Richard Lederer celebrates National Library Week (April 7–13). This year’s theme is “Libraries = Strong Communities.”
Decades ago, when I was teaching and writing in New Hampshire, I published a column tracing the history of American libraries. In response, Gertrude King Ramstrom, of Nashua, NH, sent me her luminous memories of childhood adventures in her village library. Two months ago, Mrs. Ramstrom passed away full of years at the age of 104 and one day. Her wingéd words live on:
DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: Your article about libraries whisked me back in time and place to the 1920s and the little village of Haydenville, Massachusetts, where I grew up. Its tiny library, which is still in use, was our only avenue of adventure to the wonders of the outside world, and my brothers and I, along with our friends, made good use of it.
It is not a very imposing building either in architecture or size, and a traveler probably would not even realize one was there. Although it is on Main Street, it is tucked back at an angle to the road and has a mien of withdrawal, or shyness, as if aware of its insignificance among the libraries of the world. But to us it was a structure of great importance.
Its single room embraced wonderful little nooks, and that was where we acquired a glimpse of the world, had our curiosity aroused, and met with our friends. It was open every Friday evening, and directly after supper Mother made us wash up and comb our hair so we would look respectable and be clean enough to inspect books without leaving fingerprints. Most of our friends were doing the same, and about 7 p.m.
we congregated on the wide stone step of the building. On summer evenings we lingered outside to talk, but in winter it was nice to push into the room and stand over the one-pipe register and allow the heat to blow up around us. There were no rules about talking, except when we became too boisterous, so the boys jostled and joked in one nook while we girls squeezed into another to whisper and giggle. In our little library was born my love of history, which became my major in college. From The Colonial Twins, The Puritan Twins, and The Twins of the American Revolution through The Red Badge of Courage and With Malice toward None, I read, and am still reading, every historical novel available. By corroborating their assertions with the facts of history, I have found a never-ending source of enlightenment. While my brothers read The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and Huck Finn, I read Pollyanna, Bambi, and The Yearling. As we grew, my older brother turned to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and almost wore out Lindbergh’s We. I can still picture the blue binding of the book with a silver airplane etched on the cover and my brother slouched in a big easy chair with his leg dangling over its arm. Both socks wrinkled around his ankles showing bare legs below the cuffs of his knicker pants, and his hand rumpled his hair as he soared high over the earth with his hero. As he traveled the skies and seas, I traversed America with Willa Cather, learned to love animals through Albert Payson Terhune stories, found goodness in life with A. J. Cronin, and was whisked away on the whimsy of Elizabeth Goudge. It was a wonderful experience, and because of it I would add another beatitude to the ones we learned back in our Sunday school days: blessed are they who can read and enjoy a good book, for theirs is the world and its kingdoms.
I firmly believe that children are influenced by what they read and that the books we took home from the library impressed upon us what Mother and Dad tried to teach—that good character and high moral values are to be desired above all other attributes. We heard it, we read it, and so we lived it. There is no greater endowment that can be given a child than an ideal and a hero, and our little library did just that for us.
Richard Lederer, MAT English and education, PhD linguistics, is the author of more than 50 books on language, history, and humor, available at his website, www.verbivore.com. Please send your questions and comments about language to [email protected].
In recognition of the fact that limited-English proficient
households are traditionally underrepresented in census reporting, the federal
government is planning to officially collect Census 2020 responses in six new
language options—Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese,
and Tagalog.
These languages are in addition to English, Chinese, Korean,
Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese which were available ten years ago, but paper
forms will only be available in English and Spanish.
For the 2020 count, the census bureau is accepting responses
in languages spoken in around 60,000 or more households with limited English
skills. Paper forms will be available in English and in Spanish, while the
bureau collects responses in the other 11 languages online and by phone. In
addition, video and printed guides will be available in 59
non-English languages, and there will be a video in American Sign Language, plus
a printed guide in Braille.
In addition to making the count more
accurate, offering multiple language options should also cut the number of
census workers needed to collect information, however, concerns remain that speakers
of languages other than English will continue to be among the most likely to be
excluded from census figures.
