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What do you think the strengths of your presentation are? What do you think the weaknesses of your presentation are? If possible, videotape students while they are presenting. Seeing themselves on video will allow them to have a better sense of what their presenting styles and strengths are. This is a possible guide that can be used to help students prepare for their presentations.
See also the responses for our November question: How do you have students prepare for giving presentations in class? Lend Me an Ear - Teaching Listening Strategies for World Language Learning
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This month’s theme is connecting math content to language learning. As usual, our best resource is you – so we asked our readers how you integrate math content into your language classes. Here are some of your ideas: 
This month we examine the National Standard of Foreign Language Learning relating to Interpretive Communication. Interpretive Communication refers to the understanding of material that is read or heard. Often language teachers do not use recorded materials because students react with dismay; "I can’t understand a thing!" When a teacher gives support before the listening task through instruction in strategies, students are able to break down the flow of sound into comprehensible language. The strategies-based instruction (SBI) approach developed by Cohen (1998) can be summarized with the graphic shown here. Students are guided to apply strategies before, during and after a language task. If students are supported through these three phases of a task with learning strategies, they can successfully finish the task and develop their own repertoire of strategies to apply to other learning contexts.
To develop listening comprehension skills while expanding social studies knowledge, the Spanish teacher can use a foreign language podcast, such as our Culture Club 
Pay attention to what the students are talking about as they come in to class, stand in the hallway, or chat in the cafeteria. Listen carefully without being intrusive and always remain aware of confidentiality. Just get a sense of the topics that are capturing their interest on any given day.
Leave room for students to ask questions. Be sure to provide sufficient information, in the form of a rubric for a formal assessment or in a list of "be sure to include …" if it is a less forma situation, so that students know what you expect from them. Always encourage them to ask for further details. They need to learn to seek information and to manipulate those interrogatives.
Everyday every student should have as much time as possible to speak the language. Working in pairs, or small groups, provides lots of opportunity for speaking and communicating. Take the vocabulary out of the book and make the language become a real means of communication. Insist on the use of interrogatives in these paired encounters. Not all of these conversations need to be graded for anything other than doing it.
There should be a reasonable combination of impromptu and prepared conversations. Those that are impromptu can be practice situations with new material that lead them to th
e ability to do a prepared conversation (skit) at the end of the lesson. However, some of the impromptu exercises should be graded. Encouraging students to think on their feet is a necessary step to successful real-life conversations.
The students spend a great deal of time with their friends on the internet. Bring those writing exchanges and experiences into the oral realm and have them do some web-cam conversations. This can be accomplished within your classroom if your school has firewall and safety issues you need to accommodate. Web cams are inexpensive, easy to install, and easy to operate. Students will enjoy the visual dimension of their on-line conversations.
When you are creating assignments for the students, keep in mind the proficiency aspect of your expectations. You want them to be actively engaged in using the material (words, structure, and concepts) to communicate their ideas. Vary these culminating activities so they take different forms. With this type of activity there is really no right or wrong answer, so encourage students to express their opinions.
Building a community of trust
The real key here is to keep students talking, in controlled and uncontrolled situations. The teacher doesn’t always have to be the leader; give the students an opportunity to talk about anything they wish. The only requirement is that it must be in the TL. Give a very reasonable, easy to achieve time frame, and let them exceed that limit before you stop them. Reward them by letting them know they talked for "twice as long" as you had asked them to talk!
Baron has worked across the curriculum with teachers of ESL and Spanish in the Elementary and Junior High levels. The guitar work tends to be with teachers of younger kids, as the songs are simple and appealing to younger students. Teachers find, Baron says, that learning to play a guitar is "absolutely the most helpful thing - having the instrument in their hands give them more control - they can adapt the pace and sculpt the song lyric according to what they teach." Another aspect of this empowerment is that after learning to sing the songs, the kids start writing lyrics themselves. "The teachers then get their students to sing the songs for other kids. The music helps memory but also is an outreach to the rest of the community. It’s really a grassroots approach that introduces making music in a very fun spirit."
