Read 'em and weep, baby .
Monday, December 08, 2003
Jimmy Koczan
EDIS 548
Strategy Sharing #2
In attempting to keep with the theme of the class this week, my strategy is a writing strategy entitled “Durante mi niñez…” or “During my childhood…” As with my previous strategy, this is a somewhat tense-specific exercise, focusing on the use of both the imperfect and preterite past tenses in Spanish. I have actually written a paper similar to this in one of my lower level Spanish classes, and it certainly helped me, as well as many other students, to better differentiate between the two tenses. Ideally, this is a short writing exercise, probable a page or two at the most, and is geared toward second or third year students. The key distinction here is that things the students describe which happened on a regular basis, or as part of everyday life, such as I loved to play football, would be in the imperfect tense. However, things during one’s childhood that happened only one time and had a definite beginning and end would be expressed in the preterite form. While this seems somewhat simplistic in the manner in which I have described it, the ability to make distinctions such as these is something that beginning to intermediate level Spanish students often have difficulty with. Perhaps the most useful part of this activity would be the rewriting stage, in which students would correct their original drafts either by changing the tense they used, or by restructuring their sentences to more accurately depict the tense they intended to use. In either case, simply plugging the same verb in a different tense into the original essay would be awkward, easily detectable to the teacher, and ensure that students were genuinely thinking about their errors rather than simply changing tenses to get more credit. Truly thinking about one’s errors, correcting them, and understanding why they needed to be corrected is possibly the most beneficial step of this process for students.
Rationale
1. According to the Monitor Hypothesis of SLA, the Monitor is a device that students use to edit their language performance. It also states that Learners must have sufficient time, be focused on form, and understand the rules in order to successfully monitor their oral language. Not only writing this essay, but rewriting it as well, certainly will focus the students’ attention on forming and utilizing these tenses correctly and hopefully contribute to their ability to utilize both tenses orally even though this is a writing activity.
2. According to the Input Hypothesis, acquisition occurs when a learner comprehends what is one step beyond their level of competence. For students that have studied both of these tenses individually, i.e. second year students, combining them together is another step. While this single activity will not make students experts on using both past tenses conjunctively, it will certainly increase their understanding in general and hopefully help to push them to the i + 1 level we all hope to achieve.
3. In conjunction with #2, practicing this in written form, where students have the luxury of making mistakes with the chance to later correct them and not be embarrassed in front of their peers, hopefully their affective filter will be lowered (according to the Affective Filter Hypothesis) and will allow them to more fully understand the complexities of the past in Spanish. Furthermore, according to the Input Hypothesis, speech in the target language naturally emerges once enough comprehensible input has been built up, and hopefully the lowered affective filter will allow this to happen more rapidly.
4. This is also in line with the Variable Competence Theory. By practicing a tense in a planned discourse, such as this writing exercise, in addition to oral activities or unplanned discourse which should be taking place in the classroom, we are allowing for a “variable application” of the rules of the past tenses in Spanish. Furthermore, in line with this theory, we are providing scaffolding to a certain extent by presenting the topic “Durante mi niñez...” which prompts the student to the notion that s/he will be using the past tense but requiring them to determine for themselves which form of the past tense they will be using.
Jimmy Koczan
EDIS 548-1
Strategy Share 3
Dry Erase Review
This is a strategy that I must admit I am at least in part stealing from my 488 field experience teacher, although it can me modified to review virtually any material before a written quiz/test/exam. I am going to specifically apply it to the subjunctive form although, as I mentioned, it could be applied to any tense or form desired.
Perhaps the greatest requirement of this game is that it is a review. Instruction, even extensive instruction, is required before utilizing this strategy. Priscilla and I used this to help a Spanish III class review the day before their unit test and it seemed to work very well within the context of this particular (traditional) classroom. Students should be broken into small groups and, whenever possible, differing “ability” levels should be matched to try and eliminate the phenomenon of one team winning over and over. The first round or two focuses simply on form. A particular subject (you, he, them, usted, etc) is first given, and then the infinitive of a verb previously studied in the classroom is written on the board. The first team to write the form correctly on their dry-erase board and hold it in the air gets a point. We play in rounds and as soon as a group earned three points, we began a new round.
