Current Issues in Reading Comprehension

Current Issues in Reading Comprehension

by M.D. Coyne|E.J. Kami'Enui|D.W. Carnine
Source: Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Topics: Reading Comprehension

Over the past decade, there has been an increased focus nationally on the development of literacy for all students. This increased focus has spawned several important documents to assist teachers in providing effective reading instruction to prevent reading difficulties (National Research Council, 1998) and to improve overall reading performance (National Reading Panel [NRP], 2000). Each of these documents identified reading comprehension as an essential literacy outcome for students and the ultimate goal of reading instruction. However, these national panels also acknowledged a need for more research on reading comprehension. In comparison to existing research on the code-based components of reading (i.e., phonemic awareness, alphabetic understanding, automaticity with the code), research on reading comprehension, including vocabulary development, is less extensive, rigorous, and current. This conclusion was echoed by the RAND Reading Study Group (2002) which determined that “evidence-based improvements in the teaching practices of reading comprehension are sorely needed” (p. xxiii). As a result, a number of important research initiatives, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, are currently underway that could significantly add to our understanding of ways to support reading comprehension for all students.

Perfetti, Marron, and Folz (1996) divided the factors that contribute to reading comprehension into two general areas: processes and knowledge. Processes involve decoding, working memory, inference-making, and comprehension monitoring. In contrast, knowledge factors include word meanings and domain knowledge related to the content of what is being read. These factors provide a framework for thinking about current trends in reading comprehension instructional research. Much of the research over the past several years has focused on the teaching of specific comprehension strategies that reflect those used by good readers (Pressley, 2000) and this continues to be an important focus for researchers. However, there is renewed interest in other aspects of reading comprehension. For example, an area of interest in contemporary reading comprehension research relates to the importance of individual word knowledge and decoding and its contribution to text comprehension. Another current issue is how strategic processing interacts with specific domain knowledge in content area reading.

The Role of Decoding in Comprehension Development

Before children learn to read, they are dependent on oral language and pictures to make sense of the world around them (Carlisle & Rice, 2003). Once children begin to grasp the alphabetic principle, they are increasingly able to use their understanding of orthography and phonology to read words, strings of abstract symbols that represent concepts in their world. This shift from the concrete to the abstract is not abrupt. Rather it is a gradual process that occurs as students gradually acquire proficiency with the symbolic system. However, for many students, especially those who experience difficulties learning to read, the development of word recognition skills acts much like a traffic bottleneck on a highway. Regardless of students’ level of listening comprehension, they have to learn the process of word recognition, much like every car on the highway, regardless of its power or speed, must slow down and pass through the bottleneck. Once through this bottleneck, the speed and power of a car again become paramount. Similarly, once children learn how to read words, their proficiency with language comprehension once again becomes an important contributor to their understanding of texts.

Because text comprehension, in part, relies on proficient decoding, the relation between children’s listening and reading comprehension grows stronger as they grow older and more fluent. According to Carlisle and Rice (2003), reading and listening comprehension grow more similar by about fifth grade compared to earlier grades for both good and poor readers. Good word readers are able to read a lot. The consequences of reading well include maximal exposure to new words and phrases, opportunities to read different types of texts, and practice monitoring one’s understanding (Stanovich, 1986; Cunningham & Stanovich 1998). In contrast, however, poor word readers remain at the mercy of their word reading difficulties. As a result of not reading, they fail to learn many new words, do not develop proficiency in understanding texts, and often learn to dislike reading (Baker & Wigfield, 1999).

 

Criteria for grading and sequencing

Criteria for grading and sequencing of syllabus

Ellis arguments on structural syllabus:

    There are 2distinctions between explicit concious knowledge and implicit tacit

    knowledge AND between declarative knowledge of facts and procedural knowledge

    of how to do things.

    the explicit declarative knowledge of L2 grammar can influence the development of

    implicit declarative knowledge and through communicative activity implicit declarative

    knowledge can be proceduralized in sponteneous skilled performance.

    grammatical knowledge serves a number of functons:

    -it can be used to monitor our production

    -it can help learners notice features on input

    -it can help learners compare their own production with a target model and in some

    cases notice the gap between them.

Summarized By : Z. Javanbakht

Metacognitive Processing in Text Comprehension

Metacognitive Processing in Text Comprehension

by H.W. Catts|A.G. Kamhi
Source: Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Topics: Reading Building Blocks, Reading Comprehension

Metacognitive Processing in Text Comprehension

Buy this book »

Metacognitive abilities are essential for comprehending texts in order to read to learn (Brown, 1982). There are two aspects to metacognition. One aspect involves self-appraisal, or knowledge about cognition and conscious access to one's own cognitive operations and reflection about those of others. The other aspect of metacognition involves self-management, or regulation of cognition, which involves planning, evaluating, and regulating strategies (Brown, 1987; Jacobs & Paris, 1987; Schunk & Ertmer, 2000). Both types of metacognition are critical for reading comprehension. First and foremost, students must be able to monitor their comprehension (self-appraisal): They must know if they are understanding what they are reading, and they must be able to take actions if they are not comprehending (self-management). The self-appraisal component requires three types of knowledge: declarative, procedural, and conditional (Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983; Schunk, 2001). Declarative knowledge is knowledge of what—for example, what a journal entry or summary is. Procedural knowledge is knowledge of how—for example, the steps one takes to write a journal entry or summary. Conditional knowledge is knowledge of when and why—for example, when and why one writes a journal entry or summary. The self-management metacognition component for planning and controlling actions is related to reading comprehension in two ways: Awareness of when and how to plan is critical for understanding characters' goal-directed behavior in narratives, and ability to evaluate one's comprehension and plan are critical for employing comprehension repair strategies. Poor comprehenders show less evidence of metacognitive awareness and strategic behaviors. Compared to good comprehenders, they exhibit less use of spontaneous study strategies, correct fewer errors during reading, detect fewer anomalous phrases, do less self-questioning, and have less of an awareness of the goals of reading (Gardner, 1987; Paris & Myers, 1981; Yuill & Oakhill, 1991).

Not all the information necessary to comprehend texts is available in scripts and schemata. Our ability to comprehend the theme of a story requires that we be able to figure out a character's plans and goals (Black & Bower, 1980; Bruce & Newman, 1978; Schank & Abelson, 1977; Voss & Bisanz, 1985). Bruce (1980) maintained that perception of plans plays a major role in the way we structure our social reality. The research on plans and social actions in a number of fields has concluded that (1) understanding plans is a critical part of understanding actions, (2) the ability to understand plans is a very complex inferential task, and (3) children require many years to develop these skills (Kreider & Kreider, 1987a, 1987b; Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960; Piaget, 1932; Schmidt, 1976; Sedlack, 1974). Bruce noted that in order to interpret actions as being intentional, one needs the ability to plan [italics are Bruce's] and to recognize actions of others in terms of goals. He stated that persons who have difficulty in recognizing plans and social actions in others will have difficulty comprehending texts that report such plans.

Reading to learn requires comprehension, and any attempt to comprehend must involve strategic reading and comprehension monitoring, which are metacognitive behaviors (Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1991; Dunlosky, Rawson, & Hacker, 2002). Brown (1980) proposed the following metacognitive behaviors as essential for reading comprehension:

   1. Understanding the purpose of the reading assignment (e.g., for enjoyment, to be able to explain a principle, to compare one story to another, to complete a worksheet)
   2. Identifying the important aspects and main ideas of a message
   3. Focusing attention on major content rather than trivia
   4. Monitoring to determine if comprehension is occurring
   5. Engaging in self-questioning to determine if one's goals in reading are being achieved
   6. Taking corrective action when comprehension fails

If students are using these strategies, then they will actively use information from content and text grammar schemata to facilitate comprehension by making predictions about what is to come in a text and by monitoring their comprehension to determine if their predictions are met (Meyer, 1987). For example, if you are reading a murder mystery, you are alert to clues that will lead you to discover the identity of the murderer. In expository text that begins with a topic sentence, you read to find information that supports the statement. You look for organizing words that signal sequence (first, next, eventually), cause-effect (because, since, as a result of), comparison-contrast (similar to, however, although), analysis (characteristics, types, some features), and others (Dickson, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998; Finley & Seaton, 1987). If readers are unfamiliar with the structure of a text, they experience difficulty in determining what is and what is not important and the interrelationships among the information presented. Consequently, comprehension of the passage is limited.

The selection, maintenance, or changing of schemata during text comprehension requires monitoring (Pearson & Spiro, 1980; van den Broek, Young, Tzeng, & Linderholm, 1999). When we listen or read, we are matching the present information to our schema knowledge and attempting to determine if we have a schema for what is being presented. As new information arrives, one must determine if it fits the selected schema or if another schema is needed. For example, a group of students were reading a story in which the main character, Jim, suggested that rustlers were responsible for the rocks rolling down the mountains. If the students retrieved their schema for rustlers, they should then expect some mention of cattle and perhaps a sheriff to appear as the story continued. If this is not forthcoming, then they must assume that they have selected the wrong schema and must look for other information to instantiate a different schema.

Many students with reading disabilities exhibit deficits in metacognitive abilities involving comprehension monitoring, planning of their own behavior, and in metacognitive awareness that planning is something that they or someone else might do (Baker, 1982; Hallahan, Kneedler, & Lloyd, 1983; Yuill & Oakhill, 1991; Wong & Wong, 1986). If students lack such metacognitive abilities, then they will likely not recognize planning on the parts of characters in texts, nor will they attempt to use metacognitive strategies to interpret text and to monitor their own comprehension of the text.


 

Top 10 'unanswerable' questions revealed

Top 10 'unanswerable' questions revealed

 Do blondes really have more fun?

"What is the meaning of life?", "Is there a God?" and even "Do blondes have more fun?" - these are apparently the world's trickiest questions.

Internet search engine Ask Jeeves has compiled what it called a top 10 of "unanswerables" in the past decade.

The list is based on some 1.1 billion queries made on the site since its launch in 2000.

Other weighty issues include mortality, love and fame, but "did Tony Soprano die?" also made it on the list.

JEEVES' UNANSWERABLES

1. What is the meaning of life?

2. Is there a God?

3. Do blondes have more fun?

4. What is the best diet?

5. Is there anybody out there?

6. Who is the most famous person in the world?

7. What is love?

8. What is the secret to happiness?

9. Did Tony Soprano die?

10. How long will I live?

Ask Jeeves said that this was because many users of the site had been inquiring about what happened to the TV gangster after the final episode of the popular US drama The Sopranos.

The site also said it was launching an "unanswerables" page to help people shed light on some of the most tricky questions.

Since its launch Ask Jeeves - with its trademark butler - has been struggling against more popular search engines, such as Google.

The original idea behind Ask Jeeves (known as Ask outside the UK) was to allow users to get answers to their questions, as well as traditional keyword searching.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11368424

75 ESL Teaching Ideas

75 ESL Teaching Ideas

Hall Houston
allhou [at] yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/tokyo/flats/7947/

Introduction

These are the ideas included in Hall Houston's Random ESL Idea Generator. If you have a JavaScript-enabled browser, you can use the generator to get a randomly-selected idea from this list. Perhaps you will find it useful to print out this list and refer to it from time to time.
The Ideas

   1. Alter the pacing of your class. If you rush through your class at full speed, slow things down and take time to ask your students personal questions based on the materials you are using. If you tend to proceed at a snail's pace, prepare some additional activities and push yourself to accomplish more than you usually do.
   2. Ask a student to demonstrate a dance, and assist the student in explaining the movements in English.
   3. Ask students to name as many objects in the classroom as they can while you write them on the board.
   4. Ask students to present to the class a gesture that is unique to their own culture.