Guitars in the Classroom developed from a method Baron created called Smart Start Guitar - she started in 1998 to produce a simple method of teaching guitar to little kids. The kids couldn’t read, so she created an auditory-kinesthetic method of teaching guitar. This utilizes Open G guitar tuning called slack-key tuning. The learners add one finger at a time, working on coordination. There is no pressure, and no practice required. Teachers take the guitars into their classrooms in the first week, and the students love it! Like a ‘Fun night out." First six week course is free, after that students are asked to contribute the cost of instruction. Materials are provided for free. There are a number of books which Baron has published, available at : 
Baron writes that "music’s "total engagement" carries two social bonuses for certain students. One is the inclusion of movement in the classroom setting, something some kids crave and rarely find an acceptable way to do during class time. Whether they are rocking, shaking a shaker, strumming a guitar, clapping hands, or stepping in a circle around the perimeter of the room, kids who learn best while in motion get more chances when music is incorporated."San Miguel de Allende Mexico
This group consisted of about 12 students, a teacher, and a parent. They spent their spring break working at an orphanage where one of the students and her father had volunteered previously. The students painted walls, refurbished the laundry facility, and set up a trampoline. In their free time, with the children who live in the orphanage, they played soccer and jumped on the trampoline. One of the results of their stay at the orphanage was the purchase of a truck the director uses to pick up food and to take the children on excursions. The group hopes to continue their association with a fund raising campaign to purchase needed improvements for the kitchen, including a new stove and hot water heater. In their on-going efforts to help the orphanage, the students are in contact with the people there. Having seen the facility and talked with the staff and residents, decisions about what kinds of things they can do are made mutually and for the benefit of the orphanage. These students have a continuing direct immersion experience where they are able to see the positive effects of their work immediately. |
Honduras
 The purpose of this project was to help lay a pipeline from the main water line into a village in the highlands. After a 6-hour bus ride from Tegucigalpa, the road ended and the group had to hike the rest of the way to the village. For a week, a group of students and adults carried PVC pipe up the mountainside, laid and attached piping, and ended up with a source of water in the village where there had been none previously. After the water "system" was installed and working, the women no longer had to spend hours each day going down the mountain to collect water to carry back up to the village. Volunteers trained the villagers in how to make the water safe for drinking. In addition to the knowledge that not everybody has safe, running water in their home, the experience fostered among this group awareness of the need to help others less fortunate than we are, and many continue to return to some sort of service project on a regular basis. |
Near Quetzaltenango, Guatemala The first time the group went to Guatemala, they spent time in a highlands village building stoves. In the traditional Maya house, the cooking fire/stove is inside the home, with no ventilation to the outside. Because of the health risks associated with this, the sponsoring organization worked with the local people to plan a course of action. People with the technical knowledge and skills would come to help teach the villagers how to build and maintain stoves that are safely vented to the outside. As with all of these projects, time with the children was always set aside. Volunteers and villagers worked together for a week, learning about each other in the process. Although the common language was Spanish, many students came away with a small vocabulary of Maya words as well. The 2006 project was once again in the western highlands of Guatemala. This time the purpose was two-fold. Most of the group helped to build new homes to replace those destroyed by Hurricane Stan in 2005. The remainder worked with the local women, teaching them knitting techniques and helping with deciding what items would be marketable in the US. These women have no other source of income and the knitting project will help them to become self-sufficient. |
Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras
Medical volunteers are desperately needed everywhere around the world and there are many organizations that sponsor volunteer teams. One in particular focuses on Central America, with offices in Honduras. In addition to health screening and treatment, this particular organization builds medical facilities, including a prosthetic clinic, they repair wheelchairs, and they conduct professional growth seminars for health care providers. They not only provide medical care; they provide instruction in diet and good health, literacy, and computer use and maintenance. The volunteers spend a lot of time at orphanages playing with the children, who do not get a lot of attention from outsiders. One major project that has had a very positive impact on the entire region is the construction of a gymnasium that is used by everyone for sports and physical fitness. As in all projects of this type, translators are desperately needed and one need not be fluent to be of use. Although these four capsules only touch the surface of what is available in Latin America, it is very easy to find similar projects in other parts of the world. Language skills improved and in every case, participants came away with a much better understanding of the problems facing a developing nation. As one participant stated, "During the time I spent volunteering there, I did learn a lot about life in third world countries, and about myself. My Spanish got so much better and my confidence in speaking Spanish increased, too." In addition, knowledge about the indigenous cultures brought a new respect for these people in the minds of the volunteers. |
This is an experience that doesn’t just happen for a week while students are in the locale; it is an experience that starts months before with preparation and extends for months after with follow-up and continued contact with the people. The key to any successful learning experience is to involve the students before, during, and after the experience. Preparation for what they will be doing, what they will be seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling, for what the expectations are, for how to behave in specific circumstances will help insure that the in-country experience will be a positive one. Researching the type of project you choose, the qualifications for the volunteers, the support services provided to the volunteers, the living arrangements, and the travel arrangements are of paramount importance. While in the country regular conversations with your students about what they are thinking and feeling will help them sort out conflicting emotions and reactions. If students are kept busy all day, there is less likelihood of something going bad. Start and/or end your time with an opportunity to tour some of the more famous landmarks of the country. This will provide a point of departure with others who did not go on the trip, but will ask, "What did you see?" Follow-up should include some time where students are able to express their emotions about what they have seen and done. Time to organize continued contact with the people they had such an intense experience and with whom they accomplished a specific goal may also be appropriate.
Whatever you choose to do, if it is planned well, the students are well prepared, and there is sufficient support provided to them while there, your choice of a community service learning experience in another country will be a positive and memorable experience for your students.
Las Voces de las Mujeres: An Ethnographic Approach to Listening
Assistant Professor of Spanish and TESL
Hawaii’s Pacific University
Las Voces de las Mujeres is an ongoing project to bring the voices of women of Latin America and Iberia to students of Spanish through streaming video on the internet. The project is available free of charge and hosted at San Diego State University's Language Acquisition Resource Center's (LARC) Digital Media Archive (larc.sdsu.edu/voces). In addition, a 2-dvd set of interviews with women from Guatemala can be purchased from the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at University of Hawai'i Manoa (nflrc.hawaii.edu/publications.cfm) for $25.00. Videotaped interviews were conducted in 2003 with 20 women in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, in 2005 with 20 women in Morelia, Michoacán, México, and most recently in Donostia, País Vasco, and Tarapoto, Peru (available in 2007).
This growing video archive presents the views, values, and choices of women of many ages (10 to 78), backgrounds, and professions by asking each woman the same set of seven open-ended questions in Spanish:
- Introducción. Introduction, description of family, profession, personality.
- ¿Cuáles son las tres cosas más importantes en su vida? ¿Por qué son importantes? What are the three most important things in your life, and why are they important?
- ¿Qué problemas tiene en su vida? ¿Qué hace para resolverlos? What problems do you have? How are you trying to resolve these problems?
