. For example, I said, “In my picture there are three birds in the sky.” My partner replied, “There are no birds in my picture.” You may have done something similar on paper, but why waste paper if you don’t have to? Also, as Michael pointed out in his session description, why not leverage your students’ interest in mobile technology to increase their motivation?

Great job, Michael! Many thanks!

Electronic Village Highlights to come! (The last of my TESOL summaries!)

TESOL 2013 Highlights – Day 3 – Part 2

Identity and Language Learning across Time and Space. On the final day of the convention, our keynote speaker was Bonny Norton. She is an American Educational Research Fellow and is based in Canada at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Norton began by having us consider the extent to which social relations of power, namely racism, sexism, and elitism, limit opportunities for language learners. She highlighted the connection between communication and identity: When learners speak, listen, read, or write, they engage in more than an exchange of information; they are organizing and reorganizing their identity, a sense of who they are.

Dr. Norton’s 60-minute presentation was thoughtfully constructed and eloquently delivered. I may fail if I try to recall all the points made, so I will make a humble attempt to list just a few of the key thoughts I walked away with.

• Identity is not only about how we understand our relationship to the world at the present. Identity stretches across time and space and encompasses future possibilities. Dr. Norton spoke of imagined communities and imagined identities. She encourages us to allow imagined communities into educational discourse. Students can then see the power of individuals to shape the future.

• Whereas motivation is a psychological construct, investment is a sociological construct. We should move beyond the question about what motivates a learner and ask what the learner’s investment is. Dr. Norton views greater investment in classroom practices as a result of giving greater ownership over “meaning-making.”

• Word Englishes have a place in our community. Again, with a focus on the relationship between identity and communication, Dr. Norton stated that students should not be made to feel embarrassed if they do not have “the Queen’s English” or standard English.

• Our goal is to teach students so that they will not need us. We need to make ourselves dispensable. 

Developing Intercultural Awareness. Joe McVeigh, co-author of Tips for Teaching Culture, presented for the Intercultural Communication Interest Section. Participants gained insight into the many hidden dimensions of culture through the fable of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Our choral reading kept everyone engaged. Should you wish to share this fable with a group of international students or teacher trainees, you might follow Joe’s example and use strategic word gaps (omit the final word in each verse) or use an online reading, such as the one by Tom O’Bedlam (whose YouTube channel, SpokenVerse, I’ve featured before). Unlike each blind man in the story, who could only understand a part of the whole, we were given the chance to identify all the elements of a particular culture, from laws and customs to humor and arts, and construct an encompassing definition of culture.

Joe offered several practical ways to facilitate understanding and communication among learners from different cultural backgrounds. I’ve listed a few of those suggestions below.

• Discuss proverbs to identify cultural values.

• Use multiple choice questions that prompt discussion about customs, manners, and thought patterns. Example: You and your friend go to a restaurant in the U.S. How do you pay for your meal? > List choices A, B, C.

• Practice non-verbal communication, such as handshakes. (I recommended the orientation video put together by Columbia Business School.)

• Give students the chance to present in the role of an expert and tell about their own cultures. This could take the form of a written text, a poster board, or a classroom discussion.

Final set of Day 3 highights to come! (Hint: Clever uses of technology.)

TESOL 2013 Highlights – Day 3 – Part 1

Criteria to Guide Topic Selection in ELT Materials Development. Deborah Gordon, Laurie Blass, and Jenny Bixby led a session that benefited both the classroom teacher and the full-time materials writer. Whether you are designing in-house materials or working for a publisher, it is important to understand why a purely subjective choice of topics is not likely going to be as successful as a criteria-based evaluation system for topic selection. Deborah began by identifying some of the influences on topic selection, such as the market and standards. Jenny observed how high-interest topics are subjective and change over time, but we also have “evergreen” topics, for example, food or relationships, which are addressed from different angles over the years. Laurie warned how a topic may look good to you, but may not be exactly right for your students. Deborah later used a cupcake analogy to emphasize that last point: As materials writers, we must look past the sweet cupcakes and look for the shiny apples.

The trio listed points to focus on when making a topic selection: (1) students’ interests, (2) students’ needs, (3) relevance for the students, (4) course objectives, (5) and how well a given topic provides a context for the teaching points. They warned against “topic fatigue” and the need to choose topics that are neither too broad or too narrow. They also raised the point of “shelf life” in the case of a book. How long will it be until the next edition comes out? Will the topic have relevance over the next, say, 6 years?

Their overreaching principles were stated as questions. (1) Does this topic use the students’ time well? (2) What is the take-away for the student? Deborah urged us to find the “nutrition” in our materials by identifying content as worthy of discussion,  text structures and vocabulary as useful, and content as conducive to critical thinking.

The three experienced authors then offered a 5-point rating system that could be customized for each writing project, big or small. They shared a long list of criteria-defining questions, which participants got to discuss in pairs. We were asked to identify the four that we considered most important. One of the questions I circled was “Is the topic something students can relate to or have experience with?” While I still feel relevance is important, I should also have circled “Is the topic culturally or politically controversial?” I appreciated hearing insights from other participants. Some were from different parts of the globe, so perspectives on cultural factors were shared. Two Brazilian teachers said that they were able to address a very wide range of topics with their young adults. For teachers from other countries, the number of taboo topics was a lot higher.

Thank you to Jenny, Laurie, and Deborah for giving us all something to take away from this 7:30 session!

More Day 3 highlights to come!