CMI

Almost every hobby that lets you evolve from a newbie to an expert implies learning hundreds of collocations within the first couple of months of intensive practice, which amounts to thousands if you continue for over a decade. Every time I meet someone who is interested in something I have not been exposed to much before, I end up frustrated because I do not get it what they are talking about time and again, and have to read a book or two, or explore a few websites to feel more or less on a par. As a case in point, I went on a tour this afternoon, the aim being to visit several private gardens the owners of which had won prizes in the Best Garden of the Year Contest. Most of my groupmates were landscape designers, and I was probably the only person who did not know the ropes. Those people kept asking questions, discussing landscape features, naming plants and ways of taking care of the latter, and there were dozens of other minor subtopics. There are lots of words I have to look up now in order to be able to explain to my family what they can see in the pictures I took in the gardens and nursery I visited several hours ago. Having said that, I would like to emphasize it that I am quite knowledgeable about horticulture and various plants, but that did not help much in conversations with the more experienced. Some of my questions were pathetically simple and followed the “what’s-that-brown-thingy” pattern.

Tags: horticulture, landscape design, vocabulary

Global errors are errors that affect overall sentence organization (for example, wrong word order). They are likely to have a marked effect on comprehension (R. Ellis, 2008, p. 964).
Local errors are errors that affect single elements in a sentence (for example, errors in the use of inflections or grammatical functors [sic] (R. Ellis, 2008, p. 970).

Source:  Ellis., R.  (2008). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP.

Tags: errors and mistakes, terminology

THEORY

Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching & Technology

TOOLS

Mootools

Javascript Thumbnail Viewer

DimDim – A Web-Conferencing Solution

More about Moodle

http://www.humboldt.edu/~jdv1/moodle/all.htm

A code from answers.com which allows you to gloss an entire text.

Currently used on the NY Times website, Available at:

http://www.answers.com/main/answertips.jsp

Tags: links, theory

RIvers & Temperly (A Practical Guide to the Teaching of English, OUP, 1978, p. 47) list 14 purposes or categories of language use

establishing and maintaining social relations

expressing one’s reactions

hiding one’s intentions

talking one’s way out of trouble

seeking & giving information

learning or teaching others to do or make something

conversing over the telephone

solving problems

discussing ideas

playing with language

acting out social roles

entertaining others

displaying one’s achievements

sharing leisure activities

Tags: goals and objectives, lesson planning, methodology, speaking

Researchers have identified 6 risk factors that everyone should be aware of. The following variables reduce the risk of cognitive decline in old age according to Merriam, Gafarella & Baumgartner (2007, Learning in Adulthood, p. 371)

absence of cardiovuscular and other chronic diseases

living in favorable environmental circumstances

substantial involvement in activities

maintenance of high levels of perceptual processing speed into old age

being married to a spouse of high cognitive status

rating one’s self as satisfied with one’s life

Schaie et al (1994, Perceived Intellectual Performance Change over Seven Years. Journal of gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 49(3), 103-118) cited by Merriam, Gafarella & Baumgartner (2007, Learning in Adulthood, p. 371) identified 4 factors that predict earlier-than-average cognitive decline

significant decrease in being flexible in one’s approach to life

low educational attainment

being male

a low satisfaction with life success

It is certainly worth emphasizing that it clearly is about one’s beliefs and character traits about half of the time. Cherishing principles, being stubborn and pessimistic, failing to look on the bright side all seem to contribute to premature cognitive decline.

Tags: adult learners, cognition, memory, Statistics

I have been racking my brains over the past few weeks in vain. I am incapable of thinking of a proper topic myself and that prevents me from starting work on the assignment which reads as follows

This assignment consists of two interrelated parts:

A multimedia resource for language learning for classroom or self-access use.

An accompanying rationale.

A multimedia resource

You should create a working piece of courseware that reflects the aims, objectives and learning outcomes outlined in your rationale and reflects good practice in both TESOL and the use of multimedia in language learning. This may be produced using any web authoring tool (although the expectation is that you use the WordPress CMS), and will include links to other media (audio or video, for example) and applications such as Hot Potatoes.

The resource does not need to be long or complex. It should, however, be coherent and it must work. For example, you could exploit a piece of listening or reading material with a relevant task or sequence of tasks providing practice on a specific grammar point. It can also be a piece of teacher education material. It may represent part of a larger package, but it should not simply consist of a sequence of tasks produced using authoring software. This multimedia resource should clearly reflect the issues discussed in the rationale.