In the third or fourth round, it is helpful to switch to whole sentences written on the board (in English), some of which may be subjunctive, some not. Once again, the first team to write the sentence in Spanish with no mistakes wins. Now, I realize this does not conform with everything we have learned about SLA but in this particular classroom the test the students were going to take was completely written in terms of subjunctive, so that is what the students needed review on. I certainly saw groups and even individual students improving, some of whom I have strong suspicions had paid little, if any, attention to the subjunctive form previously. We also alternated between candy and extra points for the test as rewards for winning each round. With switching between just writing the verb, then writing an entire sentence, and a little clever ingenuity on the part of Priscilla and myself, we were able to keep things relatively even and no groups dominated. I would attribute this more to knowing the students than the strategy itself but it was, nevertheless, effective to have each group experience success.
Rationale
1. The most obvious support for games such as these comes from the affective filter hypothesis. Not only was motivation increased by competition itself and the rewards, but the anxiety state I feel was actually lowered because students were working in groups rather than individuals. Wrong answers didn’t reflect a lack of ability or knowledge of any one student.
2. Variable competence theory also comes into play here because the majority of the students experience with the subjunctive form in this classroom, and in my future classrooms, was oral. Students had, on several occasions according to the teacher, done several oral classroom activities. Because the product here was written (although students did negotiate meaning orally), students had the benefit of variable application of the subjunctive mood.
3. The Interaction Hypothesis was also at work in this classroom. As I mentioned above, students within groups did a great deal of communicating, especially in the complete sentence phase, in order to figure out correct answers. Another benefit of the complete sentence phase is that there are certain triggers in the present tense that can cause this mood to be used and although they weren’t the focus of this exercise, they were also naturally reinforced.
Jimmy Koczan
EDIS 548-1
Strategy #1
This is a very content-specific task, focusing on particular verb tenses, but I think it can be very effective in conveying the actual meaning of a tense, rather than simply presenting it to students with a list of uses. I am going to use a specific tense, the conditional tense of Spanish, which translates roughly in English as if A were true, then I would… The would here is the key to understanding the conditional tense and the name of the tense, conditional, is also a perfect explanation. It is something that is dependent on something else. While I don’t have a specific name for this strategy, it certainly requires that the teacher know their students, which they should. In addition, in order for this to work, the actual formation of the tense would already have to be taught. It is not an introduction to a new tense, but rather reinforcement and a means of driving home the actual meaning and practical use of, in this case, the conditional tense.
The teacher would first present students with a hypothetical situation, hopefully, one which the students would enjoy being in, such as imagine you are the President of the United States, or if there are a high number of athletes, imagine you are Michael Jordan, etc. Students would then break into small groups, most likely no larger than 2 or 3 and come up with a few sentences of what they would do if they were this person. Students at the level that they would be learning the conditional tense would be required to converse in Spanish only. They would then present these to the teacher and the larger class as a whole by reading them. This could be followed up very effectively by at the end of class giving students a homework assignment of creating their own hypothetical situation and writing a determined number of sentences about what they would do. This could easily be done with other tenses, for example past tense by having students write about what they did when they were younger, either real or made-up. They could conjecture as to what they will be doing in 20 years for the future tense, etc. This strategy does not always require groups or small groups, but should be tailored to present a situation in which the tense you are focusing on is naturally used repetitively.
Rationale:
1. Ideally, placing students in small groups would lower their affective filter by making reducing anxiety and the introduction of creativity within the groups due to hypothetical situation would be motivating in that it would encourage them to be creative. According to the Input Hypothesis theory, motivation and anxiety play a large part in the amount of input converted to intake. Comfort with the tense here is the key.
2. By requiring students to read their responses out loud, in a sense, they are performing. According to Variable Competence Theory, there is a difference between what students understand and what they can apply. This activity would hopefully encourage not only understanding but application of that understanding.
3. By allowing students to work in small groups to create sentences and manipulate verb forms, there must be negotiated meaning. Both partners bring their initial understanding to the group and leave with a hopefully improved understanding by working together.
4. By initially providing students with a situation that matches the tense, the teacher is, in a sense scaffolding students’ understanding of the tense. In my particular example, students understand that they are writing what they would do if they were, say, president. This is key to understanding, and later lessons on the particular tense could be less structured.
5. According to Cognitive Theory, learning moves from controlled processing or temporary focus on a discrete task to automatic processing. This would certainly be controlled processing, which is necessary according to this theory in initial understanding of the conditional tense, but is structured in such a way that it promotes deep understanding or later automatic use of the tense.