Language Magazine is calling on language educators to help ensure that limited-English speakers take part in the census with the campaign Count On Me! — Campaign for an Accurate 2020 Census. Educators are trusted by limited-English-speaking minorities, making them the ideal messengers.
Language Magazine is
producing guides to help teachers explain the importance of taking part in
Census 2020 and the guarantee that the information will not be shared.
This summer, for the first time, there will be a special event designed to bring immersion and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) educators together. The Inaugural NICE conference will take place in Seville, Spain in July through a collaborative effort of several educational enterprises. This three day professional development conference will provide engaging interactive sessions led by master educators to meet teacher needs in all areas of instruction.
The NICE Conference is also aiming to do something that will have a broad impact on globalizing immersion learning efforts. As one of the main goals of the conference, NICE will incorporate facilitated networking aimed at developing international project based learning plans and ongoing classroom digital exchanges. The objective is to have participants develop partnerships that will grow beyond the conference and collaborative projects that will advance digital international learning.
“We want to provide a unique creative learning experience where educators, who are working so hard to make the future of globalized immersion education a reality, can connect, collaborate, and share with their counterparts from many places and focused on many languages around the world,” Amanda Seewald ~ MARACAS Learning Kaleidoscope
Beyond this one of a kind opportunity for learning, the NICE Conference will also invite all participants to take part in cultural excursions in and around Sevilla. By working with Spain Prep and Naturanda, experts in educational experiences in the Andalusia region of Spain, the NICE Conference is able to take advantage of the exceptional beauty and history of the area and share that with attendees.
All attendees at the NICE Conference will receive valuable tools including a copy of The Bilingual Revolution by Fabrice Jaumont, courtesy of The Center for Advancement of Language, Education and Communities (CALEC). The Bilingual Revolution is available in 10 languages and attendees will be able to choose their preferred version.
If you are fit any of the following descriptions, don’t miss out on this event that will broaden your perspectives, strengthen your skills, and create a whole new world of learning possibilities for you and your students! Get ready to learn and grow in Sevilla. Registration is open now.
Who should attend?
Teachers in a dual language immersion program
CLIL teachers
Those developing an immersion program
Teachers in a content-driven language learning program
On March 6, more
than seventy high-profile Germans, including linguists, teachers, journalists,
lawyers, and writers, published a letter and an accompanying petition that
condemned new linguistic practices which attempt to address implicit gender
connotations in language.
The letter
decried linguistic practices it sees as producing “a wealth of ridiculous
language structures” that “cannot be sustained consistently.”
It was written
in part as a response to the German city of Hanover’s formal adoption of the
“gender star” practice, which places an asterisk where letters determining the
gender of some words would normally be.
Traditionally
in German, masculine words are signified by the suffixes “r” or
“rn” (singular and plural), and feminine ones are signified by
“in” or “innen” for women. This new practice allows
readers to choose between gendered spellings.
Although it
has only recently codified it into law, Hanover has been utilizing the “gender
star” since 2003, as has much of the rest of Germany (Hanover is the first city
to officially delineate it as a guideline). The city’s spokeswoman, Annika
Schach, said in an interview, “We are not rewriting the dictionary or saying
what is correct and what isn’t—this is about style.”
The debate
swirling around gendered language in Germany has been running since the 1980s.
Many view this debate as another expression of the tension between cultural
conservatives and liberals.
Hans Georg
Maassen, the former head of the intelligence agency, was a signatory of the
letter. In the past, the spy chief has been accused of being too close to
right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany to monitor its links with
neo-Nazi groups effectively.
Oliver Baer,
who runs Verein Deutsche Sprache, an organization dedicated to promoting the
use of German, was also a signatory. His organization has been associated with
linguistic purism for their opposition of the use of Anglicisms in German.
Verein Deutsche Sprache’s members helped write and
distribute the letter.
A new independent study of Utah’s High-Quality School Readiness Expansion (HQSR-E) Program has found an online kindergarten prep program, Waterford UPSTART, so effective that it recommends making the program available to all children at high-quality public and private pre-K schools around the state.
