Theoretical and Practical Support for Secondary WL Blogging

1
Theoretical and Practical Support for Secondary
WL Blogging

• How and Why

2
Main Points

• Contents
• Terms
• Curricular Integration
• Theory

• Goals
• Communicative Competence
• World literacy
• Community
• Authenticity and increased rapid output
  Activity Theory and Communicative Language
  Teaching

3
Definitions

• Weblog publicly available automatically
  archival on-line publishing system with traits
  similar to those of word processors it is used
  in semi-synchronous communication. Features of
  the basic model provide unlimited space for
  formal and / or informal narration regarding a
  specified topic and a place in which readers who
  seek access may comment on what has been posted
  with regard to that particular topic.

• Instant Message (IM) publicly available means of
  synchronous (real-time) communication between two
  or more private individuals. Messages are
  usually characterized by spontaneity,
  informality, and brevity.

4
Implementation

• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• How
• Why

• WL students
• CMC
• Blog
• IM
• Mostly remote
• Weekly or -
• TODAYS SESSION
• Opinions TBA

5
Specifics

• Blog
• Post
• 5 sentences (II)
• 3 paragraphs (V)
• Incrementally expansive weekly topics determined
  mostly by teacher
• Integrate food ex.
• Assess - rubric

• IM
• Chat
• Current topics
• Expand
• Complete

6
Pedagogical Considerations

• learner development, diversity of learners,
  instructional learning environment, assessment,
  self-reflection are salient issues in education.
• skill-building in reading, writing, listening,
  speaking, and demonstrating cultural awareness
  often appear to compete with these important
  considerations.
• Blogging and IM are flexible enough to allow for
  a balanced combination of all these goals,
  contributing much to the delight and benefit of
  both students and teachers.

7
Powerful Potential

• Students are not only doing IM but also adding to
  and visiting the exponentially multiplying number
  of blogs.
• It behooves teachers to grasp this opportunity to
  show the younger generation how these
  technological tools can be used to move toward a
  closer and more peaceful global community.
• It has been asserted that the blogging community
  had a substantial effect on the direction of the
  most recent US presidential elections. The
  misuses of IM are widely reported.
• As the printing press was used to strongly impact
  education in the seventeenth century, so too can
  the computer be utilized to enhance (or,
  worst-case-scenario, devastate) the quality of
  life on earth.

8
Communicative Competence

• The CC model described by Savignon (1983, 1997)
  includes 4 facets
• Sociocultural
• Strategic
• Discourse
• Grammatical

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Sociocultural CompetenceRequires understanding
the social context of language use.

• Is relevant to
• roles of participants
• information that they share
• function of their interaction

• Particpator knows and attends to meanings
  attached to social conventions of language
  use demonstrates empathy, openness,
  responsiveness.
• taking turns
• appropriateness of content
• nonverbal language
• tone

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Strategic CompetenceEmploys coping mechanisms to
facilitate message exchange.

• Allows for language evolution (permits ways of
  talking to construct ways of
• understanding and vice versa)
• asks for information
• seeks clarification
• uses circumlocution
• other linguistic non-linguistic resources
  they can muster to negotiate meaning and stick to
  the communicative task at hand.

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Discourse Competencemulti-pronged
interconnectedness of whole produced text

• Requires both top-down and bottom-up processing
  (use gist to interpret sounds / words vice
  versa)
• Coherence - relation of all sentences to a single
  global proposition
• cohesion - local connections, structural links

12
Grammatical Competence

• The ability to recognize lexical, morphological,
  syntactical, phonological features of a
  language and to make use of those features to
  interpret and form words and sentences.

• demonstrated by using a rule in the
  interpretation, expression, or
• negotiation of meaning
• shown in sentence-level grammatical forms

13
CLT Identifying learners communicative needs is
basis for curricular design

• Functions, such as -
• advise
• express uncertainty
• report factual info.
• greet

• Notions, like -
• time
• frequency
• duration
• dimension
• location
• relationship

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CLT

• Savignons Communincative Language Teaching (CLT)
  model consists of 5 components Language Arts,
  Language for a Purpose, My Language is Me
  (personal L2 use), Youll Be Ill Be (Theatre
  Arts), and Beyond the Classroom.