- ¿Cuáles son los valores más importantes que aprendió Ud. de su madre? ¿Cómo pasa estos valores a otras personas? What values did you learn from your mother? How do you pass these values to others?
- ¿Hay una experiencia que me pueda contar que tuvo un impacto fuerte en su vida? Is there an experience you can tell me about that had a strong impact on your life?
- ¿Qué espera para su futuro? ¿el futuro de su familia? ¿el futuro de su país? What do you hope for your own future, the future of your family, and the future of your country?
- Si tuviera la oportunidad de hacer cualquier cosa, sin importar el dinero, ¿Qué haría? If you could do anything, and money didn't matter, what would you do?
- Help students explore the female views of cultures with an inductive approach.
- Provide students with repetitive, structured, and student-controlled listening practice.
- Provide a model for an ethnographic approach to learning language and culture.
These listening materials are different from most recorded interviews in that they provide students with many voices answering the same set of questions. Responses contain many of the same vocabulary words and structures, which provides repetition and restatement in listening practice, and exposes students to regional varieties of Spanish. Students can listen to an entire interview of one particular woman, or compare all of the women's answers to one question.
Students should answer the questions themselves before listening to the interviews and share their own answers with classmates. The sharing of both personal answers and later summary and analysis by students of the women's answers helps to create a social context and builds community in the classroom. This activity is a challenge for some students, as these are not questions most U.S. students have thought about. By answering the questions and sharing their answers in class before listening to Las Voces interviews, students also activate important vocabulary and grammar structures that are needed to express their answers in Spanish. The teacher also can use class discussion of the students' own answers to help students analyze which questions generate answers that are shared by many students (shared cultural values) and which questions seem to solicit different answers (individual variation). This type of analysis serves as a model for drawing careful generalizations .
The future of Las Voces project is secure, thanks to a commitment from LARC at San Diego State University, to host the project on a video-streaming internet server. I am now collaborating with two San Diego State Univ. faculty, Hanada Taha-Thomure and Huma Ghoshat, to expand the project to include Women's Voices in Urdu, Farsi, and Arabic.
- Access Las Voces free of charge at: larc.sdsu.edu/voces
- Worksheets and methodology for using Las Voces at various levels at:nflrc.hawaii.edu/voces/
- Las Voces Guatemala interviews published in 2-DVD set by NFLRC (2005).nflrc.hawaii.edu/voces/ .
- Questions, comments, and worksheets to use with Las Voces should be directed to Tess Lane at tlane@hpu.edu.
Spanish Honor Society Benefits Students and Sponsors
Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School
A couple of years ago I attended the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese annual meeting for the first time, and a friend urged me to go to the workshop led by the leaders of the Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica (SHH) a national Spanish Honor Society. He told me that the directors were very friendly and encouraging, and he was right. At the meeting, sponsors of chapters all over the US got together to report on the activities of each chapter. Some were incredibly active, while others were less so. Everyone was brimming with enthusiasm and creative ways to get students of Spanish to use the language outside the classroom. I sat there thinking it might be worthwhile for me to charter a chapter. Finally the editor of the SHH literary magazine got up to make her report. ¡Albricias!, the SHH literary magazine, publishes student essays, poetry, and drawings on a quarterly basis. She said that the magazine was particularly in need of good essays, and she urged us to have our students submit compositions, telling us that they would very likely be published. That did it for me. I had just finished teaching a Spanish III Honors course, and I had some very good writers in class, so I thought I would take the plunge and start a chapter. It was one of the best decisions of my career.
Chartering a chapter of SHH is easy. The forms can be downloaded from the SHH website, www.sociedadhonorariahispanica.org, and the one-time fee is only $25. Each SHH sponsor receives a copy of ¡Albricias! each quarter, along with a becas packet in December describing the various awards offered to teachers and students. Students are eligible for membership in SHH after their freshman year. They are required to be honors students in Spanish, but the society is flexible enough to let each school set its own standards for admission. Students pay $5 one time when they are invited to join the organization, and once they are members they are eligible to contribute to the literary magazine, and compete for scholarships and free trips.
The first year I launched our Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz chapter of SHH I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but my students were very enthusiastic about being invited to join the group, and they brainstormed activities. In order to raise funds for service activities, we sponsored several Taco Tuesdays at school, for which the members of SHH would each bring in a major ingredient of taco salads, and we sold them at lunch for $5 each, which covered a taco salad, rice, dessert, and a drink. The whole school loves taco salad, so we were able to raise enough money to offer scholarships to two students who were going to Oaxaca on a summer study program. We also put together a Day of the Dead altar, with a poster explaining this Mexican tradition and its connection to our celebration of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. We sold skull pops at lunch to get the rest of the school involved. In the springtime, we sent a group of SHH students and other Spanish students into downtown DC to the Organization of American States to help with their annual Food Fest. Each OAS member nation sets up a booth and sells food and drinks, and our students sold tickets used to buy the various dishes. They got a chance to use their Spanish in a festive atmosphere, with people from all over the world.
Since our chapter was launched, we have had several of our members have their original work published in ¡Albricias! The first year, our president wrote an essay about her impressions of Oaxaca. Last year, a student published an essay describing an orphan she met while on a service trip to Peru. Another student wrote a poem about the tango, and one of our members contributed a beautiful drawing of a Peruvian horse. I was surprised and delighted at the range of talent among our members. I had no idea that Gelsie was a talented artist, although I’d taught her in class. The fact that ¡Albricias! publishes work in a variety of creative endeavors means that sponsors can tap into their students’ wide-ranging interests and talents. Each item that is published is printed with a biography of the student and his or her picture, and contributors receive a copy of the publication, and a check for $35 for their work.
