SETESOL 2010 Conference Panel Notes
"Grammar Instruction Through Dilemmas, Humor & Endings of Online Commercials" - Susan DePhilippis
This session had some great tips for using video in the classroom. The presenter had a lot of examples of clips she felt were particularly useful, effective, or just plain attention-grabbing.
Working With Video in the Classrom
Before showing a clip, tell students what to look and listen for: target vocabulary, grammar point, cultural idea, etc. After showing the clip, elicit responses about what they found. Write all ideas on the board, mistakes and all, so that the class can review and correct together. If the target grammar/vocab/etc. isn’t being used, model it and try eliciting responses again.
Example Clips
Ariston aqualitis - Washing machine ad where laundry items are made to look like sea life - good for similes/metaphors
Minnesota Cold – Minnesotan shows amazing things that happen in sub-zero temperatures. Models expression “it’s so cold that…”
Great Depression Cooking - Clara talks about experiences and what people ate during Depression. Good for evoking discussion of historical era. Cooking videos in general are good for chronology or process essays.
"A Salsa Beat: Using our Senses to Promote Comprehension and Retention"
- Diane Carter
This speaker had ideas for combining visual, auditory, and kinesthetic factors in language learning. It was based on a study that showed that when all three elements are present, retention of information reached 99% three hours after presentation, and 97% after three days.
To help illustrate the idea of learning styles, the presenter handed out a list of vocabulary words and had us ask a partner what first came into their minds when they saw those words: do they feel the word, see it, or hear it? For each word, the interviewing partner would circle K for kinesthetic, V for visual, or A for auditory. At the end of the exercise, we counted up the circles to discover what kind of learning was dominant for each partner.
This was a fun exercise, and has the potential to be effective in helping students understand their own learning styles, but there was some difficulty with certain words that could be, for example, different parts of speech, or that could have different cultural connotations for different learners. We agreed that it would be very difficult to put together a list of words that were sufficiently “neutral,” and that would have one agreed-upon meaning for the purposes of the exercise. Homographs also presented a certain difficulty: for example, if the interviewer interpreted the word “wind” as /wind/, their partner would almost certainly say they could feel the wind in their face. But if the interviewer thought the word was /waind/, their partner might have a different experience of the word.
"Drawing Grammar" - Victoria Navarrete
This wasn't so much "art" as incorporating a visual aspect into the lesson, to appeal to learners with a more visual approach. Though the presenter started off talking about the seven elements of art (line, color, shape, space, value, texture, and form), she only presented ideas for four of them.
For line, she suggested using line drawings to teach verb tenses, to encourage students who believe they are not artistically inclined to use a visual medium. One example she gave was, in order to teach the present perfect progressive as evidence of a recently finished activity, to have partners sketch each other after they have completed an activity, e.g., for “Joyce has been eating cookies,” draw a person with cookie crumbs on their face.
For color, she suggested using color schemes to differentiate tenses or other grammatical features, for example, highlighting syntactic features such as subject and object in different colors. She also recommended using different colored index cards to teach which verbs verbs take infinitives and which ones take gerunds. One caveat: beware of color blindness combinations!
For shape, she recommended drawing shapes to suggest parallels and analogies. She showed us a lesson where she taught past conditional with a “pipeline” path, showing choices at junctures, and indicating alternate choices in another color. Students then formed sentences with the pattern “If I hadn’t ___________, then I would have ______________.”
Finally, for space, she suggested showing the difference between simple past and past perfect by designating three consecutive spaces in a notebook. On the middle page, students wrote or illustrated an important event in their lives; on the first page, they wrote or illustrated actions that prepared them or led up to that event (bonus: use a different color!), and on the third page, they made sentences to join those first two pages, by turning back one page for the simple past, and two pages for the past perfect.
These were all good ideas that I could see myself using in the classroom. This may have been the best presentation I attended, in terms of presentation style, information, and readable slides.
"Adult ESOL: Development of Practical Training for Teachers in Adult Classrooms" - Mercedes Pichard
The first half of this talk was about training teachers to teach adult ESL, and seemed to be geared toward administrators or people with a group of teachers to train. The second half was more what I was interested in, actual suggestions of activities for teaching English to adults.
Laugh and Graph – This was a chart drawn on an overhead transparency, with learning styles listed across the bottom, with a rating scale of 1-10 on the vertical axis. Students were are asked to rate themselves for each learning style, then the instructor stacked the transparencies on top of each other on the projector to illustrate the class’s learning style differences.
Affinity Diagrams - This was a group discussion activity.
