Repost for CSC12: Increasing target language

I just finished presenting my Best of Kentucky session, Target [Language]: Say Less, Expect More at the Central States Conference. Thanks so much to the few who stuck it out to attend the last session of the last day! Here's a repost of my presentation for them and anyone who wants it:

Target [Language]: Expect More, Say Less on Prezi

Presentation: Target Language: Expect More, Say Less

Whoops! I completely forgot to post my Prezi from my second KWLA presentation! Here it is, Target Language: Expect More, Say Less.

Target [Language]: Expect More, Say Less on Prezi

For KWLA 2011: Media from Reel to Real

Here's my Prezi for my Friday a.m. session, Media from Reel to Real.

Media from Reel to Real on Prezi

They can't speak, and it's our fault: Dismantling the myths

Earlier this month was the deadline for proposals to be submitted for the 2011 conference of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. I have never been to their conference--indeed, I've only ever attended one national conference (TESOL 2007)--but one of my new year's resolutions was to at least attempt to go, and part of that was to submit a proposal to present.

Before proposing anything, I polled several of my colleagues on Twitter to see what they thought about what might have been lacking at the 2010 conference. I got a wide variety of answers, ranging from "how could anything be lacking when there were 600 sessions?" to "oh there was so much lacking, where do I start?". One comment in particular stuck in my mind: @tmsaue1 said that almost no one seemed to want to talk about the elephant in the room- that after all this push for CLT for all these years, we still aren't producing students with any useful level of proficiency. So I made a quip on Twitter about needing a better title for my proposal than "They can't speak, and it's our fault." Something must have resonated because several people told me that either I should stick with that title, or if I changed it, that should still be the topic, because it's true.

In any case, the title I settled on was "Dismantling the Myths that Prevent Proficiency," and before I realized that you only had to come up with an outline if you were proposing a 3-hour workshop, I had outlined several myths that in my opinion are holding back the average U.S. world language teacher from pushing students to real proficiency in the classroom. Since then I have thought of a few more and gotten input from more comments. At this rate I'll have to poll everyone to see which ones to include if the proposal is accepted so I can get them within the time limit!

Over the next few months I'll be blogging about these myths individually. I'll find out in April if I'll be presenting at ACTFL (and if I am, here's hoping I also get accepted to score AP Spanish exams so I can pay for the conference!) but either way, I can reach more people through my blog anyway, with what I think about what's holding us all back.

Here goes. The ones in bold are the ones I think are hurting us the worst--keeping students from interacting with native & authentic input. Please offer feedback and help me add or subtract to/from these as necessary!

Myths

1. A person who is not proficient can be a language teacher (Or, "I have a degree in this; of course I'm qualified").

2. Learning about language is enough (Or, "I don't have to speak the TL in the classroom").

and its cousin

3. Grammatical terms are actually helpful in language acquisition (or, "How will they know what it is if I don't call it subjunctive by reason of indefinite antecedent?????")

4. Only the very young or students who have high aptitude are going to succeed anyway (otherwise known as the 'time whine').

5. The textbook and accessories are all I need (or, "my district spent $20,000 on this stuff, I have make it worth their while").

6. Students can learn vocabulary in isolation and in lists of 150 words per chapter (or, "why don't they know what bosque means and that it's masculine? we just studied this!").

7. Media produced for language learners counts as authentic materials (or, "The 'First Semester of Spanish Love Song' is the best video ever!")

8. Low-level learners can't understand authentic materials.

and its cousin

9. Students have to understand everything they hear.

10. Communication among learners is somehow going to equip them to communicate with native speakers.

11. A multiple-choice question counts as a valid assessment of proficiency (or, "I can tell how well students communicate without actually asking them to communicate).

12. Translation helps language acquisition and counts as a valid assessment of communicative ability (or, "I knew she was trying to say 'my nose is running'- how creative!").

13. Finding/creating materials takes too much time (or, "I have to do all this on my own").

14. Tech tool + any amount of language = classroom magic (or, "I'm the 21st-century teacher! Look at that amazing project with almost no communication that my students put together!").

15. Assessment is an end-of-unit activity. (or "I understand it. Surely they must. Moving on.")

Thoughts?

Stay tuned!

For a conference attendee: resources in math

Someone at my session asked for resources for math in Spanish. I promised I'd try to post some.

Look here for a list I found.