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Language Artsusage rules

• learner develops strategies for analyzing data
  independently, which is critical to becoming
  communicatively competent and effective learners
  both inside and outside of class.

• Deductive Inductive approaches are used
  combined or separately - rules are stated
  examples given or language data are provided
• learners work out rules / generalize

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Language for a Purposereal immediate
experiences specific to needs

• Compares w/ Natural Direct methods of 19th
  century . . .
• focus is on content
• Recourse to native language is natural /
  desirable (code-mix, or switch)
• not error-free. Not native-like
• Gradual
• Opportunities for purposeful L2 use in every
  classroom day to day
• An example is immersion

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My Language is MePersonal L2 Use (identity)

• Make room for learner personality and interests
• Talk about L2 learning other things
• Do not evaluate formally - Teacher relaxes
  attention to form

18
Youll Be, Ill BeTheatre Arts

• When kids explore thru acting, it becomes real.
• Skits
• Dialogues
• Plays
• Vignettes
• Pantomime

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Beyond the Classroom

• learners depend upon world for maintenance /
  development (of communicative competence) and
  vice versa.
• All media (CDs, DVDs, newspapers, magazines,
  books, internet, etc.)
• Socialization with speakers of LBL (language
  being learned)

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Assessment of CC

• Communicative Competence is measured in terms of
  fluency, comprehensibility, effort, and amount of
  communication in unrehearsed tasks. Evaluation is
  ongoing, emphasizes abilities of learners, and
  takes into consideration . . .
• Dynamic negotiation of meaning
• Written, spoken, paralinguistic, non-verbal
  aspects of output
• Context
• Observable performance

21
Weblog CLT

• The very nature of blogging and IM, illustrating
  the 4 facets of competence, combined with
  in-class face-to-face (F2F) interaction including
  the five components of CLT curriculum, provides a
  communicative method of instruction in which the
  teacher guides while the learner functions within
  the language, managing messages.

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Rationale 1

• Language Arts can be easily incorporated in class
  by the teacher as students begin to acquire
  metalanguage - identifying and naming parts of
  speech, talking about syntax and morphology -
  which furthers their capacity to manipulate the
  language and grow within it. Blogging and IM are
  most consistent with an inductive approach in
  which learners observe language data and work out
  rules, discovering and inquiring, after which the
  teacher can confirm by explicitly stating the
  rule when appropriate to the learning context.

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Rationale 2

• Blogging and IM provide space to practice
  Language for a Purpose in which students have
  real and immediate experiences specific to their
  needs as the instructor (if only temporarily)
  relaxes attention to form. The student is
  immersed in the language and there are daily
  opportunities for purposeful L2 use in class. The
  focus quite naturally is on content code-mixing
  (recourse to the L1) is initially permissible
  when all else fails expression is not expected
  to be error-free or native-like.

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Rationale 3

• Blogging and IM contribute to students
  establishing their own identity through Personal
  L2 Use. It makes room for learner personality
  and interests to find expression, talking about
  L2 learning and almost anything else.

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Rationale 4

• Blogging and IM can be extended to Theatre Arts
  if students are encouraged to act out scenarios
  they describe on their blog or events that they
  talk about on IM. When students explore
  through acting, what they are saying becomes
  real.

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Rationale 5

• Learners depend upon the world to maintain them
  and the world depends upon learners to maintain
  it. Through the academic experience of blogging
  and IM in this fashion, this symbiotic
  partnership is respected.
• Skills acquired through blogging and IM are
  applicable in life outside of the classroom.

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Summary

• As students blog and IM they
• Increase immersion-time in the language,
• Comprehend what they read
• Write - sometimes self-reflection while at other
  times reacting to literature or other material
  presented in class
• Answer questions
• Acquire new vocabulary.
• Then, through in-class discussion (in the L2) of
  blog entries or IM discussions
• hone grammar, speaking, and listening skills,
  and
• enhance cultural understanding.

