Welcome to my blog. I use it to share activities with my English students and with teachers in different training workshops. If you like what you see, why not leave a comment?
TOEIC Preparation - Week 6 - Part 3 - Conversations
Introduction: In today's class we begin our two week study of Part 3: Conversations in the listening test. Complete the collaborative tasks below with your partners.
Task 1: Practice Your British Pronunciation
Remember the three tips your teacher showed you to help you better identify pronunciation features of the British accent. With those in mind, pronounce the following sentences first in your regular accent and then repeat them in your best British voice. Have fun with it.
Mark is our teacher.
I can't take a bath after class.
I asked for a bottle of water at the bar.
I hated writing letters. Email is better.
Task 2: Analyzing Conversations
Click your group link below and follow the instructions to analyze the conversation transcripts.
Some general information questions may ask you to identify the location where the conversation takes place or the occupation of the speakers. Click the link below then go to the section that corresponds to your group.
Task 3: Focused Practice - Group Quiz - ID People and Places
Have one member of your group share the screen. Click on the group quiz and complete it with your partners. The first quiz will have you identify people speaking or referred to by the speakers. The second quiz will have you identify the location of the coversation or places mentioned by the speakers. Be sure to check the transcripts for any questions you get wrong.
Culture of English Speaking Countries - Week 6 - Introduction to Cultural Perspectives
Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 6 of the course Culture of English Speaking Countries for the bachelor's in English teaching at ULACIT. This week we will begin our exploration of the topic of cultural perspectives.
Today's Goals:
Identify the underlying values represented in common sayings and proverbs.
Distinguish the features of perceptions, beliefs, values, and attitudes.
Compare traditional American and Costa Rican values and beliefs.
Guiding Questions:
How are cultural perspectives represented in the language we use?
How can we categorize types of cultural perspectives?
What are some of the core values in US culture and how do they appear in attitudes and practices?
Warm Up: Values in Langauge
Values are one form of cultural perspectives and they are often explicity demonstrated in the language se used everyday. Click your group link below to explore the values behind common sayings and proverbs.
Let's take a moment together to recall the topics we explored last week.
Traditional Remedies:
We talked about remedies as a combination of cultural products, practices, and perspectives. Have you though of any other examples this week?
Cultural Places:
What is a cultural place?
How do products, practices, perspectives, persons, and communities intersect in a cultural place?
What ideas have you thought of regarding your upcoming cultural place podcast?
Cultural Practices:
Operations: These are ...
Acts: These are ...
Scenarios: These are ...
Lives: These are ...
Task 2: Exploring Cultural Perspectives
For homework this week you read Chapter 7 Cultural Perspectives in the Moran book and completed a study guide. Open your study guide and respond to the following prompts with your partners.
What are cultural perspectives?
The author says perspectives are the "hidden dimension" of culture meaning that they are typically difficult to identify. However, they can also be explicit. In what ways can perspectives be tangible?
What does the following statement mean to you and how is it related to the topic of cultural perspectives?
"If you want to know about water, don't ask a fish."
The author divides perspectives into four categories. What do they mean?
Perceptions
Beliefs
Values
Attitudes
What is the difference between emic and etic perspectives?
The chapter finishes with a review of three ways of looking at culture. Look at the pictures below and state what they mean to you.
Click the Pictures to See the Full Size View
Theory Break: Perspectives
“Perspectives are the explicit and implicit meanings shared by members of the culture, manifested in products and practices. These meanings reflect members’ perceptions of the world, the beliefs and values that they hold, and the norms, expectations, and attitudes that they bring to practices. To name the perspectives that underlie practices is to answer the question, “Why do the people of this culture do things in the way they do (p. 74)?”
Perceptions: What we perceive, what we ignore; what we notice or disregard
Beliefs: What we hold to be true or untrue
Values: What we hold to be right/wrong, good/evil, desirable/undesireable, proper/improper, normal/abnormal, appropriate
Attitudes: Our mental and affective dispositions - our frame of mind, our outlook - charged with feeling or emotion
“Understanding perspectives, in my opinion, represents the most challenging aspect of teaching culture. The task, simply put, is to identify the perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the culture. However, culture consists of numerous communities, all coexisting under the same umbrella of national culture…some of them are in opposition – sometimes in open conflict… Given shifting points of view, how can language teachers hope to offer accurate explanations of cultural perspectives (p. 83).”
