Biliterate education in Floria

Hi all,

Read the article or listen to the podcast from NPR about a bilingual immersion program in Miami. It nicely speaks to one of our most recent class discussion: Students use of L1 in the English classrooms.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141584947/in-miami-school-aims-for-bi-literate-education

Enjoy,
LS

In honor of national coming out day: Give a damn campaign

Dear TESOLers,

Check out this website that presents some powerful and thought-provoking information and videos on a wide range of social and political issues that surround GLBTcommunities. Most of them are relevant to you as future teachers. Hope we all "give a damn" one day.

http://www.wegiveadamn.org/

See you tomorrow,
LS

Annotated Bibliography on L2 reading research

http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/October2010/readings.pdf

Article on native language use

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110921172849.htm

More on CLT in China (some counter arguments)

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Liao-CLTinChina.html

and see The need for Communicative Language Teaching in China by Xiaoqing Liao--This is a response to Bax's arguments. ELT Journal, 2004.


More to come tomorrow...

An excerpt from the article titled" Critical Pedagogy in ELT: Images of Brazilian Teachers of English"--TQ Critical Pedagogy Special Issue

"Freire (1982, 1984) spoke relentlessly about the empowering effects of
literacy on people who are outside the world of writing. Obviously, he
understood literacy as the reading-writing of the authentic word and
world and not as a mere parroting of words dictated by the elite. Just as
literacy can empower those who are illiterate, learning English can
empower those who are excluded from the English-speaking world. To
achieve this empowerment, we as Brazilian teacher educators, together
with our student teachers, need to deconstruct the ready-made packets
of principles, methods, techniques, and materials in ELT that are
imposed by the center and passively consumed by the periphery. We
need to stop emphasizing only linguistic and technical competence. We
spend most of our classroom time trying to make students repeat
another’s words fluently, trying to erase the traces of their identities
shown in their accents. If we want to change the route of ELT in Brazil
and form empowered teachers, responsible for their practice and able to
construct their own methodologies and materials, we need to question
the supremacy of linguistic and technical competence to the detriment
of political competence. We need to question the principles, the methods,
and the curriculum that have dominated undergraduate courses for
English teachers, and we need to do so with them while we are teaching
them."

Critical Thinking vs Critical Pedagogy

Great article on how two concepts overlap and differ:

http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/papers/critical.html

A working manifesto of Fall 2011 TESOLers:

As I was re-reading Kuma's 2006 article, I couldn't help but notice some thought-provoking points that highlight the critical turn in the field of TESOL. I hope that as a class we can construct an evolving manifesto that can represent our complex teacher beliefs which are shaped by class readings, discussions and your field experiences. I'm starting a working manifesto below, and hoping that you will continue to add to this throughout the semester and use this as your guideline, your personal conceptualization of critical language education for a more democratic society.

Feel free to comment on this entry by adding your evolving manifesto:

As language educators of the global world of the 21st century, we have been awakened to:
1. Necessities of making method-based pedagogies more sensitive to local exigencies;
2. The opportunities afforded by postmethod pedagogies by helping teachers develop their own theory of practice;
3. The multiplicity of learner identities;
4.The plurality of Englishes;
5. The complexity of teacher beliefs;
6. The vitality of macrostructures--social cultural and political, and historical—that shape and reshape our pedagogical enterprise.
7. The importance of theory building.
8. The vitality of culturally sensitive language teaching.
9. Please ADD more....�

Treat Sign-up

Aut. 30 Dan
Sep. 1 Katie P.
September 6 kelsey
Sep. 8 Laura
Sep. 13 Katie H.
Sep. 15 Keri
Sep. 22 Hannah
Oct. 6 Steve
Oct. 11 Kiersten
Oct. 20 Raul
Oct. 27 Amy
Nov 1 Tom
Nov 3 Melissa
Nov 10 Nicole
Nov 29 Elise
Dec. 8 Seloni

WEEK 1: KNOWING THE CONTEXT: WORLD ENGLISHES

English 345 slide 1

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Course Description

As the number of English language learners in the U.S. increases rapidly, there is an urgent need to understand the academic needs of ethnolinguistically diverse student population. Today, the reality of globalization and the immigration requires all pre-service and in-service teachers to become more knowledgeable and sensitive about the affective ways to 1) teach English as a global language while respecting and embracing students’ home languages and discourses; (2) help learners improve their literacy skills in English (reading, writing and speaking), (3) teach content while teaching English language skills, and (4) create culturally relevant materials. In this context, it is crucial that all teachers are equipped with the necessary tools to create optimal learning environments for ethnolinguistically diverse students and move beyond “one-size fits all” approaches which, most of the time, do not take into consideration the economic, cultural and linguistic differences of diverse student population.

As we will discuss during this course, each language teaching context is different and unique. Therefore, our teaching practices and methods must be context-specific, particular and individualized. With this rationale in mind, this course aims to help pre-service teachers develop materials and pedagogical practices that accommodate academic and sociocultural needs of the 21st century’s diverse classroom contexts. Drawing on the principles of critical pedagogy and sociocultural theories of language learning, this course aims to raise pre-service teachers’ awareness on critical issues such as students’ rights to their own languages, multilingual approaches to literacy education, English-only language policies, culturally relevant material development in K-16 and first language maintenance of students.

Welcome Back, TESOLers!