This is to test image upload to blogger using Word.

Today we discussed different types of assessment, including self assessment. The discussion made me think about self assessment and its limitations. here are a few ideas

Yesterday we were introduce to Tokbox.com which is a service similar to google talk in that it does IM and voice messeging, but also does video conferencing and video messaging. it affords students to establish communication over time and space. it would be interesting to explore leaving video messages for eachother or for the teacher.

Last friday we had our first class, we discussed very general concepts related to the use of technology. Two points were particularly interesting.

This is a picture of the classroom where we are taking the CALL class, I am posting it because I want to point out the arrangement of the computers, the ones that are lined next to the wall have the monitor raised above the students heads, this makes it easy to monitor work. it is a little complicated for the students because it is unconfortable. Still, I think it is a good arrangement that facilitates monitoring of students.

This rubric was presented in some of the class materials. I took the picture and decided to post about it because it reminded me of what German is trying to do in the Academic Unit when evaluating teachers and working with the observations. It is a four point rubric but you have to make 2 decisions in order to narrow down the score.

I will encourage you to use something like this.

Theaching pragmatics has to do with teaching the meaining of language in context. It has to do with exploring different intentions of language depending on relationship, situation, intention, etc.

The frase: "Are you going home soon?" could have different meainings and intentions depending on the situation. I could mean that I want you to go, or that I need a ride, or that I am offering you a ride, or that I don't want to go home alone, etc. The meaning of the question depends on the relationship and the circumstances in which the question is asked.

There are books that offer exercises to explore pragmatics. The most important thing to consider when designing exercises or using materials that intend to develop pragmatic competence is that how the teacher approaches and uses the material is crucial.

For example you might have the following exercise: (taken from Beyond Language, Deena R. Levine and Mara B. Adelman, Prentce Hall.)

If someone offers you some food that you really don't like, you might say:

In your country: _______________________________________.

In the United states:

1. "I hate that"
2. "Sure, I'd love some more."
3. "I'll have just a little bit, please."
4. "Thanks, but I'm really full."

A teacher may approach the exercise as it is writen and concentrate on what is appropriate in the US or in Guatemala, focusing on a single right answer that is polite, appropriate, etc.

A different way, and a more useful, way to approach the material would be to explore how all the options are appropriate in different circumstances and try to decide what those circumstances are. This exploration could be done thinking of american culture as well as Guatemalan culture. Students could then roleplay the different situations in which each of the responses are appropriate.

In conclusion, when teaching pragmatics in a cultural lesson, it is important to avoid creating stereotypes or relying on them in order to explore appropriateness and meaning. It is more useful to explore the different meanings a phrase might have and the different situations in which a given phrase might be appropriate.

Hawaiian. Fried Mahi, mac salad, white rice. cabbage. It was very good.

Today we talked about teaching vocabulary and taking into account different features or properties of words when we teach.

Traditionally we focus on the denotation of words and we clarify denotation as students encounter the words. Many times vocabulary words are associated to the topic of the lesson that we are teaching and so we teach the vocabulary as it is used and presented in the lesson, without considering the extended features the words might have.

When we said extended features in class, we were refering to connotation, collocation, and semantic differences with related words.

We also discussed how exploring these features is a task that students needed to carry out independently more and more as they progress in their english studies. In addition to setting asside time for the exploration in class, students need to make this exploration a strategy in their language learning.

This reminded me of the experimenting I have been doing with Google language tools. Showing students how they can use Google language tools could encourage them to take on the task of exploring words and their extended features.

I will briefly describe Google language tools that may be helpful for students:

Define:

When using this operator in google search, Google will give back the definition of the word from different sources on the web. It also gives related frases, so you can explore the common pairings for this word. It works with single words, and phrases, and even many idioms. Ex: [define:stroll] [define:from the heart]

*:

We can use this operator to explore collocation. The axterix is a wild card in google and it means blank. If you type a word followed or precided by "*" you will get phrases that include the word and what is more commonly found next to it, either before or after. The use of this operator to determine collocation is limited because the corpus is not necesarilly limited to natural english. The corpus is all the web pages that google indexes.

" ":

We use the dobble quote to search for an exact phrase. We can use this to explore which is the most comon form of a phrase by searching for different variations and looking at how many results are found. For example: "alongside my friends" - 3,480 results; "along with my friends" - 2,380,000 results.

Google Image Search:

Google image search can be used as a visual dictionary. It works very well with concrete content words and it gives students a chance to learn vocabulary and clarify meaning without translation.

Google Translate Tools:

Finally, Google offers translation tools that are very acurate. The most interesting feature is that users can contribute better translations and so build up the translation database.

In conclusion, it would be helpful to plan a lesson with students in which you show them and help them use these tools so that they can clarify and explore vocabulary on their own.

Today we had a few minutes in which Jean and Misha shared a couple of websites that were very interesting and useful.

On thursday hawaiians celebrated Kamehameha day and during friday and saturday there were many celebrations and presentations to commemorate the day. We had an opportunity to see a few of the ceremonies. The first video is the lai drapping, in which lais are presented to King kamehameha.

Yesterday (saturday) I went to the aquarium. It’s a small aquarium but they have beautiful tropical fish. the most impressive gallery was the jelly fish gallery. those things are beautiful and I hear they are very poisonous. All the kids in the aquarium were talking about Finding Nemo. It’s amazing how that movie got to kids everywhere. In the gallery you’ll find some pictures from the aquarium displays, including clownfish and jellyfish.