Reflections on Readings

 

 

 "The most fundamental task for the professional writer is bringing together coherently the theory, practice, activities, explanations, text, visuals, content, formats, and all other elements that contribute to the finished product so that it will be helpful for both ESL teachers and ESL learners. " 
 

Textbook should not be a teacher reference book in which activities or handouts are given to supplement or complement a course. It should bring all the elements that help the learning, and teaching of students and teachers. These elements should answer to problems that students and teachers have in a particular area of language. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

· Identification of problems to solve by the creation of materials 

"Part of effective pedagogical realization of materials is efficient and effective writing of instructions, including the proper use of metalanguage; poor instructions for use may waste a lot of valuable student time…" 

 

Swan is against the argument that syllabuses and materials are base on either function or form. This argument assumes that students do not know how language functions unless they are taught how. In other word, students who learn the form of the language (grammar) do not know how to use it (communication). Swan believes that "communicative approach" is over-generalized because most teachers think that everything has to be functional. 

"Syllabuses cannot be fully worked out in advance, but must evolve as learners' and developing competence gradually emerge." 

 

 

 

 

 A grammar textbooks need to have the following features:

"Invented examples are really part of the explanations…., they are constructed to refine the explanations and in many cases to clarify the explanations."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this website, students can practice different grammar rules through activities such as filling the blanks, putting words in order, classifying words by their grammatical functions in sentences, choosing the correct answer in multiple choice, writing sentence completions, and creating questions and answers. From guided practice exercise, identification, students little by little will be able to define and analyze the grammatical functions of words in sentences in a context. 

"An additional type of instruction we expected to find throughout all the books but did not was information on learning strategies." 

 

 

 

 

Larsen-Freeman encouraged teachers to teach grammatical form during communicative interactions instead of teaching grammatical form in isolation without context. 

"… what we do hope to do is to have students be able to use grammatical structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately." 

 

 

 

 

"By focusing on this academic vocabulary in both message-focussed and language-focussed ways, learners gain the opportunity to make this important vocabulary a part of their working knowledge of the language and thus help make their academic study more manageable." 

It is important that educators and textbook developers used vocabulary that appear from the above lists because students need to study wthat are useful and relevant to them. 
 

"An academic word list should play a crucial role in setting vocabulary goals for language courses, guiding learners in their independent study, and informing course and material designers in selecting texts and developing learning activities." 

I believe it is not an easy task for teachers to select texts that include the mostly used academic words. And how these texts are related to each other? Do teachers present unrelated short passages of text where the academic words appear? 
 
 

 

 

 

 

The current issue is whether effective vocabulary learning should focus on explicit or implicit learning. 
Explicit learning: in explicit vocabulary learning, students are engaged in activities that focus attention on vocabulary. 
Teachers should teach vocabulary that is commonly used in English: General Service List of English Words. They can also teach the Academic Word List for students who plan to do college studies. 
There are different techniques and activities that teachers can use: 
Techniques: New words should be presented in isolation, in context with meaning and not to be learned by memorization. Students should be exposed to these vocabularies in many times 
Activities: word association, semantic mapping (vocabulary network), word matching. 
Teachers should avoid teaching antonyms because of interference in learning. 
To avoid cross-association in learning, teachers should integrate new words with old by teaching the most useful ones. 
Implicit Learning: 
Implicit learning is learning vocabulary indirectly through reading and listening without directly studying the vocabulary. This method is not recommended to beginning students. 

Vocabulary learning strategies 
· Guess meaning from context ( guess the unknown words, context, and how clauses are related) 
· Mnemonic devices 
· Vocabulary notebooks 

Students need to learn single words and word families but also need to know collocations. (Words that are co-occur with a given word). 

Collocations are best learned by semantic associations. 
There are two types of syntactic collocation: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations. 
 
 
 

"Concerning collocational associations as memory aids, researchers have noted that vocabulary is best learned in context and that words that are naturally associated in a text are more easily learned than those having no such associations." 

I think collocation is quite similar to word network accept that it is in a smaller scale, meaning it is within a given text. Students can learn the key words and words that surround them. I think collocation is very beneficial for intermediate or advance students. 

