This blog is for PIGATE, a grass-roots pre- and in-service teacher development group in Kumamoto, JP. Our monthly meetings are every 2nd Saturday, usually from 1:30-4:30 p.m. For more information, please contact pigateadvisor01 (aT) Gmail (dOt) com.
For adult learners, parents, and teachers keen
on learning about reading disorders, dyslexia in particular, an updated book appears
to be an important addition to the field.
According to the Amazon book blurb, this edition of Overcoming Dyslexia by Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2020) offers "new information on all aspects of dyslexia and reading problems, and ... the tools that parents, teachers, and all dyslexic individuals need" (Read more, para. 1). The audible sample (Listen [1st author reading aloud?]) starts in Part I, Chapter 1, The Power of Knowing (Look inside, pp. 3-5) at Amazon.com.
An Online Tutor Business Coach, Joanne Kaminski, who recently streamed a video review, argued that a crucial take-away from this book about dyslexia is the importance of early diagnoses (2021.08.30).
Shaywitz, S. E., & Shaywitz, J. (2020). Overcoming dyslexia: A major update and revision of the essential program for reading problems at any level, incorporating the latest breakthroughs in science, educational methods, technology, and legal accommodations. Alfred A. Knopf.
Education Week recently showcased a series of four videos of Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski explaining ways for teachers to foster learner motivation:
The short videos covered "four specific ways to nurture a sense of intrinsic motivation in students" (¶1), namely:
Granting students autonomy,
Applauding effort rather than ability;
Cultivating interpersonal relationships, and
Helping students discover the relevance of learning activities.
A list of further readings followed the videos on the Education Week article, and Larry Ferlazzo linked to additional resources in a follow-up in an Education Week Teacher blog post.
The short (16 slide) presentation embedded in this blog post represents on-going endeavours mainly to recover from a massive setback in online resource curation. In a nutshell:
This presentation provides snapshots of an individual teacher's recent and ongoing professional development endeavours. It reflects problems of ICT use, mainly discontinuation of a free service for educators, and outlines strategies for addressing them with collaborative partners, tools, and venues of choice. It supplements a working paper submitted to PIGATE.
(Abstract, slide 2)
If you have comments or questions with regard either to the content of slides in that short presentation or the gist of the working paper (Beaufait, 2019) submitted to PIGATE prior to its Annual General Meeting last month (2019.09.14), please feel free to spell them out in threadable comments on this post.
Reference
Beaufait, P. (2019a). Reflection in action: An unavoidable IT transition. PIGATE eigo jugyou gaku kenkyuu-kai kiyou, 26 [English language teaching action research group working papers, issue 26], 32-42.
In that post, Heck asserted that "there are dozens of theories that underpin what and how you teach already, and that the better you understand them, the better chance you’ll have to master your current approach and begin to bring new possibilities into your classroom..." (¶4).
Heck then posted brief additional explanations of the concepts in Millwood's graphic. The graphic itself is available ... [as a PDF]:
A follow-up comment by Millwood (2019.06.18) on his one of his own posts that introduced the map (2013.05.10) suggested that he was preparing a new version.
This hour-long recording by Dr. Kate Reynolds of Central Washington University's College of Education and Professional Studies[, Chairperson of the Department of Education, Development, Teaching and Learning,] came out about a year ago. It was from a TESOL Teacher Education Interest Section (TEIS) webinar on evolving theories and potential applications of a communicative competence framework for language teaching.
Frames and Reframing:
Recent Discussions on Communicative Competencies
In that webinar, Dr. Reynolds surveyed "recent developments on the model of communicative competencies and [began to] facilitate an interactive conversation on how teacher educators can use this information" (Abstract, 2018.06.26). Though the webinar chat is invisible in the recording, live discussion opened about 33 minutes in. Dr. Reynolds read and summarized chat entries aloud. She then reflected on contributions and issues that arose, and asked clarification and follow-up questions.
At the end of the webinar, Dr. Reynolds highlighted one of over a dozen selected references for further reading. She also offered to share her PowerPoint slides, and expressed desire to continue discussion in audience-initiated TEIS discussion list posts. That's a TESOL members-only venue, so I (Paul) would be happy to see comments from PIGATE reviewers here [on this post].