Each year the sponsors of SHH chapters are invited to nominate one junior and one senior for special SHH awards. The national SHH organization awards twelve $2000 scholarships and forty $1000 scholarships to outstanding seniors, to be used for college expenses. In addition, the SHH awards 20 Junior Travel Awards. The national directors take a group of 20 outstanding juniors from around the country on a 10-day, all expense paid trip in July through a Spanish-speaking country. Last summer I was fortunate that my student Karen Campion was one of the students chosen for the trip. She flew to Chicago, where she met the directors and the other participants, and they traveled to Mexico City, Taxco, Teotihuacan, Guadalajara and other cities. Karen is our president of SHH this year, and she came away from the trip sparked with enthusiasm for SHH and filled with new ideas she had gleaned from SHH activities described by the other participants.
This year our chapter of SHH has sponsored a Day of the Dead activity for our Saturday School, an enrichment program for inner city students. We met with a group of 7th graders and helped them make tissue paper skull masks and flowers, which later adorned our Day of the Dead altar. Our Taco Tuesdays continue to raise money for good causes. We are sponsoring the travel fees needed by a Honduran girl in the little town of Cerrón to pay a truck driver to drive her from her town to the high school and back each day. We recently sent money to the Religious Teachers Filippini, a group of nuns working in Brazil to prevent prostitution of very young girls by removing them from their families and teaching them to sew, and giving them sewing machines, so they will be more valuable to their families as seamstresses than they would be as prostitutes. We have finally saved enough money to sponsor a Salsa Mixer, which will be held in the spring, and we are hoping to sponsor salsa lessons before the mixer.
Reaching Out to Colleagues in the Field of Languages: Working to build a National Museum of Language
The Language Resource had the pleasure of talking with one of the founders of the National Museum of Language in College Park, Maryland the other day. Amelia Murdoch told us about plans for the museum and how language teachers can get involved. This museum promises to be a great resource for all of us who work in the language field.
LR: How did the idea come about for a Museum of Language?
AM: Well, this is on our website, http://languagemuseum.org/history.htm but I’ll tell you about it.
I worked at the National Security Agency and I was on an advisory group to a top administrator who was in charge of research, who was also responsible for linguistic matters. The advisory group would complain to him that administrators didn’t understand the problems of linguists.
One Air Force Colonel was told it took ten years to train a linguist, and he said, "Why, that’s as long as it takes to train a pilot!" He seemed to think that linguists could be trained overnight. Another time we were trying to compile glossaries, and one manager said, "Why do you need somebody to buy your dictionaries?" - not realizing that we had world-wide responsibilities. For example, an African language might have a dictionary that was written in the 1940s that would be inadequate to today’s needs. The language guru, as we call him, George Vergine, he said, "Why don’t you have a language fair?" The graphics dept offered to do the entire exhibit for us, and it was successful because it was visually oriented, simplified. Each exhibit was unclassified but it illustrated a problem that was common to our work.
The effect of that exhibit on people when they first saw it was so outstanding, that it made us think we ought to do it on a museum scale. This was a way to reach people who do not understand the many aspects of language, that it changes, not in terms of years, but daily, and to illustrate that some languages are related, that it’s better to train people in related languages, and that in some countries, knowing one language is not enough, but you have to learn three languages, as in African countries where you have the national language, and the tribal language, and a colonial language.
When we did the language fair, the agency paid to have it put on display at the Greenbelt Armory for four days, and they paid to have the high school kids bussed in to see the exhibit. We found that some language teachers did not have a background in language – they were hired because they were native speakers of the language but they didn’t have much knowledge of language. We realized the teachers needed to have these concepts just as much as the kids did.
So we worked on it over the years, and in 1985 some of us were going to go to the Smithsonian, but no one wanted to do enough work to get it in shape to present to the Smithsonian. In ’97 I decided we had to get it together. When a group met, we decided to do it ourselves, not to go through the bureaucracy. Once we have it established, we may offer it to the Smithsonian, but we wanted to get the job done, that’s how we felt.
LR: On the website and in the newsletter there’s a picture of a building. Where would that be?
AM: We hired a young architectural student; we told him the site we wanted, and we’re trying to get a museum complex started near the Metro stop in College Park. That area has been designated as a museum complex by the city of College Park, There’s an aviation museum there now. We’d get a developer to build a complex centered around the language museum. Now we can’t ask for anything for exhibits because we don’t have storage space. We consider that an interim building. The young man who designed it did it as his master’s project. He was working with a specialist in museum design. It’s a serious effort by us to look to the future. But it requires a great deal of money and political clout. It’s hard to get sites the public will agree with. We’ll have to develop more public sentiment about the museum.
LR: It’s a beautiful building. Right now the exhibits in the museum
AM: They are very minor.
LR: I see you have some language lab equipment.
AM: We really don’t have anything yet. We have two rooms in the office building now, one has information about our programs, and the other has information on the museum itself, the building and the site. I’d like to have somebody design the program room so when you walk in it looks like a museum. We need more helping hands. The website, I think, is shaping up. That seems to be the place where the action is now, and where people want to help.
LR: What’s your ideal museum exhibit?
AM: We have decided on major themes
Universal Aspects of Language
Language in Society
Languages of the World
I’m working on the area of Language in Society – one of the things you can see in the US is in place names – the Indians have moved but the names of places have remained. We might start with the states’ names – that’s something everyone can relate to.