" Lack of exposure is a common problem facing language learners; a good way to combat this problem is to expose students to extensive reading, sometimes referred to as a "book flood" approach, in which reading is done consistently over a period of time" 

Teachers should encourage students to read outside of class to enrich their vocabulary. Students need to be exposed to the vocabularies learned in class as often as they can in different contexts to be able to assimilate the meaning the vocabularies. By reading and listening to the same vocabulary, students indirectly learn the vocabulary (implicit learning) 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

How to teach words: 
To teach L2 learners new vocabulary, the teachers have to present authentic materials using communicative strategies such as contextual deduction of the meaning of new words. But there are some implications in teaching authentic materials. 
Authentic materials are not necessary appropriate for L2 learners because: 
· They contain too many unknown words that are not necessary adequate to L2 learners 
· The words to be learned occur rarely in authentic materials since the texts  are written to target  L1 learners 
· The context of the text is not detailed enough to describe the vocabulary. 

CAVOCA is computer program for vocabulary acquisition. It is designed in a way that words are learned, stored in and retrieved from internal lexicon. 

Craig and Lockhart said that the rates of forgetting are a function of the type and type of encoding information. 
They believe that students can remember better when they learn in depth the spelling, the pronunciation, the semantic and syntactic meaning of the words, and how these words are related to others. 
 
 

“… exposure to words in context is preferable to exposure to words in isolation. Only contexts will fully demonstrate the semantic, syntactic, and collocational features of a word the learner has to process in order to establish the numerous links and associations with other words necessary for easy accessibility and retrieval.” 

I think this is a great way to teach vocabulary. Students learn the inside out of the words: how they are formed, how they function, and how they are used with other words. Although the teachers seem to have a great freedom in teaching these vocabularies, they are restrained to certain restrictions. Students have to be exposed to the vocabulary in a lot of time in different ways.The teachers have to teach in  a way that does not create interference in learning. 

" For any context to be well understood a dense coverage is required. This means the reader must have "foreknowledge" of most other words in the particular context, which in turn presupposes a large vocabulary. " 
This statement implies that in order for the students to improve their vocabulary, they need to have some background knowledge to understand the context of the new vocabulary. But beginning L2 learners do not necessarily have foreknowledge if they are still at the stage of decoding L2. For this reason, beginning L2 learners have to accumulate as much vocabulary as they can before they can become independent readers and learners who can understand new vocabulary from the context. 
 
 

 

 

 

 

Research has shown that teaching lexical set (groups of words that are related by same semantic features) can be confusing for language beginning learners. 
Learning related words can create interference in learning meaning learners can mix up words that they learn at the present to the words they learn earlier and in the future. Teachers should avoid interference and teach words in normal communication situations and not in a contrived setting. Research found that learners could learn better when the words are not related. 
To minimize interference, teachers should teach words that are frequently used and not related to each other. Teachers can also present the words at different times in different contexts. 

"In addition to the criteria frequency and avoidance of interference, course designers need to apply a criterion of normal use, meaning that words should occur in normal communication situations, not in contrived, language-focused activities" 

When I taught French, I remember teaching a few times opposite words thinking that my students can learn better since the words are related. It was a real mistake because my students had all the words mixed up. Since then, I usually explain vocabulary in the context and ask my students to use the vocabulary in appropriate situation. I have seen teachers "overuse" the vocabulary that they teach. They make up sentences and dialogue and use the vocabulary that they study in class. The vocabulary learned is put in different structures of their speech or writing that sometimes sounds awkward. 

" It is difficult for course designers, as well as teachers and learners, to appreciate that items in sets such as months, days of the week, and numbers are best learned, initially, when not learned together" 
I believe that teaching related items can be confusing at times. But in many cases, it is not possible to teach unrelated items. If the teachers teach vocabulary related to weather, they certainly have to teach the following sequence: days, weeks, months, and seasons. It is difficult to teach this topic with other topics at the same. I believe that interference can happen when students have to match the vocabularies that are almost similar without clues. 
 