EDIS 548
Strategy Sharing #2
In attempting to keep with the theme of the class this week, my strategy is a writing strategy entitled “Durante mi niñez…” or “During my childhood…” As with my previous strategy, this is a somewhat tense-specific exercise, focusing on the use of both the imperfect and preterite past tenses in Spanish. I have actually written a paper similar to this in one of my lower level Spanish classes, and it certainly helped me, as well as many other students, to better differentiate between the two tenses. Ideally, this is a short writing exercise, probable a page or two at the most, and is geared toward second or third year students. The key distinction here is that things the students describe which happened on a regular basis, or as part of everyday life, such as I loved to play football, would be in the imperfect tense. However, things during one’s childhood that happened only one time and had a definite beginning and end would be expressed in the preterite form. While this seems somewhat simplistic in the manner in which I have described it, the ability to make distinctions such as these is something that beginning to intermediate level Spanish students often have difficulty with. Perhaps the most useful part of this activity would be the rewriting stage, in which students would correct their original drafts either by changing the tense they used, or by restructuring their sentences to more accurately depict the tense they intended to use. In either case, simply plugging the same verb in a different tense into the original essay would be awkward, easily detectable to the teacher, and ensure that students were genuinely thinking about their errors rather than simply changing tenses to get more credit. Truly thinking about one’s errors, correcting them, and understanding why they needed to be corrected is possibly the most beneficial step of this process for students.
Rationale
1. According to the Monitor Hypothesis of SLA, the Monitor is a device that students use to edit their language performance. It also states that Learners must have sufficient time, be focused on form, and understand the rules in order to successfully monitor their oral language. Not only writing this essay, but rewriting it as well, certainly will focus the students’ attention on forming and utilizing these tenses correctly and hopefully contribute to their ability to utilize both tenses orally even though this is a writing activity.
2. According to the Input Hypothesis, acquisition occurs when a learner comprehends what is one step beyond their level of competence. For students that have studied both of these tenses individually, i.e. second year students, combining them together is another step. While this single activity will not make students experts on using both past tenses conjunctively, it will certainly increase their understanding in general and hopefully help to push them to the i + 1 level we all hope to achieve.
3. In conjunction with #2, practicing this in written form, where students have the luxury of making mistakes with the chance to later correct them and not be embarrassed in front of their peers, hopefully their affective filter will be lowered (according to the Affective Filter Hypothesis) and will allow them to more fully understand the complexities of the past in Spanish. Furthermore, according to the Input Hypothesis, speech in the target language naturally emerges once enough comprehensible input has been built up, and hopefully the lowered affective filter will allow this to happen more rapidly.
4. This is also in line with the Variable Competence Theory. By practicing a tense in a planned discourse, such as this writing exercise, in addition to oral activities or unplanned discourse which should be taking place in the classroom, we are allowing for a “variable application” of the rules of the past tenses in Spanish. Furthermore, in line with this theory, we are providing scaffolding to a certain extent by presenting the topic “Durante mi niñez...” which prompts the student to the notion that s/he will be using the past tense but requiring them to determine for themselves which form of the past tense they will be using.
Jimmy Koczan
EDIS 548-1
Strategy Share 3
Dry Erase Review
This is a strategy that I must admit I am at least in part stealing from my 488 field experience teacher, although it can me modified to review virtually any material before a written quiz/test/exam. I am going to specifically apply it to the subjunctive form although, as I mentioned, it could be applied to any tense or form desired.
Perhaps the greatest requirement of this game is that it is a review. Instruction, even extensive instruction, is required before utilizing this strategy. Priscilla and I used this to help a Spanish III class review the day before their unit test and it seemed to work very well within the context of this particular (traditional) classroom. Students should be broken into small groups and, whenever possible, differing “ability” levels should be matched to try and eliminate the phenomenon of one team winning over and over. The first round or two focuses simply on form. A particular subject (you, he, them, usted, etc) is first given, and then the infinitive of a verb previously studied in the classroom is written on the board. The first team to write the form correctly on their dry-erase board and hold it in the air gets a point. We play in rounds and as soon as a group earned three points, we began a new round.
