Subject: Australia: symposium on Conversation Analysis
(November 2006) - msg#00007

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RE: "Special English"

I use Special English with my students once or twice a week. I have assigned it to them as homework in what I call "3-2-1 English". Here are the instructions that I send to students for doing speaking homework: http://www.davekees.com/content/view/87/26/ (By the way, if you visit my website, I'd appreciate it if you click on a couple of the ads of my sponsors.) Last night, three of my students called to do their speaking homework because we will have a class at their office today. COMPRENDE, AMIGO? The linguistical theory behind using Special English (and also graded readers) is summed up in Krashen's Comprehensible Input. Students need massive amounts of language input that is i+1, or one level up from where they are at. In this way they have more opportunity to derive meaning from context and they shouldn't need to grab their dictionaries for every other word. There are thousands of VOA Special English reports and stories. This also goes along with Krashen's idea of allowing students to select what interests them rather than the teacher assigning something that may not be interesting. I'm surprised at the kinds of stories my students choose. I would have never guessed that they would find those particular stories interesting. They report that they are interested in about 95% of the stories they have chosen. TOP-DOWN TOPS BOTTOM-UP The idea behind my 3-2-1 instructions to the students is to use a top-down approach. In a bottom-up approach, commonly used in China and places where a traditional approach or grammar translation approach is used, students usually learn all the new words and then listen to the dialog or read the text. In a top-down approach, students don't know the new words first and have to guess the meaning by context. This activates the student's mind much more as they try to make associations between the words they are listening to and words they already know. And because the material is i+1 they can guess most or all of it. These connections to their current language bank and the new language they acquire will be stronger that if they were just memorizing words from a list. I have them spiral down, after listening, to reading the text, and then spiral down to where they are allowed to read it with a dictionary if they were unable to guess the words any other way. "I JUST CALLED...TO SAY...I LOVE YOU HOMEWORK!..." When the students call me to do their speaking homework they have the opportunity to use the new English they have just listened to and read. They have already heard the pronunciation. They have the text in front of them. They can draw from the words and grammar to talk to me. Low-intermediate students will have a tougher time with this task. I allow them to simply paraphrase the story. To keep upper-intermediates from simply reading the text or paraphrasing it I try to twist the task a little. For example, in a news report about education I ask them if the situation is the same in China. FOLLOWING Although I'm sometimes on a bus or walking on the street when they call to do their homework, I'm usually at home. So while they are talking I open the webpage where the Special English story is (www.unsv.com) and look up the particular story they have chosen so I can follow along a bit and make sure they are not reading. Just knowing that I will open the webpage causes them to make an extra effort to make sure they don't lean too heavily on the text. "ACCORDING TO OUR RECORDS..." I also open the online Google Spreadsheet where I keep our class records and enter into the log that they have done their homework, what story they did, what new words they learned and whether or not they found the story interesting. This class log is accessible to all the students so they can see what stories other students used and thought were interesting. They can also check their attendance, homework, quiz, test and average scores. They don't know it but I'm planning on testing the students after a period of time on the new words they said they learned to check the retention. This is just some Active Research I'm interested in. Since I made a record of their new words this will be easy to do. KRASHEN WOULDN'T APPROVE Since I mentioned my alignment with some of Krashen's ideas I have to add my deviation from Krashen. The idea of requiring the students to do a task after a Comprehensible Input exercise is contrary to his suggestions. He feels that such tasks, reports, quizzes, etc. raise the "affective barrier", creates some negativity, which hinders the students from enjoyable learning. Of course, my students don't seem unduly pressured about this. They seem to enjoy it and appreciate the little pressure I do put on them to practice their English. TO CORRECT OR NOT TO CORRECT, THAT IS THE QUESTION Following Truscott's idea that a lot of correction is not going to do much good I mostly just listen. I feel that 99% of the benefit of the speaking homework is making the student talk about the subject, not my corrections of their English. "EVERYBODY'S TALKING AT ME, I CAN'T HEAR A WORD THEY'RE SAYING, ECHOES IN MY MIND..." A good mobile phone is great for this sort of thing. My Sony-Ericsson K700 had crystal clear sound with the headset. It was really amazing. But I lost that phone and am now using my old Nokia 8250. Sometimes if the connection is not so good between us, I may not catch every word they say. In this case I let it go believing, again, that for my lower and upper intermediate students 100% accuracy is not as important as their effort to communicate. After they have done their little report I will then ask them a couple related questions. "Are you like that?" "Do you know anyone who has that disease?" "Have you heard about that type of business before?" etc. Then I thank them for doing their homework. It takes 5-10 minutes. WHAM, SPAM, THANK YOU MA'M! The nice thing about my Nokia is that I can use the infrared link to my notebook computer and a free Nokia program to send SMS phone text messages to my students. I send them a reminders to do their homework. One time the message said something like, "What can you do on a rainy weekend like this? Hmmm, I know! It's a great time to do your English homework!" I have a macro on my computer that I can use to insert all of the students' mobile phone numbers in a flash. It's almost like spamming but they love this kind of spam. I'm using this kind of homework with all of my corporate students but I don't use this sort of homework with my 170 college students. That would be too great a load. Dave Kees =========================================================== davekees-zDpH8GSzhyhWk0Htik3J/w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - Guangzhou, China - skype: davekees ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ _o_ ~ c(___)/` U http://wikigogy.org our wiki TEFLChina Rules & Help: http://wikigogy.org/TEFLChina

