METAlanguage, Collocations, My Pronunciation Problem

The more I know about metalanguage, the more I realize how much more there is to know. Metalanguage is the term for ‘words that help us talk about words.’ The obvious irony here is that one cannot discuss the structures of English without speaking in the very form, with the very rules they are analyzing. Is that a limitation? I’m not really sure.

The most fascinating aspect of this study so far is realizing how many things a native speaker just ‘knows,’ without any rhyme or reason for knowing (at least when asked). For example, which one of these sounds better to you (assuming ‘you’ is a native English speaker): “I looked up it in the dictionary” or “I looked it up in the dictionary”? Obviously the second one sounds better. ‘Looked up’ is a phrasal verb, and this has a very literal meaning. Looked up literally has to do with your eyes lifting from their previous position to something higher. But, to ‘look it up’ has to do with research. When someone says ‘look it up,’ we know not to lift our heads to the sky, but to look for a dictionary or some other informational book.

And now the question arises, “How do we teach these kind of word chunks to non-native English speakers?” Not only is teaching these chunks presents a challenge, but just as challenging is how to teach these things inductively?

Corpus based teaching techniques seem like just the way to go! We’ve been learning about these in class these first few weeks and I am fascinated with its pedagogical potential! A corpus is a group of writings in a large database. The idea is a person can look up a word in this database and the database will then generate all the instances of that particular word in an actual context. WOW! This, if used properly can stimulate tons of inductive grammar teaching and collocation advancement.

Here is an example from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. I looked up the word “ball.” Here are some of the results:

            1. What you do is you create a ball of energy, I want you to understand it that way, you have a ball of energy. yeah?

            2. Now, uh what you see because I'm moving as I throw the ball in the air, and it comes down and I catch it.

            3. but reading is just is just such a different ball game that it doesn't yeah have a lot to do with, your speaking ability

If more fleshed through and given to students, this could prove such a useful expansion of their ability to understand and use the word ‘ball’ in English. As students study these results, they will have new contexts, word groups and forms by which they can use this word. Not only is it just an item they can identify; they now have new ways to use this word. A student would realize that ‘a ball of energy’ is a chunk of language used to describe something with a lot of activity (and even the teacher could let them know you can use this to describe something a person is also). He/she would also learn that the verb ‘throw’ is preferred when speaking about playing sports with balls. We don’t say ‘give the ball’ or ‘launch the ball’. Native speakers always say throw the ball. Lastly (and most interestingly) ‘a different ball game’ is such a great phrase for them to know. It’s here used as a metaphor to speak about something new and unknown. But also it has value in the literal sense also. Perhaps a non-native speaker doesn’t know that a baseball, basketball or football game could be shortened to ‘ball game’. Also, they may not know that usually a ‘ball game’ implies that a baseball game (at least in my mind it is). So much understanding and breadth of knowledge can come from just three sentences in context using the word ball. How inspiring!

Lastly, I have finally found some respite after a long, looming question within concerning something that happens to me often when I read aloud with others. Frequently in the middle of a sentence I say the word ‘a’ and ‘the’ differently than others. I say ‘a’ as the letter ‘A’ and ‘the’ like ‘thee.’ I couldn’t understand why everyone was pronouncing their words differently than I was, and how come they weren’t doing it correctly like I obviously was! This quandary was laid to rest this week when my Linguistics professor said that in the middle of the sentence, most people pronounce ‘A’ like ‘uh’ and ‘The’ like ‘th-uh.’ Hm. Obviously for some reason I think my determiners, even in the midst of a sentence are ‘A’ and ‘thee’ worthy. 

Reflections from the Semester Past

Endurance was the name of the game. Working twenty hours a week (tutoring, mostly second language learners… a joy), daily waking at 4:30am to study Chinese (something I was taking for credit/no credit) and trying to maintain somewhat of a social life required more endurance than ever before. Here are things learned on the personal side:

1. What time you have, you have. Very similar thought to the Italian phrase “Che sera, sera” in other words, what will be, will be. Of the many friends I gained in this program this semester, I realized I was working the most of anyone I know. When tests and papers rolled around, I had very little wiggle room as far as time went to get things done. There is no use lamenting over things I don’t have (like time). What I have, I have. And what I have I will use the best I can. That’s all there is to it.

2. Study groups are a total necessity. Absolutely. I’ve never met so many people who are so similar to me as in this program. I suppose grad school pigeon holes you in a way undergraduate education does not. There are two classmates who have, over this semester, become dear friends of mine who I trust completely with my academic life. Studying with them, bouncing ideas off of them, having them read my papers- I trust them in all of this. This is NOT a small thing. I’ve heard in law school the instructors purposely give too much homework, so students are forced to work together to gather all the information necessary for class. The pressure must be dreadful, but your contribution must become so much more to you and your classmates than it would otherwise. It also enables you to learn more in less time, which time, as you know, we don’t have much of.

3. Everyone has something different to offer- I love this. Working with people who have completely different life experience and educational backgrounds than you is completely necessary and absolutely wonderful. Where you lack, another is strong, and where you are strong, perhaps another lacks. At this point, you can learn just as much from your colleagues as your professors.

