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Textbook Analysis

Puntos de partida 7 is an interactive book helpful for learning the Spanish language. While looking at chapter 12 I found that the book included much vocabulary to learn and memorize. Then I remembered how in class we often discussed the use of vocabulary lists and how ineffective they were in teaching the full meaning of a language and ultimately culture. The vocabulary is presented in a paragraph that is very general and common to most speakers in an industrialized nation. I can understand how many students learning a 2^nd language would relate to a setting like this where they could fully understand a text by translating a few words. In this respect, the book is effective in that it communicates a message in the target language and presents the students with a useful way for grading. However, it doesn’t seem to be text-based oriented in that most of the activities do not show or is focused on an authentic text. However, I give it some credit in respect to providing some examples of culture and outside of the classroom resources.

Culture as we have discussed in class many times, is an important aspect of language teaching necessary during class to fully teach and acquire a language. The textbook is effective in some respect as far as culture; it includes some cultural activities at the end of chapter and on the online aid that focus specifically on the cultural aspect of Spanish as it applies in a native setting. It includes a section of “Conozca” which provides the student with general information about the country being studied, some media and a bit of culture, and some links that a student can use to look up a bit more about the country and vocabulary being studied. This relates back to the use of technology, the online course help provides the student with videos, flashcards, interviews, and grammar exercises that go beyond an atlas setting teaching. However, I still believe the book focuses too much on grammar and vocabulary exercises. Although they seem to be effective for memorizing and “learning” Spanish, many students keep forgetting the language after school. Perhaps it would useful to implement some of Lee and VanPatten’s ideas on cultural teaching and advancing from there to grammar and vocab, as opposed to doing the other opposite.

Reflection Piece 11

Continuing on the topic of technology, we find out that learning is more than just vocabulary and context. Dr. Kelm from the UT modules speaks of “chunks and scripts” as relating to the way speech is put together. This is important when it relates to technology in the sense that we have an immense amount of outside assistance to develop proficiency in the target language. Traditionally we learn from books and an atlas setting tested by a curriculum and a set of standards that limit divergent thinking and ultimately or capacity to learn outside the context of a classroom. What does this mean? Why is this a problem in education? One could in theory at least, know all the vocabulary words used in a language and still not understand a complete script or dialogue by native speakers. This is a big problem in teaching and encouraging students to invest time and money in a system that does not work. I suppose one could earn a degree and not be able to function in a real world setting with hands on. The problem is that in a traditional setting we often learn in individual parts that do not portray a full message and so students don’t have a true experience with language proficiency.

Having stated that traditional education seems to be incomplete, technology poses a solution to having an insufficient amount of input for students and a “real life setting.” This is somewhat simplified by Dr. Kelm with scripts. These offer a link between education and real life by providing numerous life settings in which the student can become familiar with the culture and native communication. An example of this is mass multimedia available through the internet. A student can listen to shows, news, music, or read in the desired language with much more ease as opposed to a hundred years where a direct immersion would be the only equivalent of this. It would be impossible to get a complete immersion without having a native setting; it was hard enough to even hear a foreign language. Which leads me to my next point, intake filtering. Intake according to Dr. Kelm is the amount of input a student comprehends from listening and reading, but the problem is how and what we skim and learn. Technology has already provided a solution to availability, now as instructors it’s important to teach students what is good material to learn and absorb.

But this can be difficult in itself, especially when the number of students is growing and it’s harder for instructors to individualize and help students improve in specific areas. Team-based learning is an excellent idea that improves attendance participation and overall thinking. Team-based learning could be the answer to the lack of interest and low participation in classroom, in a way could help improve language acquisition by having the students create a native setting and challenging them to think outside of vocabulary and rehearsed dialogues. Team-based learning has been implemented at UT in bigger classrooms and has been shown to work. Given the amount of technology available and resources, we would expect our education system to have a shift for the best and hopefully a revolution in what has been working in public education lately.