   5. Ask students to write one question they would feel comfortable answering (without writing their name) on an index card. Collect all of the index cards, put them in a bag, have students draw cards, and then ask another student the question on that card.
   6. Ask your students if there are any songs running through their heads today. If anyone says yes, encourage the student to sing or hum a little bit, and ask the others if they can identify it.
   7. Assign students to take a conversation from their coursebook that they are familiar with and reduce each line to only one word.
   8. At the end of class, erase the board and challenge students to recall everything you wrote on the board during the class period. Write the expressions on the board once again as your students call them out.
   9. Begin by telling your students about an internal struggle between two sides of your personality (bold side vs. timid side OR hardworking side vs. lazy side), providing a brief example of what each side says to you. After a few minutes of preparation in pairs, have students present their struggles to the class.
  10. Bring a cellular phone (real or toy) to class, and pretend to receive calls throughout the class. As the students can only hear one side of the conversation, they must guess who is calling you and why. Make the initial conversation very brief, and gradually add clues with each conversation. The student who guesses correctly wins a prize.
  11. Bring a fork, knife, spoon, bowl, plate and chopsticks (if you have them) to class, and mime eating some different dishes, letting students guess what they are. Then let your students take a turn.
  12. Bring an artifact from the student's culture to class, and ask them questions about it.
  13. Bring in some snacks that you think your students haven't tried before, and invite the students to sample them and give their comments.
  14. Call on a student to draw his or her country's flag on the board, then teach him or her how to describe the flag to the class (It has three stripes...).
  15. Choose one topic (food, sports) and elicit a list of examples (food - chicken, pudding, rice). Then have your student come up with the most unusual combinations of items from that list(chocolate-beef or wrestling-golf).
  16. Collaborate with your students on a list of famous people, including movie stars, politicians, athletes, and artists. Have every student choose a famous person, and put them in pairs to interview each other.
  17. Come to class dressed differently than usual and have students comment on what's different.
  18. Copy a page from a comic book, white out the dialogue, make copies for your class, and have them supply utterances for the characters.
  19. Copy pages from various ESL textbooks (at an appropriate level for your students), put them on the walls, and have students wander around the classroom and learn a new phrase. Then have them teach each other what they learned.
  20. Copy some interesting pictures of people from magazine ads. Give a picture to each student, have the student fold up the bottom of the picture about half an inch, and write something the person might be thinking or saying. Put all the pictures up on the board, and let everyone come up and take a look.
  21. Describe something observable in the classroom (while looking down), and tell students to look in the direction of what you described.
  22. Draw a map of your country or another country that your students know well. By drawing lines, show students where you went on a trip, and tell them about it. Then call on several students to do the same. The trips can be truthful or fictional.
  23. Draw a pancake-shape on the board, and announce that the school will soon be moving to a desert island. Invite students one by one to go to the board and draw one thing they would like to have on the island.
  24. Draw a party scene on the board, and invite students to come up and draw someone they would like to have at the party.
  25. Empty a bag of coupons onto a table, and have students find a coupon for a product that they have no need for.
  26. Experiment with how you write on the board, altering your writing style, the size of the letters, the direction you write, and the color of the chalk/pens.
  27. Explain to your students what it means to call someone a certain animal (dog, pig, fox) in English, and then ask them what these mean in their languages.
  28. Fill the board with vocabulary your students have encountered in previous classes (make sure to include all parts of speech), and get them to make some sentences out of the words.
  29. Find out what famous people your students admire, and work together with the class to write a letter to one of them.
  30. Find out what your students are interested in early on in the semester. Go to the Internet from time to time to collect articles on these subjects for students to read during the class period.
  31. First, instruct your students to write on a slip of paper the name of one book, CD, or movie that changed them in some way. Collect the papers, call out the titles, and ask the class if they can guess who wrote it. Finally, let the writer identify him or herself, explaining his or her choice.
  32. Give each student a piece of chalk/pen and tell them to fill the board with pop song lyrics. Then put them in pairs, and get them to use the words on the board to create a new dialogue.
  33. Give students a reward (such as a candy or a sticker) each time they take the artificial language in your textbook and turn it into an authentic question or comment about someone in the class.
  34. Hand a student a ball of yellow yarn. Have him toss it to another student, while saying something positive about that student and holding onto the end of the yarn. Continue in this manner until there is a web between all the students.
  35. Hand each student an index card, and tell them to write down a sentence that includes an error they have made this week, along with the correct version of the sentence. Next, tape all of the index cards on the board for students to look over.
  36. Hang up four different posters (example - one of a world map, one of a famous singer, one of a flower, and one of Einstein) in the four corners of your room. Tell students to choose one corner to stand in, and talk about why they chose that poster.
  37. Have each student make a list of the five most useful phrases for tourists visiting an English speaking country.
  38. Have students come to the board one by one, draw a poster for an English language movie (without the title) they think the other students have seen, and let the other students guess which movie it is.
  39. Hire a musician (flute? harmonica? banjo?) to play for a few minutes of your class period.
  40. In small groups, have your students design a billboard for something other than a product (wisdom, humility, friendship, etc.).
  41. Inquire to see if your students have any unusual talents (can wiggle their ears, can bark like a dog), and encourage them to demonstrate.
  42. Instead of saying "Very good!" all the time, vary the ways you praise (and correct) students as much as possible.
  43. Instruct your students to find something in their wallets/purses/pencil boxes, and tell the story behind it.
  44. Invite your students to stand up and explore the classroom from new angles (look in drawers, under desks, behind posters, on top of cabinets). Then have students report their findings.
  45. Just a few minutes before the bell rings, call on your students to choose the ten most useful words they came in contact with during this class period, then have them narrow it down to the three most useful words.
  46. Pass around some magazines, and have each student choose an ad that he or she likes. Give students an opportunity to explain their choices.
  47. Play a listening activity from your book an additional time with the lights turned off.
  48. Play a recording of instrumental music and have some students draw on the board what the music makes them think of.
  49. Play five very different sounds from a sound effects tape or CD, and assign students in pairs to create a story based on three of the sounds.
  50. Play music that enhances certain activities (quiet music for a reading activity, dance music for an energetic TPR activity). Ask your students for their reactions.
  51. Prepare colored letters of the alphabet on cardboard squares and put them in a bag. Students must draw a letter from the bag, and work together to create a sentence on the board. Each student must raise his or her hand to make a contribution, but the word the student calls out must begin with the letter he or she chose. Put the expanding sentence on the board, adding words only when they the grammar is correct.
  52. Prepare several paper bags, each with a different scent inside (perfume, cinnamon, cheese), pass the bags around the class, and let students describe what they smell.
  53. Print phrases such as "in the library" "at an elegant dinner with the Royal Family" "in a noisy bar" "in a dangerous neigborhood" on separate strips of paper, put them in envelopes, and tape them to the underside of a few students' desks/tables before they arrive. Write on the board a useful expression like "Excuse me. Could I borrow a dollar?" When students arrive, tell them to look for an envelope under the desks/tables. The ones who find envelopes must say the sentence on the board as if in the context written on the page. Other students must guess the context from the student's tone of voice and body language.
  54. Produce a list of commonly used sentence-modifying adverbs on the board, such as suddenly, actually, unfortunately, and happily. Then launch into a story, which each student must contribute to, with the rule that everyone must begin the first sentence of his or her contribution with a sentence-modifying adverb.
  55. Provide each student with a list of the current top ten popular songs. Play excerpts from some or all of the songs, and choose some questions to ask your students, such as: Did you like the song? Have you heard this song before? How did the song make you feel? What instruments did you hear?
  56. Purchase a postcard for each member of your class, writing his or her name in the name and address space. Turn them picture side up on a table, have each student choose one (without looking at the name), then he or she will write a message to the person whose name is on the other side. If a student chooses the postcard that has his or her own name on it, the student must choose again.
  57. Put students in pairs and ask them to guess three items in their partner's wallet/purse/pencil box.
  58. Put students in pairs. Tell them to converse, but to deliberately make one grammatical error over and over, stopping only when one student can spot the other's intentional error.
  59. Put students into small groups to create an application form for new students to the school.
  60. Put the students in small groups, and ask each group to plan a vacation for you. They must plan where you will go, what you will do, who you will go with, and what you will buy. When they are finished, have each group present their plans.
  61. Review a phrase or sentence that you want students to remember, by holding a competition to see "Who can say it the loudest/the quietest/the quickest/the slowest/in the deepest voice/in the highest pitched voice?".
  62. Set up a board in your classroom where students can buy and sell used items from each other by writing notes in English.
  63. Supply each student with a copy of the entertainment section of the local newspaper, and tell them to choose somewhere to go next weekend.
  64. Take a particularly uninteresting page from your coursebook, and put students in groups to redesign it.
  65. Teach on a different side of the room than you usually do.
  66. Tell each student to report the latest news in their country or city to the class.
  67. Tell your students to practice a conversation from their coursebook that they are familiar with, but this time they can only use gestures, no words.
  68. When they are practicing a dialogue, have students play around with the volume, intonation, pitch, or speed of their voices.
  69. Write "Tell me something I don't know." on the board, then ask students questions about things they know about and you don't, such as their lives, cultural background, interests, and work.
  70. Write a common adjacency pair (Thank you./You're welcome OR I'm sorry./That's alright) on the board. Ask students if they know of any expressions that could replace one of the ones you just wrote. Write any acceptable answers on the board.
  71. Write a number of adjectives, such as mysterious, happy, peaceful, sad, angry, and frustrated on the board. Call out a color, and ask your students to tell you which adjective they associate with that color.
  72. Write a word on a slip of paper and show it to a student. This student must whisper it to the second student. Then the second student must draw a picture of what he or she heard, and show it to the third student. The third student, then, writes the word that represents the picture and shows it to the fourth student. Then the fourth student whispers it to the fifth student.... and so on. This continues until you get to the last student, who must say the word to the class.
  73. Write an idiomatic expression (such as "It beats me." or "I'm fed up.") in big letters on the board. Call on a few students to guess what it means before you tell them.
  74. Write down the names of about five very different people on the board (a small baby, a rude waiter in a restaurant, a fashion model, a stranger in a crowd, and a grandfather). Give students a common expression, such as "Good morning!" or "Sorry!", and ask students how they might say it differently when talking to a different person.
  75. Write your name on the board vertically, and add a suitable adjective that begins with each letter of your name. The next step is to invite students to do the same.

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. V, No. 11, November 1999
http://iteslj.org/

Key developments in the teaching of English vocabulary during the mid 20th century

English vocabulary

Key developments in the teaching of English vocabulary during the mid 20th century

• 1944     * TWB The Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 words by Edward L. Thorndike and Irving Lodge containing lists of the most frequent words in written English.
        There are two semantic counts one by Thorndike & Lodge and another of the 570 commonest words by Lorge.
      * 1953 GSL A General Service List of English Words by Michael West Part 1 contains 20,000 words (those ocurring at least once per million words). Frequency is indicated on a scale of 1 to 5
      * 1960 BSV A Basic Sight-Vocabulary by Dolch 220 words had considerable influence in the teaching of reading at elementary level in the USA:
        The basic words in Dolch's list are: a about after again all always am an and any are around as ask at ate away be because been before best better big black blue both bring brown but buy by call came can carry clean cold come could cut did do does done don't down draw drink eat eight every fall far fast find first five fly for found four from full funny gave get give go goes going good got green grow had has have he help her here him his hold hot how hurt I if in into is it its jump just keep kind know laugh let light like liitle live long look made make many may me much must my myself never new no not now of off old on once one only open or our out over own pick play please pretty pull put ran read red ride right round run said saw say see seven shall she show sing six sleep small so some soon start stop take tell ten thank that the their them then there these they think this those three to today together too try two under up upon us use very walk want warm was wash we well went were what when where which white who why will wish with work would write yellow yes you your
  
        Sight words are words whose meaning the reader grasps so rapidly that they "do not seem to come between him and meaning at all". They are so common in reading matter that all children should know them instantly by sight.
  
        "Basic" because it includes the service words that are used in writing whatever the subject: conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, auxiliary verbs and some regular verbs. No nouns are included.
  
        Dolch considers that nouns are in a different category because each relates to a special subject matter. N.B. Wilga Rivers observes that L1 readers lean heavily on content words (nouns etc) to provide meaning. L2 readers can't draw on them so rapidly.
      * 1965 L.A. Hill's 5 lists: 500 750 1000 1500 2075 headword vocabularies used by OUP authors. 3000 or even 5000 word vocabularies are insufficient for fluent reading of all kinds of texts. Knowledge of the most widely used words will serve as a basis for intelligent guessing or inferencing when learners encounter unfamiliar content words.
      * 1968 The Longman Structural Readers Handbook containing 2340 words. Note that 10,000 words are needed to read & understand an English novel, looking up a maximum of 4 to 5 words per page.
      * 1974 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English uses a defining vocabulary of 2100 words. These are the words used in formulating the dictionary definitions in order to make them comprehensible to learners from non English language backgrounds.
      * 1974 Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English containing 61,000 words
      * 1980 Roland Hindmarsh's Cambridge English Lexicon: words are graded for difficulty on a scale of 1 to 7. Words within the 1-5 bands are needed for candidates taking the Cambridge First Certificate in English examination. Words in bands 6 - 7 are also needed for candidates taking the Cambridge Proficiency in English examination.
  
  Vocabulary Selection Criteria
  
  1960s-1970s approaches to vocabulary selection in English language teaching empahsized the following criteria:
  
     1. Frequency of use
     2. Which style/register? Speech or writing?
     3. Difficulty - appropriateness to level, Learnability & Teachability, Memory Load.
     4. Pedagogic value in terms of the use of the vocabulary items in delivering a structurally based syllabus: for example, volume 1 of Geoffrey Broughton's "Success With English" coursebook [Penguin Books 1968], widely used in the late 1960s and early 1970s, introduced words such as "plane", "wing", "tail", "monkey" in the early stages, because they were easy for the artist to illustrate unambiguously and also facilitated the course's structural gradation when they were recycled. They were certainly not the most relevant or functional vocabulary items to present to most learners using semantic criteria.
  
  By the 1980s, functional load or communicative need became a key criteria for vocabulary selection. By this time, syllabus guidelines were being developed by The Council of Europe [see the updated version: Threshold Level 1990: Modern Languages - the syllabus specifications set by the Council of Europe for modern language courses at the intermediate level]. Another influential work was John Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design and works of a similar nature began to appear in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It would be a pretence to say that coursebook writers had not catered for learners' needs and language in use before. However, the 1980s saw the appearance of a few coursebooks which claimed to be "lexical" in their approach in a communicative sense.
  
  Some of these "lexically-based" coursebooks clearly lacked the structural thread which most learners and teachers required and were never able to compete with classics such as Streamline Departures [Oxford 1979]. The Collins Cobuild project, using large corpuses of authentic texts (both spoken and written) provided excellent offshoots in terms of dictionaries and reference books (e.g. dictionaries of phrasal verbs). However, coursebooks offered as offshoots from this project enjoyed a limited shelf life.
  
  One explanation for their lack of popularity with language learners and teachers is shortsightedness in defining authenticity. The danger of lexical computing projects using authentic texts from all walks of life lies in the list of lexical items which is returned as the most frequent and therefore the most useful. You can end up with a very generalized bag of useful words, which are not especially useful in meeting the needs of language learners from non English backgrounds studying at the elementary level in UK cities or holiday resorts.
  
  The intuition of teachers working with these learners, informed by direct knowledge of the social spheres determining their immediate language needs (basic survival!), probably offers a better means of vocabulary control, especially at the elementary level. A teacher's attempt to simplify so that a beginner can have a chance of understanding can also be considered an authentic use of language in its own right. Both pedagogical and street environments can be included in the definition of what is authentic.
  
  It is often stated that texts should be more authentic as learners progress to higher levels. However, English has an enormous vocabulary and contains far several times the number of lexical items that any native speaker will manage to learn in their lifetime. So even when second language learners are more proficient, we should be careful not to turn our concordancers on language data from all walks of life in selecting lexical content for their courses. Many a stupid act has been committed in course and lesson planning on the basis that learners are being given a chance to experience authentic materials.
  
  A truly communicative language course will consider the learners' language needs. Generalized findings representing all walks of life will not return the best list of lexical items to offer learners embarking on higher education in academic institutions, jobs in hospital wards or work in a UK dockyard. More recently, those involved in computational linguistics have categorized corpus data so that syllabus and lesson planners can focus vocabulary selection on particular occupational and social fields. There are now several concordancers (some available on Internet web sites) which allow users to target categories of corpus data which come closest to meeting their needs.
  
  
  

Material on this site to improve survival vocabulary at beginners and elementary level:

a graded reader for beginners

Materials on this site for higher level learners in need of more vocabulary for discussion of a wide range of topics:

28 crosswords and vocabulary themes for discussion classes at higher levels

SOURCE:  TEACHING INDEX | NEXT

How Many Words Do Students Need to Know?