Reference
Reynolds, K. M. (2018, June 26). Frames and reframing: Recent discussions on communicative competencies [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs1aRTjnwAY
[189 {+ 36} words]
Monday, June 17, 2019
Linguistic paranoia – why is Australia so afraid of languages?
For most other countries speaking more than one language is the norm.
Image from www.shutterstock.com.au
About 20% of the Australian population speaks a language other than English. In fact, around 250 languages are spoken in homes around the country. This would seem to be cause for celebration. After all, successive governments have spent millions trying to increase the numbers of students studying languages in schools. However there is little connection between the languages taught in schools, and the languages spoken in homes.
Foreign language learning in schools
In 2001 the Howard Liberal government set a target of 25% of Year 12 students studying a foreign language. The same target was set by the incoming Rudd Labor government in 2007. In 2014, the new Abbott Liberal government upped the ante to 40% of Year 12 students studying a foreign or classical language within the decade. This was ambitious given that the previous targets of 25% had never been reached.
Barely 10% of Year 12 students study a language. Yet 20% of the population speaks a language other than English in the home. How does that add up? The answer is governments pay little heed to the languages spoken in Australian homes; they prefer “foreign and classical” languages to “local and community” ones.
Not all languages are equal
There is a clear hierarchy of languages in Australia. English is at the top. Next are the “classical” languages like French and German, particularly when learned at school. These are followed by languages deemed useful for Australia’s economic prosperity - e.g. Chinese, Indonesian and Japanese - but only if they are being learned as “foreign” languages. Because that is quite clever, learning a foreign language.
But if they are languages already spoken in the home, they slip down the hierarchy of languages, into the community languages pile along with about 245 other languages. Somewhere towards the bottom of that community languages pile are the Indigenous languages of Australia, about which most Australians know nothing.
The chances of those 245 community languages surviving in Australia are remote. Australia is remarkably adept at wiping out languages. Of the 250 Indigenous languages in existence at the time of British colonisation, only around 20 remain viable today. The languages immigrants bring with them are usually dead within two generations.
It seems remarkably odd policy to pour millions of dollars into setting consistently unachievable targets for learning foreign languages at school, while simultaneously watching community languages slide into oblivion.
Is it just linguistic snobbery?
We always seem more impressed by a native English speaker who has managed to learn another language at school than we are by those who learn their languages at home.
Everyone was quite impressed by ex Prime Minister Rudd’s proficiency in Mandarin, but I expect Senator Dio Wang’s Mandarin runs rings around Mr Rudd’s. I’m guessing Belgian born Finance Minister Mathias Cormann speaks German, Flemish, and perhaps also French. I suppose Senator Nick Xenophon speaks Greek, but perhaps he doesn’t. Maybe his Greek language heritage has been lost, which would be ironic as his surname means “foreign voice”. Does Deputy Opposition leader Tanya Plibersek speak Slovenian? Does the Malaysian born Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong speak Malay and Mandarin or Cantonese or Hakka?
I don’t know. I’ve never heard any of them speak another language, or be reported admirably in the press for their linguistic prowess. They don’t note their bilingualism in their biographies on their websites. Perhaps they’ve lost their heritage languages - or perhaps it’s just not “Australian” to say you speak another language in your home or to your mum and dad. Either scenario is a sad indictment.
It seems, in Australia, if you learned your second language at school or at university - that’s clever and admirable. If your bilingualism comes from your heritage, we’d prefer to ignore it.
Multicultural but monolingual
Australia is generally happy to be multicultural, as long as that just involves some tasty food, and a bit of dance and music at an annual festival. We are definitely not comfortable with being multilingual. We are a country where you are free to speak another language, but preferably in the privacy of your own home or on an overseas holiday. It seems we like our foreign languages to stay that way - foreign.
Australia is currently in a social and political space where “unity” has overtaken “diversity” as the preferred political discourse. A country that speaks multiple languages in its everyday life seems somehow harder to manage. After all, who knows what they’re saying? A community that speaks foreign languages to foreign people in foreign lands is much more secure.