Readers’ Theater – This is a group project where groups adapt scenes from a written text for oral presentation. After presenting, the class can watch a video of an existing adaption, if one exists, and discuss differences. Another idea is for the teacher to adapt the text, have the students study and perform it in the oral form, then read the original.
Reciprocal Teaching – This is a group project where a group reads a story together, aloud in turns, and each group member has a job to do during the reading. Possible roles include: reader, vocabulary “expert,” question asker, summarizer, timekeeper (keeps track of narrative timeline), predictor, clarifier, and taskmaster (keeps group on task).
"Gender as a Social Construct in First and Second Language Acquisition" -
Elyza Rodriguez
This session highlighted information from the presenter’s paper on language acquisition and gender. In general, she said, girls acquire language faster than boys do, especially grammatical forms. Girls’ general advantage in vocabulary acquisition peaks around 30 months, and then the boys usually catch up. However, boys have an advantage when it comes to certain vocabulary that adheres to gender norms--e.g, names of transportation vehicles. Regardless of gender, however, it is usually the mother’s level of education that determines how well children succeed in school.
In a study of bilingual students in the United States, girls maintained their L1s at a higher level than boys, since they were expected to pass their L1 culture down to their own children. However, girls developed equally well in both languages, whereas boys’ L1s declined as they worked harder on their English for presumed future roles as breadwinners. The study found that boys’ self esteem suffered because of the loss of L1 proficiency.
By the time they are adolescents, however, boys’ success in L2 learning declines, as they become more motivated toward pursuits socially perceived as masculine--which don’t usually include academics and language learning. Both adolescent boys and girls plateau in language learning in late adolescence, where motivation wanes as they stop seeing improvements in their communications.
"Discover the Power and Beauty of the Haitian Language" - Rony Joseph
I went to this panel not because I thought it would be useful in my studies or work, but simply out of an interest in French dialects. I haven’t dealt much with variants of French outside of France, so when I saw this on the program, I jumped at it.
You could say that Haitian Creole is basically phonetically spelled French, but you'd only be partially correct--and pragmatically bewildered. The way certain words are used is fascinating. For example, in Port-au-Prince, people say "Bonjou" for hello, and you can see the obvious French influence. But in other regions, the less obvious "si fe" and "ji tim" are the norm. Huh? Compare to French "c'est fait" and "légitime" and you might start to understand.
The presenter, a native Haitian, described his language as a “creation of black ingenuity,” explaining that it arose out of the contact language used by slaves to communicate with their French-speaking masters. Unknown to the plantation owners, however, the slaves were developing additional levels to the language that only they could understand. This made it an ideal language for the revolution; Sonthonax’s 1773 proclamation that freed the Haitian slaves was written in their own language.
Haitian Creole is related to the French Creoles of New Orleans, Guadalupe, and Martinique. The vocabulary is based in French, but the syntax is based on the principles of several different West African languages. Phonetically, there are 10 basic vowel sounds and three semi-vowels. The spelling is largely phonetic,and the writing system was not formalized until the 20th century, with an official spelling guide published in 1980.
In 1985 Creole was made the official language of Haiti, thus gaining social acceptance as a language of education, rather than simply being the language spoken at home among family. There is still a strong preference, however, for French as the language of culture and commerce.
"English Language Skills for Parents and Child Care Providers" - Marsha Chan
This session looked interesting to me because of my work with the mommy/baby class at the refugee center, but it turned out to be a commercial for a curriculum aimed toward teaching adults who want to work in childcare. I did get some ideas for useful vocabulary and structures to teach the mommies in my class, though the children are really my target audience.
One thing I noticed right away was the curriculum designers’ clever way of indicating stress patterns by showing a pattern of large and small dots to show stronger and weaker syllables. The workbook included a chapter on safety, including consideration of reporting injuries, dealing with emergency personnel, and getting children to communicate how and where they hurt themselves (always a challenge, regardless of language barriers!), along with how to express sympathy in age-appropriate language.
There was a gratifying focus on register-specific language, and the different ways you would speak to children versus their parents (for example, answering parents’ questions about their children’s behavior). Childcare specific vocabulary, such as “stroller,” “sippy cup,” and “diaper change” were highlighted, as were structures for giving specific, descriptive praise: “I like how you….” “It was nice/good that you….” “I’m happy/glad that you…” etc.
Back to Professional Development Page
This session had some great tips for using video in the classroom. The presenter had a lot of examples of clips she felt were particularly useful, effective, or just plain attention-grabbing.