How Many Words Do Students Need to Know?

Over the years, estimates of student vocabulary size have varied greatly, hindered in part by issues such as the types of vocabularies being considered (e.g., receptive/ productive or oral/print). Depending on how they approached such issues, early vocabulary researchers reported figures ranging from 2,500 to 26,000 words in the vocabularies of typical grade 1 students and from 19,000 to 200,000 words for college graduate students (Beck & McKeown, 1991). As researchers began to define more clearly what they meant by vocabulary size, the estimates became more precise. At the present time, there is considerable consensus among researchers that students add approximately 2,000 to 3,500 distinct words yearly to their reading vocabularies (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Anglin, 1993; Beck & McKeown, 1991; White et al., 1990).

Perhaps a more useful way to approach the issue of vocabulary size is to consider the number of different, or unique, words in the typical texts that students read in schools. But this approach also raises questions. For example, what counts as a unique word? Is the possessive form of a word different from the original word and therefore unique? Can it be assumed that a student who knows the word laugh also knows the words laughed, laughing, and laughter? Drawing on a database of more than 5 million words taken from a sample of school texts used in grades 3 through 9, Nagy and Anderson (1984) grouped unique words into families. The students’ knowledge of the root word would help them determine a related word’s meaning when they encounter that word in a text. To be included in a family, the relationship of a word had to be “semantically transparent.” That is, the meaning of the related word can be determined by using knowledge of its root word and the context of text. Therefore, words within a family related to the root laugh can include laughed, laughing, and laughter but not laughingstock. Based on this definition, Nagy and Anderson estimated that school texts from grades 3 through 9 contain approximately 88,500 distinct word families. Clearly, acquiring meanings for this many words is a formidable task.

Yet somehow most students do steadily acquire a large number of new words each school year. To understand the magnitude of this accomplishment, consider what learning this number of words would require in terms of instruction. To directly teach students even 3,000 words a year would mean teaching approximately 17 words each school day (e.g., 3,000 words/180 school days). Estimates vary, but reviews of classroom intervention studies suggest that, in general, no more than 8 to 10 words can be taught effectively each week. This means no more than approximately 400 words can be taught in a year (Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). Using a simple calculation, 3,000 - 400 = 2,600, produces the conclusion that students must find ways other than direct classroom instruction to learn words.

So how do students acquire so many new words? An extensive body of research indicates that the answer is through incidental learning – that is, through exposure to and interaction with increasingly complex and rich oral language and by encountering lots of new words in text, either through their own reading or by being read to (National Reading Panel, 2000). However, such incidental encounters cannot ensure that students will acquire indepth meanings of specific words (Fukkink & de Glopper, 1998). For some words, such as those that are crucial for understanding a literature selection or a content area concept, most students need to have intentional and explicit instruction. We discuss each of these ways to acquire vocabulary in later sections. First, however, we examine what “knowing” a word means.

What Does It Mean to “Know” a Word?

Establishing exactly what it means to know a word is no easy task. Is “knowing” a word being able to recognize what it looks and sounds like? Is it being able to give the word’s dictionary definition? Research suggests that, in general, the answer to these questions is no. Knowing a word by sight and sound and knowing its dictionary definition are not the same as knowing how to use the word correctly and understanding it when it is heard or seen in various contexts (Miller & Gildea, 1987).
Acquiring “Ownership” of Words
Here is how the process of acquiring word knowledge appears to occur, based on the research of Nagy, Anderson, and Herman (1987). Developing understandings of word meanings is a long-term process, one that involves many encounters with both spoken and written words in varying contexts. Here’s how one group of researchers describes this process: On the first encounter with a new word, a student stores in memory some information about how the word fits into what he is reading. This information is reinforced each time he sees or hears the word. With each new encounter, the student picks up more information about the word from its use in various contexts. As a result, the student gradually acquires “ownership” of the word.

Nagy and Scott (2000) identify several dimensions that describe the complexity of what it means to know a word. First, word knowledge is incremental, which means that readers need to have many exposures to a word in different contexts before they “know” it. Second, word knowledge is multidimensional. This is because many words have multiple meanings (e.g., sage: a wise person; an herb) and serve different functions in different sentences, texts, and even conversations. Third, word knowledge is interrelated in that knowledge of one word (e.g., urban) connects to knowledge of other words (e.g., suburban, urbanite, urbane).

What all of this means is that “knowing” a word is a matter of degree rather than an all-or-nothing proposition (Beck & McKeown, 1991; Nagy & Scott, 2000). The degrees of knowing a word are reflected in the precision with which we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and how well we understand and use words in different modes (e.g., receptive, productive) and for different purposes (e.g., formal vs. informal occasions).

Knowing a word also implies knowing how that word relates to other knowledge (sometimes called word schema). The more we know about a specific concept, for example, the more words we bring to our understanding of that concept. Because we have individual interests and backgrounds, each of us brings different words to shape that understanding.

Finally, knowing a word means being able to appreciate its connotations and subtleties. When we know a word at this level, we can use and recognize it in idioms, jokes, slang, and puns (Johnson, Johnson, & Schlicting, 2004).

What’s a Word Schema?

A word schema is a network of knowledge related to a word (Nagy & Scott, 1990). Word schemas involve both semantic knowledge about the connections of word meanings to specific concepts and linguistic knowledge about words, such as their roots and their relationships to other words with the same roots. Here is an example.

    Ramona is four years old. Already she has a fairly large schema for many simple concepts. For example, to her, the word dog includes knowledge about the general concept of “dog” as an animal, knowledge of one or two kinds of dogs, such as her Lab, Gus, and her neighbor’s poodle, Misty. It also includes specific information about Gus, such as the sounds he makes, and how he uses his legs when he runs and walks. As a result, the word dog can activate many other words for Ramona to use to talk about dogs.

    As Ramona grows older, she might add “dog” knowledge that ranges from the names of famous dogs in books, movies, and TV shows to how to train a dog, to the names for parts of a dog’s anatomy. She might also learn that the word dog can mean more than an animal and be able to use the word in expressions such as “I’ll dog you until you do what I told you to,” “that was a dog of a movie,” or “I’m dog tired.”

    Ramona has also learned that words with similar word parts can have shared meanings, although she is also aware that what seems like a root word may be something altogether different. Thus, when Ramona encounters dog-eared, dogpaddle, and doggedly in texts, she examines the context of their use to see if their meaning is associated with the appearance or actions of dogs.

   
by Fran Lehr, M.A., Lehr & Associates, Champaign, Illinois
    Jean Osborn, M.Ed., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    Dr. Elfrieda H. Hiebert, Visiting Research Professor, University of California - Berkeley

The premise of incidental learning

The premise of incidental learning

The important premise behind the incidental learning is that when a student is doing something that is fun, he can be learning a great deal without having to notice it. Learning does not necessarily have to be jammed down a student's throat. Rather, students should be allowed to adopt goals and be given materials that will cause them to pick up the desired information "in passing." It is up to course designers to construct situations in which factual knowledge can be naturally acquired. This is the basis of the Incidental Learning Architecture.

The first trick in employing the Incidental Learning Architecture is to find things that are inherently fun to do on a computer. This could be any good video game for example. The second trick is harder. What the student naturally wants to learn in the video game ought to be worth learning. The problem is to change the skills to be learned from hand-eye coordination tasks to content-based tasks, where one needs to know real information in order to accomplish one's goal on the computer. This will work well if there is a natural correlation between the content-based tasks and what is inherently fun.

Since it emphasizes the importance of getting students engaged in interesting tasks, the Incidental Learning Architecture can be seen as a version of the Simulation-Based Learning-By-Doing Architecture. The emphasis of the task in the Incidental Learning architecture is different, however. Typically, in learning-by-doing exercises, we want the student to learn the skills involved in the task. But, in the Incidental Learning Architecture, the emphasis is on the facts involved. The student's task is constructed so as to bring him into contact with the facts in a natural way.

The Opportunity of Incidental Learning

The incidental learning architecture is a particularly powerful architecture for young children because they have been using it naturally as a way to learn. It's almost unfortunate for children when school begins at age five or six. At that point, incidental learning is thrown out of the window, and replaced with a "sit in your chair and do what I say" architecture.

We are concerned with allowing children the right to continue to learn without "studying" -- without artificially forcing the process. To accomplish this, we need to provide situations in which exploration is encouraged, rather than enforcing a rigid "teacher's agenda." Any agenda we do create must insure that the student wants to continue learning. The task of the course designer (as long as there are schools, there will be designers) is to find situations that allow for exploration, and that enable incidental learning to take place.

Recent research into human brain development

Recent research into human brain development

Recent research into human brain developments is proving that parents truly are their children’s first teachers. What parents do, or don’t do, has a lasting impact on their child’s reading skill and literacy. For example, there is considerable evidence of a relationship between reading regularly to a child and that child’s later reading achievement (National Research Council, 1998).

But many parents are not yet making the most of simple, vital opportunities to stimulate full and healthy child development in the early years, and by extension, good reading readiness. As U.S. Education Secretary Richard W. Riley has said, “If every child were read to daily from infancy, it would revolutionize education in this country!”

Brain Development and Reading

Children develop much of their capacity for learning in the first three years of life, when their brains grow to 90 percent of their eventual adult weight (Karoly et al., 1998). A child’s intelligence, so long as it falls within a normal range, does not determine the ease with which the child will learn to read. Rather, as children grow and experience the world, new neural connections are made. This orderly and individualized process, varying from child to child, makes reading possible.

As parents talk, sing, and read to children, the children’s brain cells are literally turned on (Shore, 1997). Existing links among brain cells are strengthened and new cells and links are formed. That is why infants’ and toddlers’ health and nutrition, along with good functioning of the senses, are so important. The opportunity for creating the foundation for reading begins in the earliest years. Moreover, many pediatricians now believe that a child who has never held a book or listened to a story is not a fully healthy child (Klass, 1998).

Given the course of brain development, it is not surprising that young children who are exposed to certain experiences usually prove to be good readers later. Just as a child develops language skills long before being able to speak, the child also develops literacy skills long before being able to read (National Research Council, 1998).

How Parents Help

By cooing, singing lullabies, or reading aloud to a baby, toddler, or preschooler, parents stimulate their children’s developing minds and help build a base for literacy skills. Counting, number concepts, letter names and shapes, associating sounds with letters, interest in reading, and cooperation with other children are all relevant to learning to read (Wells, 1985). Researchers studying high school seniors found early educational experiences—such as learning nursery rhymes, watching Sesame Street, playing word and number games, and being read to—are all good predictors of later reading ability (Hanson et al., 1987).

Positive parental attitudes toward literacy can also help children become more successful readers (Baker et al., 1995). Enthusiasm about books and reading can be shared between a parent and child and deepen the child’s interest in learning to read (Snow & Tabors, 1996). Children who learn from parents that reading is fun may be more likely to sustain efforts to learn to read when the going gets tough (National Research Council, 1998). Some experts believe that parental emphasis on reading as entertainment, rather than as a skill, develops a more positive attitude toward reading in children (Baker et al., 1997).

Wise parents understand that play is the work of children. Parents can use the arts to help develop early language skills, from the first lullaby to dramatization of a favorite story (Council of Chief State School Officers, 1998). Dramatic play can develop vocabulary, concepts and creativity, all part of pre-literacy skill building. Music and other language-rich creative arts can stimulate a young child’s language and literacy development through one-on-one interaction with a caring adult.

ادامه نوشته

Can you be a dictionary whizz????!!

Can you be a dictionary whizz????!!

 

Read the instructions carefully in each section. If you do not understand, try asking a friend in your group to help you.

 

You will need: a pencil and a dictionary

 

Find these words in your dictionary and write down what page they are on.

 

baby  _________            icing _________

 

gate  _________            radio _________

 

cheese ________            walk __________

 

Put a circle around the word which would be found FIRST in the dictionary

 

wagon    peach    add       chance

 

Put a circle around the word which would be found LAST in the dictionary

 

string    engine    pay       bird

 

What page does the ‘p’ section start on in your dictionary?  _______

 

 

Look at the following definitions (what a word means). Can you guess which word is being described? Find the word in the dictionary and put which page you found it on. The first one is done for you.

 

A pipe that carries water away under the ground

Answer: Drain  page 70

 

The red liquid that is pumped round inside your body.

Answer: ___________

 

A liquid with a nice smell that you put on your skin.

Answer: ___________

 

An animal that has four legs and a hard shell over its body. They move slowly and hide under their shell when they are in danger.

Answer: ___________

 

Now try to do these harder questions. Make sure you look at the SECOND letter in each word if the first letters are the same.

 

Put a circle around the word that would come FIRST in the dictionary.

four         fat       few       full

 

Put a circle around the word that would come LAST in the dictionary.

dirty     dance    drive     dump

How does one help students learn vocabulary?

How does one help students learn vocabulary?

