Current Question

November Question: How do you differentiate instruction in the WL Classroom?

Reader Responses:

• I survey my students during the first week of school to determine if a particular class has a dominant learning style or "intelligence". Then I make sure that I include that style or "intelligence" in every lesson, while cultivating the other styles and intelligences as well. I also encourage the stronger students to work with the weaker students to help them understand new concepts.


• I find history or cultural short videos on youtube that are from Latin America or Spain. The kids enjoy the sights and sounds of the people and places.


• My favorite differentiation strategy is to offer students choice in how to demonstrate their learning and choice in what specific topic to study. I do this by using an independent project in one semester and portfolio evaluation in another.

October Question: How do you teach culture?

Reader Response:
Culture is an integral part of my curriculum; in fact, it is the basis of everything that I do. I use the culture as the vehicle for teaching students grammar points. For example, my students learn about the Maya, Aztec and Inca cultures, and through our study of these three pre-Columbian civilizations, we study the preterite and the imperfect tenses. This method of integrating grammar and culture is very effective and beneficial to students to have both language and culture together, rather than having them presented separately.

September Question: How do you inform students about and get them interested in study abroad opportunities?

Reader Responses:

• I do four things in my classroom: 1. As an assignment, have them interview someone who has studied or worked abroad; 2. As an assignment, have them find and answer questions about a specific study abroad question; 3. Invite study abroad agency representatives to speak to my classes; 4. Invite students who have studied abroad to speak to my classes
  
  
• As a former undergraduate educator, I have always felt that the testimonials of peers and former students who "took the leap" and found their experience to be mind and/or life changing has a strong impact on other students. Getting such individuals to talk with students—and their parents—appears to make it more relevant.
  
  If it is not possible to bring such individuals to class or some other meeting, see about getting a video recorded testimonial or do a SKYPE session (live, on-line video) with the target audience.
  
  If the presentation is put on a web-site, include some cultural info and give the students extra-credit points for doing a more careful reading and then recalling a few of such items on the next quiz, etc.
  
  In public spaces—schools, public libraries, etc.—create photo or audio-video exhibits , along with brief testimonials or bilingual statements from students in the overseas culture about the positive impact on them of such American student visits.
  
  On a bulletin/white board/video screen, "plant" intriguing questions (i.e., Do you know what the 5 de mayo holiday really celebrates?) and/or facts (i.e., In Sweden at Midsommar time unmarried women were urged to find 7 different kinds of flowers and put them under their pillow in order to . . .. ) Tie the study/travel abroad experience to answering or experiencing these kinds of information.
  
  Another important factor to build interest is for an instructor, parent or some respected adult to have had personal overseas study-abroad/ work/travel experiences and be able to share these and relate how they impacted one's life, career plans, etc.
  
  Given the vital significance of global interaction and the imperative of even more of it to come, one needs to realize that well educated citizens and workers will be expected to interact with confidence with those of other countries and cultures. If they don't realize it, parents, of course, also need to hear about the significance of study abroad. And especially, that study abroad is for everyone, not just a chosen few. (Yes, I know, that may mean fund raising to help defray costs for some or all participants.)
  
  I expect that many on this list will add to these ideas and hope that it helps teachers who are working hard to prepare their students for the global community we now live in.
  

• I tell them about programs offered by our sister community and state universities in CT during class and pass on brochures to them or pull up info on-line and share it in class. I've worked at other schools where study abroad programs are run, so I can personally recommend the programs since I know the professors running them. Last summer, I had 3 students study abroad on such programs. This year, perhaps I'll ask these students to come back and speak to my classes to encourage others to follow in their footsteps.
  
  
• "Postcards from France" by Megan MacNeill Libby - a 15 year-old who does a year of study in France. I read it aloud in class during the first few weeks of the school year. It really catches the students' interest and I have many who dash off to Guidance and start making arrangements for study abroad!
  