I’ve been talking with people about this since 1971, and if you talk to someone long enough, you discover that everybody has some special interest in language. When I talk about language I’m not just talking about conjugating verbs, and linguistics. People who are professional linguists often think of linguistics as being the subject, but the subject is really language. Language is so much a part of everything we do – language is technology, it’s the invention of the telephone, it’s the invention of the radio, it’s the study of the brain, and linguists do all of these things, but language is a larger study than the study of linguistics. I want the public to come in an see ‘how does the brain process language?’ I want two figures, because I want one to talk and one to listen, to show what happens when you speak, what goes on in the brain, how the ears operate, how the eyes operate, I want to show problems with hearing; what the brain is doing. This is not health; it’s all language. This huge battle at Gallaudet University is a language battle.
LR: What do you envision being a good exhibit in your new building? What would be interesting to the average ten year old?
AM: One topic that stood out as we talked to people about this museum is the Linguistic Heritage of America. I think it should show each of the foreign language elements that came to this country and where they went. And the food – think of the Latino food that is available here now.
The British wanted to have a "World of Language" museum, but they were looking to focus on the history of the English language. We could not make that the center of ours, because a lot of people in America would say, "I don’t care two hoots about the history of the English Language". They are more interested in their linguistic heritage, what the contribution is of that language.
LR: That’s the main feature of our culture, the diversity.
AM: Absolutely, and that’s what we say – we want to show how all of these linguistics groups have come to America and contributed to our literature… I’d like to have an author in residence, who’d stay for a year. We could have workshops with children. I’d like to have a separate hall for the Young Linguists. It would replicate what we are doing for the adults but at a child’s level. They’d have things on the floor, maybe maps, and writing and poetry workshops.
LR: My friend’s kids are really interested in different writing systems, and play with plastic Japanese or Chinese characters.
AM: What I want to have is displays on the various writing systems – and the evolution of writing instruments. You could have things so they could see what is the difference between a fountain pen and a quill pen.
LR: And a typewriter! Most of them have never seen a typewriter before.
AM: At ACTFL last year, we had a typewriter and everyone was drawn to it. People say, language is no intangible, but language is responsible for much of technology. It’s all interrelated. People don’t realize that, but a huge amount of technology today is oriented toward language. People want to see it faster, they want to see it clearer, or they want to have more fonts. One of the items we have listed under the Universal Aspects of Language refers to the recording of language. Everybody, I don’t care how smart or well educated they were, said, "Well, I hope you’re gonna have writing, too." She laughed. "What do you mean, records were originally written records!" That shocked me – this shows how language has evolved in society - they think of records as oral. In England, the history of the country is in the Hall of Records; births and deaths and all of that is in the Hall of Records.
I want to include both first language and second language acquisition. It’s important for people to come in and understand how kids learn. I want to have an explanation of the body as a language machine, with the brain as the control – how the ears work, how the eyes work, how your breath, how the lungs work, sign language, of course – the theory is, of course, that the use of the hands was essential in the beginning, in the origins of language – that it’s always been a part of language.
LR: I’ve always felt that gesture is very important.
AM: Yes, that’s it – there’s something in us that if you tied your hands and you couldn’t use them….
LR: You’d have trouble talking!
AM: I heard a lecture once by a woman who had this theory – and every thing was a gesture. That’s part of the universal aspect of language. You have the language machine – the physical and psychological functioning of the body. And then of course, the recording of language. It’s essential to being human. The fact that we are able to record language has changed the world.
LR: What kind of action would you like our readers to take if they want to support the museum?
AM: You can go to our website and let us know if you have a suggestion for a simple display, (we don’t have room for anything large) if you have a small display that you would like to design or build if necessary – if you’d need things like newspapers or writing instruments you’d have to gather those yourself. We’d also like donations and for people to become members. And remember us in your will.
LR: I think a lot of the foreign language teachers have probably been doing this kind of thing to inform people…
AM: Yes, the teachers are our best source of ideas. Not the linguistic scholar, who might not be able to put it into a workable idea of how to present it. But schoolteachers have. They’re used to doing this, they’ve been doing this for their constituents, for their students.
LR: To convey the importance of language.
AM: I’ve been disappointed that more of them have not stepped forward. I think that we can do more in terms of educating people in all walks of life. I’d like the museum to eventually become the ultimate place for the endangered languages of the world. Wouldn’t it be wonderful? If you have a museum that’s dedicated to language, that’s the place to have the endangered languages, not the Library of Congress – once we’re really established and have a few million dollars, we’d ask them to donate some of the materials they have so scholars can come. I see the museum as a place for anybody who wants to know something about language, and they don’t know where to go. When I was a sophomore in high school and I was asked what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to be a translator, because that’s the only thing I knew about.
I want to open up the world to students coming along, who say, "Why should I study French?" or "Why should I study Spanish?" We want to have two language lecture series, one is sort of a general one, and then I want to have ‘Language and Your Career, where we’d bring in doctors, nurses, teachers, and architects, who’d talk about the use of language in their work. It’s a huge project, so we need more volunteers, and we really need more money in the next year.
LR: Thank you for talking with us today.
Readers can contact the National Museum of Language
through their website http://languagemuseum.org/ or
National Museum of Language
Administrative Offices
Executive Building Suite 202
7100 Baltimore Avenue
College Park, MD 20740
301-864-7071
Promoting Foreign Language Development in the Art Classroom
At Loudon County Virginia's professional development days for its art teachers in August, Art Educator, Dr. K. B. Basseches and Foreign Language Consultant, Cynthia Weill demonstrated how to incorporate foreign language skill development into art and craft making activities.
