Ideal language lab facility proposal

My idea for a language lab facility is quite different from that of traditional language labs I remember from elementary school. Rather than having students listen to dialogs on audio cassette tapes, which are, of course, very outdated, I would rather use this facility to give students the opportunity not only to listen to and interpret speech from native speakers, but also to interact on a level other than face-to-face dialogue because feel that the classroom is the ideal place for face-to-face interaction, but this language lab should be there to supplement that with other types of authentic communication. I propose a language lab facility that would include a form of synchronous or asynchronous communication with native speakers (if possible) or other L2 learners, an interactive language learning software, and time to allow them to browse the Web in search of information about the target culture. 

First, authentic synchronous communication. I would like to set up an online pen pal exchange, something like mylanguageexchange.com. Students would spend time in the language lab writing to their pen pals in the L2 and responding to what they receive from them. Using native speakers would be ideal, but if that is not an option for some reason, I would like to set up an e-mail exchange with another foreign language class either at my school or at another school in the country. I think students would enjoy writing back and forth to a student in another city or state (or country!). This would be personal writing time, and the teacher wouldn't necessarily have to make corrections to this. The idea would be to let the students freely write back and forth and only participation would be graded.

As far as language learning software goes, I'm not a big fan of Rosetta Stone. Fortunately, my job at a public library in Pasco County has exposed me to a number of language learning software titles that we offer to our library patrons. I have had a chance to personally work with Rosetta Stone and another piece of software called Mango Languages, the latter supporting an "educator edition." Mango is excellent because it's interactive like Rosetta Stone, but in between the lessons or "slides," there are little cultural notes and grammar notes that I think students greatly benefit from. I would not require Mango specifically in my language lab, but I'm mentioning it because I'm very familiar with it. Any other comparable language learning software would suffice as long as it is interactive and does not require that students merely listen and repeat because this is not in line with my goals for this facility. As I stated above, I want students to do more than regurgitate information that is fed to them.


Finally, time for Web browsing. I think this is a vital part of the language lab. Students today are so accustomed to going online and instantly finding all of the information they need. I want students to feel comfortable with the L2, so I would like to give them an opportunity to do something they're used to while using the language lab. I would give a different assignment for every time students go to the language lab, but in general, I would ask them to spend a certain amount of time browsing the Web (only in the L2) in search of something that strikes them as interesting or fun. This could be a game, a news article, a book or movie review, anything (appropriate) that they can find in the L2 would suffice. I choose this element for my language lab because it will expose students to real, authentic, and natural language in the written form as it appears all over the Web. A lot of students might think that there isn't a lot of information available online in the L2 or that everything that is available is of no interest, but with some guidance from the teacher I think students will be surprised that they can find a lot of material online in whatever their L2 happens to be. The goal is just to get them motivated and to allow them to be creative in looking for what interests them. The teacher, of course, would circulate to make sure that students are on-track and to give support where needed. Also, for this element, students would be asked to blog about what they found and to share their posts with their classmates.


My language lab would exist to give students support in areas that can be hard to cover in the classroom when the focus on speaking. I have heard from so many students in classrooms I have observed that they just don't speak enough in class, so I would like to put a lot of emphasis on, among other things, face-to-face interaction (both in pairs and in groups) in my classroom, while the language lab would serve as scaffolding for writing, reading and listening skills and would complement what we do in class.

Chapter 6 Reflection

Robert J. Blake's sixth chapter helped me think critically about a lot of information I have learned in previous classes as well as make me reflect upon new information that I learned in this one. Two ideas in particular stuck me as significant in this chapter, the first being that classrooms should be student-centered and that second being that how technology is used is more important than choosing which technological tool to use.

The fact that classrooms should be student-centered is something I learned a few semesters ago. It's something I had always considered a personal philosophy because it makes sense that the student should be the producer and the teacher should the facilitator of learning. In the context of technology, it is the student who makes use and takes of advantage of the technological tools and resources at their disposal to enhance learning. In addition, I think it is important for teachers to consider the purpose of the technology they use in the classroom and should never choose to use something without reason; as I mentioned, these resources should be used to enhance learning in some way or another and not merely as filler or as an alternative.

 I also enourmously appreciate Blake's "teaching pigs to fly" analogy in this chapter. He suggests that trying to use technology to do what people do best can be compared to teaching pigs to fly, and I completely agree. It should not be our goal to seek out a technological tool as replacement for what teachers can do better; technology should be used, rather, as an enhancement, and with a purpose.


This chapter contained a lot of information that truly made me stop and think about how to implement some of the tools and resources we have learned about in this class. In this sort of "putting it all together" chapter, as Blake named it, I found a much needed larger perspective on technology that helped me see the bigger picture.

References:

Blake, R.J. (2008). Brave new digital classroom: Technology and foreign language learning. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Web site review

For this post, I will review the following site: http://banlangteaching.blogspot.com/2009/09/principles-for-teaching-ell-students.html

I agree with a lot of information found on this blog post. The author suggests using a number of multimedia tools like music, television and radio in the classroom. I've always been an advocate of using authentic materials in the classroom. I absolutely love exposing students to news Web sites in the L2 because there is such an abundance of information there for all levels of proficiency. Music is also a big part of my teaching philosophy. When I am studying a new language, I love to listen to the culture's music for a number of reasons; it helps you develop an ear for the language, you learn new vocabulary and exposes you to some cultural elements, as well. As a number of my former teachers (and professors) have done, I would love to carry on the tradition of playing some music at the beginning of each class to catch students' attention. I would use the Internet to find the music. 

The author of this post also suggests using some other technique that I have learned and talked about in other courses at USF, such as slowing speech and enunciating, using gestures, role-playing activities and dramatic interaction to reinforce what is being learned.