Working With Video in the Classrom
Before showing a clip, tell students what to look and listen for: target vocabulary, grammar point, cultural idea, etc. After showing the clip, elicit responses about what they found. Write all ideas on the board, mistakes and all, so that the class can review and correct together. If the target grammar/vocab/etc. isn’t being used, model it and try eliciting responses again.
Example Clips
Ariston aqualitis - Washing machine ad where laundry items are made to look like sea life - good for similes/metaphors
Minnesota Cold – Minnesotan shows amazing things that happen in sub-zero temperatures. Models expression “it’s so cold that…”
Great Depression Cooking - Clara talks about experiences and what people ate during Depression. Good for evoking discussion of historical era. Cooking videos in general are good for chronology or process essays.
"A Salsa Beat: Using our Senses to Promote Comprehension and Retention"
- Diane Carter
This speaker had ideas for combining visual, auditory, and kinesthetic factors in language learning. It was based on a study that showed that when all three elements are present, retention of information reached 99% three hours after presentation, and 97% after three days.
To help illustrate the idea of learning styles, the presenter handed out a list of vocabulary words and had us ask a partner what first came into their minds when they saw those words: do they feel the word, see it, or hear it? For each word, the interviewing partner would circle K for kinesthetic, V for visual, or A for auditory. At the end of the exercise, we counted up the circles to discover what kind of learning was dominant for each partner.
This was a fun exercise, and has the potential to be effective in helping students understand their own learning styles, but there was some difficulty with certain words that could be, for example, different parts of speech, or that could have different cultural connotations for different learners. We agreed that it would be very difficult to put together a list of words that were sufficiently “neutral,” and that would have one agreed-upon meaning for the purposes of the exercise. Homographs also presented a certain difficulty: for example, if the interviewer interpreted the word “wind” as /wind/, their partner would almost certainly say they could feel the wind in their face. But if the interviewer thought the word was /waind/, their partner might have a different experience of the word.
"Drawing Grammar" - Victoria Navarrete
This wasn't so much "art" as incorporating a visual aspect into the lesson, to appeal to learners with a more visual approach. Though the presenter started off talking about the seven elements of art (line, color, shape, space, value, texture, and form), she only presented ideas for four of them.
For line, she suggested using line drawings to teach verb tenses, to encourage students who believe they are not artistically inclined to use a visual medium. One example she gave was, in order to teach the present perfect progressive as evidence of a recently finished activity, to have partners sketch each other after they have completed an activity, e.g., for “Joyce has been eating cookies,” draw a person with cookie crumbs on their face.
For color, she suggested using color schemes to differentiate tenses or other grammatical features, for example, highlighting syntactic features such as subject and object in different colors. She also recommended using different colored index cards to teach which verbs verbs take infinitives and which ones take gerunds. One caveat: beware of color blindness combinations!
For shape, she recommended drawing shapes to suggest parallels and analogies. She showed us a lesson where she taught past conditional with a “pipeline” path, showing choices at junctures, and indicating alternate choices in another color. Students then formed sentences with the pattern “If I hadn’t ___________, then I would have ______________.”
Finally, for space, she suggested showing the difference between simple past and past perfect by designating three consecutive spaces in a notebook. On the middle page, students wrote or illustrated an important event in their lives; on the first page, they wrote or illustrated actions that prepared them or led up to that event (bonus: use a different color!), and on the third page, they made sentences to join those first two pages, by turning back one page for the simple past, and two pages for the past perfect.
These were all good ideas that I could see myself using in the classroom. This may have been the best presentation I attended, in terms of presentation style, information, and readable slides.
"Adult ESOL: Development of Practical Training for Teachers in Adult Classrooms" - Mercedes Pichard
The first half of this talk was about training teachers to teach adult ESL, and seemed to be geared toward administrators or people with a group of teachers to train. The second half was more what I was interested in, actual suggestions of activities for teaching English to adults.
Laugh and Graph – This was a chart drawn on an overhead transparency, with learning styles listed across the bottom, with a rating scale of 1-10 on the vertical axis. Students were are asked to rate themselves for each learning style, then the instructor stacked the transparencies on top of each other on the projector to illustrate the class’s learning style differences.
Affinity Diagrams - This was a group discussion activity.
- Each group gets a set of index cards with features of topic (e.g., for the topic “civilization,” the cards would say government, cities, religion, etc.)
- Silent Phase: without talking, the group must put the cards into categories. If someone moves a card, the rest of the group must consider why in silence; this eliminates arguments. If group can’t agree, it’s ok to make a duplicate card and put the item in two categories
- Discussion Phase: The group must name each category with a complete sentence or a question. They may choose to create new index cards to add to some categories.
- Filling in blanks: choose different lexical areas to blank out.