What has sparked academic interests:

1. How do students from different cultural backgrounds like to learn? Are there patterns of learning styles within different cultures that an instructor needs to be aware of? Or does it just vary person to person? Would someone who has learned in fashion A all his/her life necessarily favor it over more modern teaching methodology because they knew fashion A first?

2. How to incorporate literature into an ESL class. For one class this semester, I had to write about an L2 English language learner I know. Her interview made me want to study Spanish (her L1) more. It was very inspiring to have her motivation verbalized and spoken to me. Her motivation made its way into my being, definitely. In encouraging L2 learners of English in their motivation, this could be big. Either having them write a paper about someone learning their L1 or another student in their class learning the same L2.

3. There is a dire need for SLA academics and educators to get together to discuss strategy. There are MANY wonderful studies out there that could have potentially great benefits in the classroom.

            Ellis found that every second language learner makes the same mistakes in an L2 regardless of their L1. So this means that a German L1 speaker will make the same mistakes a Japanese L1 speaker will make when learning English. However, the closer the L2 is to the L1 the less time a given mistake will be made. So obviously, a German L1 speaker will work through difficulties in English faster (theoretically) than a Japanese L1 speaker. What does this mean for the classroom? Well, in group projects, partner projects and the like, putting these two together might be very beneficial, because the break through the German L1 speaker has can be taught to the Japanese speaker to help him/her along in their language acquisition. I think we need more of this. This also implies that even through something in an L2 and L1 can be identical, it still needs to be addressed and learned. Language learning is systematic. An educator must sequence their syllabus properly to enable all facets of a language to be touched upon, no matter who the L2 audience is.

More thoughts to come!

Motivation: Pay it forward

“Motivational self-regulation, or self-motivation, is an intriguing new area within motivational psychology, exploring ways by which we can endow learners with appropriate knowledge and skills to motivate themselves.” Lamb (2004) Integrative motivation in a globalizing world. 3 (19)  52

In the same way that a person generally doesn’t play a sport for stakes (a competitive game) unless he also likes to play it for leisure, how can language learning stay in the realm of high stakes within a student’s mind and still be thought as being successful? The need for benchmarks and tests are great within a classroom; however, if that’s all that’s exchanged between L2 learners and their teachers, once the semester ends it is very likely (actually, almost 100% probable) that the students’ motivation to learn will cease also. All L2 educators’ task is difficult. Their task is to make a classroom with stakes (grades) somehow transcend this mental strata, sowing/ developing within students an intrinsic motivation as if there were no stakes, and instead, as if language learning were merely a hobby and an enjoyment.

This perfectly echoes my experience of growing to love reading. When I was a child, aside from mandatory school reading, I never cracked open a book. I was a child with much expression, emotion and creativity (all things that would seem to align to produce a reader), but I never enjoyed it. I remember peering to the left and right during SSR (silent sustained reading, or as we [the students] called it in elementary school, sit down, shut up and read. It was a time for quiet reading after lunchtime) and seeing my classmates, in particular my friends, turn over what seemed to be page upon page in their reading, while I barely had made it through line two. My anxiety was high, frustration present, and fibbing on my read page count log a daily occurrence. This developed my perception of reading that would follow me the next eight or nine years. My thought was, “I should like reading, but I just don’t. I’m not good at it and all my friends excel in it, and well, that’s it.” To add to the discouragement, I was a horrible, terrible, no good standardized test taker. Year by year I would score in the thirties on reading comprehension. The anxiety of the test was too much for me, and the pressure unbearable. Such daily and annual traumas painted a pretty bleak reading landscape within me.

Although I never consider my elementary experience a particularly high, high stakes atmosphere, it was enough to put me off. However, my faithful mother, a middle school English teacher, and an amazing one at that, read to me nightly before bed. I would never initiate it, but I always enjoyed when she did it. She would read books, poems, recipes, anything and everything to me. She would also have me read aloud to her. I was slow, I got frustrated, and embarrassed initially when I would make a mistake, but mom didn’t care if I made a mistake. It didn’t change her view of me, or her thoughts concerning my capacity to be a reader. We just read to read every night. Eventually, after beginning to enjoy listening to the rhythm of the words (they sound an awful lot like music sometimes) I would cut my mom off from her reading, grab the book from her and begin reading aloud myself. I couldn’t understand the material well when she read, but when I read I understood everything. It was at this time a seed of interest was sown.

However, this seed was dormant for another 4-5 years until the summer before 8^th grade, when the (yes) Harry Potter craze was gaining momentum. My aunt and uncle gave me the first three ‘years’ as a birthday gift and I was gearing up for a 12-hour drive to Portland, Oregon with my dad. What was I to do to pass the time in a pre i-Pod era? Read. I read it once on the way up, once on the way home and after that I never looked back. Whatever was sown into me in the years reading with my mom sprouted/ blossomed/ was set ablaze and I loved to read. I read and read and read all the way through my bachelors in English Literature.

Now, I suppose, how I transitioned into TESOL needs to be saved for another day. 