Performed by the nonprofit Evaluation and Training Institute, the report found that Waterford UPSTART was particularly effective among at-risk children, closing performance gaps at a rate of 67%, 17 points higher than children only attending public pre-K schools and 21 points higher than children only attending private pre-K schools. Launched in 2009, Waterford UPSTART’s user base in Utah has grown from 1,631 students the first year to more than 14,000 in 2018. Designed to overcome barriers to traditional pre-K programs such as lack of transportation or geographic isolation, Waterford UPSTART offers school preparation in the home. The curriculum is available to anyone free of charge, and Waterford ensures access by providing free laptops and internet access to families lacking the resources to purchase them. The Waterford UPSTART program asks students to spend 15 minutes a day, five days a week working on early literacy, math, and science lessons. The adaptive software personalizes instruction each step of the way.
Other key findings from the HQSR-E report include:
Waterford UPSTART was the only program to have significant positive effects on early literacy development, with an effect size of .78. That means the average Waterford UPSTART student outperformed nearly 80% of children who did not use the program.
77% of Waterford UPSTART children demonstrated average or above-average literacy quotients, compared to 71% of public school attendees and 69% of private school attendees.
Waterford UPSTART children achieved “significantly higher” scores on subtests of critical predictors of future reading achievement, including letter knowledge, listening comprehension, and phonological awareness.
77% of Waterford UPSTART children met benchmarks for listening comprehension, compared to 65% of private school children and 61% of public school children.
Published by Rowman & Littlefield, Teaching ESL and STEM Content through CALL: A Research-Based Interdisciplinary Critical Pedagogical Approach by Abdelilah Salim Sehlaoui addresses the growing need for effective critical pedagogical competence (CPC), critical technological competence (CTC), and critical cross-cultural communicative competence (C5) in teachers who serve ELs. C5, which encompasses CTC and CPC, is defined in the book as the teacher’s ability to communicate effectively across cultures with diverse individuals. An educator who possesses C5 is able to critically understand the power relations and importance of the socioeconomic and political contexts in any human encounter and has the ability to make connections with real life to teach STEM content successfully.
The book provides teachers of ELs with a research-based framework using classroom-tested computer-assisted language learning (CALL) programs to empower themselves, through a practical, reflective self-professional development component, as they help their students succeed academically in STEM. A critical pedagogical and genre-based communicative approach is used to achieve this goal by teaching vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These key English language skills are given special attention in the book, while ELs’ native literacies and STEM education are also supported. The book’s critical pedagogical approach focuses on the socioeconomic context of education and makes connections between life in the classroom and real life.
Research on successful STEM schools indicates that cultivating partnerships with industry, higher education, nonprofits, museums, and research centers is crucial for engaging students in STEM learning through internships, mentorships, and interdisciplinary project-based learning. To cultivate these partnerships and engage ELs in STEM requires that educators possess C5.
Included are practical, detailed lesson plans, hands-on reflective inquiry activities, classroom vignettes, rubrics, and research-based criteria to evaluate practice, strategies, and CALL programs and resources, all either very inexpensive or free of charge. The main goal of the book is to develop students’ English proficiency and help ELs maintain their native literacy to succeed academically in STEM content areas. www.rowman.com
Independence Hall, originally known as Pennsylvania State House is where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
A new study finds
that Philadelphia court reporters did not accurately transcribe the speech of
speakers of African American English (AAE) at the 95% accuracy standard for
which they received their industry certifications.
Sentence-by-sentence
evaluation revealed that only 59.5% of the transcribed sentences were accurate,
and 77% of the time the transcriptionists could not paraphrase what they heard.
Perhaps most shockingly, 11% of the transcriptions made no sense whatsoever.
The study is
a four-year joint effort by Jessica Kalbfeld of NYU’s sociology department,
Ryan Hancock of Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity, and Robin Clark and
Taylor Jones of the University of Pennsylvania’s linguistics department. It has
been accepted for publication by the journal Language.
The
researchers had access to twenty-seven court stenographers currently working in
the Philadelphia courts, which is fully a third of the official court reporter
pool. To reiterate, all transcriptionists are required to be certified at 95%
accuracy; however, those certifications are based primarily on the speech of
lawyers and judges.
