Technagogy Weblinks from TESOL

Another technagogy presenter has shared her annotated list of favorite websites supporting Reading and Vocabulary in IEP curriculum. That document is really her webliography. Here's another handout, though, that is just the titles and links all on one page.

SJSU Academic Technology Expo on April 17

Reserve Thursday, April 17 from 4:00 to 6:00 for an Academic Technology Expo to be held in the Academic Success Center in Clark Hall. The Expo features innovative pedagogies and technologies for teaching, assessment and collaboration. Faculty and students will be showcasing their projects. iPod Shuffles and USB keys drawings will be held every 30 minutes. Light refreshments will be served. A partial list of presenters and topics to explore at the AT Expo follows:

• Elluminate - Debbie Faires, School of Library and Information Sciences
• ePortfolio - Kathy Sucher, Nutrition and Food Science, ePortfolio Coordinator, Devin Elston, Peer Mentor, Student, Psychology and Advertising
• Incubator Classroom - Joe Becker, Physics, John Clapp, Art and Design, and Katherine Harris, English
• iTunesU - Peter Beyersdorf, Physics, Faculty-in-Residence, Technology Innovations
• Online/Cable/Video Blended Courses - Rita Manning, Philosophy
• Accessible Technology Initiative - Hilary Nixon, Urban and Regional Planning, Richard Sessions, Management and Information Sciences, Michael Kimbarow, Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Xiao Su, Computer Engineering, Faculty-in-Residence, Accessible Instructional Materials
• Teacher Scholars - Amy Strage, Child and Adolescent Development, Faculty-in-Residence
• Peer Partners in Teaching - Nancy Markowitz, Elementary Education, Faculty-in-Residence
• Information Literacy - Susan Kendall, University Library, Faculty-in-Residence
• Lecturer Support - Beth Von Till, Communication Studies, Faculty-in-Residence,
• TV, Webstreaming Classes - Xiaolu Hu, Counselor Education
• Smart Classroom Operation – Rod Maciel and Bruce Kelbert, Academic Technology
• Video, DVD, Equipment Lending Library – Shirley Warren, Rick Solsten, Roberto Mena, Phil Braverman, Josip Totic, Academic Technology
• Desktop Support and Questions – Leon Nguyen, Academic Technology
• Professional Poster Creation – Bob Bain, University Photographer, Academic Technology, Kathy Sucher, Nutrition and Food Sciences
• Web Services, Accessibility, Search, Web Wizard – Harish Chakravarthy, Scot Close, Neil Torrefiel, Academic Technology
• Educated Person, Annette Nellen, Director, Campus Reading Program, Professor, Accounting and Finance
• Course Design, Nikos Mourtos, Assistant Director, Center for Faculty Development, Professor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
• Faculty Development Lab, Sammi Situ, Administrative Support Coordinator
• Information Literacy Web Site, Ji Mei Chang, Professor, Special Education
  

A flyer advertising the Academic Technology Expo can be found at http://www.sjsu.edu/acadtech/openhouse08

Grants and Awards Available from TESOL and ETS (they are in need of applicants!)

Did you know that many grants and awards were not given out at the TESOL conference?

Why? There were not enough applicants!

• All applicants who applied for TESOL 2008 awards received them. Awards range from cash, free conference registration, and free travel expenses. Info can be found on the TESOL site under: Awards Committee.
• TESOL resource center (book and materials writers) are in great need of writers. Cash grants are available. Info is on the TESOL site under: Book Publications Committee.
• ETS (Educational Testing Service) has grants available for TOEFL material writers. Grants range from $2,000-$15,000. Grants are available for MA students, new teachers, young scholars (under 40 years of age), doctoral students, and TESOL members. To find out more info go to: www.ets.org 1) click research, click TOEFL research, click for English Language Teachers, and then click Grants and Awards.

Grammar Feedback

At the TESOL conference, Penny Ur (author of Grammar Practice Activities) gave an interesting plenary about the effectiveness of the correction of student grammar. Researchers have studied the most common methods in which teachers provide feedback and the following are the most typical:

1. Recasting (If a student says the incorrect tense "I sit", the teacher then corrects the tense (" I am sitting".) Teachers use recasting 55% in error correction.

2. Elicitation (A teacher prompts students by saying " I am...", and the student then finishes the sentence by saying "sitting'.) Elicitation is used 14% in error correction.

3. Clarification (A teacher prompts students by asking a question "What are you doing?", and the student answers "I am sitting.") Clarification is used 11% in error correction.

4. Metalinguistic Feedback (A student says " I am sitting," and the teacher identifies the tense and aspect by saying "that's the present perfect".) Metalinguistic feedback is used 8% in error correction.

5. Explicit Correction (A student uses the wrong tense, and the teacher says "that is incorrect.)
Explicit correction is used 7% in error correction.

6. Repetition (A teacher repeats the incorrect tense spoken by the student with rising intonation.) Repetition is used 5% in error correction.