Solutions take ýtwo general directions: one focuses on learning word meanings ýfrom context through wide reading and the other on the need for ýdirect instruction about word meanings.ý
What Is Known and How to Know It
The divergent recommendations of wide reading versus direct ýinstruction derive from different assumptions about the extent ýof vocabulary knowledge, that is, how many words children ýtypically know, and how readily new words are learned. For ýexample, rapid word learning and large vocabularies would ýindicate a lesser role for instruction, while slower growth would ýindicate need for intervention.ý
Vocabulary size and growth. A key issue is that estimates of ývocabulary size vary widely. For example, estimates of total ývocabulary size for first graders have ranged from about 2,500 ýý(Edward Dolch and Madorah E. Smith) to about 25,000 ýý(Burleigh Shibles and Mary Katherine Smith), and for college ýstudents from 19,000 (Edwin Doran and Edwin Kirkpatrick) to ýý200,000 (George Hartmann).ý
Situations with such wide variations make it impossible to ýsimply ask people how many words they know, so estimates ýmust be based on testing people's word knowledge of a sample ýof words and extrapolating to a final figure. To construct such ýtests, decisions must be made about what is taken as evidence ýof knowledge of a word, what constitutes a single word (e.g., ýshould individuals who know the word walk be credited with ýknowing the word walking?), and how a sample of words is ýchosen to represent the language. All these decisions open the ýdoor to wide discrepancies in vocabulary size estimations.ý
Work on what constitutes a word and on techniques for ýconstructing a language sample have helped bring estimates ýinto greater agreement. Consequently, estimates in the early ýtwenty-first century place vocabulary size for five-to six-year-ýolds at between 2,500 and 5,000 words. But although the ýproblems of older work on vocabulary size are understood, ýthere are (as of 2001) no recent, large-scale studies that correct ýthese problems.ý
Estimates of vocabulary size at different ages are also used to ýestimate rates of vocabulary growth. Specific estimates of ývocabulary growth, not surprisingly, vary widely, from three ýý(Martin Joos) to twenty new words per day (George Miller). A ýfigure of seven words per day is probably the most commonly ýcited.ý
Whatever the reality, it is certain that there are wide individual ýdifferences in both vocabulary size and growth. Studies have ýfound profound differences among learners from different ýability or socioeconomic groups, from toddlers through high ýschool. For example, Mary Katherine Smith reported that high-ýknowledge third graders had vocabularies about equal to ýlowest-performing twelfth graders. These differences, once ýestablished, appear difficult to ameliorate. This is because ýchildren whose backgrounds provide rich verbal environments ýnot only learn more words initially, but they also acquire ýunderstanding about language that enables them to continue to ýlearn words more readily.ý
Learning from context. Most word meanings are learned from ýcontext. This is true from the earliest stages of a child's ýlanguage acquisition onward, but the type of context changes. ýEarly learning takes place through oral context, while later ývocabulary learning shifts to written context. Written context ýlacks many of the features of oral language that support ýlearning new word meanings, features such as intonation, body ýlanguage, and shared physical surroundings. Thus, written ýcontext is a less efficient vehicle for learning. Research shows ýthat learning from written context occurs, but in small ýincrements. Machteld Swanborn and Kees de Glopper estimate ýthat of one hundred unfamiliar words met in reading, between ýthree and eight will be learned. Thus, students could ýsubstantially increase vocabulary if two conditions are met. ýFirst, students must read widely enough to encounter a ýsubstantial number of unfamiliar words. Second, students must ýhave the skills to infer word-meaning information from the ýcontexts they read. The problem is that many students in need ýof vocabulary development do not engage in wide reading, ýespecially of the kinds of books that contain unfamiliar ývocabulary, and these students are less able to derive ýmeaningful information from context. So depending on wide ýreading as a source of vocabulary growth could leave some ýstudents behind.ý
Direct instruction. The most commonly cited problem with ýdirect instruction to address students' vocabulary needs is that ýthere are too many words to teach. This is certainly true if the ýgoal is to teach all the words in a language. Consider, however, ýa mature vocabulary as comprising three tiers. The first tier ýconsists of basic words - mother, ball, go - that rarely require ýinstructional attention. The third tier contains words of low ýfrequency that are typically limited to specific domains - ýisotope, peninsula, refinery. These words are appropriate for ýspecific needs, such as introducing the word peninsula during a ýgeography lesson. The second tier contains high frequency, ýgeneral words, such as compromise, extraordinary, and typical. ýBecause of the large role tier-two words play in a language ýuser's repertoire, instruction directed toward these could be ývaluable in contributing to vocabulary growth.ý
What kind of instruction should be offered? The answer ýdepends on the goal. Typically, educators want students to ýknow words well enough to facilitate reading comprehension ýand to use the words in their own speech and writing. ýFacilitating comprehension seems a reasonable goal, given the ýwell-established relationship between vocabulary knowledge ýand comprehension. Although virtually all studies that present ývocabulary instruction result in students learning words, few ýhave succeeded in improving comprehension. In analyzing this ýdiscrepancy, researchers, such as Steven Stahl and Marilyn ýFairbanks, found that to influence comprehension instruction ýneeds to: (1) present multiple exposures of words; (2) involve a ýbreadth of information, beyond definitions; (3) engage active ýprocessing by getting students to think about and interact with ýwords.ý
Effective instruction should accomplish the following:ý
• Begin with information about the word's meaning, but not ýnecessarily a formal definition.ý
• Immediately prompt students to use the word.ý
• Keep bringing the words back in a variety of formal and ýinformal ways.ý
• Get students to take their word learning beyond the ýclassroom.ý
• Help students use context productively.ý
Status of Vocabulary Issues
Although there is general consensus on effective vocabulary ýinstruction, little of this kind of instruction is found in ýclassrooms. Attention to vocabulary in classrooms focuses on ýlooking up definitions and perhaps writing sentences for new ýwords. The typical dictionary definitions, however, do not ýpromote students' learning of new word meanings. In fact, often ýstudents do not even understand the definitions of the words ýthey look up. Thus it is important to implement what is known ýabout effective instruction into classrooms.ý
Much about the way vocabulary is learned and stored in ýmemory is still unknown. How much learning comes from oral ýcontexts past initial stages of acquisition? How much do early ýlearning experiences matter and is it possible for children who ýlag early to catch up? What characteristics of verbal ýenvironments are most useful for word learning? For example, ýwhat are the roles of the amount of talk in a child's ýenvironment, the kinds of words used, and interactions within ýthe environment? How is word knowledge organized? Research ýmakes it clear that a person's vocabulary knowledge does not ýexist as a stored list of words, but rather as networks of ýrelationships. This leads to the question, how do these networks ýof word relationships affect how readily and how well words are ýlearned?ý
To help students improve their vocabulary, it will be necessary ýto put into practice what is already known about vocabulary ýlearning and evaluate and refine the results.ý

 

Bibliography
Anglin, Jeremy M. 1993. Vocabulary Development: A ýMorphological Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ý
Beals, Diane E., and Tabors, Patton O. 1995. "Arboretum, ýBureaucratic, and Carbohydrates: Preschoolers' Exposure to ýRare Vocabulary at Home." First Language 15:57 - 76.ý
Beck, Isabel L., and McKeown, Margaret G. 1983. "Learning ýWords Well: A Program to Enhance Vocabulary and ýComprehension." The Reading Teacher 36 (7):622 - 625.ý
Beck, Isabel L., and McKeown, Margaret G. 1991. "Conditions ýof Vocabulary Acquisition." In Handbook of Reading Research, ýVol. 2, ed. Rebecca Barr, Michael L. Kamil, Peter Mosenthal, ýand P. David Pearson. New York: Longman.ý
Beck, Isabel L.; McKeown, Margaret G.; and Omanson, ýRichard C. 1987. "The Effects and Uses of Diverse Vocabulary ýInstructional Techniques." In The Nature of Vocabulary ýAcquisition, ed. Margaret G. McKeown and Mary E. Curtis. ýHillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.ý
Biemiller, Andrew. 1999. Language and Reading Success: ýFrom Reading Research to Practice, Vol.5. Cambridge, MA: ýBrookline Books.ý
Dolch, Edward William. 1936. "How Much Word Knowledge ýDo Children Bring to Grade 1?" Elementary English Review ýý13:177 - 183.ý
Doran, Edwin W. 1907. "A Study of Vocabularies." ýPedagogical Seminar 14:177 - 183.ý
Goerss, Betty L.; Beck, Isabel L.; and McKeown, Margaret G. ýý1999. "Increasing Remedial Students' Ability to Derive Word ýMeaning from Context." Reading Psychology 20 (2):151 - 175.ý
Graves, Michael F.; Brunetti, G. J.; and Slater, Wayne H. 1982. ýý"The Reading Vocabularies of Primary-Grade Children of ýVarying Geographic and Social Backgrounds." In New Inquiries ýin Reading Research and Instruction, ed. Jerome A. Niles and ýLarry A. Harris. Rochester, NY: National Reading Conference.ý
Hart, Betty, and Risley, Todd. 1995. Meaningful Differences. ýBaltimore: Brookes.ý
Hartmann, George W. 1946. "Further Evidence on the ýUnexpected Large Size of Recognition Vocabularies among ýCollege Students." Journal of Educational Psychology 37:436 - ýý439.ý
Joos, Martin. 1964. "Language and the School Child." Harvard ýEducational Review 34:203 - 210.ý
Kirkpatrick, Edwin Asbury. 1891. "The Number of Words in an ýOrdinary Vocabulary." Science 18:107 - 108.ý
Landauer, Thomas, and Dumais, Susan. 1997. "A Solution to ýPlato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of ýAcquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge." ýPsychological Review 104:211 - 240.ý
McKeown, Margaret G. 1985. "The Acquisition of Word ýMeaning from Context by Children of High and Low Ability." ýReading Research Quarterly 20:482 - 496.ý
McKeown, Margaret G. 1993. "Creating Effective Definitions ýfor Young Word Learners." Reading Research Quarterly 28:16 ýý- 31.ý
Meznski, Karen. 1983. "Issues Concerning the Acquisition of ýKnowledge: Effects of Vocabulary Training on Reading ýComprehension." Review of Educational Research 53:253 - ýý279.ý
Miller, George A. 1985. "Dictionaries of the Mind." ýProceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Association for ýComputational Linguists. Chicago: Association for ýComputational Linguists.ý
Nagy, William; Herman, Patricia; and Anderson, Richard. ýý1985. "Learning Words from Context." Reading Research ýQuarterly 20:233 - 253.ý
Shibles, Burleigh H. 1959. "How Many Words Does a First-ýGrade Child Know?" Elementary English 31:42 - 47.ý
Smith, Madorah Elizabeth. 1926. "An Investigation of the ýDevelopment of the Sentence and the Extent of Vocabulary in ýYour Children." University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare ýý5:219 - 227.ý
Smith, Mary Katherine. 1941. Measurement of the Size of ýGeneral English Vocabulary through the Elementary Grades ýand High School. Provincetown, MA: The Journal Press.ý
Stahl, Steven A., and Fairbanks, Marilyn M. 1986. "The Effects ýof Vocabulary Instruction: A Model-Based Meta-Analysis." ýReview of Educational Research 56:7 - 110.ý
Sternberg, Robert J. 1987. "Most Vocabulary Is Learned from ýContext." In The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition, ed. ýMargaret G. McKeown and Mary E. Curtis. Hillsdale, NJ: ýErlbaum.ý
Swanborn, Machteld S. L., and De Glopper, Kees. 1999. ýý"Incidental Word Learning While Reading: A Meta-Analysis." ýReview of Educational Research 69 (3):261 - 285.ý
Watts, Susan. 1995. "Vocabulary Instruction during Reading ýLessons in Six Classrooms." Journal of Reading Behavior 27 ýý(3):399 - 424.ý

 

Peer and Self-evaluation in Spoken Tests: Tools and Methods

Peer and Self-evaluation in Spoken Tests: Tools and Methods

 

Alec McAulay
tokyomcaulay [at] yahoo.co.jp
Yokohama National University (Yokohama, Japan)

Background

I developed and used this method of peer- and self-evaluation for speaking classes in Japanese universities. I have used it in topic-based classes and adapted it to suit a number of textbooks. The benefits of this system of evaluation include:

• Students become aware of the importance of a range of communication features, such as eye contact, body language and gestures.
• It provides practice in a test format they may encounter in commercial exams, such as the STEP test and IELTS.
• It allows students to review recently acquired language.
• Students can discuss how they need to improve without feeling threatened.

Students use the handout below to assess their own progress in speaking tests. The top section is where they mark their score on the test. At the end of the course, the dots indicating the scores for each test can be plotted on a graph, revealing how the student's spoken performance has developed. The middle describes how to score the test. I ask students to leave the bottom section blank until the end of the year, when they can write their own assessment of their performance in the course overall. Alternatively, they can use this section to give feedback on the course.

The test format and assessment handout can be adapted to suit different contexts. Below, I outline how I have implemented the test in my classes.

Instructions for the Test

Students work in groups of three; an Interviewer, Interviewee and Marker. The Interviewee is the one taking the test. She or he has to answer three questions related to the three topics studied in previous classes. (In most classes, I prepare the question cards myself. However, I have recently had students prepare the test questions as homework). For example, if Class 1 was on the topic 'Mobile Phones', Class 2 covered 'Driving', and Class 3 considered 'Surrogate Mothers', one of the three test question cards for Class 4 might look like this:

Test 1

1. Do you own a mobile phone?
2. Is driving dangerous in your country?
3. Should surrogate mothers be allowed to make a profit?

Each student's interview test lasts ten minutes. The Interviewer reads the questions, the Interviewee answers them, and the Marker observes. The following instructions, written on the board for the first test, explain their roles in the test:

• Interviewee: It is your test. The Interviewer will ask you questions – try to speak as much as possible. The Interviewer will help you.
• Interviewer: Ask the questions on the card. Ask follow-up questions. Speak slowly and clearly. Help the Interviewee to speak for the whole ten minutes.
• Marker: Listen to and observe the Interviewee. At the end of the test, give feedback on the strong points and weak points of the Interviewee's performance. Together with the Interviewee, decide on a numerical grade for today's test.

The teacher acts as timekeeper during the test, walking around and being available to help out with any problems they may have. When the time is up, the Marker gives feedback on the Interviewee's performance (in L1 or L2). Then the Interviewee and Marker refer to the assessment sheet, and together decide a score for that day's performance. They mark the score with a dot in the appropriate column. The students then rotate roles, and the teacher gives out a new set of questions. This happens one more time, so that each student gets to play all three roles in the test. All together, the test time, feedback and scoring, and the giving out and collecting of cards takes 45-50 minutes in a class of sixty students. The first test takes a little longer as time is needed to explain the system and get students used to the pattern.

Additional Comments:

Usually I give a class test after three 90-minute sessions. However, recently I have had students make their own questions and carry out this kind of test at the end of each lesson. My feeling is that it elicits more spoken language and motivates students more than group discussion.

You might want to note that it is possible to replace the 'comments' section at the bottom of the page with the guidelines for each role in the test. This would save having to write the guidelines on the board each time.

This assessment form is available at http://iteslj.org/Lessons/McAulay-PeerEvaluation/spokentestform.gif.

---

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 9, September 2002
http://iteslj.org/

---

http://iteslj.org/Lessons/McA

 

Two Activities for Fostering Autonomous Learning

Two Activities for Fostering Autonomous Learning

Galina Kavaliauskiene
gkaval [at] ltu.lt
Law University of Lithuania (Vilnius, Lithuania)

Introduction

Successful language learning entails learner motivation, cooperation and empathy. Naturally, this approach places emphasis on learner development. There are a number of stages in the learner development process. The uppermost stages include raising language awareness (how learners can contribute to their own learning), changing learning strategies (self-monitoring, responding to peers, etc.), and, finally, assuming responsibility for their own learning. The last stage implies transferring some traditional teacher's roles to learners which allows them to become more independent (Kavaliauskiene, 2002).