The researchers
recruited nine native speakers of AAE from West Philadelphia, North
Philadelphia, Harlem, and Jersey City. Each of the speakers, of which there
were four women and five men, were recorded reading eighty-three different
sentences taken from actual speech from speakers of AAE.
The court reporters were asked to transcribe and paraphrase the
recordings they heard, which were played clearly and at a pitch louder than
they were used to in court. None of them performed at 95% accuracy, by any type
of evaluation.
According to
Taylor Jones, “We picked the “best ears in the room” and found that they don’t
always understand or accurately transcribe African American English. And
crucially, what the transcriptionist writes down becomes the official FACT of
what was said.”
Jones also
discussed the fact that linguistic discrimination is symptomatic of anti-black
racism and attitudes about language that emphasize that there is one correct
manner of speaking. In reality, AAE is a rule-governed, systematic dialect that
is as valid as any other.
Jones wrote that
many of the court reporters assumed criminality on the part of the AAE
speakers, and many expressed the wish that the AAE speakers spoke “better
English.” Jones also noted that the court reporters were not “unrepentant
racist ideologues.” Rather, they were professionals, both white and black,
whose trainings did not match their tasks.
Responding to
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter,
Temple law professor Jules Epstein questioned if it was not just stenographers,
but also jurors, judges, and lawyers who were misunderstanding AAE speakers,
and what that implied about the quality of justice
dispensed by the courts.
RoboKind, the creators of robots4autism and Milo, have introduced Jett, the coding and programming robot, along with the robots4STEM curriculum. Designed to teach all students—including those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)—the coding and programming skills they need to ignite a lasting interest in STEM, Jett is the younger sibling of RoboKind’s facially expressive robot Milo.
Individuals with ASD often thrive in process-driven, repetitious settings, and this aligns with skills needed to learn coding and programming. Jett empowers all students to be agents of their own education, giving a number of traditionally underserved groups access to coding and STEM.
Jett includes an entire curriculum of ready-made lessons that do not require teachers to have any previous experience or background with coding. The project-based, self-paced continuum of learning starts with simple lessons and progresses to complex topics. They do not depend on or require interaction with others, which has proven to be successful for students on the autism spectrum because it provides a safe, nonjudgmental, and engaging environment.
As a result of interacting with Jett, users report more girls are interested in signing up for computer science courses at the middle school level and are starting to picture themselves in STEM careers, and more students of color are having positive coding and programming experiences. https://robokind.com/
The mystery-thriller, directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, started as a collaboration between myself at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Inuit film production company Kingulliit and the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN).
We hope the film will be a catalyst for language revitalization as well as community economic development. In 2012, fewer than one per cent of the Haida were fluent in the Haida language and most of those were over the age of 70, so the language was regarded as in crisis.
Edge of the Knife emerged out the results of a community planning process our students had been involved in at Skidegate a year earlier, a year of community engagement and envisioning Haida hopes and dreams.
The top three priorities identified by the Skidegate community were language revitalization, the creation of jobs that would keep youth on Haida Gwaii instead of moving to Vancouver and protecting the lands and waters of Haida Gwaii through sustainable economic development. I believed a film in the Haida language could potentially serve all three priorities. I pitched the idea to the Executive of the Council of the Haida Nation and the president, Peter Lantin, agreed.
Inspiration
I was inspired by Kingulliit’s success making feature films in the Inuktitut language (most famously Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner in 2001) that showcase the Inuit culture and employ Inuit as actors, costume and set designers, writers and directors.
Developing a partnership with Kingulliit (formerly Isuma) could mean nation-to-nation capacity building in all aspects of filmmaking. Jon Frantz, the producer and director of photography on Edge of the Knife, facilitated Kingulliit’s involvement. Frantz is a former UBC masters student who had moved to Igloolik to work with Kingulliit.
Norman Cohn, a co-founder of Kingulliit with Zacharias Kunuk, suggested working on a dramatic film rather than a documentary. I have a background in screenwriting, having completed an MFA in screenwriting at UCLA in 1989, so I was very enthusiastic about making a feature film rather than a documentary.
We received $200,000 in a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). My work explores the power of collaborative storytelling through film, which I hope can expand the potential and room for community planning interventions.