Over a period of two days the presenters offered three workshops. The first presentation focused on wood carving and ceramics making in Oaxaca, Mexico. A second gave participants an in-depth review of textile arts from around the world such as Chilean harpilleras, Panamanian molas, story cloth and embroidery. In the first two sessions the presenters focused on the development of and intergenerational practices involved in making each of the crafts. A third presentation on Hurricane Katrina introduced participants to an art show arranged by Basseches entitled "…and the levee broke: meditations on the power of water" in which children and artist made art representing the theme of "the power of water."
With each session, the instructors modeled ways for the participants to reproduce variations of the art forms introduced such as ceramic sculpture and molas. For the former, the presenters described the methods artisans in Mexico use to create their ceramic work. Basseches emphasized the difference between making the art (as the Mexican originators do when they create their art) and making art "in the style of…" the Mexican artists (which is what students in American schools would do after seeing the Mexican work). Participants were also introduced to the skill of making Polaroid transfers to focus on the skill of "overlapping." Polaroid transfers were introduced as a contemporary interpretation of the mola tradition to produce the impression of shallow depth. Then art teachers were shown how they could work across disciplines with a foreign language teacher to improve skill areas in listening, speaking, reading and writing as well as vocabulary development.
An example of this combination of fine arts, content, and foreign language revolved around a unit on the Aguilar sisters of Oaxaca, Mexico. The sisters: Guillermina, Josefina, Irene and Concepción are internationally known ceramists working in a figurative style. As children, the girls were taught by their mother to make useful household objects of clay to sell in the local market to help supplement the family income. As they grew more skilled, each sister began working in a more figurative style. Now their work reflects the world around them as in the image of women at the local market. However, eldest sister Guillermina’s work has become increasingly autobiographical as she represents herself in clay at various stages of her life.
Weill, who did much of her thesis research on Oaxacan artisans, presented the group with slides of Guillermina Aguilar's working process. Participants saw each stage of Guillermina's creative process from mixing clay, to modeling a figure, firing the object in a kiln, then painting the final work. Participants understood how Guillermina depends on all members of her family including her grandchildren to help her with this highly labor-intensive process.
After gaining an understanding of how Guillermina and her sisters made their work and the sources of their inspiration, participants combined art making and development of foreign language skills. For the first activity key items related to Guillermina's ceramic making were placed in a box. Then participants were asked to pull something from the box without looking. The instructor asked, "What is it?" / "¿Qué es?" Participants were then given the name for the object in Spanish such as clay, "barro" and ceramic figure, "figura de cerámica."
These words were carefully chosen to develop the learner's knowledge of ceramic making and to develop vocabulary for the following reading activity. The presenters read a translated and simplified version of the children’s book, Josefina by Jeanette Winter. Josefina is the second eldest Aguilar sister. The book is especially useful because it documents the process of clay figure development through the pictures. Between the pictures and the new vocabulary the participants were able to follow the text of the book as it was read in Spanish. To reinforce understanding of the text the participants were asked to sequence pictures of the book that had been photocopied without the text. After they sequenced the work, the participants were given the text to place with the pictures. Knowledge of the key vocabulary taught in the beginning helped the participants to complete this task. For a final reading activity, the participants were given the text without the pictures and asked to draw illustrations for the written description.
As a culminating foreign language activity, participants were taught vocabulary for parts of the body: head, "cabeza," body, "cuerpo" as well as the commands for "make" and "put." Using Total Physical Response techniques (TPR) the instructors called off commands: make a head, "hagan una cabeza;" make a body, "hagan un cuerpo;" put the head on the body, "pongan la cabeza con el cuerpo." By the time the instructors were finished with the commands, the predominately monolingual art teachers had completed a clay figure.
The second part of the session was devoted to studio art making activities in which teachers could apply their knowledge of the ceramic tradition to make their own sculptures reflective of their own personal traits and symbols. One of the points made during the lecture on Guillermina Aguilar was how she evolved from making utilitarian objects to figurative/autobiographical pieces.
In her twenties, Guillermina began experimenting with figurative work. She made the piece below in her late twenties. She felt that the piece was a statement on her life at the time.
Now that Guillermina is a grandmother she continues her autobiographical work. This piece of an old woman holding a young woman who is in turn holding a bowl is a commentary on her evolution as an artist.
In order to prepare for the related ceramic making activity, participants were asked to make sketches from their own lives. After developing approximately six thumbnail sketches learners were given clay and asked to create an autobiographical statement. The teacher's artistic response was varied. Pieces included a triad of female figures representing the artist’s role as wife, mother and teacher. Another teacher depicted himself as a fisherman and a painter.
Feedback on the introduction of foreign language into the art education classroom was very positive. Comments included, "I would have learned a foreign language if it had been taught to me in an art context;" and "I always thought there were natural connections between art and language development. It’s just that no one ever showed me how to do it before."
K.B. Basseches is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is past president of the West Virginia Art Education Associations and was named West Virginia's Art Educator of the Year in 2002 and the West Virginia Art Education Association Higher Education Art Educator of the Year in 2000.
Cindy Weill was a Spanish teacher in the Glastonbury Public Schools in CT. She is trained as an art historian and studies the process of folk artisans around the world.
Gross J. & Hayne H. (1998). Drawing facilitates children’s verbal reports of Emotionally laden events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 1999, 5, (3). 265-283.
Wesson M. & Salmon K. (2001). Drawing and showing: Helping children to report emotionally laden events. Applied Cognitive Psychology. (15) 301-320.
