Some words about #EMF5

I was greatly impressed by all SPEAKERS and their Presentations:)))

I would like to describe #EMF 5 in some words:

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#EMF5. Alla L. Nazarenko "«The Power of Technologies? The Power of a Teacher? The power of a Learner?". day 3

  Alla L. Nazarenko  

At first Alla L.told the audience about Distance Learning (DL).

Overcoming Teacher – Learner is separation by

virtual teaching presence,

virtual learning presence

virtual cognitive presence

via interactivity of ICT.

These are discussions creating a virtual learning community.

What is discussion?

It is a “heart and soul” of distance learning.

So, students “see” each other in a virtual class (social presence). They share their  own opinions with others, agree or disagree with other learners, question their points of views, think and learn (cognitive presence).

What is the role of a teacher?

The teacher suggests issues for discussions, moderates discussions and comments on them (teaching presence).

The speaker believed that the power of a student included:

Motivation,

Self-organisation,

Responsibility.

Then Alla L. represented the English Language course “Bensons”.

After that Alla L. spoke about ‘Blended Learning’. BL is a combination of traditional F2F education and online distance learning. The aim is to enhance the efficacy of learning by creating a more effective learning environment due to investigating technologies and using their didactic potential in a traditional learning process.

The structure of a module consists of:

a plan of the lecture,
a slide presentation, 
an assignment,
a test, 
a discussion, 
learning materials. 

The students of the university participate in different 

Intercultural telecommunication projects=>

partner-universities:

universities of 4 countries of CIS: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Ukraine;

Russia and 2 universities:MSU and DSU (Dagestan);

Cultural projects:

Traditions of Hospitality,

Family Values Yesterday and Today,

Woman in Literature and in the Science,

Fairy tale as a Mirror of National mentality. 

#EMF5. Catherine Walter. "Learning grammar and pronunciation: What do we know, and what can we do about it?" Day 2

Catherine Walter

Catherine Walter reported on very interesting and engaging topics: grammar and pronunciation.

Outline:

• How to teach grammar? Overview of approaches
• Why this way and not that way? Overview of evidence
• When – before or after the task? Who chooses what to teach – the teacher beforehand or should we react to the learner’s need?
• How much explicit grammar teaching?
• How to teach x2: what is ‘a good rule‘? A good example? A good exercise? In what order should they appear?
• The role of pronunciation

The ideas on teaching grammar outlined here are based on research applicable to secondary school and above learners – not young learners.

the speaker asked the audience. Grammar: is it true or false?

• If people learn enough vocabulary, they’ll acquire the grammar of the language.
• The best way to teach grammar is to wait unteel the need for a specific grammar point emerges, and then teach it.
• The best way to teach grammar is via tasks.
• There is evidence that teaching grammar rules works.

How to teach? Overview of approaches:

Explicit (through rules) or implicit (through exposure, examples)? How to provide practice?

• Exposure. Necessary? Sufficient?
  Just exposure is insufficient, which was clearly demonstrated by Canadian immersion programmes: after 12 years of all-day-long immersion the students’ spoken and written production was still non-standard.
• Explicit teaching. Input-interaction-output model says conscious knowledge is useful – ‘crutches’ that hold you until you can walk w/o the crutches – which sounds Vygotskian!
  Explicit teaching helps noticing: Example: if your L1 has only one word for ‘yes’ and L2 has more, you might not notice that. But if someone tells you about this, you’ll notice;
  encourages comparison of noticed input with the learner’s output, can convert directly into unconscious knowledge and
• can provide negative feedback, the knowledge of what doesn’t happen in the language (which is more difficult to get from input)
• Tasks. When tasks appeared, they were seen as a panacea. But now it’s not clear how well they work so that’s definitely not ‘the obviously best way’. Explicit grammar instruction can be (and should be) part of task-based instruction.
• Skills approach: the behaviourism is re-emerging in a way: we do need to practice to build our skills.

Why? Overview of the evidence.

Is there any evidence that explicit grammar teaching works?

Norris & Ortega review (2000) found that explicit teaching is better than implicit

Gass & Selinker (2008) review: after early childhood, acquiring complex forms requires both meaningful input and explicit grammar focus

Spada & Tomita (2010): explicit better than implicit on simple & complex features, effects last

A possible counter-argument: if you teach them grammar rules, do they only learn grammar rules?

Spada & Lightbown (2008): form-focused input leads to conscious and unconscious knowledge over time

When to teach what?

Two options: first teach then give a task, or feed in grammar exactly when the learners needs it.

How much explicit grammar teaching?

The four strands of language instruction, which according to Nation need equal time:

• Meaning-focused input
• Meaning-focused output
• Language-focused learning (rules/pronunciation/how writing works/..)
• Fluency development (activities tat help you get faster and more automatic – activities might be quite artificial, like scales in learning to play a musical instrument). 

The three Es:

• Explanations (rules). There are different kinds of rules.
• ‘No cycles, whether ridden or not!’ is imposed by an authority
  ‘At sea level water boils at 100 Celsius.’ – an expression of an observed regularity.
  very often students think that language rules are bicycle rules, but they are boiling water rules.
• Examples: Qualities of examples are prototypical, natural sounding, not containing irrelevant difficulties (e.g.-above level vocabulary, potencially unknown cultural references), implications for corpus use.Quantity of examples are Goldclock principle (usually examples needed for inductive teaching than for deductive teaching). 
• Exercises:

The order of the 3 Es

• Deductive: explanations => examples => exercises
• Inductive: examples => guiding the students towards the rule - exercises; useful to demonstrate to learners that our rules are ‘boiling water’ rules + more appealing to the students who don’t like authority + means that they cognitively process the rule more deeply, so they might remember it better.

Productive and receptive pronunciation

• Grammar teaching should go hand in hand with teaching receptive pronunciation, because some grammar points are very difficult to hear.

• Examples of grammar points that are difficult to distinguish: Regular present simple and regular past simple. .
• How to teach receptive pronunciation?
  Decoding activities: A or B? Same or different? Odd one out (walks, walked, walks, walks); Write the word; how many words? Sentence dictation.