My 2010 documentary, Finding our Way: Beyond Canada’s Apartheid, used a collaborative method to tell the story of two small First Nations in north-central British Columbia, the Cheslatta Carrier Nation and the Burns Lake Band. The process of making that film was the beginning of my re-education about Canada’s history of colonizing and dispossessing Indigenous peoples.
I spent most of the next year on sabbatical and working on Haida Gwaii. The first step was to assemble a Haida Advisory Group composed of elders and other knowledge-holders to oversee the project.
Community storytelling
Working with two Haida partners, Dana Moraes in Skidegate and Lucille Bell in Old Massett, we co-designed and facilitated a series of community-based, story-gathering workshops in which community members were asked to suggest what Haida story or stories they would most like to see portrayed in a feature film.
We gathered those ideas and then ran script-writing workshops in the two communities for anyone interested in potentially becoming a writer for the film. After the workshops, we ran a writing contest and Haida community members were invited to submit a short story or film idea.
Edge of the Knife/TIFF
The jury for that contest was made up of both Haida and non-Haida. We read the submissions without names and the unanimous choice of three winners were the brothers Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw, who co-wrote a story, and Graham Richard.
We developed a film script which we had only six months to complete if we wanted to submit it for the 2015 application to the Canada Media Fund (CMF). We hunkered down through the winter, working mostly on weekends, to come up first with a three-page story outline, then a 10-page outline. We then mapped out the entire script in story cards and finally wrote the script. We learned the new script-writing software program together.
Vast amounts of junk food and coffee were consumed as we riffed off each other through long days that flew by. Graham and Gwaai often got on the floor to act out potential scenes.
In creating the story, we reflected on all the ideas that had been assembled during the community story-gathering workshops, and we also worked under two important guidelines from our advisory group.
The first was that the story should be roughly balanced between the northern (Old Massett) and southern (Skidegate) dialects to encourage members of both communities to learn their own dialect and to have a film that would showcase both. The second guideline was that the film should showcase Haida culture and technology, pre-settler contact.
Edge of the Knife/TIFF
A third significant factor was that the budget could not exceed $2 million, so we needed to imagine a story and a setting that could be portrayed within all these constraints.
Jaalen Edenshaw was also our historical researcher and checked archives online for details, often as we were in midst of writing. We also worked closely with elders and knowledge-holders from both villages to seek advice about specific scenes, such as a prayer of thanks for the first salmon caught that season.
Production
By September 2015, we heard that we had been funded $1.89 million. We hired Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown (a Tsilhqot’in filmmaker now living on Haida Gwaii with her Haida partner and family) as co-directors, and Jon Frantz as producer.
Frantz and other folks from the Inuit film company mentored the Haida in setting up a Haida Production Company, Niijang Xyaalas Productions, which would be the majority owner of the film (with Kingulliit being the minority partner).
Translators fluent in the two dialects set about translating the script. The co-directors set about casting and also holding acting and language workshops. A few months before the film went into production, all the cast had to participate in a gruelling two-week language “boot camp” where they were sequestered in log cabins on the north shore of the archipelago and taught how to pronounce and say their lines.
At the Hiellen Long House, actors practise and rehearse their lines from the script ‘The Edge of the Knife’ written entirely in Haida. These actors trained in a two-week language boot camp reading and speaking the Haida language.https://www.facebook.com/edgeoftheknifemovie/
I was able to witness some of boot camp and I was bowled over by the commitment the new actors displayed in learning this difficult language. Many explained to me that they felt a responsibility to their ancestors to get it right.
The same was true on location, on the site of an ancestral village in the remote north of Haida Gwaii, in June 2017. The cast was dedicated to faithfully rendering Haida life as it was in the early 1800s.
Keeping Haida alive
One of the intentions of the Haida film (with English subtitles) is to generate interest, especially among the youth, in learning the language.
We hope that the film and the script will be developed into a one-month language module for high schools, and that teaching and learning relationships between youth and elders will be sustained beyond the premiere of the film itself. We also hope there has been sufficient training, tools and infrastructure set up during this project for future Haida film projects under the newly created production company. A group of writers, actors and producers are energized and inspired by this project; they will take this energy forward and train others in various aspects of production.