©2006 The National Capital Language Resource Center
Involving Parents in Their Children's Foreign Language Learning
Research indicates that parental involvement in children's education positively impacts on children's learning. The National Standards for Foreign Language Learning call for progress toward extending learning into the community. Foreign language teachers can create and foster links between the school, home, and community by involving parents. This can benefit students by giving their academic learning relevance in terms of their home environments and community. While many school programs exist to inform parents of school procedures and activities, parental involvement as outlined in this article builds upon parents' knowledge and experiences and on their roles as community members. These enrich, enhance, and extend students' academic learning. This article suggests ways to establish links to home and community and identifies two areas of activities which support these links. (Note: the word parent is used in this article to describe any adult caretaker of a child.)
After deciding the basic structure of parental involvement, the teacher lays the groundwork for its establishment by sending home letters, by holding workshops and meetings for parents, and/or by holding a discussion in class with children, informing and involving them in the project. Teachers may wish to emphasize to parents that they do not need to be familiar with the language their child is studying and that parents can participate in a number of ways, many of which are low or no cost.
Parents play an important role in making links between school and home. For example, children's interviews of parents can encourage parents and students to explore language and culture within their own homes. Students and teacher can work together to design oral interviews exploring parents' experiences with language learning and other cultures, including those being studied in the class. Sample starter questions are: Have you ever visited a country where people speak French? Why were you there? Did you ever study another language? Tell me about it. Did any of our ancestors come from a place where people spoke a language different than English? The data from these interviews can be used in class in a variety of activities, including reporting to the class orally, writing up the results of the interview, and creating visuals.
Parents can also play a valuable role in helping their children explore and become involved in their community's linguistic and cultural worlds. Parents and students can seek out community resources which are related to the language and culture being studied. These resources include radio stations or programs, newspapers, televisions shows, library holdings. They also include restaurants, movies, and food stores. Many communities have local festivals to celebrate the heritage of community members. There may also be cultural events which involve the language and culture. If attendance at such events or patronizing such establishments is not possible, simply documenting them provides evidence of their presence in the community, providing a relevance to and enhancing in-school learning. One elementary school Spanish teacher involved her students' parents by setting up a project in which students and parents together photographed stores, restaurants, and other establishments which were part of the Spanish-speaking community. This linked learning in the school, home, and community in a concrete manner.
Learning experiences shared between children and their parents and brought into the classroom provide a rich body of knowledge which can be further built upon. Parental involvement boosts student academic success by providing relevance to the home and establishing connections in the community.
Jennifer Delett and Barbara Rado Mousseau provided many ideas for this article.
Parents, Teacher, and a Community Help Make 5 de Mayo a Memorable Spanish-Speaking Event
This month we celebrate the Hispanic-American holiday, Cinco de Mayo. According to MEXonline.com, "The holiday of Cinco De Mayo, The 5th Of May, commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. It is primarily a regional holiday celebrated in the Mexican state capital city of Puebla and throughout the state of Puebla, with some recognition in other parts of the Mexico, and especially in U.S. cities with a significant Mexican population. It is not, as many people think, Mexico's Independence Day, which is actually September 16."
My ears perked up when I heard about a nearby school that is involving students of Spanish in service learning and culture. Carol Nezzo’s class at Lakelands Park Middle School in Gaithersburg, Maryland visited a senior apartment complex to put on a program about Cinco De Mayo. They set up stations to work on crafts, history picture book making, and games with the residents, shared their experiences with cooking foods from Spanish-speaking countries. They made Ojos de Dios (God’s Eyes; a woven decoration made with sticks and yarn)and Papel Picado, intricate designs made by folding and cutting paper. How did one part-time teacher manage to organize this opportunity for her Spanish students? She called upon the resources available to her through her community, the city of Gaithersburg, and among the parents of her students.
How the City and School Collaboration Began
Maureen Herndon, who is Program Manager for Human Services in the City of Gaithersburg, is excited about the Cinco de Mayo event. Forest Oak Towers is a housing complex for seniors and disabled individuals. Speaking last week, Herndon said, “The counselor there, Connelly Stewart, is wonderful and she has been working with many residents on a wide range of issues and has also pointed out the need for fun and group activities. At the same time, Carol Nezzo called and asked us if we knew of any volunteer opportunity for her Spanish classes. We matched the two groups and are very excited to be part of this intergenerational, intercultural and sure to be fun event! Over 25 residents are presently signed up to attend.”
Cooking in Spanish
To begin learning about Mexican culture , the class made tortillas by hand and with tortilla presses.The students found that they like the press method better than making tortillas by hand. They also used the Mexican chocolate rounds that contain cinnamon to make Mexican hot chocolate. After "baking" the tortillas on top of the stove, students added cheese (Monterrey Jack) to make quesadillas, which were heated on cookie sheets in the ovens. (The school has a special teaching kitchen with six ovens.) There was some instruction in cooking safety, of course. Parent volunteer Donna Von Wald explained “It was messy, but fun!” It was a great way to get the students more deeply involved with Spanish class.
The students next had to research and choose a recipe that would be common in a Spanish-speaking country. See the worksheet Nezzo created to explain the Comida unit. To help them find recipes, Nezzo brought in books from the library. A series she found helpful was Lerner Publishing's Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks with titles like, "Cooking the Cuban Way," "Cooking the Mexican Way" and Cocina de la Familia by Marilyn Tausend. Nezzo liked these bnooks because "They did not look childish at all and they explained the recipes very clearly in large print."Student translated into Spanish, and made a poster with an introduction to the food and a drawing or photo; a list and a picture of the ingredients; and a map of the country. To download the worksheet directing how to make the poster, click here. Each student made the food at home, then several parent volunteers came into class to help heat up the dishes and serve them pot-luck style.