Also I forgot that I had this resource, education tools from the Department of Education in Venezuela.

Searching BBC Mundo

I promised to add some information as I stumbled through searching on BBC Mundo during my presentation Prompts with Power. As it turns out, I was thinking of the Radio ONU website--theirs is easily searchable and programs are scripted.

To search BBC Mundo for print sources, go to Google, and on the right, click 'advanced search.' On the part that says "only search this site," type bbcmundo.com. Then type your term in the top and click 'search.'

For video and audio, on the bbcmundo.com site, type your search term in Spanish at the top. I typed "ambiente" as mine. Hit enter. On the right you'll see the first 3 video/audio results. Click "more audio/video results" and look through to see what you want. On the 2nd page of my results there was one about the chestnuts in the Amazon, a nice idea to include.

Prompts with Power: writing/speaking prompts

These are the sample prompts we are doing in my presentation, Prompts with Power, with sources.

Unit theme: Interpersonal relationships
Prompt theme: Adamari Lopez and Luis Fonsi divorce

LEVEL 1
Target "should"
She is sick.
He "should..."
Extend: why?

LEVEL 2
Target: talking about the past
Compare their relationship to a time when an illness affected your relationships.

LEVEL 3
Target: Perfects, subjunctive
What has happened to their relationship?
Extended: How do you feel about Luis Fonsi now?

LEVEL 4
Target: None specific.
Write an essay for your Marriage and Family class on the following topic: How does stress affect relationships? Give a personal example. How do you think famous couples could deal with the stress of fame and separation to make their relationships last? What about when an illness adds to the challenges?

Potential audio sources:
Adamari Lopez no se dio por vencida
Confirman Luis Fonsi y Adamari Lopez su separacion

Print sources:
Luis Fonsi: "Miento si digo que estoy bien"
Siguen cuidando uno del otro

Prompts with Power: Prezi

Here's the Prezi for Prompts with Power.

Prompts with Power: German & French resources

These are the promised German and French resources from my presentation, "Prompts with Power."

Hausegemacht.tv

Radio on demand
Morganpost TV on YouTube
More radio on dradio

For both French and German, a print source I mentioned a few posts back, Ads of the World.
Also change your Google settings to show pages in German/French as well as English, and use news.google.com to find online news.
Surf thousands of online newspapers to find newspapers from Germany, France, China, Liechtenstein, Congo, you get the idea.

For French audio:
ARTE radio
RFI radio
Radio France
BFM radio
France 24's YouTube channel

Prompts with Power: Dating in high school

This is a writing or speaking prompt I'm making available as a follow-up to my upcoming presentation called "Prompts with Power." Prezi coming soon.

The prompt is:
¿Deben los jóvenes salir con novios en el colegio?

My favorite audio source for this (you have to watch both to get the full drama):



And the print source is an article from EPA.

Another possible audio source (but I didn't want them both to be about pregnancy, etc. and the Patito Feo is a good glimpse of the manipulation that can come from immature relationships):

KWLA Presentation: PLN-ology

Here's my Prezi for the three-hour workshop @jannachiang and I are doing at the annual fall conference of the Kentucky World Language Association, this weekend in Lexington. The title is "PLN-ology" and the topic is how to use online tools, specifically Twitter, the eduPLN on NING, and Delicious social bookmarking, to enhance professional development (and for fun too!)

I just made my first Yodio

I love professional conferences, particularly KWLA! What could be better than a bunch of awesome teachers getting together and sharing their best practices? That's how I found out about Yodio. My students in Spanish 3 today wandered the school taking pictures of teachers and staff "commanding" people to do things. They've written the commands and tomorrow we'll add the audio. I'd share it but I think I should keep photos of my students off this blog. But meanwhile I made my own, just with two pictures. Grab your kids, a camera, and a cell phone, and tell your own digital story!

My Voki uses impersonal 'se'

One of the cool tools I was introduced to at the KWLA conference was Voki, a tool you can use to make a talking avatar. It's easier for me to show you what it is rather than explain it. We will be trying this out this week in my classes! :-)


Get a Voki now!

KWLA Fall 09 Conference presentation

This is the presentation I did for the fall conference of the Kentucky World Language Association.



And here is the handout.

My KWLA presentation

Here are the slides from the presentation I recently gave at the Kentucky World Language Association's fall conference in Lexington, KY.



The whole thing can be found here.