In that way, the initial community development goals of the project will eventually be fulfilled. I have a new SSHRC grant (2017-21) to monitor and evaluate the impact of the film in relation to our original goals and hope to share more of what we learned along the way.
I feel so fortunate to have been able to spend time in this resurgent community, Haida Gwaii, a magical place. I have both made new friends and continued with my re-education about Indigenous Canada.
A CBC documentary on the making of The Edge of the Knife.
Julie Vorholt shares six activities to incorporate technology into your speaking class in any language
Are you a speaking teacher who wants to use technology in class? Are you enthusiastic but too busy to research and decide the best next step? Are you ready to make a plan to include technology in more activities and in different ways in your speaking classroom? Most teachers would answer with a resounding “Yes!” to all of these questions. I often hear teachers expressing their interest in incorporating technology, but moving from a professional discussion of a hypothetical situation to teaching a successful classroom activity can be difficult. To streamline this process, I created the following list for teachers, a user-friendly menu of options that can help them choose their next steps.
Six Technology Activity Types for Classroom Instruction
Responding to materials found on smartphones
Recording on audio
Recording on video
Speaking via video
Presenting with software
Interacting with apps and websites
Teachers can reflect upon their background knowledge and comfort when deciding which activity type to try first. Of course, the decision will also be influenced by students’ pedagogical needs and the teaching context. An easy starting point is the first type; teachers may vary greatly in terms of their prior knowledge with types two through six. It all depends on the person. Ideally, a teacher will select one type and teach a lesson. Then the teacher can continue with that activity type or try a new one. Over time, some teachers will master all six types.
What Inspired the Six Technology Activity Types?
I developed this idea while editing New Ways in Teaching Speaking (second edition), which includes over 100 lesson-plan activities. Language-teaching professionals from around the world contributed activities that they have found successful when teaching speaking in their own classrooms. The substantial number of submissions that included technological tools led to the creation of a speaking and technology section in the book. It is organized according to the skills that students are working on by using technology: developing fluency and accuracy, developing pronunciation, and improving their speaking for academic and professional purposes. However, the book does not provide direction for teachers who are ready to incorporate technology in ways that are new for them. The number of options can be simultaneously exciting and overwhelming. An action plan was needed. Thus, I created these six technology activity types, which are illustrated below with references to examples from New Ways in Teaching Speaking.
How Are the References to Examples Useful?
They can provide a clearer connection between theory and practice. Commentary about each activity type is followed by an example of how a classroom teacher puts the activity type into practice in his or her language classroom. They may initiate teachers’ independent thinking about their current lessons and stimulate ideas about how to update those lessons with the addition of technology.
Following is each activity type with my commentary based on experiences using the activity type in the classroom. Also, an example or two of the activity type is given from the book.
Responding to materials found on smartphones
This activity type is the easiest because it does not require preparation and students use their own phones. They enjoy talking about the pictures they select to share. This activity can be repeated by giving students different types of pictures to find. Also, students can pull up more than just pictures. They can be set different tasks, such as locating specific information on websites. To reinforce additional skills and learning objectives, suggest that they locate a source connected to their current topic in reading class or a picture that illustrates a vocabulary word.
Activity: “Storytelling with Cell Phones”
Contributor: Robert J. Meszaros
Student Proficiency Level(s): All
Recording on audio
Students benefit from recording their voices, listening to themselves speak, and trying to improve their speaking. Many students like recording themselves. Repeating the activity provides them with multiple opportunities for self-assessment and improvement. For activities such as creating a podcast, giving students the option to publicly share their work can be very motivating.
Activity: “Smartphone Speaking”
Contributor: Marcella A. Farina
Student Proficiency Level(s): All
Activity: “Student-Generated Podcasts as Speaking Portfolio”
Contributor: Bita Bookman
Student Proficiency Level(s): Intermediate to advanced
Recording on video
Students often watch videos on the internet and may already be recording and posting their own videos online outside of class for fun. They enjoy recording themselves and seeing how their classmates react. Some teachers have students plan and shoot a class video or organize a friendly competition between classes.