Reflection Piece 10

Technology is important because it has revolutionized our way of living and eases the way we communicate. This is important in language teaching because technology offers a wide variety of options and alternatives to implement in a classroom. We have gone from reading books and answering questions based on the research by a doctor years before to having a live conversation and video documentation and teaching. Last week during class we saw a video on the idea of divergent thinking and public education. One of the concerns discussed was the fact that children are constantly bombarded with input from all angles. A child may be advanced in video games and technology of all sorts and we continue to teach in atlas setting with lectures. The video portrayed this idea as “boring.” It’s not hard to understand why students aren’t paying attention in the classroom. Children are being over stimulated at home with many video games and alternative options to paper homework. Instructors aren’t using all the resources available to them, we need to implement all the ideas taught by our books and modules in a reliable “fun” way to which students can relate to. A good example of this would be kids’ shows; they are often times instructional and aim to teach children basic counting and the alphabet. I have seen my nephews and nieces learn English as they listen to Dora the explorer or even Barney through TV, hands-on books, and online games. I believe that in much the same way, students can learn interactively if given the chance.

Dr. Orlando Kelm states that language teaching can be hard through technology because often times technology is quickly outdated. This is not to say that the use of technology is ineffective, on the contrary, it should push instructors into finding new creative ways to use what is being thrown into the general public as innovative technology. Just the other day a friend of mine showed me a video game that is far advanced anything I had seen or remembered such as “Super Mario.” This new game needs not any controllers but instead has sensors attached to different parts of the body that pick up stimulations and motions to instantly play on the screen. Then I thought why we can’t use this kind of technology with video games that instruct kids in a target language by presenting them with a “native” setting. In other words, as Dr. Kelm states: “Technology provides context. Technology can imitate or create any social setting, sounds, situations, native sights that can stimulate a studen’t interest in the target language. I can imagine that a video game which has a restaurant in Spain with a programmed chat from a waiter with sounds and sights from Spain would be much more interesting than reading out of a book with a classmate.

Time on task is very important for language learning. Dr. Kelm points out how an intermediate level takes much more hours than offered in a classroom. We can’t change this fact, people are busy. But he offers a website in which a learning student can be actively involved and make good use of technology. Another excellent option is the use of phone applications. I have found this to be personally useful during my studies for biology as an undergrad. “Study Arcade” offers a good way of creating flash cards for vocabulary and I often used the “Biology MCAT” application to refresh my memory on diagrams and processes in the body. Even podcasts and audio CD’s in my iPod were also helpful while I drove or exercised. The use of memory space now available to store videos and music facilitates what we can fit in a smart phone, which most students have and always carry around.

Culture, culture, culture. Culture has been the course of discussion in the classroom, online, and in several chapters of the book. In the UT module about culture, Dr. Garza clearly states that teaching culture is necessary to keep students interested in second language acquisition. “We teach culture as long as we have students to teach” but then goes to say “as long as we teach culture, we will have students to teach.” How could we ever teach a language without culture? A student will never become fully proficient in a language by simply memorizing equivalents to their native language. The goal of language learning is to be able to communicate with native speakers and to share information effectively that would entitle understanding culture. I agree with Robert Phillip’s blog when he states that  “This problem is compounded by the fact that you can never get enough practice speaking in the classroom.” It is often very difficult to get all the practice that we need in a classroom setting. How then can we ensure that our students get a good feel of cultural immersion when we are often limited to a curriculum? All communication is culturally embedded, but usually language is taught in isolation focusing on grammar and structure. Unfortunately we are confronted with a series of questions that can determine what and how we teach. Dr. Garza says that we should measure proficiency by functional ability not by number of years of learned language in a classroom. In other words, can the speaker function in an immersed setting and carry out everyday activities that will involve understanding plenty about the culture. He gives the example, can you order at a restaurant?