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Theoretical Conclusion

• Blog and IM topics and activities are implemented
  such that each week students consistently have an
  opportunity to learn more about one another.
  Additionally, on-line and F2F interactions
  naturally result in negotiation of meaning,
  which seems to be a more powerful learning
  experience than the comparatively more cursory
  practice of simply producing expository messages
  without receiving responses. I believe that
  students communicative competence increases as a
  result of full participation in a
  properly-designed language course in which this
  type of CMC is the spinal column of the
  curriculum.
• Educators are encouraged to further investigate.

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Preparation

• Contact local network administrator to initiate
  blog template on server, purchase program, or
  depend upon free engines online (not as
  desirable).
• Start small.
• Make such CMC central to the curriculum.
• Start all students in a group at once.
• Start at beginning of semester or school year.
• Clearly state expectations.
• Let kids choose and use pseudonyms.
• Password-protect.
• Support students.

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Perpetuation

• Anticipate and respond to resistance.
• Support students.
• Blog and IM regularly.
• Combine blogging and IM with face-to-face
  in-class interaction.
• Personalize blogs.
• Supervise and participate on a gradually
  declining basis.
• Give ample lead-time.
• Trouble-shoot.

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Progression

• Praise. As what the instructor had intended for
  students to learn / do appears in the dialogue,
  recognize and show appreciation for it so that
  learners are continuously propelled to strive for
  understanding.
• Suggest expanding the audience.
• Assess holistically.

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Suggested Topics

• Personal introduction, idiosyncrasies, pet
  peeves, likes and dislikes
• How they spent / will spend summer or other
  vacation, holidays
• Family, neighborhood, town, state, country, other
  countries
• The opposite sex, the law, literature, TV shows,
  school-sponsored dances and events, stereotypes,
  identity

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More Suggested Topics

• Their opinion of each season of the year, blogs
  themselves, grades, sports, music
• Original poetry, short stories, essays, jokes,
  journal or open topic entries
• The process of choosing and getting accepted to a
  college, senioritis, graduation
• A memorable moment in their life, their new
  years resolutions, their heroes

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F2F Events

• short informal debates, interviews, and
  question-and-answer sessions
• peer presentations, elaborations, advising,
  hypothesizing
• interpreting, paraphrasing, summarizing,
  translating (if desired!)
• vocabulary-building, self-revision, brainstorming
  for new topics
• revising according to teacher feedback
  (pinpointing errors, cuing, providing sample
  answers, rephrasing, directly correcting, etc.)

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More F2F Events

• Intralevel peer revision, interlevel peer
  revision, monitoring one another and sometimes
  suggesting corrections on blog and IM, using LCD
  projector, even possibly with a speaker of the
  language being learned
• Games (matching posts with responses, matching
  personal facts with the correct person)
• Inventing (new social constructs such as a
  national grading system based on narrative rather
  than numbers new words new things)
• Creating and demonstrating (art, improvisation)

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Rubric On-line Blog Assessmt.

• Entry 9 sentences 1 comment on someone elses
  blog 1 comment to someone who responded on your
  own blog 11 pts. / week. (99 points per 9-week
  marking period).
• The hundredth point can come from having them all
  done on time.
• This is point-based for completion.

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Alternative Blog Rubric

• A total of five points per week is available (45
  points credit for a marking period).
• Format Follow the description above.
• Quantity Blog regularly.
• Communicativity (I made up that word) When
  blogging, muse. End with a question sometimes,
  say something slightly controversial once in a
  while, avoiding being flat.
• Progress I should be able to see that your
  grammar and vocabulary improve.
• ParticipationYour name should appear often
  under comments on others blogs.

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Student Reactions

• Gratitude
• Thanks to people who do the blog.
• It is fun to integrate technology in my learning
  and school.
• My other classes dont use blogs, so I like using
  them in Spanish.
• Its a good idea not good but excellent.

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Student Comments Re GrammarAnd Alluding to
Discourse Competence

• writing
• Speaking is very important too but writing is
  better . . . when I write, I always think about
  grammar.
• Its possible to see progress in the quality of
  writing.
• reading
• I like reading Spanish V blogs because they make
  me want to be better in Spanish.
• Now I can read . . . without problems.
• We read a lot because of our curiosity to know
  what classmates have written.

