Author: sbengall

Something interesting that I’ve learnt surrounding the subject of our course is BICS and CALS.  These BICS and CALS very from student to student and from language learner to language learner.  But there are some overall understandings that can help us as teachers.

BICS are a students Basic interpersonal communication skills.  To form these skills students need to interact with others in social situations.  The language transfer will be in day to day language that one needs to interact with others.  On average, these language skills develop after 6 months to two years.  Students pick up these skills on the play ground, in the lunch room, while talking on the phone, etc.  BICS is just on of the many reasons why, as teachers, we need to push out students to talk to people they would not normally talk to.  And we need to assign groups where every student will feel comfortable speaking in English.

CAPS, on the other hand, is a students Cognitive academic language proficiency.  This is the formal language that students learn.  This comes from listening, reading, writing, and speaking about content based material.  For a ELL it usually takes 5 to 7 years to fully develop these skills.  5 to 7 years!!  Is is clear that this is a lot longer then it take to acquire BICs.  As a result teachers need to find ways of enforcing CAPs in their classrooms and try to find methods that will help their ELLs understand this language more easily.

Are you tired yet?

Over the past three months we hear nothing more than the ZPD.  Lev Vygotsky’s theory about the Zone of proximal development.  We’ve talking about what the ZPD is.  This theory explains that there is a perfect amount of challenge in each activity for every student.  More specifically, it Vygotsky says that if you teach students something they already know then they will be bored.  If you teach them something that is way beyond their present capability than they will give up, get frustrated, and then be bored.  The ZPD is the place in which students are challenged enough and where they can engage in the material and understand what is going on.

This formula can also be used for language acquisition.  If a teacher is teaching students words that they already know, they will not be learning anything new, and they will get bored.  If a teacher is teaching students language that is way beyond their reach it will go right over their head and they will not be able to understand what the class is about.  However if the language being taught is in the students zone of proximal development then these students will be able to grasp what is being taught and they will be able to better understand the language.

The key things students need to make this theory work is social interaction.  Social interaction will help with development and learning.  This will help students move from their actual language levels to their potential language levels.  Reading texts and listening to others speak will help with ELLs learning.

When it comes to English Language Learners, there are two fun things we can do to help them with their language acquisition.  One of these things is expose them to pop culture in English.  The other is to engage them in fun games.

Exposing our ELLs to pop culture in English is a two fold.  First it will help our students acquire everyday language that come up in films, songs, TV shows, etc.  One of the best ways to pick up common expressions and understand their meanings is by watching cartoons where the language and plot are simple enough to understand and is enjoyable.  Secondly, they will be able to relate to other students more frequently.  Many students make pop culture references daily.  Once our ELLs start to understand these references they will begin to feel like they belong.

Fun games are also a great way to engage our ELLs.  In our everyday lives we place a high value on games of all kind.  We use games in office retreats, for team building, trust building, in the news paper, the list goes on.  So why not have games in our classrooms?  Games can help students with writing and spelling (for example scategories), games can help with reading (for example trivia and cross words), games can encourage speaking (such as taboo), games help with listening skills (such as two truths and a lie), the list goes on.

Since these two things are fun and engaging and can really help our ELLS it is important that we try to incorporate them into our lesson plans.

Last Wednesday we had class with Graham.  In this class we spent sometime doing activities or games that involved the whole class and not only taught us something but were also fun.  These games varied in the sense that some of them needed no words at all and then others needed some explanation.  One of the games that we did was called “line or scale.”  Basically during this activity people line up based on a statement to show where they stand.  For example, Graham asked us if we expect to use a lot of lectures in our classrooms.  People lined up on one side of the class if they planned to mainly use lectures, on the other people who planned to never use lectures, and then everyone was in between.  Then we shared our thoughts and ideas with those around us.  This allowed us to talk to others that we may not normally speak to.  As well if changed some peoples perspectives on lecturing!

In the book Building Academic Language the author states that it is important to build a whole class discussion.  There are many reasons why a whole class discussion can be very useful for learners.  These discussions can help students build their thinking skills, help them modify their ideas, as well as help them to articulate these ideas.  A whole class discussion is a little like improvisation.  You have to be paying attention to what is going on.  One minute you may be talking about one thing and the next minute you are on to something else.  Mainly, in whole class discussions and in improv people need to stay on their toes, they need to think and then rethink their next move and everyone needs to be committed together.  All in real time!  Zwiers says that this imitates real life situations which will help students in the future!

Last week we did our reading on vocabulary and how important it was.  While reflecting on this topic, I realized that as I child I had a lot of problems with vocabulary.  My problem was that I was a very visual person.  When people spoke to me I would visualize the words I was hearing to make sense of them.  However, this led to problems with the different forms of words.  If something was said to me orally then I wasn’t always able to figure out how to spell it.  In my mind there was a disconnect between the oral and print forms.  For example, I have a friend named Cedise.  I know this is an uncommon name, but nevertheless it is a name.  So when someone was telling me about the Cedise Sky High, I wondered if this highway was named after my friend.  A few years later I saw a sign that read Sea to Sky highway.  All of a sudden it clicked, for years I had been writing the Cedise Sky Highway because most people pronounce it the same as Sea to Sky highway.  (most people pronounce it sea-dis-ky).  As a result I realized that it would be very useful to not only speak new words but to also show how they are spelt!

I was at a dinner party a couple of nights ago and my friends started asking me about my courses.  As theatre people, they could not understand how I had a class that taught the discourses of theatre.  I began explaining how some students may not know what it means to be backstage, or to be in a theatre of the round, or part of the audience.  As I was explaining the bricks and mortar of my subject, my friends became even more confused.  In return, I tried to think of another way to explain it.

One of my friends at this party does not have facebook.  She has never had much exposure to the site either.  Thus I started talking about the discourse of facebook.  For someone who has never been on facebook they would have a hard time understanding a conversation where people click on a button to like something, can poke someone virtually, and where writing on their wall has nothing to do with graffiti.  Almost everything we do has its own discourse but explaining that language to outsiders can be difficult.  It was hard for my friends to understand that some people have never been exposed to theatre language.  However, when I put it in the context of Facebook they were able to see how difficult it could be.