While learning language along with culture, it would seem that these two should never be disconnected. In my experience, hanging out with friends and church family I grew in culture and language proficiency in English. I had seen the American culture in movies and TV and had my many assumptions about the culture. I could have never learned the language the way I did by simply listening to rehearsed conversations and memorizing vocabulary. I had to go to a restaurant and order and negotiate meaning about the food that I wanted. I had to go to a game and negotiate meaning on prices and seating. Altogether many examples of cultural differences that helped build my knowledge and tear down the fear of speaking. Robert again gives out an excellent idea for providing an alternative for cultural immersion:  “Also if one cannot live in the culture I think that by adopting aspects of the culture and creating a simulated environment of immersion, one can develop in the culture with the immense amount of internet help and global communication.” Given the immense amount of external help from mass media to entertainment and news, a student has much more opportunities to grow and develop in the target language as opposed to 50 years ago. Yet we continue to use the same teaching methodology.

This is all tied together with building toward proficiency. Task oriented learning, as Lee and VanPatten discuss in chapter 4; could be a useful and fun way to learn language and culture. Lee and VanPatten suggest that an actual task gives instructors and learners a concrete objective and therefore help determine what linguistic tools need to be developed to be successful with the task at the end of a lesson. I find it to be a good idea, although a learner will not be able to comprehend a topic in all of its situations or contexts. It is in this building of proficiency that instructors are interested in, although never easy.

It is clear that learners need opportunities to use vocabulary to communicate information as an output. Only with these given opportunities can they work on different processes responsible for the development of fluency and accuracy in second language speech. Here is where grammar and becomes important as a basis for structured output. Grammar in without a doubt a structured form of input from which learners converge to. Lee and VanPatten discuss in chapter 8 that the development and use of the output analog to structured input enable learners to access form and structures in their developing system to communicate an idea. In other words, output is analogous to the input a student receives. This is true for native speakers and children who acquire a language early in childhood without receiving a conscious form of structured grammar. In their case, they often times learn a language better and faster and have no real formal instruction in what the language encompasses with rules and patterns.

This is not to say that teaching grammar is ineffective in learning a language, instead simply that children learn faster. And so it is important that instructors push learners toward more optimal processing of language data by providing a more native setting in grammatical structure of the second language. Traditional approaches to instruction, as in Atlas, that involve explanation plus practice in making sentences “are simply not effective” say Lee and VanPatten. So what is there to do, how can we provide an optimal setting and reverse time to take students to the time when they were kids and thus capable of fully acquiring a language? Lee and VanPatten suggest that “we blend both art and science in the classroom” by working with methods and techniques that have strong empirical support. What does this mean? There are many unanswered questions for instructors that are forced to teach and are indirectly encouraged to improve on their teaching. They give ideas, but as a fellow classmate discussed last week, “if what they talk about is so effective, why can’t they come up with a year-round curriculum that I can use in the classroom?”

Grammar is very difficult, but necessary in teaching a language when it can no longer be simply acquired. Some UT modules give some interesting ideas on developing grammar and having the student understand grammar conceptually as opposed to simply memorizing rules. It is no secret that many students learn a foreign language during college only to later claim a very low proficiency in the language. Could we really call this learning? I realize that this is what these different authors are trying to avoid in education. And in a way they are trying to change traditional methods to ensure a broader more complete education, but instead we should build upon what does work and experiment with what could work.

It is true that merely memorizing rules and repetition does not develop proficiency, but it would be harsh to say that traditional methods are simply not effective. Many students have learned by rules, repetition, and structural learning in a classroom. However, I do believe that we should modify traditional methods to include more communicative exercises to help teach grammatical structures and ultimately the language.

This week’s topic deals with the spoken language in the classroom. Listening comprehension seems to be just as important if not more than speaking or writing a second language. Lee and VanPatten along with the videos of Dr. Mahmoud al-Batal discuss ways in which listening is useful for second language acquisition when used as comprehensible input and as a communicative interaction. In know that for at least from an early age children imitate sounds and stumble through words, sounds, and sentence structure as they acquire a language. In much the same way in a classroom setting listening provides the best way in which a student can see the language being used at its best.

