Gina's social and psychological distance to Spanish language, culture and speakers.

8 social factors that acts on acquisition:

Social dominance: Gina receives more influence from American culture than Chilean culture because the first one is the dominant culture; so it will be complicated for Gina to learn Spanish.

Integration pattern: There is no integration due to the fact Gina does not do things apart from the mainstream.

Enclosure: Gina needs to interact with us in order to learn Spanish because she knows almost nothing about about this language .But she has more resources to have access to Spanish such as television, radio, magazines,Internet and other Spanish speakers that we can find in the campus.

Cohesiveness: the learner group is very tight nit cause they share the same culture, But in the case of Gina is different because she is really willing to learn Spanish , so if she thinks that she can do it , she will be successful.

Size: The learner group is very large that is why is difficult for them to learn Spanish.

Cultural congruence: Chile and USA are very different in terms of life style, education , food, jobs,etc.

Attitude: Gina has a good attitude toward our culture, so it will help her to learn Spanish.

Intended length of residence: I do not if Gina wants to travel to a Spanish speaking country.


Psychological Distance:

Motivation: As I said before , Gina is really motivated for learning Spanish.

Attitude: Gina is very interested in our culture due to the fact that she feels very comfortable with us.

Cultural shock: Gina is not suffering cultural shock owing to she only spends one hour per day with us, and she just wants to learn spanish but not thus living in chile !

Analysis

I did no receive any answers from my teachers , so I had to use Pamela's answers.

1. Describe your students at school. (this means social class, if they speak any other language besides spanish, where do they parents live, wich cities or towns) talk about your students in general.

students`s families are from a low class level I mean most of them don't have a regular job. Due to most of them work at part time jobs and they haven't got a professional degree, some of them haven't even finish their primery education. Their parents are craftmen/women, fisherman/men, shop assistants, waiters/resses, etc. Their higher money income occurs during summer, due to tourists and this income is their main families' economic support for the rest of the year.

Half of families have lived here around 50 years, yet the other half have come from Cartagena (a city located in the cost, quiet poor) looking for better job expectations to different cities as Santiago (Chile's capital and also the biggest and nearest city).

Students interests are regaeton music and music in general, dancing, fashion, to party and follow some urban styles. 5% of students attend to some sport, music, art and language workshops after class in the same school. But most of them show openly their great adiction to tv or video games. I think there are 5 to 10 students in the whole school who can speak English, and there are some others interested in French.
Anyway none of them are their main goal! They expect to go to university, or college and I think a 30 % from the students will really do it this year.

Our students are considered vulnerable, since social and cultural sorrounding (non standard family group, drugs problems, delinquency, etc) and it's also worth telling that there's a rising number of students with special needs or in integrated school program...

2.Describe a learner you have in your class it could be a good or bad at English

There is a student in particular, who is not very good at English. Most of the time he has a terrible behavior, although when he feels he can do something he makes it happen. A very interesting feature about him is that, in contrast, there are some students, who fail before starting anything and need a lot of support from teachers... that is why they are considered lazy and there've been some situation when they're are diagnosed with some intelectual disability or syndrome....

Analysis

This case is very similar to Salvador's case, the boy who was disruptive in class and refused to try to read and write in Spanish and English. First of all, this boy needs support from his parents (because he can have problems in his house due to the fact that their parents do not have a job maybe ). Secondly, it is important to know the student's interests because as we read in the article about Salvador , he was very interested in playing soccer and afterwards he felt that he could take part of a group and since that period he started doing the activities in the classes. We have to do the same thing with this boy: we have to know his interests and afterwards we have to make a plan in order that he can take part in group activities, but the activities have to be very motivated for him.

School visit to Bridgeport and Brewster

First of all I am going to talk about the first school that we visited: Bridgeport. The school is one of the best schools in the whole country, despite the fact that it is rural. It has 81% of Spanish speakers especially from Mexico. The first class that we observed was the 9th grade. The teacher was extremelly entertaining and all his students were very interested in his class (he was making a performance where all the students were participating). The second class was the 6th grade and we could not observe the class because when we enter the classrom with the Principal every student were very interested in us, they wanted to know everything about Chile. We told them about food, coins, the language that we speak in Chile, Pablo Neruda, etc. The kids were very nice!

In general I really liked the teachers of this school because they were very nice with their students , I thik that they love teaching! For this reason this school is one of the best in the country.