This paper describes two activities that can encourage learners' development towards autonomy by motivating and involving students in class activities, producing classroom materials and using them in class.

Checking and Correcting Homework

• LEVEL: post-elementary & above
• OBJECTIVES: peer-/self-assessment, developing autonomy, learner cooperation & interaction, recycling vocabulary
• TARGET LANGUAGE : vocabulary / grammar review
• MATERIALS: homework (done individually outside class)
• IMPLEMENTATION
• PROCEDURE: whole class interaction or in small groups
• TIME LIMIT: about 10 minutes

This activity transfers a common teacher's role to learners, encourages their cooperation, interaction, assessment and recycling earlier covered material. It can be used as a warm-up activity at the beginning or as a revision task at the end of the class.

Ask one of the students to start the activity by appointing a speaker who will provide an answer to the first question. If the answer is correct, this student asks somebody else to answer the next question, and so on. If the answer is wrong, the teacher's role is taken by any student who provides the right answer.

The activity works even better if you divide class into teams (3 to 5 students on a team), let students choose the names for their teams (lions, tigers, snails, etc.) and set up the implementation procedure in the same way as described above with one exception - nobody 'plays' teacher's role. Teams do all the checking in turns. Students have more fun this way.

In this activity, all students have opportunity to speak out and argue their points. The teacher is nearly redundant: his/her role is to monitor students' performance. The teacher's interference might be necessary in case of tricky questions, i.e. if learners are unable to come up with a right answer.

Useful Tips

It is advisable, however, instead of prompting the right answer to give learners some tips that might help them produce the correct answer. Usually someone in class does.

At lower levels, students might lack self-confidence to use English. If learners feel like using their first language, do not discourage them. Let students become familiar with activity and feel comfortable and secure.

Alternatives

This activity can be used for peer-checking of progress tests administered by teachers. Having administered a few versions (to avoid cheating) of progress tests, ask students to exchange their worksheets, correct their peer's work and allow them to grade it. Learners enjoy playing teachers!

Next, let students discuss their performance by working in pairs or small groups. The teacher's role is to monitor pairs' work and give advice if necessary.

Useful Tip

Avoid 'denouncing' students for making  mistakes.  The damage to a student's reputation might be irreparable. Individual counseling is preferable.

Student-produced Tests

• LEVEL: elementary & above
• OBJECTIVES: peer-assessment, self-assessment, producing materials, reflection on usage, interaction, recycling grammar/vocabulary
• TARGET LANGUAGE: vocabulary, grammar, word-building, matching words& definitions
• MATERIALS: handouts, worksheets, transparencies from
• web-based, authentic or textbook materials
• IMPLEMENTATION
• PROCEDURE: work in pairs / small groups / whole class discussion
• TIME LIMIT: flexible

The choice of materials that students can use for producing tests for their peers depends on their level. Higher level students are apt to create a variety of exercises (word-building, gap-filling, language in use, matching words and definitions) and use authentic materials. Lower level students prefer to produce grammar exercises similar to ones in their textbooks.

For students, making their own tests is an extremely motivating activity, which also has an element of self-study and self-assessment. Learners are bound to reflect on the items they have chosen for testing

In class, learners hand out worksheets to their peers, set a time limit and provide assistance if needed. The outcome is discussed either between groups or in the whole class.

The teacher's role is to monitor learners' activities in pairs or small groups unobtrusively. Intervention is unnecessary unless learners need assistance.

Useful Tip

It is advisable to check and correct mistakes on the learners' worksheets before they are handed out to their peers.

Tests might be presented on transparencies and implemented as a whole class activity (provided an overhead projector is available in the classroom).

Reference

• Kavaliauskiene, G. Three Activities to Promote Learner's Autonomy. The Internet TESL Journal. Vol. VIII, No. 7, July 2002. http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kavaliauskiene-Autonomy/

---

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 7, July 2003
http://iteslj.org/

---

http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Kavaliauskiene-Autonomy2.html

 

What's the Truth?

What's the Truth?

Carole Allen Poppleton
cpopplet [at] mica.edu
Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD, USA

Most teachers know the difficulty of an opening lecture, introducing students to the goals and expectations of the course, and, hoping beyond hope sometimes, that the students might respond at some point during that first session. I have found a fun and inventive way to make my students feel relaxed with me and to begin to feel relaxed and comfortable with one another in a question / answer, pair share activity. I've found this specific warm-up game workable and useful at a variety of English proficiency levels. For lower level classes, simply make the statements more direct and use appropriate vocabulary. For more advanced, you can expand your "true or false" questions based on students' capabilities. The main objective is for the students to feel comfortable and to meet at least one person in the class and to begin building rapport while practicing writing, listening and speaking.

Step 1

The instructor introduces herself to the class and makes a few casual remarks to get the students acquainted with his/her voice and intonation. Next, the instructor tells the class that they are going to play a game called "What's the Truth?" On the board the teacher lists five sentences about herself (again, these can be very basic or more complex depending on the level), two that are false, three that are true. For example:

1. I love to cook and eat Indian food.
2. I speak three languages: Spanish, English and Russian.
3. I am married and have two children.
4. I love to write short stories and poetry.
5. I lived and worked in Japan for two years.

Step 2

The teacher tells the students that some of these statements are true while others are false. She reads the sentences aloud to the class and it, collectively, votes on which are true and which are false. The teacher counts the votes and writes the numbers next to the statements. All of this creates quite a lot of giggles and guesses as to which sentences are true. I believe it helps to get the students thinking about the instructor as a "real" person, just like them.

Step 3

Next the instructor reveals the three statements that are true and asks the class which one they would like to know more about. Everyone votes and the teacher then spends a few minutes talking about herself: her love for ethnic cooking, her life in Japan, the book of poems she just wrote, etc. The "opening up" of the teacher in front of her students helps to lighten the atmosphere and begins to set the tone for the semester's learning experience.

Step 4

Now it is the students' turn to play the game. On a sheet of paper they must write two false statements and three true ones about themselves. These sentences can be very simple or more complex, but I usually stress that students try to be as creative and free as possible. Allow about 5-7 minutes for the writing process. After completion, break the students into appropriate pairs (perhaps selecting them by gender, native language, race, age, etc. to form diverse groups) and have them begin to play "What's the Truth?" This instantly gives them something to focus upon and talk about as they try to guess the truth about their partner. After the true sentences have been revealed, the students, too, must choose one sentence or topic statement to discuss further. Depending on how talkative and lively the class is in response to this game, the instructor should allow about twenty minutes (10 minutes per person) for the elaboration of the true statement.

Step 5

The final phase of this game is for the pair teams to stand up and introduce each other, by name, to the rest of the class and tell one "true" interesting fact about one another. By warming up with the pair share activity and by introducing and talking about someone else, the performance pressure is lessened for the speaker and the rest of the class begins to become familiar with other students.

Caveats

If time allows and the instructor is stressing listening and memory skills, she could also "test" the class on each other's names, or what information they have learned about each other. For example, the instructor could say, "Keiko, what do you remember about Hsui-Jen?" or "Who can tell me first the name of the student who studied in Russia?"

I have found this introductory activity, which takes virtually no preparation time, to produce lively, fun and often-times surprising results. I had a student reveal that he was a doctor in his native country, a woman who adores Elvis Presley songs, and one young girl confessed that she once gave $50.00 to a street beggar because she had no change! Most of the students really begin to speak and laugh with one another as they read their "lies" and tried to decipher the truth. At best, each student has become better acquainted with another student and all have become better acquainted with the instructor as a person, very similar to them, who has likes, dislikes and has possibly experienced a few adventures!

---

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IV, No. 5, May 1998
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/

 

The primacy of spoken English

Should spoken English be the principal objective of language learning?

ESSAY TITLE: In recent years it has been argued on both linguistic and psychological grounds that spoken language should be the principal objective in language teaching. Outline the arguments supporting this view and discuss their validity in relation to your experience on the needs and objectives of language learners.

Recent emphasis on spoken language in course materials

Most textbooks published in recent years place the greatest emphasis on spoken language in that they embody a methodology that is largely oral.

Traditional grammarians who taught language by talking in the vernacular about language, by setting written translations and largely written grammatical exercises, neglected a very important priciple:

"On the whole people learn what they do. Do something enough times and you will become competent in doing it thereafter." Their Ss did in fact have plenty to do, but the pretence was that they were learning to speak a foreign language.

I discovered this when I arrived in France with French O-level to my credit, but with few French utterances to offer a native French speaker. I was almost completely unrehearsed in the speaking skill.

ادامه نوشته

The 44 English phonemes

The 44 English phonemes

Index to number references and vowel / consonant sounds

Vowel Phonemes			Consonant Phonemes
01		pit	21		pit
02		pet	22		bit
03		pat	23		time
04		pot	24		door
05		luck	25		cat
06		good	26		get
07		ago	27		fan
08		meat	28		van
09		car	29		think
10		door	30		that
11		girl	31		send
12		too	32		zip
13		day	33		man
14		sky	34		nice
15		boy	35		ring
16		beer	36		leg
17		bear	37		rat
18		tour	38		wet
19		go	39		hat
20		cow	40		yet
			41		shop
			42		leisure
			43		chop
			44		jump

Source:http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/folkchart.htm

 

ُSPSS Project

سلام به دوستان.....

یه تحقیق آماری برای درس SPSS انجام دادم.....که اونو اینجا میذارم برا دانلود. این تحقیق به زبان

انگلیسی نوشته شده.

 

 

دانلود

Happy Teacher's Day

If you can read this, Thank an English Teacher.

 

Happy Teacher's Day

The Clarifying Routine: Elaborating Vocabulary Instruction

By: Edwin S. Ellis (2002)

When you think of vocabulary, there is a good chance that you think of long lists of words from social studies or science textbooks, spelling word lists, or even the humongous lists of terms to study for college entrance exams. Zillions of flash cards also may come to mind. No doubt you share the common childhood experience of having to "go look up the words in a dictionary, write the definition, and then write a sentence using the term" — but how much of that vocabulary do you remember now? Do you remember how you could rote copy the definition of a term as part of a homework assignment, but have no real idea what the definition meant and still get an 'A' on the assignment?

Perhaps the least effective way to study vocabulary is the "look and remember" technique. Here, students typically stare at the term and definition, apparently trying to activate photographic memory they wish they had. Another common study technique is 'rote verbal rehearsal' — saying the word over and over again, usually in the exact language and format from which the definition originally came.

Ross Perot, with his unique use of the English language, said it best — "That dog don't hunt!" In other words, many of the traditional techniques teachers and students use to learn vocabulary does not work because most students, not just those with learning problems, rarely remember the meanings of new terms beyond the test. This raises a very disconcerting question: If students don't remember the definitions of new terms after the test, why bother requiring them to memorize these definitions in the first place since it seems to be a waste of time?

We know from research that new terms must be defined using language and examples which are already familiar to students, and that the more ideas from background knowledge with which the student can associate the new term, the more likely it will become a well-networked and permanent part of memory. There are a variety of tactics and strategies that can be mediated by the teacher to help students understand and remember new terms as well as the significance of important names, events, places, or processes. All of these tactics involve facilitating elaboration in various ways.

http://www.ldonline.org/article/5759

ادامه نوشته

Classroom activities: skills needed for reading different texts-types

Classroom activities: skills needed for reading different texts-types

A. PREDICTION:

1. What is coming next?
2. Anticipation questions (Give title: "Women in Africa". Ask students to anticipate the questions they think the article may answer.
3. Pre-questions focussing on global function / most important aspect
4. Surveying a book using index, chapter, paragraph headings (read topic sentences)
5. Completing sentences: It was a lovely day so/but

B. SKIMMING (Rapid reading for overall gist and to extract specific information)

C. SCANNING (a passage for specific information) - timed activities with specific questions.

D. COHESION The way in which the forms of the language are used to tie ideas together, to build up stretches of text. Cataphora, Anaphora, Logical Connectors, Substitute words (different ways of saying the same thing), Related words

Related words (Lexical sets = collocation), questions about reference words, jumbled sentences, invent paragraph jigsaws (leave out one paragraph), Cloze tests are a good way of testing cohesion links within a text.

E. COHERENCE The way in which arguments are linked and developed in terms of the ideas they convey. See "From Paragraph To Essay". Organisation is * Chronological * Problem/hypothesis *Experiment/conclusion

F. INFERENCE & INTERPRETATION: students apply their knowledge of real world to what is stated as well as what is implied (but not stated).

QUESTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED:

1. What do we teach? CAPITALS. TYPOGRAPHICAL VARIATIONS or HANDWRITING.
2. How are we going to teach them to read? Whole word approach, phonics, I.T.A.?
3. What is learning dependent upon?

Rules to bear in mind when planning the teaching programme:

1. The law of experience: doing something makes it likely we will remember it. First impressions are the most lasting.
2. The law of frequency: the more often we do, the more likely we will remember it.
3. The law of recency: the more recently we have done something the more likely we are to recall it
4. The law of relevance: select lesson content which is relevant to your student's immediate language needs
   (This assumes that you have discovered what those needs are, and have the resources to address them).

The teacher's job is to produce an interesting lesson respecting the maturity level of the student. Note: failure of many reading schemes to interest adults.

Sorce:http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/esl1108.html

APA Documentation Style

---

 

 

Background

APA style, or APA format are the terms commonly used to describe the writing style guidelines which are developed, maintained, and periodically revised and updated by the American Psychological Association (APA).

The American Psychological Association came into being in its current form through the 1945 amalgamation of a number of different psychological societies and organizations which existed in the U.S.A. at that time, at both the national and state levels. The APA currently has almost 160,000 members and is the largest association of psychologists in the world.

Over the years, the APA has developed a standard for writing style that is now widely used by writers in the social sciences, education, business and psychology. Accordingly, the APA documentation style is now used throughout the world, in both business and academia.

The APA's writing style is documented in its manual entitled:

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition (2001).

The APA's Publication Manual covers all aspects of the writing and publishing process including: organizing, writing, formatting, keying, and submitting a manuscript for publication. It provides detailed guidance on editorial style as well as on the appropriate standards for publishing research in accordance with ethical principles of scientific publishing.