During my middle school years in ESL classrooms, I listened attentively to our teacher correcting our broken English. He in a way provided the patterns and sounds I wanted to make out during my first steps of English comprehension. Clearly, there are two parties that deal in developing a strong foundation of language learning. Lee and VanPatten discuss the first one as being comprehensible input, or “the factor related to the acquisition of a linguistic system-vocabulary, syntax, phonology, and other linguistic features.” Therefore the listener is an active participant in the construction of meaning, whether he or she understands a full message or simply infers, guesses, or anticipates meaning. The second deals with listening comprehension which is how and the amount that a listener understands in a communicative interaction. Clearly, listening in the real world is not simply hearing someone talk, situations are filled with visual cues and other stimuli that influence our understanding of a message.  It is for this reason that instructors should use real life settings as much as possible to communicate a complete message in which a student can feed off from different cues.

It is important to mention that communication and ultimately listening can be informal or formal. In each setting, the listener has different cues from which to develop on. In my experience, I found that I learned much more about common sayings and accents from my friends. It was through laughs and making mistakes that I developed a deeper understanding of what I had been learning in the classroom. I tried applying some of the concepts thought only to find out that the way native speakers use the language differs from the classroom. This is not to say that teaching is ineffective, simply incomplete in properly developing a language filled with culture. Classroom teaching helped me develop the basics of English, and served as the way in which I could write what I heard. Clearly verbal communication immerses a student in different paces, sounds, and ideas that could never be thought from reading and writing. If input is to be of any acquisitional use, in this case by listening, the message must be comprehended and ultimately the learner should be able to function in a real life setting even if they don’t receive a complete message or classroom language. Ultimately, instructors should find appropriate listening comprehension tools to use for students in second language acquisition although it’s not an easy task because of all the variables that involved in language teaching.

This week our reading dealt with literature use in the classroom and how it can be effective in second language acquisition. It is important to point out that there exists a great difference between language and literature teaching. Instinctively, based on my own experience with language learning I am led to believe that the difficulty level of literature is much higher than language. For this reason, I was somewhat skeptical about the use of any type of literature in beginning classes of language learning. It would almost seem that a student might be more lost with the amount of archaic words offered in a dense text from the Spanish Golden Age.

I am not saying that with some practical methods discussed on the website or the article offered in class, students could familiarize themselves with the language. Based on my perception of literature and the readings I had to make during lit classes, I could certainly say that it would be almost impossible for a new student to conceptualize, reason with a text, participate, opinionate, or even understand the story of what he or she is reading. But Gillian Lazar in her book “Literature Teaching: A Guide for Teachers and Trainers” defines literature in a much broader way that includes many more aspects than what I associated to literature courses. “Literature is a special use of language which achieves its distinctness by deviating from and distorting practical language. Practical language is used for acts of communication, while literary language has no practical function at all and simply makes us see differently.” Basically, literature is not meant for language learning but for reflecting and reasoning in the target language.

Based on this structural idea, literature makes us reason, create critique, reflect, understand, and analyze the author’s views on the story and the historical context in which a given work is written. It is in doing so that a speaker becomes fully proficient and has achieved a complete dominance of a language. Richard Kern identifies this clearly in his article by making a clear distinction between literature and language learning during a developing process in which language learning comes first and literature seems to be a response and the reflection of a well-learned language. So in a way it would be safe to say that this process has been followed by many instructors in the past and seems to be the easiest to follow because the student can choose to continue his or her studies on a language based on their understanding. Nonetheless, as Kern pointed out literature involves interpretation and language use as in basic language learning. Therefore he thinks lower-level classrooms should use literature and push beyond interpersonal communication skills.

Immersing a student in a text advanced in language context can be very intimidating. However, the importance of showing a real text should not be undermined. I think there are texts that can be used and would be effective in teaching a language by presenting a story with vocabulary that a student may associate to images and ideas. I myself learned English in steps which included language learning followed by literature in more advanced courses. I can say that this method worked for me, but I am not in a position to discredit any other teaching methods that implement literature in lower-level courses.

