ELL-U Forums and Discussions

OC04 Culture Course Discussion: Course Reflection

2013-03-21T12:37:02Z

Culture plays a critical role in teaching and learning. How has the content in this course helped you better understand your own cultural investments, perspectives, and values? What are some strategies you will use to facilitate a culturally inclusive learning environment and facilitating (cross) cultural understanding among all members of the class?

Formative Assessment to Inform Quality Adult ESL Instruction (OC03)

2012-11-10T18:37:54Z

Backward Design- Students will look at Food store flyers and lay out of maps of stores, as well as weekly sales flyers and speak about food shopping and make authentic sentences about food shopping.
Student were given many pictures of common nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepostions to put on flash cards. Students will play different types of games such as food bingo, songs about food shopping, making food lists from flyers.
Students will make a English journal with letters of the a- z and list all the words they are learning. Plus a section for nouns, both common and proper, verbs, adjectives, prepostions.
Students will have student “small talk ” conversations about food and food shopping. As the students converse about food shopping we will add new words in their English journal that are slang or idioms. We will visit the site 5 minute English as the slang/idioms come up. Cash, dough, mulla, bucks “Money talks” “Money makes the world go round” We will listen to an ABBA song about money…. we will sing “ain’t it funny how it’s always sunny in a rich mans world”
Students will add a new page to their journals Academic English- Symbolism. We will talk about sunny meaning happy. The students will now write sentences about shopping. As they write the sentences we will correct the tense or explain why we use lower case or upper case or why we add a period or question mark.

OC04 Culture Course Discussion: Strategies, Activities, and Methods

2013-03-20T19:20:36Z

What strategies, activities, or methods have you used as a culturally competent teacher? What have you observed in other teachers?

OC04 Culture Course Discussion: Description, Interpretation, Evaluation

2013-03-21T12:36:08Z

What did you discover about your own assumptions? How has going through the DIE stages helped you see new perspectives? What challenges did you experience and how did you overcome them? Were any of the stages more difficult than others? How can you use the DIE inquiry strategy to address cultural assumptions and cultural dilemmas that arise in classrooms with adult ELLs?

OC04 Culture Course Discussion: “big C” and “little c” Culture

2013-03-21T09:10:03Z

Share your thoughts around which items shown below would be designated “big c” and “little c”. Which items might be debatable as to their designation? Why?

-Beloved by Toni Morrison
-Star Wars by George Lucas
-a McDonald’s® menu
-Jeremy Lin
-a Groupon voucher
-Madonna
-Betsy Ross’ flag
-The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
-iPods®
-baseball
-The Great Depression
-a bus ticket
-a Coke® can
-The White House
-Facebook

Motivation

2012-05-03T11:28:57Z

Post in this conversation your ideas (by hitting reply) about how you can improve one or more activities to increase participation and motivation among your class. Remember the strategies from the ELL-U course:

? Engaging learners early on in the lesson
? Varying activities, tasks, and materials
? Helping students set achievable goals
? Setting cooperative rather than competitive goals
? Balancing affirming activities that students can easily accomplish with challenging activities slightly beyond their capabilities
? Providing smooth transitions from one activity to another
? Giving clear instructions
? Using authentic materials
? Giving comprehensible feedback

OC01: Second Language Acquisition: Myths, Beliefs, and What the Research Shows Continuing Discussion

2012-01-05T18:20:57Z

What are some teaching techniques that you have used that seem to really promote second language acquisition? What stories can you tell that show that these techniques promote SLA? Any examples of student work is welcome!

Teaching Adult ELL Emergent Readers: Linking Research and Practice (Study Circle)

2013-01-25T16:15:12Z

This is a forum thread requested by SC20 participants. It is of course for anyone interested in Teaching Adult Emergent Readers and all that that entails

Directions

2011-06-09T11:51:51Z

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North Carolina SLA Reflections

2013-02-21T09:48:21Z

North Carolina teachers who attended the Second Language Acquisition for Teachers of Adult English Learners (TE08) should post their responses to the following reflection questions here.

1. One of the things you may recall that we did was to think about how second language acquisition research relates to everyday teaching decisions. Since our workshop, have you thought more about any of things we discussed? For example: error correction, simplified input, grammatical syllabi, cooperative learning, and content-based instruction. Please reflect on these points again and go back to the OC01 online course if needed.

2. We discussed how learner identity and investing in learning matters in language learning. Do you have examples to share that illustrate this?

3.In the workshop we did some activities which helped you focus closely on learner language. Have you practiced analyzing your students’ written or oral production to figure out their interlanguage rules? Have you used their strengths or needs to inform your teaching decisions? If so, share an experience you’ve had.