Preparation for the Fiesta
Before the Cinco de Mayo event, Nezzo had students choose a station to prepare. She explains, “The more time to brainstorm with students ahead of time, the more the students come up with their talents that they want to share. They could choose a craft station such as ojos de dios, flores, papel picado - or they could choose the history station and do book making and enter information and pictures connected with Cinco de Mayo.” To practice a dialogue about their craft or the content of their station, Nezzo had students use post-it notes to construct sentences and arrange them into a dialogue. The stations they could choose from included quesadilla making, and they took along their food posters to hang near the food preparation." Sangria was served at the fiesta as a drink, at a parent's suggestion. "Sangria originated in Spain and is now in many Latin American Countries. There are lots of recipes without alcohol. If there had been more space and time at the fiesta, it would have been possible to have a lesson based on the different fruit vocabulary and verbs in the recipe. Next year I may make a list of the foods and drinks for the students to choose from – or at least make sure that the April posters include one focused on Sangria. The students did very well choosing their own recipes. There were some duplicates, but that was ok. A substitute teacher volunteered (without pay) and the tech person helped. So we have a wonderful crew!”
Cinco de Mayo Celebration
On the day before the celebration, parent volunteers noticed only ten students had returned their permission slips. So they called and reminded parents to send in the forms, and when they came to school on Friday, 30 students had the signed forms. This is yet another way that parents can help to make such an event more successful. At Forest Oak Towers, 35 – 40 seniors and their assistants enjoyed traveling from one station to another learning about Mexican history, crafts, and food. The stations were:
- Ojos de Dios (God’s Eyes): The students used popsicle sticks for the cross pieces on this craft which comes from the Huichol Indians in Mexico. Volunteer Donna Von Wald recommends using variegated yarn so you don’t have to switch colors and still end up with a beautiful multicolored hanging.
- Flores: students showed how to make beautiful paper flowers
- Papel Picado: students showed how to fold and cut colored paper to make lacy decorations to hang from ceilings or walls.
- Making quesadillas: students assembled tortillas, cheese, and spinach to toast in the oven (much of the food was provided by the City of Gaithersburg).
- Playing games: students brought checkers and cribbage to play with the residents.
- History Picture Books: students and guests colored designs that represented aspects of Cinco de Mayo. This activity was popular - and a good way to engage people in conversations about Cinco de Mayo.
- Non-Alcoholic Sangria: students cut up fruit and mixed juices for this punch drink.
- Mexican Wedding cookies: students showed their posters of how to make the cookies and their history and provided samples.
Guests arrived and the party proceeded with a lot of activity. A few students had the food station and they helped guests to carry food to seats. Students did not eat until all guests had their food - which means the students did not eat much. (Students took and ate bag lunches at the site, because the parents and teacher were not sure about available food for the students. It turned out to be essential that they had eaten their bag lunch, because more senior guests arrived than had signed up so there was not a lot of party food for the students.) There was a welcome in Spanish from a senior resident. A community person had come with a father who acted as the Master of Ceremonies, and she translated to English. A student volunteered the true meaning of Cinco de Mayo. Most of what went on was student initiated. The celebration was greatly appreciated by the residents; Von Wald said many of them thanked the parents and students for bringing the celebration to them. The residents requested that the papel picado be left hanging, because it brightened up the room. The residents turned out to be multi-ethnic, not just Hispanic. Communication went on in English, Spanish and through demonstration. When the event was over, students had an hour to clean up and to reflect on the service they performed, how it was helpful to the community, and what they learned about themselves. They will receive service learning hours.To follow up on the event, Nezzo’s students will reflect and discuss how Spanish gets one into interesting places with interesting people. They will write for short periods in their Learning Logs.
Getting parents and the community involved
I was impressed with how much Nezzo is able to accomplish with her middle school Spanish class, so I asked how she gets parents to help out. She told about her process: “Beginning in August, I talked with all parents by phone and at Back to School night. I keep a data sheet for each family. Over Christmas break I reviewed the sheets to recall the families who were interested in volunteering. I matched them up with my notebook that I keep on possible field trips and projects. At the same time, I called the places where we might have trips in order to get tentative dates. I keep working with two types of data: 1) Family data sheets where I record what parents/guardians say and 2) My notebook that has divisions for all of the possible projects and trips that we might do - and the information that I gradually collect about these. Eventually, because of wonderful kids and parents, ideas and plans from everyone come together.” Nezzo continues: “I am a part time teacher so that I can have time for this. There are parents who are very gracious with their time. Many do have their own jobs. One or two do not. Some have flexible schedules. Some knew each other from the previous grade school. So there are many things that come together here. We have a dedicated and experienced volunteer coordinator for our school. I hope that this is not a "once in a lifetime" kind of year - but these experiences for the students do depend on a lot of people working together - and the e-mail.”
Parent Von Wald commented that many parents are happy to come in to help in the classroom, because such opportunities are rarer when their child is in middle school. Nezzo welcomes parents at any time; a special chair is set aside in her classroom for parents who are visiting. She has arranged other field trips, such as to the University of Maryland’s Language House, to demonstrate to students where language study may take them. Students in Lakelands Park Middle School Spanish classes are the beneficiaries of an imaginative teacher and generous parents who created a memorable educational experience for all involved.
(Photos by Leslie Guerra)