Samuel Hernandez

This week’s material introduced concepts and techniques that can help students get more out of the reading process and I believe reading authentic texts that are personalized to the reader’s interests can be useful in the classroom. Janet Swaffar who is a Professor of Germanic Studies at UT Austin identifies that about 50 percent of what is learned depends on text extrinsic factors on familiar topics. Reading is a process undertaken to reduce uncertainty about meanings a text conveys. The process results from a negotiation of meaning between the text and its reader. This in turn identifies how knowledge, expectations, and strategies a reader uses to uncover textual meaning, all play decisive roles in the way the reader negotiates meaning with a text.

Schemas allow even beginning language learners to pull a lot of information, discussion and learning out of authentic texts that may be initially considered overwhelming. Both our textbook and Dr. Swaffar in her teaching methods segment on reading, explain and elaborate on great ideas for pre-reading, guided reading and post reading activities. The lower the level of speaking proficiency, the greater the need to not rely on open-ended questions and activities. It is through effective reading that a second language acquisition student can become familiar with vocabulary and draw connections between what he hears and sees as written text.

Lee and VanPatten discuss the five functions of schema and describe an instructional approach to reading that comprises a lesson framework to surround the text and activities and go beyond the text.  The approach reflects what we know learners do with texts if left alone. While learning beginning French in high school, I often found myself reading word for word and translating on the page from the back of the book. This is exactly what instructors should try to avoid, ultimately and ideally there should exist an active interaction between a reader and a text. In other words, it is much more complex than merely comprehending the words involved and can require several levels of analysis. According to what has been referred as the schema theory, our previous knowledge comes in to play to help us disambiguate, elaborate, filter, compensate and organize information.

Written texts can deal with culture; this means that often times culture is embedded in the language of the text. We have been discussing the meaning of a text, what defines a text, and how a cultural background affect a student understands and assimilation of a text. This in turn highlights the importance of schemata, as discussed by LVP, because the more knowledge you bring to the table the more likely you will make the connections that will unlock meaning. Also, by learning to interact with texts early in their studies, students will be better prepared to interpret and comprehend more complicated texts and genres that they will come in contact later as they develop. Aiding in cultural understanding can improve comprehension, all while understanding that language also affects comprehension, lexical choice, the organization of information, and level of language proficiency.

I think its common knowledge that reading improves language comprehension. Nonetheless, as future instructors we can take the instructional approach and framework for helping L2 learners comprehend written language offered by Dr. Swaffar and Lee and VanPatten. Reading can be a fun activity, and has been in my personal experience because it’s filled with individual information and cultural context that can be applied in classroom reading.

Samuel Hernandez

Reflection Piece 4

The meanings of words are rarely the same across languages, it was discussed during class that only about 36 words remained the same across languages. This simply implies that each word conveys a different meaning in respective cultures. This is not all too unfamiliar to my experience as a foreign student. The idea of Saturday night cookouts in America was completely different from what I knew as a child in Mexico. Everything from the food and drinks, to the sport we watched was different. In this case my idea of a cookout during a game was much different and obviously some meaning was lost in cultural transfer of the word.

In much the same way, teaching vocabulary to students can be problematic. Culture-specific meaning vocabulary limits methods of teaching 2^nd language to students. The fact remains that a student will not fully understand the meaning of house in France by simply having the American “equivalent” translation in paper. It’s important to show images of a house of France and how the natives feel about their homes.  It can be said that vocabulary lists are inadequate in effectively teaching students the full meaning of language. There are however methods that can expand a learner’s full understanding of a language. Lee and Van Patten speak of communication. Communication involves the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning within a particular context. Communication is much more effective than vocabulary lists because learners come to understand that activity in language classrooms can be more than practicing of “subcomponents of communicative ability.” Instructors in this respect are less Atlas-like and provide for more negotiation of meaning important in understanding culture and vocabulary and 2^nd language structure. Cross-cultural communication involves not only a clear understanding of grammar, but also an understanding of the way lexical items work within a culture. As instructors, we need to teach students to be cautious about assuming they understand a native speaker of another language and give students some specific examples which will “underscore the admonition.”