APA documentation style (similar to the MLA style) calls for "in-text" citations of sources of information to be listed within the text where they are referenced, rather than in footnotes and endnotes, as some systems call for.

ادامه نوشته

APA STYLE GUIDE

 

APA STYLE GUIDE

 

APA requires a hanging indent for its citations. Also, PLEASE BE SURE TO DOUBLE SPACE CITATIONS. For space saving reasons, the citations below are single spaced. APA requires double spacing of citations. For in text citations please see: http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/research/apaintext.html. If your source does not appear on this sheet, consult the APA guide available on Reserve or at the Information Services desk.

Books

Typical book entry -- single author
Arnheim, R. (1971). Art and visual perception. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Publishing information - Spell out the publishing names of associations and university presses, but omit superfluous terms such as "Publishers," "Co.," or "Inc." If two or more locations are given, give the location listed first or the publisher's home office. When the pubisher is a university and the name of the state (or province) is included in the university name, do not repeat the name of the state/province in the publisher location. When the author and publisher are identical, use the word "Author" as the name of the publisher.

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of

 mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Multiple authors
When a work has up to (and including) six authors, cite all authors. When a work has more than six authors cite the first six followed by "et al."

Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails.  Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

Roeder, K., Howdeshell, J., Fulton, L., Lochhead, M., Craig, K., Peterson, R., et.al. (1967).

Nerve cells and insect behavior. Cambridge, MA:   Harvard University Press.

Corporate authorship
Institute of Financial Education. (1982). Managing personal funds. Chicago:  Midwestern.

No author identified
Experimental psychology. (1938). New York: Holt.

Citing items in an anthology/chapter in edited book
Rubenstein, J.P. (1967). The effect of television violence on small children. In B.F. Kane (Ed.),

Television and juvenile psychological development (pp. 112-134). New York:

American Psychological Society.

Reprinted or republished chapter
Freud, S. (1961). The ego and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition

of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 3-66). London:

Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1923)

Following the entry, enclose "Original work published" in parentheses, noting the original date.

Chapter in a volume in a series
Maccoby, E.E., & Martin, J. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-child

interaction. In P.H. Mussen (Series Ed.) & E.M. Hetherington (Vol. Ed.), Handbook

of child psychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personality, and social development

(4th ed., pp. 1-101). New York: Wiley.

 

ادامه نوشته

How To Write A Dissertation

or

Bedtime Reading For People Who Do Not Have Time To Sleep

---

To The Candidate:

So, you are preparing to write a Ph.D. dissertation in an experimental area of Computer Science. Unless you have written many formal documents before, you are in for a surprise: it's difficult!

There are two possible paths to success:

• Planning Ahead.

Few take this path. The few who do leave the University so quickly that they are hardly noticed. If you want to make a lasting impression and have a long career as a graduate student, do not choose it.

• Perseverance.

All you really have to do is outlast your doctoral committee. The good news is that they are much older than you, so you can guess who will eventually expire first. The bad news is that they are more practiced at this game (after all, they persevered in the face of their doctoral committee, didn't they?).

Here are a few guidelines that may help you when you finally get serious about writing. The list goes on forever; you probably won't want to read it all at once. But, please read it before you write anything.

ادامه نوشته

Why to learn vocabulary?

سلام بعد از مدتها اومدم!درگیرکارای پایان نامه بودم....چون کارم درباره vocabulary هست کلا تو این فازم!

Why to learn vocabulary?

 

What is a strategy?

What are the strategies to learn vocabulary and their effectiveness?

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.      ( Jules Renard )

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.             (Evelyn Waugh)

A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.

                             (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.   (John French)

These and so many other pieces of great minds convinced me that learning words are synonymous to learning a language. Words are language themselves. So it is inevitable to learn a number of words to be able to perform all the language functions appropriately with a particular language.   

 Strategy. A learning strategy is a series of actions a learner takes to facilitate the completion of a learning task. A strategy starts when the learner analyses the task, the situation, and what is available in his/her own repertoire. The learner then goes on to select, deploy, monitor, and evaluate the effectiveness of this action, and decides if s/he needs to revise the plan and action. There is a distinction between language learning strategies and language use strategies, the former being strategies for learning tasks such as remembering, and the latter being strategies for language use, such as communicating in an L2.

Purpose

One way to see the overall task of vocabulary learning is through the distinction between knowing a word and using a word. In other words, the purpose of vocabulary learning should include both remembering words and the ability to use them automatically in a wide range of language contexts when the need arises. Vocabulary learning strategies, therefore, should include strategies for "using" as well as "knowing" a word.

ادامه نوشته

Teaching vocabulary: Going beyond the textbook

Penny Ur

Rishon LeTzion ETAI mini-conference

February 22 2009

Some research-based facts about vocabulary teaching

Vocabulary is the most important aspect of language to teach

You can understand a reading text and make yourself understood with almost no grammar, but you can’t get anywhere without vocabulary.  It is more important than reading strategies for understanding a text.  It is also the best single measure of proficiency.  

Learners need to acquire a large number of lexical items

They need to understand 98% of a text in order to understand the main gist, and in order to guess the rest from context.

For an unsimplified text, this means about 5,000 – 8,000 words (Schmitt, 2008).  By the end of 6^th grade they may know 1000: so need another 4,000 – 7,000 over the next 6 years: 20 – 30 a week!!

Many of the lexical items learners need to know are ‘chunks’

‘Chunks’ are expressions we learn as global units: by the way, I don’t know, never mind, back and forth, in favor of, make a difference

‘Collocations’ are the way words ‘prefer’ to link with other words: responsible + for, rosy + cheeks, high + mountain (not tall)

TASK: How many ‘chunks’ can you find in the following text:

The mobile phone has changed the lives of people all over the world. Here are a few facts:

In many countries there are more mobile phones in use than regular phones.  People in remote areas in countries such as Kenya, India and Peru often don’t have regular phones.  Until the invention of the mobile phone they were not able to communicate with the outside world.

Photographs of important events, like the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, are now taken on mobile phones.  These often become the first pictures seen on television.

Mobile phones can save lives.  For example, if you have your mobile phone on in an earthquake, a rescue party can find your location.

You can’t acquire enough vocabulary only through incidental encounters

By ‘picking up’ through extensive reading or listening: learners appear to learn only one new word per 2,000 -  VERY slow! So we need deliberate teaching and re-teaching of new items.

ادامه نوشته

INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY

INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY
ACQUISITION IN THE FOREIGN
LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
Henning Wode
Kiel University

This paper is based on ongoing research on a recent low-dose, late
partial English immersion (IM) program in Germany. The evaluation
compares English language outcomes of IM groups, groups from
non-IM schools, and non-IM groups from the same school as the IM
groups, at various points of their development. This paper focuses
on whether English vocabulary learning occurs incidentally while students
are learning history or geography, or both, taught in English
and whether there is evidence to suggest that the learning abilities
activated in the IM classroom are the same as those found in traditional
foreign language teaching and in naturalistic (untutored) L2 acquisition.
The data derive from a communicative group test. It is shown
that some of the lexical items cannot have come from the textbook
or from other kinds of teaching materials used during regular foreign
language instruction in the program. This leaves the teacher’s oral
use of English as the most likely source. Several implications for L2
acquisition theory and teaching practice are discussed.

PURPOSE AND TERMINOLOGY

Although late partial English immersion (IM) programs of the kind under scrutiny
here have been operating quite successfully in Germany since 1967, L2
development in such programs has never been evaluated on a scientific basis
(see Wode, 1995, for an overview). There is no tradition in Germany for educational
program evaluation. Consequently, in order to undertake such research
and to have it accepted by the general public, the school authorities, and the
scientific community, the research design must not only address very specific
issues, such as incidental vocabulary acquisition, but also relate to larger is-
This research was supported by a grant from the Cornelsen Stiftung Lehren und Lernen.

ادامه نوشته

How to Write a Research Proposal

How to Write a Research Proposal

By: Paul T. P. Wong, Ph.D., C.Psych.
Research Director, Graduate Program in Counselling Psychology
Trinity Western University
Langley, BC, Canada

Most students and beginning researchers do not fully understand what a research proposal means, nor do they understand its importance. To put it bluntly, one's research is only as a good as one's proposal. An ill-conceived proposal dooms the project even if it somehow gets through the Thesis Supervisory Committee. A high quality proposal, on the other hand, not only promises success for the project, but also impresses your Thesis Committee about your potential as a researcher.

A research proposal is intended to convince others that you have a worthwhile research project and that you have the competence and the work-plan to complete it. Generally, a research proposal should contain all the key elements involved in the research process and include sufficient information for the readers to evaluate the proposed study.

Regardless of your research area and the methodology you choose, all research proposals must address the following questions: What you plan to accomplish, why you want to do it and how you are going to do it.

The proposal should have sufficient information to convince your readers that you have an important research idea, that you have a good grasp of the relevant literature and the major issues, and that your methodology is sound.

The quality of your research proposal depends not only on the quality of your proposed project, but also on the quality of your proposal writing. A good research project may run the risk of rejection simply because the proposal is poorly written. Therefore, it pays if your writing is coherent, clear and compelling.

This paper focuses on proposal writing rather than on the development of research ideas.

ادامه نوشته

Ten Conversation Lessons with Stories, Vocabulary Practice, Questions and Activities

اگر فکر نوشتن یک کتاب تو سر دارین راهکارهایی که فرزاد شریفیان هموطن ساکن استرالیا پیشنهاد کرده فوق العاده به نظر میرسند. مثال این موارد در ادامه مطلب هست. از دستش ندین.

Ten Conversation Lessons with Stories, Vocabulary Practice, Questions and Activities

Farzad Sharifian
f.sharifian [at] cowan.edu.au
Edith Cowan University (Western Australia)
Suggestions for Using the Lessons

The Story
Depending on the main objective(s) of the course, the teacher may choose to read the story aloud asking the students not to look at it or ask the students to read the story to themselves silently and as quickly as possible.
Vocabulary Practice
The teacher may ask the students to answer the vocabulary questions as soon as they are through with the story. Students should use the text in order to guess the meaning of each vocabulary item.
Questions for Discussion
The questions posed under this section are meant to stimulate spontaneous speech and class discussion. The teacher may ask several students to answer the same question for different possible opinions.
Activities
Here the teacher may ask students to pair up and tell each other the story in their own words and he himself may act as a co-communicator or a counselor. He can also ask one student to tell the whole class the story in his/her own words. Then the teacher may act as a model and pronounce the words under this section and ask the students to repeat the words several times. Finally, the teacher may use each word in a full sentence and ask the students to repeat for possible contextual effects.
Miscellany
A variety of statements such as proverbs and quotes can be found under this section. The statements are deliberately chosen to be provocative to spark off spontaneous debate and discussion. Thus, the teacher may choose each of these statements as a topic for class discussion.

ادامه نوشته

How to teach the Simple Past tense in English

How to teach the Simple Past tense in English

 

Whenever I have to teach the Simple Past tense in English, one activity I always use is speaking and writing practice using some short “stories” that I made up. Writing them was a lot more difficult than I’d originally imagined since use of only regular verbs in a narrative is not really authentic language. Native speakers simply don’t talk that way. But, to give my EFL English students some practice in writing the forms of regular verbs in past and especially in pronouncing them, I came up with a couple of shorts using only this form. They’re harder to read and pronounce than “normal”, but the intensive practice seems to be quite helpful. So, I continue to use them even though I know this speech pattern is not going to occur in natural English speech.
Since my learners are all from a Spanish-speaking country in South America, Colombia, they typically exhibit a problem in pronouncing the –ed verb ending in its various forms. I’d noticed the same propensity towards pronunciation problems with –ed regular verb endings in other Spanish-speaking areas, so I prepared exercises to help with this early on. Students in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Panama and Ecuador have all benefited from these simple “stories” I hope that perhaps your EFL / ESL students will too.
TEFL Learners can read the story paragraphs aloud, focusing on the correct pronunciation of the verb ending forms. They can fill-in the blanked out endings in the paragraph to practice adding –ed or just –d as required. Also they’ll practice with when to change “y” to an “i” before adding –ed. For example, Play becomes played, and stay becomes stayed, but try and cry become tried or cried. The stories could be cut into strips and re-ordered, acted out as a “skit”, pantomimed, or a variety of written exercises and comprehension activities could be added. As an added feature, I boldface the verbs in the paragraphs.
I attempted to create short paragraph stories that would be of some interest as well. One is set in the Old West and is called, “The Sheriff of Calico County”. The others take place during a visit to the zoo, and during a bank robbery, respectively. They’re entitled, “The Zoo” (169 words) and “The State Bank” (131 words). Kinda catchy titles, ain’t they? There was just a bit of “writing license” taken in the creation of these short paragraph stories. Hey, it worked for Shakespeare, didn’t it?
Here are two as examples for you to try out.
The Zoo
Last Wednesday we decided to visit the zoo. We arrived the next morning after we breakfasted, cashed in our passes and entered. We walked toward the first exhibits. I looked up at a giraffe as it stared back at me. I stepped nervously to the next area. One of the lions gazed at me as he lazed in the shade while the others napped. One of my friends first knocked then banged on the tempered glass in front of the monkey’s cage. They howled and screamed at us as we hurried to another exhibit where we stopped and gawked at plumed birds. After we rested, we headed for the petting zoo where we petted wooly sheep who only glanced at us but the goats butted each other and nipped our clothes when we ventured too near their closed pen. Later, our tired group nudged their way through the crowded paths and exited the turnstiled gate. Our car bumped, jerked and swayed as we dozed during the relaxed ride home.
The State Bank
This morning at 8:33, someone robbed the State Bank downtown. The thief entered the bank and stated that he wanted all their money. The thief smiled but looked very tired. The tellers seemed worried. The thief received the money he requested, asked to be excused, then stormed out quickly as the door revolved. He dashed down the street and screeched away in a damaged car that rattled, squeaked and smoked. It appeared that he really needed the money. The police soon arrived. They barreled and chased down the street. They searched and questioned bystanders, but the thief vanished. The police failed to catch him. Investigators abandoned the case and neglected to do anything else. The money was never recovered and the thief was never identified the report of the incident ended.
In part two of this article series, I demonstrate the use of a similar style, but much longer piece for practicing simple past of regular verbs. If you’re successful and want to try another of my “stories” or two, just e-mail me for more. Better yet try your hand at coming up with a couple of your own. Either way, I’m happy to be able to share these with you and I’d be happy to hear how these worked for you and your EFL / ESL English learners. So, feel free to let me know how well these worked (or didn’t) for you.
Good Luck

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an English language teaching and learning expert author and university professor in Cali, Colombia. Now YOU too can live your dreams in paradise, find romance, high adventure and get paid while travelling for free.
For more information on entering or advancing in the fascinating field of teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language send for his no-cost PDF Ebook, "If You Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know", immediate delivery details and no-obligation information are available online now at: http://bettereflteacher.blogspot.com/
Need professional, original content or articles for your blog, newsletter or website? Have a question, request, or want to receive more information or to be added to his articles and teaching materials mailing list? Then contact the author at this website for a prompt response.

