If I don't write this right away I will probably get lazy and not write it.
I went to the Adult Language Training Conference today at CMU, it's been a long day, so here I am totally wiped from a long day of EAL workshops, but I made it and I took some notes to share with you.
- Joanne Pettis said
"Assessment is a systematic approach to collecting information on students learning and performance based on various sources of evidence to inform teaching and help students learn."
She used some 'fancy' words for this but I am going to simplify it here. Assessment is for A)placing students at a starting point , B)informing the learning process along the way and for C) feedback to determine if a goal has been reached
She asked - Does assessment improve learning? If it does are there assessment practices that are effective? --the answer YES and these are the effective practices to make it a resounding YES
the approach to assessment has to be
- planned for
- goal driven
- engaging the teacher and student in reflection and dialog
"Don't do more assessment do more with assessment" - I see this as a good statement to encourage not overdoing it in assessment. When I think about this statement and consider my observation after a full day of listening to assessment talk. I wondered about the pendulum factor. After just studying the approaches and methods that have swung the pendulum over the last 100 years is the pendulum of assessment swinging now? How far will it go?
"Assessment will empower students to be life long learners"
"Assessment will inform teaching and excite students"
Thank you Joanne for collaborating with my present learning journey.
Thursday 23 February 2012
Saturday 11 February 2012
Summary of our Discussion this week
We had a discussion on the class site this week about which language teaching approaches are our preferred and least preferred. There were some good points made in defense of some of the approaches I would have originally given little thought to. The Audiolingual approach is my least favorite method we read about, yet through discussion I realized there are some good points for it and I realized I actually use it in my teaching methods. The point was made that drills and repetition are an effective way to keep something to memory. I have experienced some of the same results as my classmate Jennifer who said about her experience in teaching,"(Learning language through songs) helped the students learn certain vocabulary and structures deeply by practicing them in a different, fun way." And as my classmate Vanessa said "Forming good habits through repetition does have value." So the Audiolingual approach can be effective, but I think it can only be effective in teaching language if it is used in conjunction with other approaches that help the learner use the structure and good pronunciation in real world use. As for other less preferred approaches, the Grammar Translation approach came up a number of times, mostly due to it's lack of connection to real world use but some language students learn best through this approach, to this my classmate Lauren said " I think it’s very important to take this(the fact that students want it) into consideration, especially in an educational culture that is more and more student-driven." So there is even a place for the Grammar Translation Approach. By far the favorite approach rang in as the Communicative approach, and as for me that sounds good too because personally my two preferred methods are the communicative and Direct approach. I like the Direct Method because it uses pictures, miming, demonstrating, drawing and objects to show the students what is being taught. I also like this method because it encourages the students to ask questions and speak as much as possible. I like the communicative teaching approach because it focuses on real life situations and authentic materials and all the skills are integrated right from the beginning. Others on in the discussion said they liked the approach for it's goal to communicate, learner centered nature, teachers role is as guide, use of current materials and students learn grammar inductively.
What I have found interesting as I have been learning about approaches, is that in my ESL class I use more Audiolingual style than I would have expected, considering I don't like the approach that much. I am not quite sure why this is yet. Either way it seems I need to line up my intentions and my actions, to teach more intentionally. I have enjoyed this learning journey. A line from the article I read by Paul Davis and Eric Pearse 'Development in Teaching English' really stood out to me, it reads " Many teachers continue to use activities and techniques that have passed out of fashion. Sometimes this is the result of ignorance rather than professional judgement. But other teacher who are trained and well-informed, also take ideas from unfashionable methods because they seem appropriate for their own teaching-learning situation. This is known as eclecticism. Eclectic approaches, based on well-informed views of the nature of language, language learning and language teaching and a good analysis of the specific teaching-learning situation, are considered by many English teaching professionals to be the best." It stood out to me for two reasons. One: I often feel like the ignorant teacher who has this willy nilly teaching approach that is working but I don't know why. Two: I see my goal here; to have an eclectic approach, based on well-informed views of the nature of language, language learning and language teaching and a good analysis of the specific teaching-learning situation. That's why I am in this class.
What I have found interesting as I have been learning about approaches, is that in my ESL class I use more Audiolingual style than I would have expected, considering I don't like the approach that much. I am not quite sure why this is yet. Either way it seems I need to line up my intentions and my actions, to teach more intentionally. I have enjoyed this learning journey. A line from the article I read by Paul Davis and Eric Pearse 'Development in Teaching English' really stood out to me, it reads " Many teachers continue to use activities and techniques that have passed out of fashion. Sometimes this is the result of ignorance rather than professional judgement. But other teacher who are trained and well-informed, also take ideas from unfashionable methods because they seem appropriate for their own teaching-learning situation. This is known as eclecticism. Eclectic approaches, based on well-informed views of the nature of language, language learning and language teaching and a good analysis of the specific teaching-learning situation, are considered by many English teaching professionals to be the best." It stood out to me for two reasons. One: I often feel like the ignorant teacher who has this willy nilly teaching approach that is working but I don't know why. Two: I see my goal here; to have an eclectic approach, based on well-informed views of the nature of language, language learning and language teaching and a good analysis of the specific teaching-learning situation. That's why I am in this class.