It boils down to this: Culture perspectives depend on your point of view. Given shifting points of view, how can langauge teachers hope to offer accurate descriptions of cultural perspectives (Moran, p. 83)?"
"The working solution I propose is to present alternative vewpoints as part of knowing why, or discovering interpretations. In simple terms, these can be defined respectively as culture as a unified whole culture as distinct communities, and culture as competing communities (p 84)."
Functionalist: Takes the broad view of culture, most often at the national level, using the nation as the focal point.
Interpretive: Does not address the notion of a national culture community. All culture, in the interpretive view, is local.
Conflict: Accepts that each community has its own perspectives but does not assume harmonious relationships among them, rather, they are in competition, struggling for influence, power, or control over the core institutions of society.
Task 3: Values in American Culture
For your Culture Learning Journal this week you were asked to read a chapter called "Traditional American Values and Beliefs". Click the link below and follow your teacher's instructions.
Task 4: Exploring Emic and Etic Perspectives on Costa Rican Values
As a final task, let's complete a brief reading on the topic of fatalism and discuss to what degree you think fatalism is represented in the cultural perspectives and practices of Costa Rica and the United States.
Teaching Grammar and Writing - Week 6 - Functional Approaches to Teaching Grammar
Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 6 of the course Teaching Grammar and Writing for the Master's in English Teaching at ULACIT in term IC 2023. In this class we will explore functional approaches to the teaching of grammar. In this view, grammar is a communicative resource that is used to perform specific social functions. We'll also look at your discourse frames activity design and consider the Teaching-Learning Cycle as as a technique for discourse level grammar and writing instruction.
Today's Goals:
Demonstrate the features of your original discourse frames activity.
Discuss the principle concerns of a functional approach to grammar instruction.
Examine the concept of genre and an instructional strategy to teach it.
Guiding Questions:
How can I provide effective scaffolding to help students express their ideas?
How does a functional approach to grammar instruction help students use grammar as a communicative resource?
How can the Teaching-Learning Cycle help students develop genre competence?
Task 1: Activity Type Demo - Discourse Frames Activity
In this course you will be asked to create sample grammar activities in order to compile a portfolio of grammar activitiy types that describes their basic features, strengths, and challenges.
Characteristics: What are the features of a discourse frames activity?
Example: What activity did you create?
Strengths: In what ways are discourse frames potentially beneficial in grammar instruction?
Challenges: What potential limitations or challenges are associated with discourse frames?
Task 2: Reading Response - Functional Approaches to Teaching Grammar
Let's take a moment to discuss these questions related to your assigned reading for this week.
A Fundamental Divide: One of the controversies in language teaching regarding the role of grammar is whether or not to teach it at all. In your opinion, what are some potential arguments in favor of and against the explicit teaching of grammar?
Quote: "The assumption is that it is our job to create the natural conditions of acquisition present in the external environment ... [I]nstead what we want to do as a language teacher is ... to improve upon natural acquisition, not emulate it ... [and to] accelerate natural learning."
Two Approaches: Having taken the position that grammar instruction does have a role in language teaching, there are two major approaches common in language classrooms today. What does each mean and which is most similar to your approach to teaching?
Focus on Form (FonF)
Focus on Forms (FonFS)
Competence: Changes in language teaching methodology, in particular in its treatment to grammar instruction, changed radically in the late 70's and early 80's as a result of research in applied linguistics that led to the proposal of the concept of Communicative Competence. What do the subcompetencies involve? How does defining communicative ability in this way broaden the goals of language instruction?
Click to view full size image.
Functional Grammar: The author ends the chapter with the following quote. How does this quote help provide perspective regarding the overall purpose of grammar for users of a language and inform the approach to grammar instruction that teachers should follow?
"Adupting a functional approach to teaching grammar enables teachers to use a whole text perspective and to view language as a communicative resource whose goal is to create meaning. A functional perspective sees language as a set of interelated systems through which useres of the language draw on different types of grammatical resources to express ideas about a topic, to negotiate interpersonal aspects of language use and to produce streteches of language (text) that are cohesive and coherent within the context (Burns, 2016, p. 103)."
Task 3: The Teaching Learning Cycle
Last week we considered structured output activities to help students produce grammar at the discourse level. This week we will look at and an instructional sequence that can be used to help raise students' awareness of the genre features of written and spoken texts.
