Pauline Gibbons - Chapter 4 lyrics

General Principles for Developing Academic Literacy As Chapter 3 suggested, academic language and literacy needs to be taught and used in context, an approach that is strongly supported by research (see, for example, Langer 2001; Meltzer and Hammon 2005). This is a very different approach from the decontextualized “sk** and drill” exercised taught in isolation and commonly a**ociated with remediation. But there is considerable evidence that the explicit teaching of academic language and literacy, modeled and practiced in context, enhances the learning of El learners. (Meltzer and Hammon 2005). There is also evidence that El learners, like all learners, learn best when the cla**room organization includes a mix of while cla** work, group work, pair work, and individual work, along with a mix of direct instruction and student centered collaborative work. The teaching and learning activities in this chapter and those that follow are based on the principle that there is no single “right” kind of cla**room organization or task. What is important is that the task and the cla**room grouping are the most effective for the particular teaching focus at that point. Implement a “Jan*s Curriculum”: Develop Academic Language on the Basis of What Students Already Know Jan*s was the Roman God of Doors and entrances, always depicted with two faces, each looking in opposite directions. An effective curriculum from El leaners also looks in two directions: at what the students being in terms of prior learning, experience, understanding, and sk**s, and at the curriculum outcomes and standards that are your focus. In a Jan*s curriculum, prior learning and the everyday language with which students are familiar together provide a bridge to new learning and academic language and literacies. New learning proceeds on the basis of what students already know, and this includes connecting school learning with students personal out of school experiences. Move Toward Complex Texts, Don't Begin with Them Part of what the Jan*s curriculum means in practice is that teachers think in terms of moving toward academic language, rather than beginning a unit with a heavy load of new subject vocabulary and concepts. A difficult academic text is not the place to start! This is especially important for EL learners who are still relatively new to English. Chapter 3 illustrates the notion of the “mode continuum” and suggested that teaching activities be sequenced from those that involve everyday language to those that increasingly involve more written or subject specific language. Moving towards academics language is a similar principle. Most mainstream textbooks are written with the a**umption that the students who will read them are already familiar with spoken English. As we know, this is often not the case, particularly when the textbook is laden with unfamiliar concepts and subject related language. Constantly stopping and explain words and phrases to El students as they are reading can disrupt the lesson and, for the student, disrupt the reading process. Rather than giving on the spot explanations, it is better to see the text as an end point and to prepare students reading it by developing an overall understanding of the content first before having students tackle the text alone. As in the textbook example about the refraction of waves in Chapter 3, concepts can initially be introduced using familiar words and concrete examples, together with visuals such as diagrams, illustrations, computer simulations, concrete objects, or other realia. In this context, you can begin to model the more academic language the students will find in the textbook. Model the Use of Academic Language in Your Interactions with Students This kind of teacher student discourse “meshes” every day and subject specific ways of meaning, this building on students' prior knowledge and current language as a way of introducing them to new language. It offers learners several ways of understanding key concepts: in this example this occurred through the teacher demonstration, through her use of everyday language, and through the modeling of subject specific language. Typically such talk moves from every day to academic talk, but may also travel in reverse, as when teachers ask learners to explain key concepts in more everyday ways. This is also important for we do not want learners simply to “parrot” academic language without understanding. This Jan*s like talk is in face a common feature of much of the talk between teachers and students in many cla**rooms, yet teachers are not always consciously aware of what they are doing nor of its usefulness for EL learners. But being aware of the language we use with students in all cla**room interactions is part of being a language aware teacher. Understanding the relationship between spoken and written language, or between “everyday” and “academic” language is an important part of this awareness. Talk about Language: Develop a Metalanguage with students Using language to talk about language (often called metalanguage) with students in one way of making language more visible. It is often very helpful to EL learners to use some key metalanguage in the context of supporting their reading and writing in your subject. The purpose of this is not simply to name a grammatical structure (which by itself is probably a little use) but rather to draw students' attention to how certain aspects of language function and how they make it possible to talk about abstract ideas in concise ways. For example, by comparing written and spoken ways of explaining a difficult concept you can show students how nominalizations and nominal groups make it possible to express complex ideas more consciously and precisely (see the examples in Chapter 3). When we name something it is more likely to be noticed, recognized, and used. As Christie (1990) has argued, “to be alert to the ways that one's language works for creating and organizing meaning is to be conscious of how to manipulate and use it” (22). Becoming familiar with terms like nominalization and nominal groups can provide learners with a resource and tool for their own reading, writing, and language development. For example, you could get students to underling the nominal groups or nominalization in the text they are reading. This will help them to recognize the structure of the sentences that may otherwise appear very dense. Breaking down language is their way into manageable parts and into the elements of the sentence, will help make reading easier. Teaching about language in this way is of course much more effective if it becomes something that all teachers in the school do, so that teachers and students share a common language about language. Integrating Language Activities with Content Teaching In language learning cla**rooms, there are broadly two types of language-learning activities: Communicative activities, where the focus is primarily on using language in order to complete a task. Language is used in a meaningful context for authentic purposes. Form Focused activities, where the focus is on learning about language. The activity venter's on the language itself. Using Language: Communicative Activities In a communicative activity something happens as a result of the langue being used; there is an outcome, apart from language learning, such as a problem being solved or a solution found. A key principle in communicative activities is that there should be an “informative gap”; that is, the participants do not all have access to the same information in order to complete the task. Thus these activities are structured in such a way that they require students to use language in order for the task to be complete. Many of the activities described late in this chapter, such as split dictation and barrier crossword are examples of communicative activities. Learning about Language: Form focused activities Traditional grammar focused activities are often “exercise-type” activities, the aim of which is to improve students' knowledge about own language works. As far as possible pedagogic (or grammar based) tasks should always be in the context of students developing sk**s and language knowledge that they will later use n an authentic context. For example students may learn about the rhetorical structure of a written argument, and the conjunctions used to introduce each point in order to write a letter to a local newspaper about contentious issue. Learning about grammar and language usage without a relevant context in which they use the language is likely to be a very limited use. Language Activates as a Continuum Historically there has been much debate about the value of each of these types of activities and sometimes they have been held up as representing polarized approaches to language teaching. But from the perspective of an integrated content language program it is probably much more useful to think of all language learning activates as ranging along a continuum: on the one hand those that use language for real world like tasks (such as writing a cla** letter to a newspaper about a local community issue) and the form and structure of language (such as a cloze exercise that focuses on subject specific vocabulary). Both will be useful at particular times depending on the purpose of the activity. And there are many activities that could be located on the continuum between these two types of tasks. However, Once EL learners are beyond the beginning stages of English, often the most effective language learning activities are those that encapsulate both aims; they allow more learning about language in the context of using language.