NDLR Modern Languages’ Community of Practice

I almost lost the plot last week. You know it. You have it all organized and ready, your course program clear, your classes prepared with two weeks in advanced and then midterm correcting madness starts. Assignments arrive by the dozens and you don’t have physical time to deal with the correcting and giving proper feedback. Students drop by to ask you about them. Meetings pop up. The weekend disappear.

Yes, we are stressed teachers and we aren’t any better for being so stressed. I read an amazing book at the beginning of this year:

TRAVERS, C.J. & C.L. COOPER (1996) Teachers Under Pressure: Stress in the Teaching Profession, Routledge: London and NY.

They identify sources of teachers stress such as: Pupil/Teacher interaction, Management of structure of the school; class sizes; changes in education; appraisal of teachers; concerns of management; lack of status; staff shortages; job insecurity and ambiguity of the teacher’s role. I found it quite useful to see this classification because it helps me identify where my stress is generated instead of letting it all loose and head directly towards burn-out. In page 161 they also bring to the attention of educational managers a series of solutions.

We can also discuss in this blog or create a forum if you think it could be useful the ways in which we feel stressed and when we feel them. We could definitely create a network for the support of teachers that feel under pressure. Let me know what you think!

Dear all,

My colleagues Doris Devilly, Michelle Tooher and I are at present involved in a NAIRTL-funded research project on Web 2.0 technologies in language learning and teaching. Our aim is to create a Wiki (Wikilingua.ie) for language teachers which will hopefully become a valuable resource and platform for everyone who is involved in language teaching.

 To analyse and better understand the current situation regarding needs and practices in the field, we have prepared an online questionnaire, which should not take longer than 10-15 minutes to fill in. We would appreciate it very much if you could spend some of your time on this questionnaire and help us with our project. The questionnaire can be found at:

 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Mw_2fGs_2bgCkTGlwZ9PuudPFw_3d_3d

 Thank you very much!

 Best regards,

 Berit Carmesin (NUIG)

Prof. McLaren has sent us a great article for those interested in linguistic diversity.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3624

“Endangered (Linguistic) Species”
Manx, Aasax, Ubykh, Eyak: Once spoken in, respectively, the Isle
of Man, Tanzania, Turkey, and Alaska, all four languages have
died out in the last 35 years. Of the 6,000 or so languages still
heard in the world, about 2,500 are at risk, and 199 have fewer
than 10 speakers left, according to Unesco.    To bring attention
to the plight of these endangered linguistic species, Unesco
today unveiled an interactive online version of the latest
edition of its _Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger._ (The
print edition comes out next month.) The atlas draws on the work
of more than 30 linguists, supervised by its editor in chief,
Christopher Moseley of Australia.    Users of the atlas can
search by country or area, language name, number of speakers, or
vitality, which includes five categories: unsafe, definitely
endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered, and
extinct. Each search takes you to a Google map with balloons that
mark the home turf of each language; click on a balloon and you
get a series of virtual notecards that give you that tongue’s
name(s), latitude and longitude, number of speakers, and status.
The Unesco team clearly hopes to add outside expertise to its
work; users can record comments or corrections for each entry.
Is there good news? Glad you asked. In a news release, Unesco
says that the atlas shows that the situation is not “universally
alarming.” Papua New Guinea, for instance, has more than 800
languages–the most of any country–but “relatively few”
endangered ones (88). Some languages declared extinct, including
Cornish (Cornwall) and Sishee (New Caledonia), are the focus of
revitalization projects.    Should we rush to blame global
goliaths like English for what’s happening to the world’s
linguistic diversity? Maybe not. “It would be naïve and
oversimplifying to say that the big ex-colonial languages,
English or French or Spanish, are the killers, and all smaller
languages are the victims,” Mr. Moseley says in the news release.
“It is not like that; there is a subtle interplay of forces, and
this atlas will help ordinary people to understand those forces
better.”    Multilinguists should also mark their calendars for
Saturday, February 21, which is International Mother Language
Day, established by Unesco in 2000 to celebrate linguistic and
cultural diversity. –Jennifer Howard

Survey on the use of games in language teaching at third level

I am grateful for you taking the time to complete this survey. All surveys will be anonymous and can be returned to my office AM 333. E-mailed answers or queries are welcome to anne.oconnor@nuigalway.ie. Many thanks in advance for your help and participation.