The second school that we visited was Brewster. The firs class that we observed was about Total Physical Response.There were 3 groups of 5 little students (all of them were Spanish speakers) , and one monitor for each group. The problem with this class was that the monitors were not teachers and they lost patience easily . From my point of view the class was not very good owing to the fact that the students were very confused about what they had to do, because the teacher gave a sign before the students imitate what she was doing, and if the students imitated the teacher's movement before she gave the sign, she got angry. For this reason the students did not understand very well what they had to do. I did not like vey much this class.

The second class that we observed had only 3 students (they were Spanish speakers too) and the teacher was bilingual. The activity that they had to do was visual in which they had to memorize every picture on the table and then the teacher took out one of them (while the kids had their eyes closed) and one of the students had to say what picture was missing. The second activity consisted on singing.

The level of English of this school was lower than the firt school.

In Chile the rural schools are very different. Firt of all they are not as comfortable as school of USA. The number of students is very small in rural schools of Chile (they have around 60 students ). In fact the classroom have two different classes at the same time with the same teacher! So it is a big problem and for this reason the rural schools in Chile are really bad in terms of education.

Seattle

It was an amazing adventure that I will never forget . We were very lucky because the weather was very nice . I could know many places of Seattle:for example the Space Needle . I think it is the best place that you have to visit when you go to Seattle , you can appreciate the beautiful view of this big city. Apart from that I went to the Pike Market , China Town , and the Seattle Aquarium . But my favorite places were the Science Fiction Museum and Experince Music Project because you can take a fotograph with your favorite character of Star Wars and play a electronic guitar in order to be a rock star for five minutes!

I have no doubts that one day I am going to come back to Seattle owing to three days are not enough.

P.S. : I could enjoy the monorail too bacause in Chile there are not these kind of things.

Activity using Power Point

The kind of technology that I decided to use is Power Point, because it is very easy to use.

My activity is for 5th grade and it consists on: First of all my topic is about clothes and I am going to show my students some pictures about pieces of clothing and accessories related to it, and then they have to say the right word of the picture in English.

I decided to make this activity especially for visual learners ( they learn trough seeing thing) and auditory learners ( those who learn best through hearing things). This activity is very interactive, is very short, they receive feedback immediately, it is centered on the student and the teacher is only a support.

The objective of the activity is that they learn vocabulary about clothes, and the pronunciation of the words related to this topic.

The teacher's beliefs about technology

Here are the questions with their answers

1. What role do you think technology does take/can take in learning? (You are looking to know if they are a technophile, technophobe, instrumentalist, take a critical approach...)

Teacher 1: A very important one because learning reflects what goes on in real life, and real life is pretty much all about technology. Almost all kids have access to a cell phone or a computer.

Teacher 2: I think technology should be a very good complement for the teacher, it should support some of the contents covered in class and it should help students in their autonomous learning but I think it shouldn't be the most important instrument of learning.

As we can see in this answers , there is a different point of view about the use of technology because the first teacher says that technology is the most important thing for learning I (he is a very young, he is only 23 years old), but the second teacher says that technology is only a tool (he has more experience in teaching). I agree with the second teacher .

2. What role should the learner take in the classroom?

Teacher 1: The learner has to learn, i.e. take part in all the activities that go on in the classroom.

Teacher 2:The learner should have a very active participation in the class, not being just a listener but a participant

The answers are very similar, the both says that learner has to have a active role in learning.

3. What role should the teacher take in the classroom? (Both of these questions will help you determine if your teachers are teacher-centered or open to learned-centered learning...)

Teacher 1:The teacher has to teach, i.e. design and have students to activities that lead to that goal

Teacher 2:The teacher has to be a facilitator and he has to help students in their process of learning.

4. What does good teaching look like?

Teacher 1:Solid.

Teacher 2: Good teaching for me is having fun in the classroom not only the teacher can have fun teaching but students should have fun learning.

As we can see, the last answers are very similar, but we can apreseciate that the first teacher is a technophile person and the second one has instrumentalist point of view about technology.

Delicious account

delicious.com is a social bookmarking where you can share websites.
Username=chileteach
Password= who knows?