It is odd we should be so determined to keep our multilingualism in the closet. For most other countries speaking more than one language is the norm. With so many economic, cognitive, social and political advantages to multilingualism it seems simultaneously extraordinarily wasteful and absurdly paranoid to not celebrate and nurture the languages spoken in homes all around the country.
Ever wonder how to handle individual differences within a single class? In the first of these EdWeek videos, "[v]eteran teachers Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Synieski offer [a few] quick tips...."
In the second, Larry offers more ideas for differentiating instruction by adjusting content, processes, and products to suit learners' abilities, interests, and needs.
Creating and implementing interactive tasks based on self-determination theory—for young learners and the young at heart!
By David Ockert, Toyo University
David Ockert’s teaching interests are in critical thinking, reading comprehension, and academic writing. He does research on the influence of technology on affective variables (motivation, confidence, anxiety, and willingness to communicate). David also enjoys creative lesson planning for communicative purposes, using a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach via the three pillars of self-determination theory [SDT]: competence (mastery), relatedness, and autonomy.
For this presentation, David will focus on self-determination theory-based EFL motives interconnected with competence, relatedness, and autonomy. He will show how all three can be incorporated easily into any level of pedagogy, with a focus on the junior high school level in Japan. [UPDATE, 2018.09.10: This presentation will be a participatory event with very little lecture. David will lead participants through hands-on tasks, with evaluation of each afterwards, to provide a real-world experience of how and why SDT-based lessons work.]
Date & time
Saturday, September 15, 2018; 13:30–16:30
Venue
Seminar room 10, Faculty of Administrative Studies office wing, Prefectural University of Kumamoto (PUK): Please see PIGATE Meeting Locations (https://goo.gl/h5DgbP) for details.
Attendance plans
Hoping or planning to attend? Please let us know by filling out an attendance form:
If you'd also like to attend an informal networking event afterwards (tentatively 18:30–20:30), please ... add, "Post-function: Yes!" (without quotation marks) along with your email address as Additional info. at the end of the form [2018.09.13: ... ask Paul in person on Saturday whether a seat is still available].
Kaichi School, Matsumoto, JP, photographed May 31, 2013,
by Paul Beaufait. All rights reserved.
How much time do students spend in school?
"There is no consistent pattern ... among top-performing education systems. / This suggests that when it comes to student performance, more important than the amount of time students spend in class is how that time is spent" (Craw, 2018 [emphasis in original]).
That newsletter article caught my eye this morning in a list of website bookmarks after discussion at an English Café gathering yesterday, in which participants ... considered ... [among other topics]:
Assessment practices in elementary school English-as-an-additional language learning activities slated to become mandatory coursework in the next few years (GU, n.d), and
Roles of assistant or partner classroom teachers in occasional or routine team-teaching.
The article is an adaptation of Tomlinson and Moon (2013a, pp. 19-21), in which the authors described assessment of, for, and as elements of differentiated instruction. Tomlinson and Moon argued for assessments to identify differences in:
Individual learners' readiness to learn,
Their individual interests or passions, and
The learning modalities that individuals prefer (2013b, What to Assess, ¶1).
Tomlinson and Moon also outlined various types of assessment to use before, during, and after instructional units, namely:
Pre-instructional assessments,
Formative or ongoing assessments, and
Summative assessments (2013b, When to Assess, ¶1).
The article concluded with examples of, and purposes for, combinations of formal and informal assessments. Regarding informal assessments in particular, Tomlinson and Moon asserted:
Informal assessments are useful in giving a teacher a sense of what makes a student tick, providing a big-picture look at how the class as a whole seems to be faring at a given moment, and amassing a growing sense of how specific students work in particular contexts(2013b, When to Assess, ¶2).
The first few examples of informal assessments that Tomlinson and Moon mentioned in their article resonated with remarks that the English Café convener made yesterday with regard to what a team teacher could do when not directly involved in instructional activities.
References
General Union [GU]. (n.d.). MEXT's 2018/2020 "New Course Of Study In Foreign Language Education" Plan. [Retrieved 27 March 2018 from] https://goo.gl/sBjXpo
This post displays Google slides [and references] from part two of the PIGATE gathering on March 10, 2018. The presenter's blurb for the program that day read:
In this workshop, participants will make, share, and refine self-assessments, then project and reflect on goals and resources for additional personal and professional language development.