In the article “When One-Word Translations Are Not Enough” by Lana Rings, Cliquen and Kneipen are the American clique and bar. Dr. rings concluded that the German concept of Kneipe includes the following: a Kneipe is a place where friends (and sometimes family) go to talk, eat, and drink for an average of two to three hours, anywhere from a few times a week to a few times a year. An American bar, then, is a place where alcoholic beverages are served, where people go to drink, socialize, dance, relax, eat, or play pool or darts, as often as several times a week or as seldom as a few times a year, staying about two or three hours on average. Bars are also places where people get drunk, and where they may flirt with others. People go in groups or alone, although it may sometimes be safer in groups. Obviously the meaning of the word bar differs in culture between both countries with both some negative connotations about the concept of a bar. Regardless, this study proves that in fact words are mostly tied to a culture-specific meaning particular to a culture.

It is in understanding that proper communication with students in the classroom and opportunity for negotiating meaning, that an instructor can provide the right tools for second language acquisition. Effective teaching includes conveying the idea that vocabulary changes meaning in different languages. In this way instructors can move on from an Atlas-like teaching of memorizing vocabulary lists to a realistic exchange of ideas and meanings in full conversation.

Samuel Hernandez

Reflection Piece 3

Dr. Dale Koike a pragmatics instructor describes how pragmatics is a representation of language in use. Pragmatics is important for the use and understanding the instructor’s intentions and how to react to those intentions. Pragmatics encompasses not only at the linguistic level, but also at the cultural and social level. If we as teachers approach teaching via pragmatics, we can transmit a broader view of language to the students. Dr. Koike identifies that pragmatics creates a focus on communication as opposed to single objects or the use of vocabulary. It in this function reflects the function of language. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, and time of a message. This is important in making sure a student understands a message properly because ultimately the ability to understand another speaker’s intended meaning is modified.

Gary Wederspahn in his article “Cross-Cultural Communication Between Latin American and U.S. Managers” describes a few cultural differences among Latin America and the U.S. in the business world. His views specifically deal with the importance of learning any differences to ensure effective communication and proper understanding. This relates to linguistics and second language acquisition in various levels because as instructors it’s important to identify differences to have a good “business” with our students. When a message has been produced in the second language, it’s sent through a cultural filter as it is received. A breakdown of communication occurs and the decoding is influenced by a set of values, attitudes, beliefs, preconceptions, and expectations that are different from those of the sender or the original message. Wederspahn describes specifically a few American differences in the “time” concept and the “task vs relationship” as opposed to Latin American views on these topics. If a student was told that a business person received a message, he or she wouldn’t understand that as opposed to the American system, there is no pressure in returning the message within a deadline. Interestingly, the slideshow “American French Cultural Difference” presents a few stereotypes and cultural differences in day to day activities in both cultures. Many differences from greeting, to the way people eat, can have an impact on the way a student may interpret a message. If two people hug or even kiss in America, this is perceived as a sign if intimacy among the two, however in France this could be a greeting. The message in this concept deviated from its initial intent.  

The cultural differences described above are only a few of the challenges in classrooms or business communications.  In order to overcome them, it is necessary to first see them clearly and objectively, to understand how he or she is being perceived by counterparts from other cultures. Finally, one needs to use effective cross-cultural communications, which means using gestures and body language understood across cultures that can give more information about the message even if to the receiver means something different initially.

Ultimately, it’s vital to improve and understand effective teaching techniques used to provide a meaningful education that will pass cultural barriers and effectively convey the desired message. Students are held with the responsibility of acquiring and understanding the right message. As instructors, we can only provide them with the appropriate type of information that convey and include cultural differences in a classroom setting.