Activity 1: Discuss these questions with your partner. Then move on to the next activity.
Have you ever received a rejection letter or email?
If so, what did it say? If not, what do you think a letter like this should contain?
Who would probably send a rejection letter?
When would the letter be sent?
What should the tone of the letter be?
How does the writer probably want the reader to feel?
What is its purpose? What details does it need to express and why?
Activity 2: Click on your group worksheet below and follow the instructions in the document.
Burns, A. (2016). Functional Approaches to Teaching Grammar in the Second Langauge Classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Teaching English Grammar to Speakers of Other Languages (pp.84-105). Routeledge.
Celce-Murcia, M. (2016). The Importance of the Discourse Level in Understanding and Teaching English Grammar. In E. Hinkel (Ed.) Teaching English Grammar to Speakers of Other Languages. Routledge.
TOEIC Preparation - Week 5 - Parts 5 and 6 - Incomplete Sentences and Cloze Passages
Introduction: In today's class we continue our two week study of parts 5 and 6 in the reading test. This part of the test is similar to standard multiple choice English exams that you are familiar with. Here the test is measuring your ability to identify the appropriate vocabulary, phrase, or grammatical structure to complete a sentence. Complete the collaborative tasks below with your partners.
Task 1: Recognize Parts of Speech by Suffix
Click the link below then go to your assigned section of the document. You have two tasks. First categorize the words according to their part of speech. Then read the words in context, identify their suffix, and think of another word that finishes with the same suffix.
Task 2: Reviewing Transition Words and Conjuctions
Another grammar point that is evaluated in Parts 5 and 6 are connection words and phrases. These little words can cause a lot of confusion. Let's take some time to analyze their functions. Click your group link below and complete the table with the missing information.
Task 5: Focused Practice - Part 6 - Word Forms and Verb Tenses
Click your group link below. Read the three articles and select the best answer choice for each blank. Keep in mind that all the items in this practice will require you to select the word form that matches the missing part of speech or select the correct tense and form of the missing verb.
Culture of English Speaking Countries - Week 5 - Cultural Practices
Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 5 of the course Culture of English Speaking Countries for the bachelor's in English teaching at ULACIT. This week we will discuss the topic of cultural practices, compare traditional practices regarding remedies, describe a cultural place, and consider differences in customs between the US and Costa Rica.
Today's Goals:
Compare cultural products, practices, and perspectives regarding traditional remedies.
Analyze a a culture map video podcast to identify the interaction between products, practices, and persons in physical space.
Describe the linguistic and extralinguistic features of a cultural act.
Guiding Questions:
How do products, practices, and persons intersect in a cultural place?
How is my culture represented in the actions people perform?
What are the linguistic and extralinguistic features of a cultural act?
Warm Up: Folk Remedies
Many cultures have a rich and detailed repertoire of products and practices related to traditional folk remedies for common physical ailments. These products and practices are informed by cultural perspectives about the causes of illness and what keeps a person healthy. In this activty you will explore some of the folk remedies of your own local and family culture.
I was curious to learn if there were similar perspectives and practices in other countries. I asked friends from Guatemala, Dominican Republic and Finland and here is what they told me. As you listen, identify similarities and differences between the products, practices, persons, and perspectives.
What about US traditional remedies? Well, there's nothing special except for the importance of chicken soup! CLICK HERE to see an image. It's so associated with comfort, care, and feeling better that there was a famous series of self-help / motivational books with that name (CLICK HERE).
Task 1: Group Recall
Let's take a moment together to recall the topics we explored last week.
What is a cultural product?
Artifacts?
Places?
Institutions?
Art Forms?
Moran says that products can be portals to help us explore the other cultural dimensions. Think of a product and let's see what associations you can make with the other dimensions:
Product: What is it? Where do you find it?
Practices: How do you use it? When?
Persons: Which people use this?
Communities: Which groups of people use this object?
Perspectives: Why do people use this? What significance does it have in the culture?
Gun ownership is a politically and culturally divisive topic but it is an essential cultural feature of the US. CLICK HERE to read some statistics. Can you think of any issues that are as politically and culturally polarizing in your country?
How do people in your culture view the role of guns in US culture?
How does your culture view the topic of gun ownership?