40
More Student L.A. CommentsAlso alluding to
Strategic Competence

• comprehension
• It helps us to understand Spanish
• vocabulary
• I always use my dictionary to construct
  interesting sentences. Although it frustrates me
  sometimes that I dont have all of the words that
  I want, I learn a lot.
• metacognition
• I can develop my Spanish here.
• With blogs, one can think of what s/he wants to
  say, and find the right words and proper
  sentences to express it.
• . . . an interesting and unique way to learn.

41
Student Community AwarenessAlluding to the
Socio-cultural Aspect

• The blogs create a sense of community.
• I enjoy using blogs because I can chat with a lot
  of people . . . in different Spanish classes.
• I got to know other students better.
• I like having a view into the lives of my
  friends. They say things that I dont get to
  hear by other means. I can maintain contact with
  those that I dont see often by reading their
  blogs. It gives me a good idea of what happens
  to them, of what they think and feel.
• Its a way to converse w/other students and the
  teacher

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Students See L4APurpose

• I think that the best way to learn something is
  to use it in life . . . these blogs work in this
  manner.
• They are more realistic than other tasks.
• Theres more sense to doing blogs than regular
  essays.
• They are more interesting than papers or maps or
  studying for an exam.
• I believe that we learn more than with
  traditional homework.
• Theyre not busy work. I hate busy work..
• Its good practice for essays and our future with
  Spanish.

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Student Evaluative Remarks

• I dont always remember the words that I have to
  write a thousand times in a row, but I always
  remember the words that I use in a sentence.
• . . . are challenging and hard . . . good (as
  opposed to homework).
• My writing has become more fluid.
• My sentences dont stand alone I write in
  paragraphs now.
• I use more tenses and make an effort to
  incorporate whatever were doing in class . . .
  subjunctive, conditional, whatever, into my
  blogs.
• Blogs are an idea that brings the truth to any
  topic.

44
Students Show OwnershipDeclaring My Language is
Me

• I like to blog b/c Im a writer. Im always
  happy when Im writing about myself. Its the
  perfect activity. In the end, I can be proud
  of my work. I have seven small essays written
  completely in Spanish and I think thats an
  accomplishment.
• I feel special when I have responses to read.
• Were comfortable in this environment.
• When I have a lot of homework to do, I start with
  my blog . . . its fun!

45
Students say yes to Drama

• I like when we read blogs in front of the class.
  . . Many people are very funny.
• Blogs are good ideas for conversation.
• I like when we play guess the person who wrote
  this blog.
• Its a good opportunity to joke with/about people
  in the class.
• Its interesting when other people say something
  about my blog.
• Class is better with blogs.

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Students see Beyond

• Probably in the future, many classes will use
  blogs.
• I want to minor in Spanish when I am older.
  Everyone can practice Spanish. One time when I
  told my Dad about the blogs, he said that blogs
  were a good idea because students want to use the
  computer and that its important that students
  talk with each other in Spanish.
• I never used the computer for Spanish class in my
  life with the exception of research for projects.
  
• I have had some blogs before . . . something
  familiar but new. After writing about ourselves,
  we should write about news, politics, etc. That
  way, we can learn more.
• Its very applicable to students of this era.

47
Students Show Motivation

• Since Im concerned with ecology, Im very happy
  for the opportunity to write a lot without
  wasting paper.
• We dont have to worry about forgetting the
  homework in school . . . its on-line.
• You can write when its convenient for you.
• At first I thought blogs were strange . . . never
  did anything like this . . . first time I have
  used the net a lot, each week, for a class. Now
  it is very natural. I like it although it is
  homework. The topics are fun a lot of times.

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Conclusion

• Commonly, students report preferring blogs over
  stereotypically-designed writing assignments
  observing substantial improvement in their own
  and others functioning within the language being
  learned and targeting where they still need to
  progress. The latter two are hallmarks of
  learner autonomy, which has been a major goal of
  education throughout history. Blogging provides
  a means to fulfill that goal along with many
  other potential benefits. For this teacher, its
  fascinating.

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Applied Activity Theory

• Yrjö Engeström and the Change Institute