Week five materials

Open with an inductive activity re: affective filter.

http://web.ku.edu/tesl/ct822_lesson5.htm

• What's a wug test? What's it tell us?
• The acquisition vs. learning dichotomy (or is it?): Here to stay or a flash in the pan?
• What can you tell me about the Contrastive Analysis hypothesis (it has shown up on comp. exams).
• Is there a theoretical basis for addressing particular grammar structures first? Do grammar texts tend to be organized in similar order? Gregg P. 8
• Anyone familiar with Vygotsky? Any similarity to i + 1?
• What does QED , QNED and ceteris Paribus mean (pronunciation)?
• Use "counter intuitive" correctly in a sentence related to SLA.
• What about fossilization? Does Krashen's theory account for it?

Don't forget to weigh in on your preferences for testing on the comments section of the PREVIOUS blog post.

Note the new links provided to your right.

Week 3 & 4: CPH, BE and Call for Input

First we'll cover the critical period stuff

1) Continuum activity. Bottles to be filled or candles to be lit?
2) Discussion questions

i) http://web.ku.edu/tesl/ct822_lesson4.htm#2
ii) What do we value (in terms of teaching language to youth/ children/ etc)
iii) Anyone raising(ed) bilingual kids? Differences, challenges, advantages, worries.
iv) How does personality change flipping from L1 to L2 (does it?)?
v) Melting pot or salad bowl?
vi) How do the balloons work?
vii) How do politics play out/into Bilingual Education discussions
viii) If Porter is Italian, why does she speak so much about Hispanics so much?
ix) What are the terms used for classes/programs charged with teaching second language? (ie ESL, BE, etc) What do they mean/ how do they differ in philosophy or application. Share your experiences and opinions.
x)


3) Return and comment on Lit. Narratives/ CV’s
4) Everyone without a blog (including post) stays and we have lab time. Rest of class has is on own recognizance.

Additional Issue
We need to discuss assessment/ exams - and I will likely vary some of the questions the course has used in the past - though I know of no official test bank

Testing (assessment) has varied in format by individual instructors from semester to semester - not to mention between different instructors. I initially considered an essay midterm (in class - closed book) and a take-home final. I'd like to open that up for discussion. We could collaborate on the questions.

It is also to be determined when the most appropriate time for the tests are. My concern is that the class does the reading and engages the content -how we get that to happen is negotiable. I put this question to the blog and ask the class to comment. It's important, but in danger of swallowing up a lot of class time. Regardless - assessment is of key concern to students and deserves attention.

SLA Blog_2-6-8

Note that on the right side of this blog there is a “blog roll.” When I get blog addresses from students, I enter those addresses into a list of links I’ve added. This allows me to quickly surf around to the enclosed list of blogs dedicated to this class. This also allows anyone in this class to quickly and conveniently find the blogs of other students. See what your classmates are doing.

We will reserve some classtime for workshop time in posting your own blog. By the end of this class everyone who attends should have a blog. If you haven’t written a reading response – post a few words regarding your initial feelings about blogging for class: hopes, dreams, misgivings ….whatever. At the end of this class, any or all of us will have the chance to publish on the potential and challenges of this emergent educational technology. Can it live up to the hype?

I’d also like to encourage you to post comments. At this point they could relate to the ease or difficulty you find in posting a blog, or better yet the content of what you read.

Last Week’s Lesson plans

Pair work: Explain to each other
Consider and discuss how the following variables affect critical period arguments regarding SLA.
· Neurlological
· Phonological
· Cognitive
· Affective
· Linguistic

• Explain equilibrium/ disequilibrium. Provide an example from your experience (rather than the book).
• Language ego: (p. 64)– (How) is L1 personality different from L2 personality?
• explain difference between compound and coordinate bilingualism.
• Explain and give examples of code-switching (reaching buzzword status –but I doubt many outside SLA really know what it means.)
• do you have bilingual pets?
• what is Universal Grammar?
  
  Discussion questions.
  
• Questions from end of chapter: 1 from text: re: myths – what is assumed or presupposed in each statement.
• What can feral children (wolf children) tell us about language acquisition?
• Is there a critical period for technological literacy?
• Can an adult with no previous exposure to a dialect (ie someone born in the northern Midwest traveling to the deep south/ Brittan) adopt a dialect well enough to fool natives?
• What role does SES/ class affiliation play in the use /phenomena of accents among native speakers of a common langage?
• What do you know about brain science – dendrite growth – synapses – lateralization – brain tumors.
• What is the role/value of rote learning in SLA?
• How does raising a child in a bilingual environment affect their development?
• Does bilingual’s memory contain one storage system or two? (compound vs. coordinate bilingualism).
• What are the dangers of uncritically accepting the CPH?
  
  Lecture notes:
  Story of a Language Center: Standardized placement – tests – 3% - the cost of perfection and the meaning of fluency
  
• Shibboleth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
• P. 64~5 – Quiz – stick out your tongue. LE
• P71 Nature vs. Nurture – what we know. Why we know it.
• How does culture affect what chapter says is true re: how we learn language? (rote
• and the Chinese student).
• Colleague (arrogant grad student in urban planning) said, “the problem with these ESL students is. (find video).