So far a number of ideas have been put forward by some of my friends and acquaintances, but I can’t make up my mind.  I have contemplated

• creating a set of interactive grammar quizzes to practise a particular language point (I mean there are thousands of interactive quizzes out there already, I have to create something really unusual)
• designing a multimedia resource for very young learners, e.g. a picture dictionary with tasks (this one sounds OK-ish, I just need to get myself a proper digicam and learn photography – easier said than done. Plus where should I get the audio? I am not a professional anchor after all. )
• devising a few topic-based units of sequenced tasks for a certain level or exam purposes (well, that’s sort of stretching and there are copyright issues as usual. Just can’t think of a place to get all those texts, pics and audio for free. So thats’ all about becoming a digital coursebook writer at the end of the day and I find it daunting, because this is LOADS of unpaid work)

I wish I could paint and draw, sing and act. I wish I were a prolific writer and could write engrossing stories and articles exceptionally well.

Tags: ideas, methodology, Web Design

Source: The Bilingual Family: A Handbook For Parents by Edith Harding & Philip Riley, 1999, CUP.

Over half of the world’s population is bilingual. This fact is usually surprising to many Europeans, who are under the impression that living with two or more languages is exceptional. (p. 27)

What matters and what doesn’t in second language acquisition?

Singleton’s survey (1983, Age as a Factor in Second Language Acquisition. CSLC, Trinity College, Dublin) of all the reserach and evidence shows clearly that age, in itself, is not particularly relevant to success in language learning, whereas motivation and opportunity are. (p. 63)

What is the same and what is different about young and adult foreign language learners?

Children put vast amounts of TIME and EFFORT into mastering a language: where adults do likewise, they seem to learn just as well, pronunciation excepted. In fact, adults do BETTER in terms of RATE of acquisition, and not so well in terms of eventual outcome: younger people do seem to acquire native-like accents, whereas older people seldom* lose their foreign accents. (p. 63)

*Seldom* does not mean *never*! I have read about about studies of adult SL learners with native-like accents in “The Study of Second Language Acquisition” (2008, 2nd edition, OUP) by Rod Ellis.

Tags: adult learners, age, bilingualism, motivation, pronunciation

According to Mckay & Tom (Teaching Adult Second Language Learners, CUP, 1999, p. 26), working in groups helps students feel they are part of a community. They come to know each other as

• individuals &
• friends

Pair-  and groupwork serves an important pedagogical purpose, because it

provides more opportunities for individuals to talk than does a teacher-fronted class, as well as less formal and potentially threatening environment.

Working with peers, adult students are less likely to feel afraid to make a mistake, they are more relaxed and thus often end up speaking and experimenting with the language more.  What is crucial is your teacher’s classroom management skills, though. There is more to efficient pair- and groupwork in a language class than simply putting people into pairs or groups and telling them to talk about something.  The tutor has to design appropriate tasks and provide enough scaffolding in order for this type of learning activity to benefit the students.

Tags: adult learners, groupwork, pairwork

Social presence is the degree to which an individual feels real or is seen as real while studying in an online context. The higher the degree of the learner’s social presence in a VLE, the lower the probability of the learner not finishing his/her studies.

Tags: interaction, social presence

It looks like more and more language teaching is being done on the web. Let me summarize what online language teachers have on offer, what they do or could do in theory.  I will list several examples from Curtis J. Bonk & Ke Zhang’s (2008) Empowering Online Learning, pp.  62-63.

Types of resources & activities for online language learners

• online flashcards
• electronic dictionaries, glossaries & corpora
• webinars
• videoconferencing
• presentations / slide shows
• simulations
• webquests
• mazes
• grammar lessons
• vocabulary lessons
• voice games
• word games
• interactive speaking games
• news portals
• topic-specific websites
• podcasts
• videos
• reading exercises
• listening quizzes & exercises
• collaborative writing tasks
• digital storytelling
• blogging
• text & voice chat sessions
• asynchronous discussions
• pronunciation labs
• progress reports
• interactive quizzes
• online conversation classes
• placement tests
• self-paced lessons
• peer-to-peer practice conversations
• expert mentoring, etc

What else is out there? Is there anything on the list you either have tried and liked or hated, or would like to try?

Tags: activities, language learning e-tivities, Learning Language Teaching, online lessons, resources