مدونة عبدالله الشهراني

  Employing "Good Talk" and "Warm Language" By Jessica Cinco Have you ever had one of those teachers? The ones whose monotone voice drones on and on…and on, until you either doze off in the middle of the lecture or hopelessly slump down in your desk, with your hands covering your face wondering if the Cosmos was trying to punish you? Or maybe you had a professor whose lectures were so unclear, complex, or abstract that you spent every single moment in class trying to quell a panic attack because you knew that you wouldn’t be comprehend the course material enough to pass the test. I had one such professor, whom I’ll call “Dr. O,” during my freshman year of college. At that time, I was a business major with high hopes of becoming a successful business woman. I enrolled in Dr. O’s Introduction to Microeconomics class, and as I settled myself into my desk on the first day, I knew I was in trouble. Dr. O quickly introduced himself, the syllabus and the class. Then,...

  Effective and engaging learning springs from well designed learning based on proven theories and principles. The Conversational Framework The design of this MOOC was informed by Diana Laurillard's Conversational Framework (2012). The Conversational Framework is a model of the conditions necessary for learning to take place. The framework argues that it is vital to put in place cycles of communication between the teacher and the students and between the students and their peers. These cycles are enabled when the teacher engages learners in six learning types: acquisition (or reading, watching or listening) discussion inquiry or investigation practice collaboration production For more information, watch Professor Laurillard explain the six learning types in this video: Introduction to the six learning types . The Learning Designer We have used an online planning tool, the Learning Designer, to design each week of the course. The Learning Designer was developed by a team led by Dia...

 

  Opening the Classroom Door by Elaine Kendrick As we mentioned in the previous videos, it is very important that students get as much practice as possible communicating in English. Some of this will take place in the classroom, hopefully for about 80% of the time spent in class. Those minutes of class time are precious and few, so helping our students acquire English as a second language requires opening the door of the classroom and helping our learners recognize their opportunities to practice English in the outside world. Many opportunities to practice can be found on the Internet. CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) has been around since the 1960’s, when the focus of language instruction was on learning, not acquisition. Our technological resources have improved quite a bit since then, and thanks to the Internet and the widespread use of mobile devices, authentic contexts for practicing English that lead to acquisition are literally at their fingertips. Because English ...

  Excerpt from Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition , (pgs. 20-22) by Stephen D Krashen; retrieved September 3, 2015 from http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf The Affective Filter hypothesis states how affective factors relate to the second language acquisition process. The concept of an Affective Filter was proposed by Dulay and Burt (1977), and is consistent with the theoretical work done in the area of affective variables and second language acquisition, as well as the hypotheses previously covered in this chapter. Reasearch over the last decade has confirmed that a variety of affective variables relate to success in second language acquisition (reviewed in Krashen, 1981). Most of those studied can be placed into one of these three categories: (1) Motivation . Performers with high motivation generally do better in second language acquisition (usually, but not always, "integrative" (2) Self-confidence . Pe...

  Teaching Language Learning Strategies In the previous video you learned about the strategies that good language learners employ, namely: Predicting – using social and contextual clues to guess at the topic Using selective attention – paying attention to only what seems important Preparing – thinking about what one wants to communicate in advance Looking ridiculous – being willing to look foolish in order to complete the task Practicing Monitoring – correcting one’s own speech for accuracy Asking questions Taking notes Using imagery – relating new information to a visualization Finding the answer in multiple ways Using physical response – relating new information to a physical action Playing – experimenting with language Research has shown that language learners who use these strategies are more likely to acquire a foreign language. Oxford (1990) states that language learning strategies (LLS) allow learners to become more self-directed and expand the role of language teachers. Sh...

  Excerpt from Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition , pg. 10 by Stephen D Krashen; retrieved September 3, 2015 from http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf THE ACQUISITION-LEARNING DISTINCTION The acquisition-learning distinction is perhaps the most fundamental of all the hypotheses to be presented here. It states that adults have two distinct and independent ways of developing competence in a second language. The first way is language acquisition , a process similar, if not identical to the way children develop ability in their first language. Language acquisition is a subconscious process; language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but are only aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication. The result of language acquisition, acquired competence, is also subconscious. We are generally not consciously aware of the rules of the languages we have acquired. Inste...

Accuracy vs. Fluency: Find a Balance and Keep Moving Forward by Andrea Murau Haraway When I was in my early 20's, I accepted a job teaching English in Japan. While I had never studied Japanese or lived in Japan, I did have experience learning other languages and living in other countries. When I arrived in Kyoto, I joined two other English-teaching colleagues -- also new to Japan. We spent our first few months teaching, and outside of teaching, struggling to get by in daily life. We soon realized that we needed to take language classes, so as summer break approached, we enrolled in intensive Japanese classes. It was very interesting to watch our different approaches to learning (and using) our new language. One weekend, we decided to take a day trip to Ryoanji, a famous rock garden, located in the outskirts of Kyoto. We took a train to the area, but from the train station we had to ask directions to the garden. Here is where I discovered our different approaches. One friend was ver...

  Excerpt from Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition , (pgs. 64-66) by Stephen D Krashen; retrieved September 3, 2015 from http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf OPTIMAL INPUT IS COMPREHENSIBLE (a) How to aid comprehension If we are correct in positing comprehensibility as a crucial requirement for optimal input for acquisition, the question of how to aid comprehension is a very central one for second language pedagogy. Indeed, the comprehension requirement suggests that the main function of the second language teacher is to help make input comprehensible, to do for the adult what the "outside world" cannot or will not do. There are basically two ways in which the teacher can aid comprehension, linguistic and non-linguistic. Studies have shown that there are many things speakers do linguistically to make their speech more comprehensible to less competent speakers. Hatch (1979) has summarized the linguistic aspect of simpl...

Excerpt from Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition , (pgs. 20-22) by Stephen D Krashen; retrieved September 3, 2015 from http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf THE INPUT HYPOTHESIS (a) Statement of the hypothesis Let us first restate the question of how we acquire: given the correctness of the natural order hypothesis, how do we move from one stage to another? If an acquirer is at "stage 4", how can he progress to "stage 5"? More generally, how do we move from stage i , where i represents current competence, to i + 1, the next level? The input hypothesis makes the following claim: a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to move from stage i to stage i + 1 is that the acquirer understand input that contains i + 1, where "understand" means that the acquirer is focused on the meaning and not the form of the message. We acquire, in other words, only when we understand language that contains stru...