(PIGATE meeting agendas, 2018.03.10)
To find out about what ensued, please ask one or more of the language teachers who took part, ...
... or post questions in comments on this post, where all of the participants can respond.
This post is to point out a free, five-week long, online workshop for teachers of young learners—one of many such offerings in TESOL International's Electronic Village Online (EVO) program for 2018.
Teaching EFL to Young Learners Participants of Teaching EFL to Young Learners TEFL2YL EVO18 will learn about and create activities for English to Young Learners and Teens from around the world using storytelling, board games, action songs, and limited resource classroom activities. ...
Registration starts on [Jan 8, and the _program_ starts] Jan 14, 2018.
If you have a yen for online networking and distance learning, and will have a bit of time to spare between mid-January and February next year, I highly recommend looking into this and other upcoming EVO workshops.
The screenshot below shows three websites I've earmarked recently for PIGATE by tagging them and sharing them in Diigo, a social bookmarking service. The list on the ... [right] side shows the top ten tags in use since May 2015.
For example, a few days before Mr. Kobori's presentation on September 9th, 2017, I discovered a homepage offering a free, open source typeface designed to help "make reading easier for [people with] some symptoms of dyslexia" (https://opendyslexic.org/faq/, ¶1).
Though the PIGATE Diigo Group currently is private, anyone can find and use bookmarked website links in an RSS feed on the PIGATE Blog sidebar (Diigo Bookmarks: Group PIGATE's best content).
PIGATE members are more than welcome to join. I'd love to see what websites other little piggies recommend for each other.
"The most powerful learning
experiences often happen when children are simply given the space to work things out on their
own — to come up with their unique way to occupy [their time]" (Gallup, 2017, p. 1).
Summer homework, to the best of my recollection, wasn't a big thing way back when I was growing up in Missoula, MT, half a century or so ago. As a matter of fact, the concepts of homework (school work) and vacation—"freedom or release" from school (Dictionary.com, vacation, definition 3), still seem diametrically opposed. Air-conditioning wasn't a big thing in many places, either.
Reading, however, was a big thing, at least in my family. Visits to the public library downtown were, generally speaking, a weekly affair. During the summer they may have been even more frequent.
Though the archive photo below predates my childhood reading career by a few years, and the children's coats (and the date stamped on on the back of the photo) suggest a colder season, the Children's room was in the basement of a Carnegie grant-funded library building. That basement remained pleasantly cool throughout the summer!
Children and books at the Missoula Public Library (1956)
As I recall, there were story hours once a week, and children could get library cards as soon as they could sign their names—in cursive not printed script. However, the one book per child checkout limit proved irksome.
Once I'd gotten hooked on reading, one of my parents had to check out extra books to get us through the week. It wasn't too long before they had to persuade the librarian to let me check out books from the upper-elementary school stacks.
"Dan believes that everyone can learn to draw better (I love his growth mindset!). He starts with the premise that we can all draw 5 simple shapes - [a] circle, [a] square, [a] triangle, [a] line and a blob. His first of three free videos illustrates this perfectly: http://www.napkinacademy.com/freevideos."
"We teach because we choose a career path where every day brings a new challenge, every day is different and our creative abilities are required" (¶. 6).
First of all, I'd like to thank the directorate and membership of PIGATE for the opportunity that Mr. Hirotaka Terada and I had to make an extended presentation about social media for PIGATE, at Kumamoto Gakuen University (KGU) on June 11th, 2016. It was encouraging to see how determined the director, Mr. Nobuyuki Takaki, and other members of the group were to resume PIGATE-style grassroots teacher development activities, in spite of severe consequences of earthquakes in Kumamoto. I'd like to extend special thanks to Prof. Joseph Tomei for making arrangements for the PIGATE group to meet at KGU in both June and July.
In the aftermath of the tremors, which necessitated cancellation of the PIGATE gathering in May, it was a challenge to plan and develop contributions for a joint presentation entirely at a distance. Though Terada and I had exchanged a few ideas face-to-face after the meeting in April, we depended completely upon internet communication technology (ICT) from then until we met again at KGU a few minutes before the June meeting began. So this had become an opportunity to both explore and employ handy and useful online media in collaborative presentation development.