  
• I think that the frst step would be to make students interested and " in love" with the target Language. Exposing them to lots of visuals, and bringing the Culture to the classroom is one motivating way. Discussing and comparing between cultures as well as " living" the Culture by trying to bring it to the classroom, is essential to experience a little dose of what is like to be abroad. The most important of all, is to talk about the different opportunities that will open doors to a successful future once immerged into the culture and living it in reality.
  
  
• I have a wall filled with collage-picture-frames featuring students that have traveled with me in the past or spent time studying abroad. The kids love seeing pictures of their friends in exciting places around the world. It generates questions, interest and excitement. I have hundreds of pictures...It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words!

June/July Question: If your school would pay for it what would you most like to do to improve your language teaching ability during the summer vacation?

Reader Responses:

Travel! I'd take either a study abroad or volunteer trip to a Spanish-speaking country. I do this on my own every few years but it would be nice for someone else to pay!

Fly to Manosque and spend the whole time with my French cousins. No English at all for 3 months.

Provide them with online Rosetta Stone TOTALe to increase their motivation and help them maintain and improve their progress.

I would travel to a Spanish-speaking country I've never visited before and talk with as many people in as many cities as I could. Every travel experience I have ever had has enhanced my ability to describe foreign cultures to students with greater detail, clarity and richness.

I would take a language course in the a country where the target language is spoken.

I would do a 3 day Immersion with native speakers.It would include daily news, music, dancing and singing, films, discussion, a field trip to a Hispanic market, meriendas, una fiesta final.

Go to a Spanish speaking country, take cultural classes and live with a host family. My real dream would be to go to Portillo Chile and work as a ski and snowboard instructor during the summer (which I do during weekends during the winter in CT).

I would travel to a country that speaks the target language.

I would like to have an opportunity to go the country where my language is spoken to update my skills. I would like to study how the language has evolved since I studied it 25 years ago. I want to learn the new idioms and the new popular culture.

I actually did it this summer! I studied at the Fundacion Ortega y Gasset in Madrid in the program for North American professors sponsored by the Consejeria de Educacion and the Embajadas de Espana. We studied new methodology in the teaching of Spanish as a second language, contemporary Spanish culture, and grammar and linguistics. It was fenomenal! My school helped fund this wonderful adventure and it was worth every penny I paid myself as well.

May Question: How do you integrate global awareness with standards based teaching?

April Question: How do you prepare your students to enter a language related career?

Reader Responses:

Connect students' language learning to as many other disciplines during their school day. after school, and on the weekends as possible. Enlist the support of colleagues, parents, administrators, community members to help you with this challenge.

March Question: How has being bilingual impacted your life?

Reader Responses:

• I am bilingual in Spanish-English. I became bilingual due to marriage and moved later to the USA where I earned a Master in Public Communication. My bilingual experience has been very interesting and happened in stages. First, I discovered the advantage of reaching more people and being able to understand their culture. There were difficult experiences in the process - my heavy accent, the lack of feedback in some life situations that native English speakers share, the sense of control in one language more than the other, including changes in personality - more confident and outgoing in my native language and more cautious and reserved in the other. The great bilingual impact in my life is the knowledge about other cultures, my understanding and sensitivity for others and my sense of pride for my culture. It is to see the world from a wider perspective and feel that I belong to more than one community or country.
  
  
  
• I can enter two different worlds freely. I get double courage from the world created by two different languages. I can think in the box and out of the box. I can always interpret life in two different perspectives. I feel I am kind of person who can swing into two worlds.

• Not with my first job, as Assistant d'anglais in a school in France; not when I became a TA in a University in the United States; not even after becoming a full-time high school French teacher.  In my fourteenth year of teaching, I went abroad as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher, and it was there and then that I felt like a real professional language teacher.  In the seventeen years since then, everything I do has reinforced the feeling.
• After 20 years.
• After I studied and lived abroad and felt very confident with the language and culture I was teaching.
• When I studied language learning theory.

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