 

 

 

 

 

It is found that development of a large vocabulary is linked to the development of reading skills. There are several explanations to this statement. 
The aptitude hypothesis: 
Intelligence is the key to vocabulary acquisition and reading skills. 
The knowledge hypothesis: 
The vocabulary knowledge is a reflection of general knowledge: people who have more knowledge in general will learn more words and have better comprehension. 
The instrumentalist hypothesis: 
There is a relationship between the actual number of words known and reading comprehension. 
The access hypothesis: 
This hypothesis stresses that the more students are exposed to the words through practice and reading, the more they develop their vocabulary knowledge. 

Jenkins and Dixson believe that vocabulary learning occur through: 
Explicit reference 
Through example 
Through context 
Through morphological analysis 

The learning of vocabulary in context is useful only if students are taught to know how and when to use this vocabulary. 

Implications from L1 research 
1. “Vocabulary knowledge is the “cornerstone of literacy”” 
2. Learning vocabulary involves many skills. Students must recall meaning, infer meaning, comprehend the text, communicate orally, and spell correctly,… 
3. Being exposed to the vocabulary through various ways (reading, writing) can increase vocabulary knowledge 
4. In order to learn the vocabulary efficiently, the students have to know the learning strategies (students need to know when and how to use context cues to derive meaning for new words, and they need to know how to use dictionaries) 
5. Students can learn better when they can relate new lexical items to background knowledge, can analyze semantic features of the vocabulary or can create associative link between the new word and what they already know. 
 

“What is particularly important “is the teacher’s ability to arouse in his or her students a genuine interest in vocabulary, to develop the skills and the curiosity that will guarantee the growth of every student’s vocabulary far beyond the … limits of the ESL classroom”” 

Teachers should find creative ways to teach vocabulary. They also have to expose the vocabulary in many ways and in many times to the students so they can absorb the new vocabulary with facility. Teachers have to teach new vocabulary with different strategies. After a period of time, students will build up their vocabulary and feel more motivated to study new words on their own. 

" In a sense the key word approach also makes use of the students' background knowledge by creating an associative link between a new word and a known word, phrase, or image which is acoustically and/ or visually similar." 
Teachers can help students to build up their vocabulary by connecting the new vocabulary with the one that students already know. One way of relating the old and the new vocabulary is to be able to do semantic mapping. Students are asked to relate words to topics. 
 

 

 

 

 

In this article, the author describes how he and colleagues write text materials. 
The authors of the textbooks come from different parts of the country share ideas, and interests. They then divide the work in different units and each co-author chooses one unit to work on. The co-authors give each other feedback their work. 

The creative process: 
The author should know the course requirements and thinks of the authentic contexts where the target language will be used. S(he) thinks of where s(he) can retrieve the input materials. S(he) writes down all kind of exercises s(he) can think of and then organize them. 

Working with publisher, the authors: 
· Looks at the need of the market. 
· Discuss with other authors about the unit structure, grammar syllabus 
· The first unit draft is submitted to the publisher. 
In the meantime, authors build up ideas. 
From the first to the third draft, authors will modify more and more specifically the materials according to the feedback from publishers, and triallers (students). 
 

After reading the text written by Prowse and listening to the two speakers, I realize how dedicated you have to be when you seriously publish a textbook. People who are involved in the publication of a textbook have to work as professional team members. They have to be honest about their feedback, they have to learn to listen to others, and be flexible. They have to spend a lot of time to organize, gather information, and edit their work and it does not surprise me if they spend two years to publish a book. 
I wonder how fast technology textbooks are published as for example computer textbooks? Do authors spend that much time to publish them! Are they well revised? Is the content of the textbook will bestill valid and up-to-dated once it is published? 

I am impressed with the author's creative process. When I think of creativity, I think of impulsion and disorganization. This is how he organized his creativity process: he usually reads the syllabus (what is required to teach), find materials that are suitable to the context of the target language, draw up the lesson plan, give a sequence to the activities, at this point everything slowly takes shape. The whole process takes a lot of time because in between he has to modify his work if necessary to the feedback of other co-authors. 
I think that everybody can write books or be creative, what is hard is to be able to organize ideas, to put these ideas in paper, and to find out if one's ideas meet the need of the public. 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

In this text, the author described his experience when he published a composition textbook for ESOL. As an experienced ESOL teacher in the 70’s, he felt the need to write a composition textbook that was not available in the market. He knew in the details the syllabus, the activities that fit to the students’ need, and the skills that the students need to master their writing. His students helped him to develop his materials because they gave him feedback of his work. He learned later that the key to commercially publish a material is mostly  to know the material well and to be creative. According to the author, publishing a textbook is a rewarding learning experience. 

