Using Literary Texts to Develop Language

In our MCM readings for this week there was a focus on how to use literature to develop language skills such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking. This also happens to fit under my group's multi-genre topic which is creative writing.

This week our group created a short story activity which uses the teaching-learning cycle. By using this cycle we are allowing our students to read and analyze the short story genre with some scaffolded instruction. This will eventually allow our students to construct an independent text. The reason why I mention this is because this activity involves most of the elements that are discussed in the MCM text.

At the beginning of our activity (which is meant for intermediate to advanced learners) students simply read a fairy tale. The reason why we chose this short story genre was that fairy tales usually adhere to a simple structure and this would make the analysis much simpler for them. Then after our students have thought about the genre we ask them to recreate the story by writing a modern version of it. This allows our students to rewrite the story in their own words and to make a connection with the text. In our MCM reading this week the authors say that, "it is important in selecting literary texts to ensure that the theme of the text is engaging for the students and that the text itself is not too difficult on either a linguistic or conceptual level" (322). So by allowing our students to find a connection with the text we hope that they become engaged in the learning process. If they are engaged then task such as determining the point of view, the structure of the story, and the kinds of vocabulary in the text become much more interesting and our students are more likely to remember what they are learning. I am not going to explain the entire activity that we created, but after a series of scaffolded instructions our students become less and less dependent on the teacher. Our activity's final goal is to have our students choose a character and independently write/act out the dialogue that they have created along with the other students to create a miniature play of the original short story. After finishing this activity our students will have not only become engaged in the learning process, but they will also have had some practice reading, writing, speaking, listening, and most importantly thinking about English.

Lightbrown & Spada: "Observing learning and teaching in the L2 classroom"

This is my 13th and most scary post, a little late for Halloween though... I found the eleven studies at the end of chapter five to be very useful and interesting. Since I don't have too much teaching experience I want to mention just a few of these studies and how I have noticed them in my own L2 learning.

The first study I want to mention is study #2 on page 128 (Recasts and private speech). In this short paragraph L & S state, "that learners noticed recasts when they were provided by the instructor. Furthermore, learners were more likely to react to a recast with private speech when it was directed to another learner or to the whole class". I think that this is worth mentioning because it reminds me of how a simple change in the instructor's reaction to a speech error can make all the difference. When learning my L2 I found that this method of recasting a student's error indirectly was used very often and it was very effective. The result that this had on me and other students was that we became aware of the fact that this was more than likely a common error that we all shared instead of an individual mistake on our part. It sort of unified the class. This way we were able and more willing to adopt the recasts and to work on our own errors without feeling stupid or behind the curve.

Another study that I'd like to mention is study #7 on page 132 of L & S. Here our authors discuss how closed questions from an instructor usually produce a "simple on-word response" from the student, while open questions produce "longer and more complex answers". I would agree with this in general, but I want to focus on how this type of questioning is used in beginning level L2 classrooms. I want to focus on this because for beginning level second language students it is often difficult to create complex answers because of their lack of vocabulary and grammatical forms. But with this difficulty in mind I also want to mention that beginning level L2 students can often surprise a teacher with their limited abilities. One thing that I noticed in my own L2 was how, even with very limited knowledge, I was able to express ideas beyond my L2 abilities by making the most use of the vocabulary and grammatical forms that I already possessed. Usually all it takes (or took) is for the instructor to assist their students by giving them a couple words of new vocabulary that interests them or by helping the students to make a more complete and complex sentence than they would have come up with on their own. This negotiation of meaning along with a few metalinguistic comments can help an engaged student to keep looking to the horizon of their abilities (+1).

The last thing that I want to point out which is fairly obvious but important is study #9 on page 133. At the end of that study it focuses on how important the home life is on a student's second language acquisition and education in general. Even though I think that this is obvious, it is something that we, as teachers, should always keep in mind.