Theory Break: Places
"Man-made settings are populated with numerous artifacts, arranged in particular ways within the physical space. The organization, layout, or interpretation of this physical space is a critical feature of places, just as much as the artifacts and their arrangements in these places (Moran, p. 52)."
Places are interesting cultural features to explore because of the reasons mentioned in the quote and also because it is within places that different cultural practices are carried out by communities and specific persons.
Task 2: Cultural Place Video Podcast (15%)
Your first group project is due on July 11 at 11:59 pm. Consier the following information about it.
Learning Objective: Demonstrate your ability to analyze a cultural place in an English speaking country by creating a 7-9 minute podcast describing its physical layout, the cultural products it contains, the practices that occur there, and the underlying perspectives that the people of the culture have about it.
Justification: Cultural products are the most visible forms of culture but they take on a wide variety of forms and do not exist in isolation from other items of the cultural pentad (practices, perspectives, persons, and communities). The analysis of a cultural space will provide the opportunity for you to demonstrate your understanding of this cultural framework as a tool to analyze the features of a cultural place in an English speaking country.
College Football Stadiums in the US
Podcast Evaluation: Now click your group link below and evaluate your teacher's sample podcast. It is not perfect so think carefully about the score it deserves for each of the criteria in the rubric.
For homework this week you read Chapter 6 Cultural Practices in the Moran book and completed a study guide. Open your study guide and respond to the following prompts with your partners.
What is a cultural practice?
What are the characteristics of the four types of practices?
Operations
Acts
Scenarios
Lives
Share the scenario you described in your study guide and say how it fits within some of the following categories:
Time-Based
Event-Based
Group-Based
Institution-Based
Live-Cycle Based
What are some examples of operations and acts within your chosen scenario?
In the chapter you also learned some new terminology for linguistic and extralinguistic features of practices. What were some of the new terms you learned?
Describe a practice you are familiar with. How can the terms be used to describe what happens (or not) during the practice?
Theory Break: Cultural Practices
“Practices are organized and implemented in preordained ways according to the expectations of members of the culture. They involve a linguistic dimension (written or spoken language), and extralinguistic dimension (paralanguage and nonverbal language), manipulation of products, and specific social circumstances, and often occur in particular physical settings or places (p. 59).”
“Operations describe practices that involve manipulation of cultural artifacts. Acts are specific communicative functions with both linguistic and extralinguistic features. Scenarios are practices enacted in specific social situations, involving operations, acts and other sets of specific practices. Lives are sets of practices organized by individuals through the ways they live their lives in the culture (p. 59).”
Task 4: Exploring Cultural Acts
Click your group link below to explore the linguistic, paralinguistic, and extralinguistic features of common cultural practices.
For your Culture Learning Journal this week you were asked to read a brief chapter called "Differences in Customs". Discuss the following prompts with your teacher and parters.
The author described an uncomfortable moment between four immigrants in the US from different cultures who decided to have a potluck dinner (US custom). What happended? Why?
The article mentions some US holidays. What are some operations and acts associated with holidays in your culture?
What do you think of the following quote? How do parents in your culture treat their children? How do your cultural values appear in the ways you communicate?
"Americans value independence and self-reliance, for example, so it is customary for them to encourage their children to speak up for themselves. They assume all people are more or less equal, so it is customery for them to talk in relatively informal ways with nearly everyone."
What else did you learn about the following US customs? How do they compare to customs in your culture?
Punctuality
Keeping your Appointments/Plans
Distance when standing and talking
Topics to avoid in polite conversation:
Politics and religion
Woman's age and weight
Personal income
Price paid for things they own
Details about one's health, especially bodily functions
Differences I Noticed
Entering a room or someone's house with "con permiso".
Saying "buen provecho" to someone who is eating.
Greating everyone in the room individually.
Greeting with a kiss.
Navigating levels of formality in 2nd person singular (usted, vos, tu*).
Showing care for others through diminuitives (papi, mami, papito, mi tata, lita).
Using diminutives for almost everything.
Making plans and never following through.
Differences in punctuality.
References:
Althen, G. (2011) American Ways: A Cultural Guide to the United States (3rd ed.) Intercultural Press.
Moran, P. (2001). Teaching Culture: Perspectices in Practice. Heinle, Cengage Learning.