Anne O’Connor
Department of Italian

Note: For the purpose of this survey I am using the following definition of a game:

An activity which is entertaining and engaging, often challenging, and an activity in which the learners play and usually interact with others. (Wright et al, 2006)

1. What language do you teach?
2. Do you use games when teaching language? (If not, then please proceed to question 3). If you use games with some language classes but not with others then please answer both question 2 and question 3.
a. What type of games do you use?
b. In what context do you use them?
c. Do you invent them yourself or do you source them from books or a website (if the latter, please provide details).
d. Why do you use games?
3. If you do not use games, why not?
4. In your opinion, what problems are there when using games with adults?
5. In what context (if any) do you think games can be used in language teaching at university level?
6. Do you think that games are more suited to younger or older learners?
7. Would you be interested in hearing about ideas for language learning games?

All of us complain about the same thing – and with a reason – we have too many classes, too many students, too much administration, no time to read a blog or to share or even to have a chat in the corridor. Our timetables clash and so we are all running around with minimal opportunities to exchange. So how about we think of solutions?

My first solution to this problem is this:

RSS feed in plain english

You have no time to open this blog and explore, I know, but you can definitely feed it into your news and then if there is actually anything interesting you will be able to track it and find it and read it.

Have a good busy week!

I was doing a bit of a small search for you guys this week to find other blogs and interesting stuff out there on language, language teaching and linguistic. This is the list of recommended ones I have come across with. You can always send us some or comment down here if you have found any interesting case:

LINGUISTIC NEWS: http://lingformant.vertebratesilence.com/

TRANSLATOR, INTEPRETING: http://inttranews.inttra.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi (in english, french and spanish)

language and linguistics in the new: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/langling/resources/newsarchive.html

the world’s lover guide to new words: http://www.wordspy.com/

language log: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/

phonoloblog: http://camba.ucsd.edu/blog/phonoloblog/

languages and technology news: http://www.multilingualblog.com/index.php

lingua bloggin: http://blogs.pumpernickle.net/billy/linguablogging/

Language acquisition news: http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/language_acquisition/

Foreign language news and magzines: http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/types/flnews/spanish.html

As Gaeilge

I would be ashamed if I didn’t include some information about Irish. I am trying to learn Irish myself – slowly but surely; it would probably have been quicker if I felt the need to speak it as more pressing. The truth is though I have finally decided to go out and learn it.
Irish comes in handy for a lot of reasons, but for the language teacher in Ireland, it provides knowledge of a grammar that could be comparatively closer or sometimes a shortcut to the grammar of the language that you are teaching. To give you an example, I use the differences between tá//is to shed some light on the differences between ser//estar in Spanish. As most of my students come from a leaving cert Irish background, this information helps them.
But in your quest to learn Gaeilge, you may not be as lucky as we are in the west. Sometimes it is not easy to find sources of other modern languages you try to learn so I have compiled a few websites that can help – I hope – in the learning of Irish.
If anybody wants to send some more useful websites or tools for Irish or any other language, I will happily post them.

SOURCES: http://www.daltai.com/home.htm
Electronic Dictionary: http://www.dil.ie/
Interactive Irish: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/gaeilge/
General: http://www.gaeilge.ie
Online Language Course: http://www.gaeltalk.net/
NUIG Summerschool programmes: http://www.nuigalway.ie/international_summer_school/irish_language.html
Online T.V.: http://www.tnag.ie/

Creativity and Your Students:

One Semester of Spanish – Love Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngRq82c8Baw

It’s Muscailt at NUIG. The international festival of arts at the University always brings together the foreign and the national, the artists and the students (artists or not) in a beautiful blend of creative experiences. I have attended several things and I have to say that I have been amazed at the energy, work and power of some of the works performed or shown during the festival. For more info on Muscailt ? http://www.muscailt.nuigalway.ie/

This has made me think a lot about how much creativity I let my students exploit and show in their work for my classes. Do I really allow my students to be creative? Or do I give them their food and chew it too – as the Spanish saying goes?