Language syllabus design

موضوع و متن كنفرانس هفته آينده ام

Language syllabus design

 

Type A Tradition

 It consists of both structural and functional syllabus
 Aspects of Grading a syllabus (McIntosh and strevens,1964)
1. Staging
2. Sequencing
 Selection and Gradation of Vocabulary
1. Frequency of occurrence
2. Coverage
3. Range
4. Availability
5. Learnability (Mackey, 1965)
a. Similarity of the L2 word to its L1 equivalent
b. Demonstrability
c. Brevity
d. Regularity of form
e. Learning load represented by a new word
6. Two other factors:
a. Opportunism
b. interest
 Structure  selection
1. Frequency
2. Coverage
3. Learnability and teachability
 Structure Grading
 Frequency
 Ergonic combination
 Concreteness
 Proportion
 General expediency

ادامه نوشته

Teaching Pronoun Usage: Don't Trust Your Ear

Teaching Pronoun Usage: Don't Trust Your Ear

The tip for how to teach pronoun usage is not to trust your ear. If you trust your ear, you would have said the answer to the example above would have been "him." You would have been wrong. You have to stick to the rules, regardless of the way it sounds. If you know the rules, use the rules, and apply the rules, there is no reasons why you should miss pronoun usage questions.
Object Pronouns
Object pronouns usually, but not always, are located at the end of sentences. Common object pronouns are us, him, her, us, you, etc. Object pronouns follow objects: direct objects, indirect objects, and objects of the prepositions. If you do not know how these grammatical concepts function, I suggest you review them before moving on so you will be able to recognize direct and indirect objects as well as objects of prepositions. Here is an example: The letter was addressed to him. To is the preposition, so you know that you have to use an object pronoun, which is him.
Assessing Student Understanding
After explaining the concept to students write ten sentences on your SMARTboard and see if students understand the concept. For example: (He, Him) went to school. Obviously, the answer is he as "he" is the subject of the verb.
After students understand how to use subject and object pronouns, introduce who and whom to students. This concept, often dreaded by students, is just as easy as using he/him.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/39363.aspx#ixzz0OJQUZaSn

Teaching : An Honorable Profession of Today

Teaching : An Honorable Profession of Today

 In all over the world, teaching as a career option is considered as one of the noble professions of today. A teacher has full authority and responsibility to mould his students. For building a career in teaching, one should have some different skills and training at different levels. Teachers can make the future of their students by rousing their curiosity and by watching them grow.

For becoming a teacher, one should have to do different areas of specialization for nursery schools, primary schools, high schools, middle schools, colleges and universities etc. For each type of level, an individual must have different types of expertise. People, who love children, can start their career as a teacher in schools and on the other hand, one who wants to mentor young people, should teach in college or university. For being a teacher, the only important thing is that you should be expertise in your field. The basic qualities of a teacher are patient, perseverant, ready to adopt the students' demands and pleasing personality. Being successful in this profession, one should able to understand the students' psychology. With his intelligence, wisdom and patience, a teacher can influence on the students in a positive manner. Students consider their teachers as their role model.

In building a career in teaching, one should have to do a professional course from the reputed institute. Some of professional courses are NTT course, B.Ed, M.Ed and so on. Sharda Group of Institutions also offers B.Ed program at its affiliated college. Now this institute has also established a private university i.e. Sharda University in Greater Noida under Act 14 2009 of UP State Legislative and approved by UGC. B.Ed. Program of the institute is affiliated to Dr. B.R. Ambedakar university, Agra that is formerly known as Agra University. The eligibility criteria for taking admission in B.Ed program at SGI Institute is required Bachelor's degree in any discipline with minimum 55% marks. This institute believes in delivering high level education to the students with the help of its accomplished faculty members. In short, teaching as a career option is a challenging option for everyone because teachers are responsible for making one's career.

 

Written by Mukesh Kumar
from:http://www.eduq.com/Articles/Teaching--An-Honorable-Profession-of-Today.aspx

Approaches to Foreign Language Syllabus Design

Approaches to Foreign Language Syllabus Design

This "Digest" is based on the ERIC/CLL "Language in Education" series monograph entitled "Approaches to Syllabus Design for Foreign Language Teaching" by Karl Krahnke, available from Prentice-Hall/Regents for $11.33. To order, write to: Book Distribution Center, Route 59 at Brook Hill Dr., West Nyack, NY 10994 or call: 1-800-223-1360.

THE PLACE OF THE SYLLABUS
A language teaching syllabus involves the integration of subject matter (what to talk about) and linguistic matter (how to talk about it); that is, the actual matter that makes up teaching. Choices of syllabi can range from the more or less purely linguistic, where the content of instruction is the grammatical and lexical forms of the language, to the purely semantic or informational, where the content of instruction is some skill or information and only incidentally the form of the language. To design a syllabus is to decide what gets taught and in what order. For this reason, the theory of language explicitly or implicitly underlying the language teaching method will play a major role in determining what syllabus is adopted. Theory of learning also plays an important part in determining the kind of syllabus used. For example, a syllabus based on the theory of learning espoused by cognitive code teaching would emphasize language forms and whatever explicit descriptive knowledge about those forms was presently available. A syllabus based on an acquisition theory of learning, however, would emphasize unanalyzed, though possibly carefully selected experiences of the new language in an appropriate variety of discourse types.
The choice of a syllabus is a major decision in language teaching, and it should be made as consciously and with as much information as possible.There has been much confusion over the years as to what different types of content are possible in language teaching syllabi and as to whether the differences are in syllabus or method. Several distinct types of language teaching syllabi exist, and these different types may be implemented in various teaching situations.

SIX TYPES OF SYLLABI
Although six different types of language teaching syllabi are treated here as though each occurred "purely," in practice, these types rarely occur independently of each other. Almost all actual language teaching syllabi are combinations of two or more of the types defined here. For a given course, one type of syllabus usually dominates, while other types of content may be combined with it. Furthermore, the six types of syllabi are not entirely distinct from each other. For example, the distinction between skill-based and task-based syllabi may be minimal. In such cases, the distinguishing factor is often the way in which the instructional content is used in the actual teaching procedure. The characteristics, differences, strengths, and weaknesses of individual syllabi are defined as follows:
1. "A structural (formal) syllabus." The content of language teaching is a collection of the forms and structures, usually grammatical, of the language being taught. Examples include nouns, verbs, adjectives, statements, questions, subordinate clauses, and so on.

2. "A notional/functional syllabus." The content of the language teaching is a collection of the functions that are performed when language is used, or of the notions that language is used to express. Examples of functions include: informing, agreeing, apologizing, requesting; examples of notions include size, age, color, comparison, time, and so on.

3. "A situational syllabus." The content of language teaching is a collection of real or imaginary situations in which language occurs or is used. A situation usually involves several participants who are engaged in some activity in a specific setting. The language occurring in the situation involves a number of functions, combined into a plausible segment of discourse. The primary purpose of a situational language teaching syllabus is to teach the language that occurs in the situations. Examples of situations include: seeing the dentist, complaining to the landlord, buying a book at the book store, meeting a new student, and so on.

4. "A skill-based syllabus." The content of the language teaching is a collection of specific abilities that may play a part in using language. Skills are things that people must be able to do to be competent in a language, relatively independently of the situation or setting in which the language use can occur. While situational syllabi group functions together into specific settings of language use, skill-based syllabi group linguistic competencies (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse) together into generalized types of behavior, such as listening to spoken language for the main idea, writing well-formed paragraphs, giving effective oral presentations, and so on. The primary purpose of skill-based instruction is to learn the specific language skill. A possible secondary purpose is to develop more general competence in the language, learning only incidentally any information that may be available while applying the language skills.

5. "A task-based syllabus." The content of the teaching is a series of complex and purposeful tasks that the students want or need to perform with the language they are learning. The tasks are defined as activities with a purpose other than language learning, but, as in a content-based syllabus, the performance of the tasks is approached in a way that is intended to develop second language ability. Language learning is subordinate to task performance, and language teaching occurs only as the need arises during the performance of a given task. Tasks integrate language (and other) skills in specific settings of language use. Task-based teaching differs from situation-based teaching in that while situational teaching has the goal of teaching the specific language content that occurs in the situation (a predefined product), task-based teaching has the goal of teaching students to draw on resources to complete some piece of work (a process). The students draw on a variety of language forms, functions, and skills, often in an individual and unpredictable way, in completing the tasks. Tasks that can be used for language learning are, generally, tasks that the learners actually have to perform in any case. Examples include: applying for a job, talking with a social worker, getting housing information over the telephone, and so on.

6. "A content-based-syllabus." The primary purpose of instruction is to teach some content or information using the language that the students are also learning. The students are simultaneously language students and students of whatever content is being taught. The subject matter is primary, and language learning occurs incidentally to the content learning. The content teaching is not organized around the language teaching, but vice-versa. Content-based language teaching is concerned with information, while task-based language teaching is concerned with communicative and cognitive processes. An example of content-based language teaching is a science class taught in the language the students need or want to learn, possibly with linguistic adjustment to make the science more comprehensible.

In general, the six types of syllabi or instructional content are presented beginning with the one based most on structure, and ending with the one based most on language use. Language is a relationship between form and meaning, and most instruction emphasizes one or the other side of this relationship.

CHOOSING AND INTEGRATING SYLLABI
Although the six types of syllabus content are defined here in isolated contexts, it is rare for one type of syllabus or content to be used exclusively in actual teaching settings. Syllabi or content types are usually combined in more or less integrated ways, with one type as the organizing basis around which the others are arranged and related. In discussing syllabus choice and design, it should be kept in mind that the issue is not which type to choose but which types, and how to relate them to each other.
PRACTICAL GUIDELINES TO SYLLABUS CHOICE AND DESIGN
It is clear that no single type of content is appropriate for all teaching settings, and the needs and conditions of each setting are so idiosyncratic that specific recommendations for combination are not possible. In addition, the process of designing and implementing an actual syllabus warrants a separate volume. Several books are available that address the process of syllabus design and implementation both practically and theoretically (see For Further Reading section; the full-length monograph includes a 13-item annotated bibliography of basic works on syllabus design and a 67-item reference list). These books can help language course designers make decisions for their own programs. However, a set of guidelines for the process is provided below.
Ten steps in preparing a practical language teaching syllabus:

1. Determine, to the extent possible, what outcomes are desired for the students in the instructional program. That is, as exactly and realistically as possible, define what the students should be able to do as a result of the instruction.

2. Rank the syllabus types presented here as to their likelihood of leading to the outcomes desired. Several rankings may be necessary if outcomes are complex.

3. Evaluate available resources in expertise (for teaching, needs analysis, materials choice and production, etc.), in materials, and in training for teachers.

4. Rank the syllabi relative to available resources. That is, determine what syllabus types would be the easiest to implement given available resources.

5. Compare the lists made under Nos. 2 and 4. Making as few adjustments to the earlier list as possible, produce a new ranking based on the resources' constraints.

6. Repeat the process, taking into account the constraints contributed by teacher and student factors described earlier.

7. Determine a final ranking, taking into account all the information produced by the earlier steps.

8. Designate one or two syllabus types as dominant and one or two as secondary.

9. Review the question of combination or integration of syllabus types and determine how combinations will be achieved and in what proportion.

10. Translate decisions into actual teaching units.

In making practical decisions about syllabus design, one must take into consideration all the possible factors that might affect the teachability of a particular syllabus. By starting with an examination of each syllabus type, tailoring the choice and integration of the different types according to local needs, one may find a principled and practical solution to the problem of appropriateness and effectiveness in syllabus design.

FOR FURTHER READING
Alexander, L.G. (1976). Where do we go from here: A reconsideration of some basic assumptions affecting course design. "English Language Teaching," 30(2), 89-103.
Dubin, F., & Olshtain, E. (1986). "Course design: Developing programs and materials for language learning." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gattegno, C. (1972). "Teaching foreign languages in schools: The silent way (2nd ed.)." New York: Educational Solutions. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 157 403)

Krahnke, K.J. (1981). "Incorporating communicative instruction into academic preparation ESL curricula." (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 210 915)

Mohan, B. (1979). Relating language teaching and content teaching. "TESOL Quarterly," 13(2), 171-82.

Steiner, F. (1975). "Performing with objectives." Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

ABOUT THE MONOGRAPH

"Approaches to Syllabus Design for Foreign Language Teaching," by Karl Krahnke, includes chapters on the place of the syllabus in language teaching, six types of language teaching syllabi, and choosing and integrating syllabi, as well as individual chapters devoted to each of the six types of syllabi defined here.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

Ways of presenting English grammar

Ways of presenting English grammar

Contexts, prompts and methods used in grammar presentation in the language classroom:

Model sentences for oral practice + picture e.g. The butcher's got some meat. He hasn't got any lamb. Contrasting sentence pairs.

Question & Answer e.g. pattern practice drills of both the "meaningless" and "meaningful" variety.

Dialogues e.g. A. I'd like some bacon, please. B. I'm sorry, we haven't got any. Streamline Departures - Yes, dear. Did you get any bread?

Situations e.g. I'm going to pack / take a bus to….. Robert O'Neill's "English in Situations" See also the situations and conversations in Kernel Intermediate. Julia.

Demonstration e.g. prepositions of place - I'm going to put the cassette tape into the cassette player.

Texts e.g. The sun shines more in Spain than in England. Contextualization.