In the third or fourth round, it is helpful to switch to whole sentences written on the board (in English), some of which may be subjunctive, some not. Once again, the first team to write the sentence in Spanish with no mistakes wins. Now, I realize this does not conform with everything we have learned about SLA but in this particular classroom the test the students were going to take was completely written in terms of subjunctive, so that is what the students needed review on. I certainly saw groups and even individual students improving, some of whom I have strong suspicions had paid little, if any, attention to the subjunctive form previously. We also alternated between candy and extra points for the test as rewards for winning each round. With switching between just writing the verb, then writing an entire sentence, and a little clever ingenuity on the part of Priscilla and myself, we were able to keep things relatively even and no groups dominated. I would attribute this more to knowing the students than the strategy itself but it was, nevertheless, effective to have each group experience success.
Rationale
1. The most obvious support for games such as these comes from the affective filter hypothesis. Not only was motivation increased by competition itself and the rewards, but the anxiety state I feel was actually lowered because students were working in groups rather than individuals. Wrong answers didn’t reflect a lack of ability or knowledge of any one student.
2. Variable competence theory also comes into play here because the majority of the students experience with the subjunctive form in this classroom, and in my future classrooms, was oral. Students had, on several occasions according to the teacher, done several oral classroom activities. Because the product here was written (although students did negotiate meaning orally), students had the benefit of variable application of the subjunctive mood.
3. The Interaction Hypothesis was also at work in this classroom. As I mentioned above, students within groups did a great deal of communicating, especially in the complete sentence phase, in order to figure out correct answers. Another benefit of the complete sentence phase is that there are certain triggers in the present tense that can cause this mood to be used and although they weren’t the focus of this exercise, they were also naturally reinforced.
Jimmy Koczan
EDIS 548-1
Strategy #1
This is a very content-specific task, focusing on particular verb tenses, but I think it can be very effective in conveying the actual meaning of a tense, rather than simply presenting it to students with a list of uses. I am going to use a specific tense, the conditional tense of Spanish, which translates roughly in English as if A were true, then I would… The would here is the key to understanding the conditional tense and the name of the tense, conditional, is also a perfect explanation. It is something that is dependent on something else. While I don’t have a specific name for this strategy, it certainly requires that the teacher know their students, which they should. In addition, in order for this to work, the actual formation of the tense would already have to be taught. It is not an introduction to a new tense, but rather reinforcement and a means of driving home the actual meaning and practical use of, in this case, the conditional tense.
The teacher would first present students with a hypothetical situation, hopefully, one which the students would enjoy being in, such as imagine you are the President of the United States, or if there are a high number of athletes, imagine you are Michael Jordan, etc. Students would then break into small groups, most likely no larger than 2 or 3 and come up with a few sentences of what they would do if they were this person. Students at the level that they would be learning the conditional tense would be required to converse in Spanish only. They would then present these to the teacher and the larger class as a whole by reading them. This could be followed up very effectively by at the end of class giving students a homework assignment of creating their own hypothetical situation and writing a determined number of sentences about what they would do. This could easily be done with other tenses, for example past tense by having students write about what they did when they were younger, either real or made-up. They could conjecture as to what they will be doing in 20 years for the future tense, etc. This strategy does not always require groups or small groups, but should be tailored to present a situation in which the tense you are focusing on is naturally used repetitively.
Rationale:
1. Ideally, placing students in small groups would lower their affective filter by making reducing anxiety and the introduction of creativity within the groups due to hypothetical situation would be motivating in that it would encourage them to be creative. According to the Input Hypothesis theory, motivation and anxiety play a large part in the amount of input converted to intake. Comfort with the tense here is the key.
2. By requiring students to read their responses out loud, in a sense, they are performing. According to Variable Competence Theory, there is a difference between what students understand and what they can apply. This activity would hopefully encourage not only understanding but application of that understanding.
3. By allowing students to work in small groups to create sentences and manipulate verb forms, there must be negotiated meaning. Both partners bring their initial understanding to the group and leave with a hopefully improved understanding by working together.
4. By initially providing students with a situation that matches the tense, the teacher is, in a sense scaffolding students’ understanding of the tense. In my particular example, students understand that they are writing what they would do if they were, say, president. This is key to understanding, and later lessons on the particular tense could be less structured.
5. According to Cognitive Theory, learning moves from controlled processing or temporary focus on a discrete task to automatic processing. This would certainly be controlled processing, which is necessary according to this theory in initial understanding of the conditional tense, but is structured in such a way that it promotes deep understanding or later automatic use of the tense.