I think the author gives us a very realistic picture of publishing textbook material. According to the author, the textbook writer has to have a reason to write, has to have the experience in his or her field, to be able to make the material clear for other teachers to understand, and to be aware of the time consuming for the publication of a textbook. 
At first, when I look at what a writer has to do to publish a book I get discouraged. If I ever want to publish, I wonder how much experience in teaching I will need before I can start writing a textbook material. When publishing a book, the learning experience can learn different aspects: the authors can develop their writing skills, earn academic knowledge through research,  learn how to market and negotiate their products (textbook material), and have a feeling of accomplishment. 

" So, with the help of my students and their work, I was able to fulfill the needs and expectations of a more general student audience than my own (the third rule of writing). … I believe that textbooks should be written by teachers who actually know and understand student needs and who have actually class-tested the materials they are compiling for the textbook."
I agree with the author, textbook writers should be teachers. I think that textbook writers should be experts of their field, should know what their students need to meet their needs, and finally have direct contacts and feedback from students and other teachersdfsdfsdf. 
 

 

 

 

 

Textbook evaluation is to find out: 
· If the materials in the textbook match with the curriculum 
· If the textbook meets the student need meaning is the content appropriate to the students? Do the explanations and examples help the students? Do the exercises/ tasks target the different types of learners? 
· If the textbook answer the need of the teachers.  Teachers usually look at the content/ explanation, examples, and exercises or tasks. 
All teachers need to read the textbook and resources before implementing their lessons. 
After the first reading of the textbook: the teachers should look at the format of the book, the content, the practice, the students ' evaluation, and instructor manual. 
Teachers should have formal (instructor manual and other materials in school) and informative sources (materials from other teachers).

Dr. Byrd described different situations in which the textbooks do not match with the curriculum and that reflects what I experience in my school. In the middle school where I teach, ESOL students (approximately 500 students) do not have textbooks in Language Art. They cannot use grade level textbooks because they are too difficult for them to work with. For the last few years, the ESOL teachers in my school have requested textbooks that are appropriate to students' level. Some suggested using ESOL textbooks that already exist in other states such as Florida or California where the ESOL programs are very well structured. Others suggested to use the old adaptation of elementary textbooks since the same curriculum is presented but at an easier level. The reality is we never receive any ESOL textbooks to work with students, we make copies of class set of short stories and worksheets for the students to practice language skill. As for other subjects such as math, we modify the content of the grade level textbook: the content is taught to the basic, we do not give word-problems and teach at a slower pace (we spend 6 weeks on one chapter vs. 2-3 weeks at most in a mainstream class). 
The ESOL student population keeps growing in my school, in the county and in Georgia but students in my school still do not have appropriate materials to study. 

I am glad to be able to create the activities for IEP students because it allows me to have an idea of how to design a textbook. I have to look at content/explanation, tasks, presentation/ Format. 
The content and explanation are challenging parts for me, in particular the content. I do not know if the content is challenging enough for my students since I do not teach them directly. 
The second part is the origninality of the activities. I think after the 6th activity, I do not know what to do. I tried to do my best in creating the activities, but I was afraid that they do not hold in a unit. 

 

 

 

 

 Based on the model of SLA Chapelle proposed seven hypotheses relevant for developing Multimedia CALL.

 The linguistic characteristics of target language input need to be made salient. In this hypothesis, the author meant that whatever the teacher wants to teach in the target language has to be brought clearly to the attention of the students.
 Learners should receive help in comprehending semantic and syntactic aspects of linguistic input.
In order for the students to understand the semantic and syntactic aspects of the language, the teachers have to help the students with specifics in the target language with language simplification, elaboration, and redundancy.
 Learners need to have opportunities to produce target language output. Students need to practice their target language as much as they can to improve.
 Learners need to notice errors in their own output: By noticing their errors, the students can improve their learning, improve their language process.
 Learners need to correct their linguistic output: As students recognize their error, they can correct them, they can "focus on form" of the language.
 Learners need to engage in target language interaction whose structure can be modified for negotiation of meaning: Students should interact in target language to improve their language structure.
 Learners should engage in L2 tasks designed to maximize opportunities for good interaction. When engaging in L2 tasks such as interactional activity and communication goal, students make tremendous efforts.