Beyond 1) basic email service (Gmail) underpinning our initial contacts and endeavours, 2) a social networking service that both presenters use regularly (LINE), and 3) a shared Google presentation around and on which to collaborate; possible social media upon which to focus our presentation were virtually uncountable (see: The Conversation Prism 4, 2014, below).
Our shared Google presentation, now public on the PIGATE Blog (2016.06.12), included pretest and posttest items to assess audience members' knowledge and beliefs with regard to the nature of social media and uses of them. Pretest responses, the presenters hoped, would lay a foundation for a working definition of social media. Initial discussion of personal and professional purposes rounded out common characteristics of social media that Obar & Wildman (2015) had identified, namely:
Internet-based applications (apps),
User-generated content,
User- and group-specific profiles for apps or websites, and
Networking services facilitating connections amongst users and groups.
As had a couple of PIGATE members who'd responded to the Monthly Special prompt for the Dec. 2015 newsletter (No. 267, 2016.01.01, pp. 27-28, https://goo.gl/mQ6Dio), Terada expressed a preference for online communication via LINE (Free calls and messages). So the presenters used LINE for Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoiP, https://goo.gl/D4YMBG) calls to talk through research and development of their presentation, as well as for text messages to arrange and follow-up on those VoIP calls.
Terada's findings reflected extended discussions with twenty classmates and friends, who'd used mainly LINE, Facebook, and Twitter, and to a lesser extent Instagram. Those discussions explored various merits and demerits of social networking service (SNS) use, as well as trouble that users or their friends had encountered. In a nutshell, Terada found such SNSs useful for one-way distribution of information, yet problematic when responses were desirable or necessary.
Beaufait pointed out benefits of social media use that the Online Learning Consortium (2016) had reported for online instructional programs, in particular potential for:
Learner engagement (and retention),
Instructional effectiveness–achieving desired learning outcomes, and
Provisions of career and educational support services.
Beaufait also called attention to passive (automatically collected) and active (individually produced) data found in so-called digital footprints, or virtual representations of our real-life selves (Oglethorpe, 2012). Such footprints may work either against or for job-seekers, professional program applicants, or students in general. Beaufait noted that, in the eyes of some schools, "A Google search result is your portfolio" (Leigh Blackall, Teaching and learning online [TALO] Google group mailing list, 2016.06.01, emphasis added).
Discussion periods throughout the presentation explored numerous questions–many more than possible to answer in-session to everyone's satisfaction, for example:
What's social about social media–if people use them merely as tools for broadcasting personal information, rather than for facilitating and promoting educational exchanges or socially responsible endeavours;
What changes may be taking place in attitudes and practices with respect to privacy and control of personal information in highly-interconnected online communities, groups, and networks; and
What can we as educators and language learners do to maximize benefits and minimize risks of social media use, for both personal and professional purposes, as well as for students–young ones in particular, whom we may serve as trail-breakers, role-models, guides, or coaches?
Among the references for our presentation in the slideshow on the PIGATE Blog, I'd like to highlight Davis (2015) as the source for Web-guides for teachers (currently slide 54), and to double up on Couros (2011, 2013, 2016a, & 2016b). George Couros (@George Couros, https://goo.gl/0c4J1T) not only granted permission for use of a custom graphic in animation of Bringing community into classrooms (currently slide 58), but also has provided numerous examples and suggestions of ways to use Twitter for professional development purposes.
In wrapping up here, I'd like to encourage everyone, social media users and non-users alike, to review public pre- and post-session tweets here (https://goo.gl/s3K1lu). I also hope you'll take active parts in on-going and future conversations and explorations of potential uses for social media in additional language and professional network development–for both learning and teaching purposes.
Please allow me to close with thanks to all who took part in the June gathering, and a reminder from our presentation (Social media sufficiency, currently slide 62):
"[C]ollaborative conversations alone are often not enough to promote teacher learning and change. Teachers must try complex innovations, and reflect upon these implementations in order to extract from experience the knowledge that leads to improved teaching."