Reflections on Language Learning and Technology 3

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Literacies and Technology Tools/Trends
Bob Godwin-JonesVirginia Commonwealth University

Summary:

READING

The electronic resources instructors provide many opportunities to the students in order that they can understand the texts easily. Optimized formats for screen reading, and glosses are well-known. But, many texts on the web are not optimized for either screen reading or print. Some CD-ROOM programs make use of multimedia to help text comprehension; for example Cyberbuch makes use of video and graphics in order to help the comprehension of texts. Other programs , for example annotext and GALT work with second language texts.Some web sites are presenting texts Web-formatted versions and in PDF, order that people can read on paper.

WRITING

Networks have provided opportunities for collaboration, mutual proofing, and shared writing. E-mail is one of the most used forms of CMC. In addition, the teachers are using e-mail to communicate with students ,and students are using it too in order to interact with language learners or native speakers. A project to facilitate the use of e-mail exchanges in language learning is called The Tandem Network .Other forms of CMC are Web-based bulletin boards or discussion forums, one example of forum is Web Crossing .The chat rooms are also popular and they can be effective in small groups, they are used to connect language learners and native speakers to talk about concrete topics.

ELECTRONIC LITERACY

The students are able to use the computers to learn how to use e-mail, word processing, and the Web.
The students are very familiar in the use of multimedia use/creation owing to MP3.Nowadays , the access to all forms of Internet-delivered audio and video has become much easier . In fact, in the case of softwares, installation of players and browser-linked helper applications is easy too.
The trend in the software industry has been the use of PDF or HTML formats.


OUTLOOK: STANDARDS AND UNIFORMITY?

One of the problems of computer literacy is the lack of accepted standards in many areas. For example, Microsoft’s new electronic book format is not compatible with Palm hand-held. The same thing occurs with “Instant Messenger” that can not interact with other instant messaging system, for example yahoo or Microsoft.

Reflection:

Technology everyday surprises us, in this occasion we have learned the use of electronic resources instructors ,they are good way to improve reading skills. Apart from that, we have known the use of CMC (forum, chat room ,and e-mail) to develop writing skills. But, the problem is that one thing is having technology for teaching and another thing very different is knowing how to use technology for teaching; in other words, Is the integration of technology in the classroom enough to provide learning in reading and writing skills? From my point of view , I do not think so because it is a process that depends on the teacher and the students ; the curriculum has to change.

podcast

For EFL

http://www.apple.com/search/downloads/?q=english+foreign+languageb

http://coolpodcasts.wordpress.com/category/language-podcast/

http://www.myngle.com/?gclid=CJ3orvnPvZUCFQv7agod-SO5Qg

http://volkerh.public.iastate.edu/projects/podcasting/


For my students

http://www.oculture.com/2006/10/university_podc.html

http://www.rhapsody.com/musicvideos

http://www.myngle.com/?gclid=CJ3orvnPvZUCFQv7agod-SO5Qg

http://elspad.podomatic.com/



For Gina

http://www.123teachme.com/

http://www.studyspanish.com/

http://www.myngle.com/?gclid=CJ3orvnPvZUCFQv7agod-SO5Qg

http://www.edufone.com/podcasts.php

http://www.spanishnyc.com/videos.php

I would like to create a podcast especially for listening activities . My postcast has to have many songs and the sudents have lo listen to them and then they have to do some activities related to the songs; for example fill the gaps, talk about the songs, etc.

Examples of Call, CMC, and Drill and practice

Call (Computer-assisted language learning)

Good examples

http://www2.nkfust.edu.tw/~emchen/CALL/web_CMC.htm :It provides resources for each skill: listening, pronunciation and speaking, vocabulary, reading, writing, and grammar.

http://www.englishdaily626.com/ : It provides activities for almost all the skills: reading, listening, vocabulary and grammar. But it does not provide speaking and writing activities.

Drill and practice

Good example:

http://www.englishclub.com/ :In this website you can find everything that you want about grammar, vocabulary, speaking, reading, writing ,etc.

Bad example:

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/ingles/aprendaingles.html : It is an incomplete website because it only has grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation .

CMC (Computer Mediated Communication)

Good example:

Asynchronous example
http://www.hotmail.com/ . the students can send e-mails to a teacher and then they can receive feedback.

Synchronous example
Msn . It is very useful because you can talk to at least two different people at the same time, and you can receive feedback immediately.

Bad example:

http://sharedtalk.com .It could be dangerous because you can talk to strange people.