Activity: “Video Recording on Flipgrid”
Contributor: Laura Giacomini
Student Proficiency Level(s): All
Activity: “Star in a Viral Marketing Video”
Contributor: Sean H. Toland
Student Proficiency Level(s): Pre-intermediate +
Speaking via video
Most students are already adept at using FaceTime, Skype, or Zoom to speak with family and friends. This activity type brings that experience into the classroom. As more people take online courses and work remotely, the ability to speak confidently online in academic and professional settings is increasingly important.
Activity: “International Video Chats”
Contributor: André Hedlund
Student Proficiency Level(s): Beginner
Presenting with software
Although students may already be experienced with PowerPoint, they may not know about alternatives, like Prezi, and presentation formats, such as PechaKucha, which limits speakers to 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds. Successful delivery using the PechaKucha format requires skill in both carefully planned speaking and impromptu speaking. If the timing does not go as planned, students must be ready to make impromptu comments. Students may benefit from a class discussion focusing on how to select the most appropriate software and presentation format for each situation.
Activity: “Improving Presentation Skills with PechaKucha”
Contributor: Suzan Stamper
Student Proficiency Level(s): Intermediate to advanced
Interacting with apps and websites
New apps and websites are launched daily, offering a multitude of resources that may or may not be created specifically for language learners. These resources can engage your students as they learn about the latest pedagogical resources.
Depending on the activity, no preparation is needed. Give students a meaningful question and see what they discover. Examples include:
“Find an app that you can use to practice pronunciation.”
“Find and introduce a website that you think everyone should know about.”
When students search in pairs or small groups during class, situations naturally present themselves as opportunities for discussion. This authentic context continues as students share their findings with the class.
For teachers who want the entire class to use the same app or website, preparation is required. It can be time-consuming to identify the best resources to enhance your students’ learning and examine the resources’ capabilities so you can introduce them to your class. However, this process has become easier due to the plethora of online reviews and social media pages. Teachers can communicate about their findings and troubleshoot together as a group, or “hive mind,” if any challenges arise.
Activity with an app: “Pronunciation with Mobile Apps”
Contributor: Hoa Thi Thanh Bui
Student Proficiency Level(s): High beginner to intermediate
Activity with a website: “Google Earth Field Trip”
Contributor: Emma Tudor
Student Proficiency Level(s): All
Additional Information about Activities
The following materials can be found on the TESOL International Association website.
To read three sample activities from the section “Developing Fluency (Part I),” please go to: Three free activities (http://blog.tesol.org/on-teaching-speaking-new-ways-in-teaching-speaking-2nd-edition) for you to use in your classroom
In conclusion, we teachers want to continue growing professionally while maintaining high standards working with our students both inside and outside of the classroom. I hope that using these six technology activity types will help teachers to confidently experiment with new ways to teach speaking with technology.
References
Vorholt, J. (Ed.). (2019). New Ways in Teaching Speaking (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: TESOL International Association. Vorholt, J. (2018). “On Teaching Speaking: New Ways in Teaching Speaking, 2nd edition.” Blog post. http://blog.tesol.org/on-teaching-speaking-new-ways-in-teaching-speaking-2nd-edition/ Vorholt, J. (2019). “On Teaching Speaking: 4 Benefits of Flipgrid Video Recording.” Blog post. http://blog.tesol.org/on-teaching-speaking-4-benefits-of-flipgrid-video-recording/
Julie Vorholt, editor for New Ways in Teaching Speaking (second edition), has taught English, ESL, and EFL to learners of all ages and trained language teachers in the U.S. and internationally for more than 20 years. She has edited and written a variety of pedagogical materials in both print and online formats to support teaching and learning in speaking, listening, and writing. Julie’s professional contributions include frequently presenting at state, national, and international conferences, including Oregon TESOL (ORTESOL), TESOL, and TESOL Greece. In the TESOL International Association, she served as the Materials Writers Interest Section chair and volunteered on the Awards Committee. She also participated on the Fulbright Selection Committee for English Language Teaching Assistantships in Turkey. She currently teaches ESL in the intensive English program at Lewis and Clark College, serves on the ORTESOL Board of Directors, and works as a consultant.
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