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Stephen Krashen (virtually) coming to China

Stephen Krashen is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California and is a highly acclaimed, controversial linguist, who has put forth a number of hypotheses on second language acquisition. A book review in the TESL-EJ journal says of Professor Krashen, "...perhaps the Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis has had the greatest effect on teaching, since it justified the dismantling of discrete grammar teaching. Briefly stated, it claims that learning and acquisition of language are separate, and that acquisition is more important. Learning discrete grammar points can affect one's Monitor, which can occasionally change one's output, but that is a fairly weak device; acquisition, on the other hand, being subconscious, is responsible for one's internal construction of language, and does all of the more important work in the creation of a learner's language. Thus, 'consciously learned knowledge can be displayed on tests of consciously learned knowledge,' but doesn't really help in the more important task of acquiring a language in a communicative sense."[1] I asked Professor Krashen if he might be interested in joining our TEFL-China Teach list members for a week in a sort of virtual conference and he expressed his willingness to participate in such a way. It would be a wonderful opportunity for those of us who have not heard about his ideas to learn something about them. It would be great for those of us who already know something about them or even disagree with them to be able to ask him some questions. Whether we agree with these ideas or not, they are very interesting and have had a big impact on English teaching theory. Roger thought it was a good idea and even though it should not disrupt normal list activity suggested we check with the list first. Would anyone mind if we took this opportunity to have a one-week virtual conference with Professor Krashen on the TEFL-China list? List members will be able to continue their normal posting on the list as always. There is no intention to dedicate the list for the virtual conference only. All normal "teach" messages can continue. This will just be an additional feature that will run simultaneously for just one week. It could take place this month, August, or in September, depending on Professor Krashen's availability. Please let us know your feedback. If you are interested in learning more about Professor Krashen, see the links below.[2] Regards, Dave [1] http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESl-EJ/ej26/r9.html [2] LINKS ON PROFESSOR KRASHEN: His own website: http://www.sdkrashen.com/main.php3 A Summary of Stephen Krashen's "Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition" http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/krashenbk.htm Achievement Profile: Stephen Krashen - ESL Mini-Conference http://www.eslminiconf.net/september/krashen.html What's the Best Way to Teach English? - NPR (audio) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1127540 Topic: "What are 5 things you wish you'd known when you started teaching?" - ELT News http://eltnews.com/features/thinktank/036_sk.shtml ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ _o_ ~ c(___)/` U http://wikigogy.org our wiki TEFLChina Rules & Help: http://wikigogy.org/TEFLChina

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English Accents

Last week I found a great corner of the BBC website dedicated to English accents http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices Also check out the map at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings/index.shtml It took me so long to find it again I thought I would save you the trouble. It would be interesting to hear from the non-British teachers on this one. That's assuming they can understand anything and perhaps they could direct us to an equivilent site for Australia, America, Canada etc. John Ball ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ _o_ ~ c(___)/` U http://wikigogy.org our wiki TEFLChina Rules & Help: http://wikigogy.org/TEFLChina

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Krashen coming to China

The more information the better. We can never have too much. I look forward to seeing his ideas discussed. Bill Morris ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ _o_ ~ c(___)/` U http://wikigogy.org our wiki TEFLChina Rules & Help: http://wikigogy.org/TEFLChina