 

 

 

 

 Egbert proposed different ways of creating computer activities in a more interactive way.
 Give opportunities to students to interact with the activities by adding a reference text in which they have to find the answers to the questions.
 Create an activity in which 2 students have to do different tasks
 Exchange electronic email between teacher and students
 Interacting with students of other classes, and other classes
 Interacting with each other in videoconferencing
 Providing free services to local and world community members

 I think Egbert gives very interesting ideas that teachers can use to create interactive activities with students however these ideas require a lot of knowledge in computer. I might use parts of these ideas such as adding reference text in the activity, creating a chatroom where my students can go to exchange ideas because I do not how to create webct, exchanging emails with students. Unfortunately, I won't be able to keep track of these email correspondences because I don' t know how.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In this reading, Kol described a study in which researchers believed that if students were taught strategies that facilitate their screen reading, they would scan better, skim and close-read better from screen than from paper.
The strategies that facilitate students' screen reading are: Find feature, the highlighter, and a hyperlinked outline of the text.
The Find feature allows students to find specific pieces of information in the word processor.
The hyperlinked outline allows students to read the highlighted sections to get the main ideas of the text.

  I took a grammar class in which I had to find different grammar words in sentences to illustrate grammar rules. What I did was to highlight the text that I wanted to find these words click on Find option. The computer gave me all the sentences where I could see the grammar that I was looking for. Of course not many have the grammar component in the context that I wanted, I quickly changed searching method and scanned the text by myself to find the grammar words in a given context. As KOL said, when using the Find feature, studies showed that: " the Find function does not take readers directly to the desired location but, rather stops at every instance of the word in the text".
As for skimming a text, I personally prefer skimming a text from paper than from the computer because I can highlight, write notes on the side of the paper and flip the page, as I like.

 

 

 

 

 In this reading, Shin presents the different ways of improving the educational quality of hypermedia-based CALL systems.
When designing the CALL systems: the designer should take consider the following questions:
Does the user have the control of the system?
Does the system provide a range of different learning systems?
Does the system give the opportunities to ESOL students to hear different voices of target languages?
Is the system user-friendly?

Constructivism:
From the constructivist viewpoint, learners are to be motivated to learn and solve their problems. This concept has been in the field of HCI (Human Computer interaction)-CALL.
In order for CALL system designers to collect and help the users' problems, they have to develop formative workshops in which users are exposed to prototypes; the designers record users' behavior, attitude, and reflective comments and come up with constructive learning materials to the help the users (Students).
 

  

  

 

 CALL materials are ESOL multimedia materials. The content of the textbooks is presented in World Wide Web. 
How CALL is developed: 
Developers determine the language features in particular in oral communication. They ask students to perform certain tasks that allow them to pinpoint the problems in oral communications. Once the problems are determined, the developers with help of teachers give testing students immediate and feedback and instructions. Instructions and feedback are given through different technical systems: internet, CD, compressed audio, Purevoice. Students can share feedback from distance. 

 I think this is a very structured program and I am very impressed of the assessment plan. I wish the author emphasized on how this program is beneficial for the students in the development of language skills. I believe that multi media can be a supplement to language learning experience, students cannot totally depend on them to develop their oral communication skills. Each student has different layers of issues/difficulties in communication that need to be "fixed"; how could a system fix them all and in particular with a group of students using the program in the same time? 

The steps for  Usability proposed by Kessler are: the think aloud protocol, the co-discovery-the self-reporting log method. 
The think aloud protocol consists of saying what the students think as they complete the tasks. I think this method is very difficult for my students to perform because not only do they have to think what they do but have to say  in a second language what they do. I guess you have to be  fluent in the native and target  languages to be able to do that. 

I like the self-reporting log method. Students report in writing their thoughts and actions. I have seen this method used by some teachers. Students keep a journal and turn it in to the teachers, the teachers make corrections and comments. In this mehtod, students can freely express themselves to their teachers.