- Listening comprehension exercises: true/false, matching, etc.
- Phonetic exercises: use lyrics with a clear rhyme pattern to match phonemes.
- Group activity: Cut lyrics into strips that have to be reconstructed.
- Vocabulary: slang, idioms.
Readers’ Theater – This is a group project where groups adapt scenes from a written text for oral presentation. After presenting, the class can watch a video of an existing adaption, if one exists, and discuss differences. Another idea is for the teacher to adapt the text, have the students study and perform it in the oral form, then read the original.
Reciprocal Teaching – This is a group project where a group reads a story together, aloud in turns, and each group member has a job to do during the reading. Possible roles include: reader, vocabulary “expert,” question asker, summarizer, timekeeper (keeps track of narrative timeline), predictor, clarifier, and taskmaster (keeps group on task).
"Gender as a Social Construct in First and Second Language Acquisition" -
Elyza Rodriguez
This session highlighted information from the presenter’s paper on language acquisition and gender. In general, she said, girls acquire language faster than boys do, especially grammatical forms. Girls’ general advantage in vocabulary acquisition peaks around 30 months, and then the boys usually catch up. However, boys have an advantage when it comes to certain vocabulary that adheres to gender norms--e.g, names of transportation vehicles. Regardless of gender, however, it is usually the mother’s level of education that determines how well children succeed in school.
In a study of bilingual students in the United States, girls maintained their L1s at a higher level than boys, since they were expected to pass their L1 culture down to their own children. However, girls developed equally well in both languages, whereas boys’ L1s declined as they worked harder on their English for presumed future roles as breadwinners. The study found that boys’ self esteem suffered because of the loss of L1 proficiency.
By the time they are adolescents, however, boys’ success in L2 learning declines, as they become more motivated toward pursuits socially perceived as masculine--which don’t usually include academics and language learning. Both adolescent boys and girls plateau in language learning in late adolescence, where motivation wanes as they stop seeing improvements in their communications.
"Discover the Power and Beauty of the Haitian Language" - Rony Joseph
I went to this panel not because I thought it would be useful in my studies or work, but simply out of an interest in French dialects. I haven’t dealt much with variants of French outside of France, so when I saw this on the program, I jumped at it.
You could say that Haitian Creole is basically phonetically spelled French, but you'd only be partially correct--and pragmatically bewildered. The way certain words are used is fascinating. For example, in Port-au-Prince, people say "Bonjou" for hello, and you can see the obvious French influence. But in other regions, the less obvious "si fe" and "ji tim" are the norm. Huh? Compare to French "c'est fait" and "légitime" and you might start to understand.
The presenter, a native Haitian, described his language as a “creation of black ingenuity,” explaining that it arose out of the contact language used by slaves to communicate with their French-speaking masters. Unknown to the plantation owners, however, the slaves were developing additional levels to the language that only they could understand. This made it an ideal language for the revolution; Sonthonax’s 1773 proclamation that freed the Haitian slaves was written in their own language.
Haitian Creole is related to the French Creoles of New Orleans, Guadalupe, and Martinique. The vocabulary is based in French, but the syntax is based on the principles of several different West African languages. Phonetically, there are 10 basic vowel sounds and three semi-vowels. The spelling is largely phonetic,and the writing system was not formalized until the 20th century, with an official spelling guide published in 1980.
In 1985 Creole was made the official language of Haiti, thus gaining social acceptance as a language of education, rather than simply being the language spoken at home among family. There is still a strong preference, however, for French as the language of culture and commerce.
"English Language Skills for Parents and Child Care Providers" - Marsha Chan
This session looked interesting to me because of my work with the mommy/baby class at the refugee center, but it turned out to be a commercial for a curriculum aimed toward teaching adults who want to work in childcare. I did get some ideas for useful vocabulary and structures to teach the mommies in my class, though the children are really my target audience.
One thing I noticed right away was the curriculum designers’ clever way of indicating stress patterns by showing a pattern of large and small dots to show stronger and weaker syllables. The workbook included a chapter on safety, including consideration of reporting injuries, dealing with emergency personnel, and getting children to communicate how and where they hurt themselves (always a challenge, regardless of language barriers!), along with how to express sympathy in age-appropriate language.
There was a gratifying focus on register-specific language, and the different ways you would speak to children versus their parents (for example, answering parents’ questions about their children’s behavior). Childcare specific vocabulary, such as “stroller,” “sippy cup,” and “diaper change” were highlighted, as were structures for giving specific, descriptive praise: “I like how you….” “It was nice/good that you….” “I’m happy/glad that you…” etc.
Back to Professional Development Page