Teaching Grammar and Writing - Week 5 - Grammar Instruction at the Discourse Level
Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 5 of the course Teaching Grammar and Writing for the Master's in English Teaching at ULACIT in term IC 2023. In this class we will question traditional grammar instruction approaches that focus exclusively on sentence-level analysis by considering the unique linguistic insights that can gained by considering language use at the discourse level. We'll also look at your grammar focused task design and consider the value of using discourse frames and narrative frames in grammar and writing instruction.
Today's Goals:
Demonstrate the features of your original grammar focused task.
Explore unique linguistic insights that can only be appreciated at the discourse level.
Analyze several discourse and narrative frame activities for grammar and writing instruction to identify their key features.
Guiding Questions:
How can I balance meaning-focused communication and grammar awareness in the design of tasks?
What is the importance of analyzing language beyond the sentence level?
How can I provide effective scaffolding to help students express their ideas?
Task 1: Activity Type Demo - Grammar Focused Task
In this course you will be asked to create sample grammar activities in order to compile a portfolio of grammar activitiy types that describes their basic features, strengths, and challenges.
Characteristics: What are the features of a communicative task?
Example: What activity did you create?
Strengths: In what ways are tasks input potentially beneficial in grammar instruction?
Challenges: What potential limitations or challenges are associated with tasks?
Task 2: Reading Response - Importance of Discourse Level in Grammar Teaching
Let's take a moment to discuss these questions related to your assigned reading for this week.
Defining Discourse: What does discourse mean in its common, non-linguistic definition? What does discourse mean in applied linguistics?
Syntax vs Discourse: The grammar examples presented in most coursebooks and grammar lessons in classrooms around the world tend to focus on grammar at the sentence level. Why do you think this is? What are some of the limitations of sentence level analysis?
Discourse and Communicative Ability: The author's primary claim in the chapter was that an understanding of grammar at a discourse level is key to the development of communicative ability and that this level of analysis is not only possible at beginning levels, but highly beneficial.
Describe what you remember about the examples she gave using discourse frames.
In your own experience as a
language learner and teacher, do you think using an approach like this when
introducing new language would be more appealing to students than the typical
sequence of grammar explanation (often in the form of a grammar box with rules
and examples) followed by controlled practice drills? Why or why not?
Text Analysis: In the next section the author describes two examples from the Frame-Elaboration Hypothesis that help explain the uses of "used to" and "would" for habitual past as well as "going to" and "will" for future plans.
What do you remember about these examples?
How do you think a cycle like the following would be for your learners?
Guided Analysis of Text
Students Elaborate Hypotheses
Teacher Confirms, Clarifies, and Exemplifies the Patterns
Students Produce their own Texts
Coherence and Cohesion: A final topic explored in the chapter was regarding the use of cohesive devices in writing (and formal speaking). What do the following terms mean? How, acording ot the author does improved cohesion add to coherence?
Coherence
Cohesion
Task 3: Discourse and Narrative Frames for Grammar and Writing Instruction
Last week we considered output focused activities using tasks for grammar instruction. This week we will look at two teaching techniques that help structure student output to make use of grammar structures at the discourse level.
Celce-Murcia, M. (2016). The Importance of the Discourse Level in Understanding and Teaching English Grammar. In E. Hinkel (Ed.) Teaching English Grammar to Speakers of Other Languages. Routledge.
Nassaji, H. & Fotos, S. (2011). Teaching Grammar in Second Language Classrooms. Routledge.
TOEIC Preparation - Week 4 - Part 5 and 6 - Incomplete Sentences & Cloze Passages
Introduction: In today's class we begin our two week study of parts 5 and 6 in the reading test. This part of the test is similar to standard multiple choice English exams that you are familiar with. Here the test is measuring your ability to identify the appropriate vocabulary, phrase, or grammatical structure to complete a sentence. Complete the collaborative tasks below with your partners.
Task 1: Part of Speech Rally
In Parts 5 and 6 of the exam you need to be able to identify the part of speech of the missing word or phrase in order to select the right answer choice. Let's do a review of the seven most important parts of speech. Click on your group link below and complete the chart with the part of speech, a group definition, and several examples.
Click your group link below. On each page you have three sentences and four words. Match the correct word form with each sentence. There will be one word left over.
Take the quiz with your partners. Identify the the part of speech of the missing word and make the best selection from the answer choices. Check you answers when you finish.
Some questions in parts 5 and 6 will require you to distinguish between grammatical words with similar functions. Click your group link below and follow the instructions in the document.
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