From the above, recasting was clearly preferred by the teachers studied, but the researchers then studied students' understanding of their teacher's feedback and found some major differences between what the teachers and students found to be most effective.

Of the above methods, students benefited most from: elicitation (46%), metalinguistic feedback (45%), explicit correction (36%), repetition (31%), clarification (28%), and recasting (18%).

Therefore, while the teachers studied used recasting as the most common correction procedure, recasting was last in the students' perceived recognition of their grammar error. Ur stressed that, by recasting, students may think that the teacher is confirming their answers rather than correcting them. Ur also stressed that not all teachers may feel comfortable with all methods of error correction, so it is important to review the research to find the most effective method of error correction within our classrooms.

Effective Global English in Action

New York City is an ideal environment for observing Global English both working well and breaking down, so I’m looking for clues as to what makes the difference. It may be all about pragmatics.

Astro Restaurant in midtown Manhattan is a busy and highly multicultural work environment. I had breakfast at the counter Friday morning and observed an impressive work and communication flow conducted almost entirely in ESL. Astro buzzes with counter service, table service, phone-in orders, drop-in carryout orders, and deliveries in a very very small space. The staff is in constant motion, multitasking, socializing and all using an L2.

The manager, Mario, runs the place from behind the counter except that he always comes around to shake hands with his regulars who drop by for carryout. Almost all the language among employees and between employees and vendors is English as a second language. (If Ann Sarrafzadeh had been with me, she could tell you where they were all from ~ I’m guessing their L1 were Spanish, Russian, and Tagalog?)

I wondered how they communicated so competently in a situation that could have been chaotic. I could see that their language skills were not sophisticated but that their understanding and use of conversational pragmatics was highly effective.

I ate slowly enough to take in some of the linguistic exchanges.

• All of the employee exchanges were in English (as L2)
• All restaurant signs are in English
• Almost no one used articles
• Almost no one used plural suffixes (see footnote)
  
• There was never a mix-up of orders or a misunderstanding
• Small talk with customers focused on weather, sports, and headline news (nothing personal or controversial - well, except that the headline that day was the pregnant man story)
• Everyone used a lot of polite forms: please and thank you – and I mean a lot! In New York?

The next day I attended a session on cross-cultural classroom conversations. The speaker made the point that when someone makes a basic grammar mistake in a conversation, we assume he or she is a foreigner. However, when someone makes a basic cross-cultural mistake in a conversation, we will probably decide that he or she is rude and inappropriate. A natural response would be for us to end the conversation rather than continue with someone we find either overly emotive or unresponsive. The Astro counter staff didn’t have great grammar but did demonstrate fluency in non-verbal signs, proxemics, and topic choices.

We need to be sure that our students know and practice the pragmatics of different and appropriate communication styles. Having a conversation with a partner at a table is probably a fairly unusual setting for real-world communication. Lessons in the physical and topical boundaries of conversations may give them some cultural fluency that will be more effective than perfect grammar.

Footnote: I would have thought that using plural suffixes would have facilitated and clarified the number of eggs or orders, but they worked around it with things like “double scrambled egg”. (In fact, it may be that they deliberately choose lexical markers rather than suffixes to assure that the NNES cooks, who might not notice ‘s’ endings, get the message and the order right. Linguists predict that English will drop plural suffixes; these effective ESL conversations may be the harbinger. )

P.S. A waitress (perhaps Russian L1) warmly greeted a delivery man who had not been in for a couple weeks with a cheerful, “I never see you again!” I wish you all had been there so I could get your insights into Astro English!

Technagogy Links

Here's one of the most comprehensive handouts from a TESOL technology session I attended this evening. To be honest, the session discussion was scattered. However, this electronic version of the handout includes an impressive collection of links and a handy chart (I love charts) that could guide your exploration of technagogy.

TESOL 2008 CALL-IS Discussion Handout: What's Your Favorite Technagogy?

Tips on Effective Conference Brokering

TESOL and CATESOL conferences are as overwhelming as they are exhilarating**. You won’t be able to read the notes you scribble hastily during the sessions, and you’ll never find time to go through all the handouts you collect.

At tonight’s opening plenary in New York City, Suresh Canagarajah ended a great presentation with these tips on getting the most out of these jam-packed conferences. They are actually more ways to think and listen to the dozens of presentations you'll hear every day.

• Contextualize – the information to see what the source is
• Deconstruct – the presentation to determine the underlying values and assumptions
• Translate – the information into ideas that will work for you in your teaching
• Represent – yourself and your school
• Imagine – new worlds, new techniques
• Reflect – on where you fit into this community of practice

Of course, as he talked I was madly scribbling notes which I already can't quite read. I’ll hope Kim listened more, scribbled less, and can straighten these out.

**TESOL 2008 has sessions beginning at 6 am and others ending at 9:45 pm.
There are up to 60 concurrent sessions at various times on Thursday and Friday.