Blogging and My "Work-Self"

How does a teacher determine who they are as an educator? Certainly there must be some wrestling and toggling within, and some thought provoking questions that need to be addressed to decide this. I would think a large part of a teacher’s identity is determined by their post bachelor educational experience. The personal, provocative, precious and potentially pitiful moments that make up a journey of ‘teacher-ness’ by which a future educator is self-defined must therefore, be of the upmost importance.

However, what happens if a teacher’s educational encounters, by which he develops and defines his sense of ‘work-self,’ are not expressed and reflected upon time and time again? In education, there is always something to be learned, to reflect upon and to improve. For me, to receive the upmost benefits of my educational environments, I must provide myself with a forum by which to reflect. Day by day, in class and at work I am surrounded by educators. Everywhere is a talent, a skill, an insight that I can absorb, think-on, and potentially implement. How can I not be interested in what I and others like me are doing? How can I not take advantage of and make use of who and what surrounds me day by day?

It is my hope that cataloguing my various experiences of in and out of the classroom will become a tool in defining my teacher ‘self-ness,’ within, as well as advancing and perfecting the way I teach English without.

With that as a blog umbrella, here is where I am at this week:

Yes, I am in Chinese. Yes, I am in Chinese at 8am five days a week. Yes, it’s nothing like English and very difficult. There are several things that have contributed to my VERY mixed sentiments about this course. On the one hand, it is lending me the perfect ‘blackground’ with which to see how I desire to be in an educational setting. Its not all ‘black’ when Zhongwen-ing (Zhongwen is the pinyin word for Chinese. Pinyin is a way to display and somewhat categorize the sounds used in Chinese in a phonetically and the -ing is what I do to nouns to make any noun a verb), but there have been many, many times when I’ve made the vow, “I will never do this to my students.” Here are some educational tips I’ve picked up so far:

1. Do not establish a standard (pattern) for test taking and then change it without giving your students notice.

2. Do not explain examples by using unfamiliar vocabulary.

3. Explain grammatical structure, don’t just repeat sentences from the book as the students’ only points of reference.

4. If there is new vocabulary, explain slowly and clearly. The definition never, “Just doesn’t matter,” especially when converting from a phonetic language to a non phonetic one.

5. Do not have a test every day. 

Although most days any frustration I have with memorizing what seem to be pictures (only I've learned not to call characters pictures through the mistake of one of my classmates), I have enjoyed a few things in the class also:

1. My friends who know Chinese are extremely supportive. They ask me how I am in Chinese whenever they see me (Ni hao ma?) and they do sweet things like make Chinese reference flashcards to help me memorize the many ways in which to make words. Now if that kind of support was cultivated in the classroom, motivation would be no problem for anyone.

2. Although I don't appreciate the stress that comes with weekly standing before my classmates and reciting a memorized Chinese conversation for two minutes, by watching my classmates take their turns, there is a definite sense of camaraderie that is cultivated. To have camaraderie in a classroom without the embarrassment would be great.  

Questions I have from the week: How does one incorporate technology into TESOL? What kind of technology can be a direct and indirect benefit to teachers and students?

Is the order of learning the same for L1 and L2 learners? Do we learn things in the same order regardless of when we contact the L2? How do you pick your grammar battles on a student's paper or in the classroom? When do you correct your students' speaking and when do you just let them talk to learn to talk?

Thoughts: Blogs would be a great tool to show inward growth and development for a teacher. To have a forum to express experience is key to developing a teachers’ sense of self. How do we know what we treasure in education unless we consider it? I don’t think that profound advancement in one’s personal performance in education or in the field of TESOL as a whole comes by accident, nor can it be the result of a one sentence wrap up of an isolated experience. Personally for an educator, I can’t imagine blogs being anything but an outstanding tool for educational reflection and advancement.

Surely there must be a belief that an L2 learns to speak the L2 by speaking. How does the philosophy, learn to speak by speaking play into an L2's learning of language?

Funny Things: 

1. In Chinese class two classmates (males, probably freshmen in college) got called on by the TA to read a dialogue aloud. They were laughing while sitting in the back of the class (which is why they probably got chosen to speak). The laughing and difficulty uttering anything didn't cease upon being called on. One of them was trying to speak while the other was laughing and he said to his partner, "Come on, Zhongwen man you're making us look stupid!" If not properly conveyed by my writing, it was the funniest thing I heard all day.

2. I was at work (I work at the campus tutoring center and tutor reading and writing, and work the front desk at times) and the coordinators (my bosses) were in there discussing a tutoring session one of them just had:

Coordinator 1: How'd it go?

Coordinator 2: Oh I don't know, I don't think I helped him much (she teaches freshman English at my university, so for her not to help a student immensely is rare).

Coordinator 1: Why do you think that? (She's a total mama. She is the cog of the Learning Assistance Center machine. She's wonderful, and has a wonderfully dry sense of humor, which you will understand momentarily)

Coordinator 2: All I did was showed him some places in his paper he had grammar problems. All I did really was show him when to use whatever and whoever. 

Coordinator 1: Well, you don't know that could have changed his life. 

Now this was dry funny at its finest. Bravo "Coordinator 1."