I think the information here is very useful, and what I like most about this post is that it can be read as a sort of list, a list of rules of thumb for foreign language teaching. I would like to keep this bookmarked so that I can refer to it in the future and apply some of these strategies to my lesson plans.

Internet Reciprocal Teaching

I really enjoyed the PowerPoint about Internet reciprocal teaching because it reminded me of a number of activities I did as a student in high school, some of my favorite classroom activities of my high school career. Fortunately, we did these activities in my French class, among others, so I have a idea of what this would look like in a foreign language classroom. Granted, I was participating in the activity as a student so I wasn't thinking critically about its importance at the time, but I can say that as a student it was an activity that helped me really engage the class because it allowed me to research topics, find things that I found personally interesting and present them back to my classmates.

I think this is an approach that has the potential to help a lot of students because, first, they tend to enjoy hands-on activities, and second, because it allows for a certain amount of creativity depending upon the exact parameters of the activity. My teacher, for example, gave us some vague (in a good way) guidelines about what we could research online, and it was up to us to find something that interested us, something that we would create a presentation about and enthusiastically describe and explain to our classmates. A lot of students talked about aspects of French history that they liked, others looked up current events in news articles from Francophone Web sites. 

In general, it's a great way to implement technology into the classroom, and what's most important is that it's meaningful! Students will gain some knowledge by doing the research and will be able to practice speaking and writing for the presentation portion. 

Listerv postings

First post:

Hi everyone,

This is my first time creating an original post, but I've been replying to your posts for a little while now. I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on whether or not French teachers whose native accent is something other than the "standard" Parisian French accent should make an effort to sound more international.

Having spent a lot of time in Montréal, my accent is that of a typical Québécois, and I find that some people (even people from France) have a hard time understanding me. I wonder if having a teacher from somewhere other than France can affect an English-speaking student's ability to understand mainstream Metropolitan French, and if so, how?

I would appreciate any feedback.

Merci,
Michael Lewis
michaellewis@mail.usf.edu

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Second post:

Hi Linda,

I agree that when pronunciation hinders learning, there is a problem, but on the other hand, exposing the students to different accents might be considered beneficial to them. As you said, though, it really depends upon what they plan to use the foreign language for. I posted a similar topic a few moments ago about French pronunciation in which I asked whether French speakers who don't have a "standard" accent should make an effort to sound more international or standard. I would like to know what you think, too!

Michael Lewis
michaellewis@mail.usf.edu

Chapter 5 Reflection

In chapter five of Robert J. Blake's Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning, the topic of distance learning is discussed, as it relates to foreign language education. This is undoubtedly a very touchy subject because of deeply-held beliefs that a lot of foreign language teachers, both new and old, might have about classes that are taught entirely in an online or distance learning format. The theory goes that student need to have face-to-face, authentic interaction with (native?) speakers of the foreign language in order to achieve adequate proficiency, especially oral proficiency, in the language. Of course, distance learning for foreign language classes has some limitation, but this does not mean that they should be entirely ignored. 


As Blake mentions, distance learning foreign language classes attract a certain type of students. Students who have tight schedules and who need fewer in-class hours might be inclined to take an online Spanish class, for example. The fact of the matter is that due to the fact that the class is online, students will probably have to put even more time and effort into achieving the same proficiency they would achieve in an on-campus class. As a teacher, I would also ask myself what I could do to motivate students knowing that most or at least a large portion of the student population in these distance learning classes might be made up of students who are expecting to do less work and put in less effort than they may in an on-campus class. 


In terms of technology, though, Blake mentions a number of studies (there aren't many, apparently) that serve to evaluate distance learning foreign language classes. In a few studies, the technology used was a little outdated. Personally, I think there is a great amount of technology at our disposal to make these distance learning classes as rich an experience as their on-campus counterparts. Blake mentions synchronous and asynchronous chat sessions that allow teachers and students to communicate, either in real-time or not, as well as flash animation that can make the experience fun and engaging. Video chatting with Skype is something that I would also consider an option because it allows teacher-student and student-student communication to occur in an environment that's as authentic as possible without actually meeting in person. 


I do believe that distance learning can work as a format for foreign language education, but I think it's important to consider the student population and to design the curriculum around their expectations while also making the experience as rich and engaging as possible.

References:

Blake, R.J. (2008). Brave new digital classroom: Technology and foreign language learning. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Web site review: Carnegie Mellon

Bonsoir,

For this assignment, I will be talking about Carnegie Mellon's Educational Technology Web page which is located here: http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/technology/index.html.

The page layout is easily navigable. It's very simple overall, and all the information we would need is listed right on this page. I find that there isn't a whole lot of useful information on this site though, at least for me personally and probably for a lot of USF students. The whole first section is dedicated to tools that we have here at USF such as Blackboard, SafeAssignment, TurnItIn, and the "clickers." We should consider ourselves lucky to be attending a university that has access to this technology. We have already been exposed to it which will make it that much easier for us to become used to it if we ever have the opportunity to use it as teachers instead of as students. Other links on this page provide information about podcasting and webcasting. The site also elaborates on some projects that Carnegie Mellon's Office of Technology for Education (OTE) is working on as they relate to introducing technology to the classroom. This is probably the most unique part of the Web site because most of the other parts contain very common information, information that we have seen before in other Web sites. This is not to say that is isn't still useful information, however. 


Overall, I feel like this page doesn't have as much useful information as other sites we have reviewed, but as I mentioned above, I do like the projects section. I do have a problem trying to see how these projects are related to my future teaching, however. I will bookmark the site and check back frequently for more information!.