Thursday 2 February 2012
Knowledge, Ability and Effective
Competence ----
When I think about competence I think about 3 words; knowledge, ability and effective. From the readings this week I have learned a few things about communicative competence. We read an article by Vesna Baraic and Jelena Mihaljevic Djigunovic called defining communicative competence. Even though I sum up this meaningful word, competence, with; knowledge, ability and effective, there is so much more to it. I can see a lot of thought, research and discussion has gone on through history to bring us to better understand competence . Many people contributed to our present day understanding of communicative competence. Chompsky separates competence and performance, he says competence is about knowledge and performance is about the actual use of language. Hymes brought a sociolinguistic perspective to Chompsky's view and defined communicative competence as an ability to grammatical competence in a variety of communicative settings and situations. Widdowson made a distinction between competence and capacity and he was the first to give more attention to real language use. According to Canale and Swaine there were 3 types of knowledge, knowledge of underlying grammatical principals, knowledge of how to use language in social contexts and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions in respect to discourse. Also skill had 2 distinctions; underlying capacity and real communication. Then Savigon became an influential thinker, she described communicative competence as the ability to function in a truly communicative setting. Dynamic and relative were key terms for her model. Bachman called communicative competence 'communicative language ability' and he and Palmer focused their definition in two broad ways, language knowledge and strategic competence. Because their model is clearer, more complex and coherent than others, it has been favorable. Their attention was specifically on the aspects of language use; achieving a communicative goal in a specific situation. Finally I read about the CEF 2001 model and it's additions to the way we can understand communicative competence. This model balances knowledge and use by weaving them together. Each component; language, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences have 'ability to use' ridding on their backs so to speak.
I like to keep things simple and easy to understand, so this is the definition for competence that I've come out of this module with - to know and be able to use resulting in a desired effect. When I originally thought about the word competence, before I worked through this module, I defined competence as; to know and be able to do. After reading the article I saw something was missing from my definition so I took the goal focus from Bachman and Palmer and changed the way I defined competence by adding "to use with a desired effect" as part of my definition. For me I see it clearly that the goal of communicative competence is about combining knowledge learned and the ability to use the language in the desired situations, with the desired effect.
And here is a picture just for fun .... to break up the bla bla bla.:)
Sometimes I feel like this flower.
When I think about competence I think about 3 words; knowledge, ability and effective. From the readings this week I have learned a few things about communicative competence. We read an article by Vesna Baraic and Jelena Mihaljevic Djigunovic called defining communicative competence. Even though I sum up this meaningful word, competence, with; knowledge, ability and effective, there is so much more to it. I can see a lot of thought, research and discussion has gone on through history to bring us to better understand competence . Many people contributed to our present day understanding of communicative competence. Chompsky separates competence and performance, he says competence is about knowledge and performance is about the actual use of language. Hymes brought a sociolinguistic perspective to Chompsky's view and defined communicative competence as an ability to grammatical competence in a variety of communicative settings and situations. Widdowson made a distinction between competence and capacity and he was the first to give more attention to real language use. According to Canale and Swaine there were 3 types of knowledge, knowledge of underlying grammatical principals, knowledge of how to use language in social contexts and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions in respect to discourse. Also skill had 2 distinctions; underlying capacity and real communication. Then Savigon became an influential thinker, she described communicative competence as the ability to function in a truly communicative setting. Dynamic and relative were key terms for her model. Bachman called communicative competence 'communicative language ability' and he and Palmer focused their definition in two broad ways, language knowledge and strategic competence. Because their model is clearer, more complex and coherent than others, it has been favorable. Their attention was specifically on the aspects of language use; achieving a communicative goal in a specific situation. Finally I read about the CEF 2001 model and it's additions to the way we can understand communicative competence. This model balances knowledge and use by weaving them together. Each component; language, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences have 'ability to use' ridding on their backs so to speak.
I like to keep things simple and easy to understand, so this is the definition for competence that I've come out of this module with - to know and be able to use resulting in a desired effect. When I originally thought about the word competence, before I worked through this module, I defined competence as; to know and be able to do. After reading the article I saw something was missing from my definition so I took the goal focus from Bachman and Palmer and changed the way I defined competence by adding "to use with a desired effect" as part of my definition. For me I see it clearly that the goal of communicative competence is about combining knowledge learned and the ability to use the language in the desired situations, with the desired effect.
And here is a picture just for fun .... to break up the bla bla bla.:)
Sometimes I feel like this flower.
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