Since I started teaching in 2003 and specially at Trent University (Canada), in which creativity comes to the forefront, I was lucky to be made aware of the need to be creative we all have and also of the diversity of creativities that my students presented. Muscailt is proof of that too.

So I have attached a video that shows one way of introducing student creativity (and humour) into the teaching of Spanish. This video is part of the ‘Weekly Songs’ I am presenting my students with at all levels [first year (A1-B1), second year (A2-B2), final year (b2-C2)]. This is the first year I am doing it but it is mainly because here in Galway we have many musical personalities, and therefore they learn some sentence structures and vocabulary much better through the use of song. Through Blackboard
[http://www.blackboard.com/] I upload a song from youtube and attach the lyrics – translated into English for the beginner first years, but not for the rest -. I select these songs according to the grammar we are looking at in our classes or the vocabulary topics that we are developing.

I have received some good feedback from some of the students enrolled in our courses about this initiative; but I am aware it is only one of the many ways we can enhance, include and praise student creativity in our courses. If you have any suggestions or items of student creativity in your language courses, it’d be great if you shared them with us by emailing them to me: pilar.alderete@nuigalway.ie

Case Studies in Language Teaching I:

I have decided to have this section for the wonderful language teachers we have in Ireland to show off their skills and genuine ideas. I would like to welcome you all to contribute to this section of the blog by sending me your ideas or the innovations that you are including in your classes so that all of us can benefit (and give you credit of course!) from your teaching practice.

So I’ll start by me and my new ideas! I’m not trying to be obnoxious, but I realize that with all the hard work we do (not only teaching but in many other trades), we don’t get nearly half as the praise we need so I hope this section of the blog also serves that purpose.

This year we have introduced a completely new element to our Final Year BA Spanish, which we have called ‘pragmática práctica’ or practical pragmatics. In this course, we decided to equip our students with a methodology to tackle and comment advanced language ‘texts’ (videos, audios, magazine snapshots…) and understand not only their linguistic aspects but also their cultural content and specificity. The first idea of a course like this came from a conference I attended in Sofia, Bulgaria where Dr. María Victoria Escandell suggested that language teachers should start paying more attention to the specific aspects of cultural communication. I am currently developing a series of lessons for the whole semester in which we first understand the materials – which are normally heavily charged with colloquial aspects for students whose level of Spanish is B2-C1 – linguistically, commenting on the ‘strange’ structures that we find in them (and also summarize them in our own words). Later, we pay attention to different pragmatic aspects such as speech acts (and the grammatical structures or categories related to them), deixis (cultural and linguistic), persuasion, politeness and – lots of! – impoliteness and humour. The students answer questions about these aspects and write a comment on them.

The course has proved very successful so far and the feedback has been good. So if you want any more details about this project or you want to tell us about any of your brilliant teaching ideas, send me an email: pilar.alderete@nuigalway.ie

February 4, 2009 at 1:25 pm · Filed under French, German, Irish, Italian, Spanish · Edit

Adrian Avendano is preparing a wonderful event in Galway. He invites you to attend one of his organized events happening in Galway. Tonight @8pm. He is holding a language swap in Nimmo’s, where students and teachers from other languages schools and universities, as well as people who have an interest in practicing their languages, will meet up in an informal setting to have conversations in other languages. The main aim of this event is to get people who are really interested in languages to meet and connect with new people who have the same interest.

This is an experiment, and all going well he would like to hold one of these language swaps on a regular basis, with a language expert attending in order to serve more value. Presently he is still searching for someone who would be willing to come along as an expert, and perhaps you would be able to recommend someone that you know who would be interested?

Other events that will be happening with the main aim to meet new people include theatre workshops, an astronomy evening and for people who love travelling. It will be an open platform where everyone can participate and learn something new.

These are the details for His website:

www.meetforeal.com