Grammatical explanations - e.g. "some" used when the quantity is definite for plural or uncountable"

Diagrams - e.g. Time Line for Present Perfect v Past Simple

Drawings

Translation

Grammatical explanations in student's mother tongue

Students' suggestions - e.g. activation of previous language knowledge through The Silent Way

Language bath - Suggestopaedia

 

Authentic Materials

Authentic Materials

The question of authenticity as applied to learners at different levels
AUTHENTICITY - REAL COMMUNICATION

EXAM TITLE: Some extremists argue that no language used in a classroom can be "real" because of the very fact that it is used in a classroom. Others would argue that classroom language is as real as any other language. In other words, the language teacher need not make any concessions towards authenticity. What in your view are the criteria that make the use of language in a classroom "real" and what kinds of activity do these criteria give rise to? (Question from David Jones' RSA Course in Stockholm).

It is probable that much of the criticism of "language used in the classroom" has arisen as a result of the limited view of language which underlies many syllabuses.

ادامه نوشته

To Teach or Not to Teach (Grammar)—No Longer the Question

To Teach or Not to Teach (Grammar)—No Longer the Question

There was a time, not so long ago, when virtually every high school English teacher who heard the word "grammar" could immediately recall Warriner's, diagramming sentences, and endless skill and drill exercises.

These teachers embraced the notion of prescriptive (also called traditional or school) grammar. Grammar was taught as a discrete set of rigid rules to be memorized, practiced, and followed.

During the height of the whole language movement, when teaching grammar in isolation became taboo, these teachers were left frustrated and baffled by the lack of grammar instruction in the classroom.

English teachers of later generations, on the other hand, joined the profession embracing ideas of descriptive (also called transformational) grammar. These teachers believed that grammar instruction should be matched to the purpose of the user. Teachers found descriptive grammar theories to be more flexible, reflecting actual usage and self-expression over "correct" structures.

Some people credit the descriptive approach with a general loosening of rules regarding grammatical structures that were once considered unacceptable, such as split infinitives.

ادامه نوشته

Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistic + Download

یه دیکشنری که خیلی به درد بچه های Teaching میخوره ، اینجا آوردم برای دانلود....

Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistic

دانلود کنید

Teaching Speaking

Teaching Speaking

Copyright: Oxford University Press India. All Rights Reserved

Why is speaking often regarded as the most important of the four language skills? Perhaps because, as Penny Ur (1996) says, 'people who know a language are referred to as 'speakers' of that language, as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing; and many if not most foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak.'

 

What is the main objective of teaching speaking?

The single most important reason for teaching speaking is to develop oral fluency, that is, the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably accurately and without undue hesitation. Donn Byrne (1976) argues that to meet this objective learners will have to be brought from the stage where they merely imitate a model or respond to cues to the point where they can use the language to express their own ideas and feelings (processes that must to a large extent be in simultaneous operation).

 

For oral fluency to be attained, learners will need two complementary levels of training. New! Learning to Communicate offers an introduction to these two levels: practice in the manipulation of the fixed elements of English (or accuracy-based elements like pronunciation) and practice in the expression of personal meaning (or fluency).

 

ادامه نوشته

Grammar and Its Teaching: Challenging the Myths

Grammar and Its Teaching: Challenging the Myths

by Diane Larsen-Freeman

From: http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content4/grammer.morph.html

Grammar is often misunderstood in the language teaching field. The misconception lies in
the view that grammar is a collection of arbitrary rules about static structures in the
language. Further questionable claims are that the structures do not have to be taught,
learners will acquire them on their own, or if the structures are taught, the lessons that
ensue will be boring. Consequently, communicative and proficiency-based teaching
approaches sometimes unduly limit grammar instruction. Of the many claims about
grammar that deserve to be called myths, this digest will challenge ten.

1. Grammar is acquired naturally; it need not be taught.

It is true that some learners acquire second language grammar naturally without
instruction. For example, there are immigrants to the United States who acquire
proficiency in English on their own. This is especially true of young immigrants. However,
this is not true for all learners. Among the same immigrant groups are learners who may
achieve a degree of proficiency, but whose English is far from accurate. A more important
question may be whether it is possible with instruction to help learners who cannot achieve
accuracy in English on their own.
It is also true that learning particular grammatical distinctions requires a great deal of time
even for the most skilled learners. Carol Chomsky (1969) showed that native English
speakers were still in the process of acquiring certain grammatical structures in English
well into adolescence. Thus, another important question is whether it is possible to
accelerate students' natural learning of grammar through instruction. Research findings
can be brought to bear on this question from a variety of sources (see Larsen-Freeman &
Long, 1991). Pienemann (1984) demonstrated that subjects who received grammar
instruction progressed to the next stage after a two-week period, a passage normally taking
several months in untutored development. While the number of subjects studied was
admittedly small, the finding, if corroborated, provides evidence of the efficacy of teaching
over leaving acquisition to run its natural course.
With regard to whether instruction can help learners acquire grammar they would not
have learned on their own, some research, although not unequivocal, points to the value of
form-focused instruction to improve learners' accuracy over what normally transpires
when there is no focus on form (see Larsen-Freeman, 1995).

ادامه نوشته

The Age Issue: Mature Teachers

The Age Issue: Mature Teachers

Sharon de Hinojosa

Age may not be as much of a hindrance as you may believe. In many societies, older people are viewed with respect, they often have more education and experience than those fresh out of university. Some societies may be more accepting than others, for example, Asia (in particular China and Taiwan) as well as some Latin American countries (such as Mexico) have been known to be more accommodating to mature teachers. Be aware than some countries may have age restrictions for visas and may vary between 55-65, so be sure to be honest with your employer beforehand. The good news is that in many countries, after spending a certain amount of time as a resident, you can become a permanent resident, thus reducing your need to renew your visa or be dependent on an employer for a visa.

Playing up any teaching or tutoring experience that you have is a great help. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in a classroom setting, induction of new employees, managing training sessions, and even running meetings are all useful in the teaching world. See Writing a Teaching CV for more tips on how to write a teaching CV.

Only you can decide whether teaching in another country is for you. Try looking at What's the Best Country to Teach English In? Remember that with teaching abroad, there are two things to keep in mind. First off, if you’re not a teacher, would you enjoy teaching? You can always try volunteering in your local community to teach new immigrants or tutor children or teenagers to see if teaching is something you would like to do. Remember that most teaching contracts are six months to a year, with the latter being more common. Be aware that setting up in a new country is expensive, just the plane ticket may be a couple months salary. So before you commit, make sure you are up to completing the contract. Find links for jobs in the Job Sites article.

Second, living in a different country can be fun and glamorous, but it can also be daunting. Culture shock starts to set in when you realise that things are different than what you expected. Everyone goes through culture shock, even if you go to a country where you know the language. Knowing about culture shock and how to deal with it can greatly help you. Read more about Culture Shock in this article. Going to live in another country is a great way to open your eyes to another culture, just be aware that you might have a couple of rocks along the way. If you/re ready for them and prepared to deal with them, then you’ll probably have the experience of a lifetime.

You will also have to take some practical concerns into consideration. Bear in mind that not all countries may equipped with facilities that you take for granted, such as elevators. An example of this is China, where only building with more than six floors need to have elevators. Teaching abroad is a wonderful experience and a great adventure, but with all new experiences, you will have to be prepared to put up with things that are different than you are used to. Take a look at the questions below , and if you can answer “yes” to the majority of them, then you’re up to the challenge of teaching overseas.

● Can you get around old streets, hills, steps or stairs made of rocks of bricks?
● Can you live in a place without central heating or AC?
● Is it ok for you to stand on your feet for a couple hours at a time?
● Will you be able to work with active young children, talkative teens, or tired adults?
● Are you up to playing games in class or moving around the room?
● If you need medicine or require a special diet, can you get this where you want to live?
● Are you up to the challenge of learning a new language (at least the basics) and about new customs?

So if you’re up to the challenge, what are you waiting for? Dust off your CV, start looking for jobs that interest you and apply. Before you know it, you’ll be about to embark on an experience that will make your friends and family turn green with envy.

Source:
http://tefltips.blogspot.com/2008/11/age-issue-mature-teachers.html

Top 6 Keys to Being a Successful Teacher

By Melissa Kelly,

The most successful teachers share some common characteristics. Here are the top six keys to being a successful teacher. Every teacher can benefit from focusing on these important qualities. Success in teaching, as in most areas of life, depends almost entirely on your attitude and your approach.

1. Sense of Humor

A sense of humor can help you become a successful teacher. Your sense of humor can relieve tense classroom situations before they become disruptions. A sense of humor will also make class more enjoyable for your students and possibly make students look forward to attending and paying attention. Most importantly, a sense of humor will allow you to see the joy in life and make you a happier person as you progress through this sometimes stressful career.

2. A Positive Attitude

A positive attitude is a great asset in life. You will be thrown many curve balls in life and especially in the teaching profession. A positive attitude will help you cope with these in the best way. For example, you may find out the first day of school that you are teaching Algebra 2 instead of Algebra 1. This would not be an ideal situation, but a teacher with the right attitude would try to focus on getting through the first day without negatively impacting the students.

3. High Expectations

An effective teacher must have high expectations. You should strive to raise the bar for your students. If you expect less effort you will receive less effort. You should work on an attitude that says that you know students can achieve to your level of expectations, thereby giving them a sense of confidence too. This is not to say that you should create unrealistic expectations. However, your expectations will be one of the key factors in helping students learn and achieve.

4. Consistency

In order to create a positive learning environment your students should know what to expect from you each day. You need to be consistent. This will create a safe learning environment for the students and they will be more likely to succeed. It is amazing that students can adapt to teachers throughout the day that range from strict to easy. However, they will dislike an environment in which the rules are constantly changing.

5. Fairness

Many people confuse fairness and consistency. A consistent teacher is the same person from day to day. A fair teacher treats students equally in the same situation. For example, students complain of unfairness when teachers treat one gender or group of students differently. It would be terribly unfair to go easier on the football players in a class than on the cheerleaders. Students pick up on this so quickly, so be careful of being labelled unfair.

6. Flexibility

One of the tenets of teaching should be that everything is in a constant state of change. Interruptions and disruptions are the norm and very few days are 'typical'. Therefore, a flexible attitude is important not only for your stress level but also for your students who expect you to be in charge and take control of any situation.

Top 10 Tips for Student Teachers

By Melissa Kelly,

 

Student teachers are often placed into an awkward and stressful situation, not really sure of their authority and sometimes not even placed with veteran teachers who are much help. These tips can aid student teachers as they begin their first teaching assignments. Please note: these are not suggestions for how to approach the students but instead for how to most effectively succeed in your new teaching environment.

1. Be On Time

Punctuality is very important in the 'real world'. If you are late, you will definitely NOT start out on the right foot with your cooperating teacher. Even worse, if you arrive after a class has begun which you are supposed to be teaching, you are placing that teacher and yourself in an awkward situation.

Sponsored Links

13 Signs of BurnoutAvoiding Stress, Depression and Burnout by expert Henry Neilswww.assessment.com

Residency Scramble 2009Few or no interviews? Prepare now. The professional Scramble approach.www.ElectronicResidency.com

Art Teachers-Free galleryYou teach art, but do you make art? Free galleries for you & students.www.foundmyself.com

2. Dress Appropriately

As a teacher, you are a professional and you are supposed to dress accordingly. There is nothing wrong with over dressing during your student teaching assignments. The clothes do help lend you an air of authority, especially if you look awfully young. Further, your dress lets the coordinating teacher know of your professionalism and dedication to your assignment.

3. Be Flexible

Remember that the coordinating teacher has pressures placed upon them just as you have your own pressures to deal with. If you normally teach only 3 classes and the coordinating teacher asks that you take on extra classes one day because he has an important meeting to attend, look at this as your chance to get even further experience while impressing your dedication to your coordinating teacher.

4. Follow the School Rules

This might seem obvious to some but it is important that you do not break school rules. For example, if it is against the rules to chew gum in class, then do not chew it yourself. If the campus is 'smoke-free', do not light up during your lunch period. This is definitely not professional and would be a mark against you when it comes time for your coordinating teacher and school to report on your abilities and actions.

5. Plan Ahead

If you know you will need copies for a lesson, do not wait until the morning of the lesson to get them completed. Many schools have procedures that MUST be followed for copying to occur. If you fail to follow these procedures you will be stuck without copies and will probably look unprofessional at the same time.

6. Befriend the Office Staff

This is especially important if you believe that you will be staying in the area and possibly trying for a job at the school where you are teaching. These people's opinions of you will have an impact on whether or not you are hired. They can also make your time during student teaching much easier to handle. Don't underestimate their worth.

7. Maintain Confidentiality

Remember that if you are taking notes about students or classroom experiences to turn in for grades, you should either not use their names or change them to protect their identities. You never know who you are teaching or what their relationship might be to your instructors and coordinators.

8. Don't Gossip

It might be tempting to hang out in the teacher lounge and indulge in gossip about fellow teachers. However, as a student teacher this would be a very risky choice. You might say something you could regret later. You might find out information that is untrue and clouds your judgement. You might even offend someone without realizing it. Remember, these are teachers you could be working with again some day in the future.

9. Be Professional With Fellow Teachers

Do not interrupt other teachers' classes without an absolutely good reason. When you are speaking with your coordinating teacher or other teachers on campus, treat them with respect. You can learn a lot from these teachers, and they will be much more likely to share with you if they feel that you are genuinely interested in them and their experiences.

10. Don't Wait to the Last Minute to Call in Sick

You will probably get sick at some point during your student teaching and will need stay home for the day. You must remember that the regular teacher will have to take over the class during your absence. If you wait until the last minute to call in, this could leave them in an awkward bind making them look bad to the students. Call as soon as you believe you will not be able to make it to class.

Learning Vocabulary, Strategies at Work

Learning Vocabulary, Strategies at Work

By: Ana Robles, Fraga

Outlined By: Zabih.O Javanbakht

 

·      To do everything, we use different strategies. The strategy will affect the results.

·    Learning a language needs to perform different strategies.

·    Language has different areas. For every area, we should use different strategies.

·    Students must be familiar with different strategies for the different areas of the language.

·    As teachers we can help students to develop those strategies that enhance learning. To do so we need to:

·    Identify the most efficient strategies

·    Make the students aware of their current strategies

·    Present alternative strategies with their advantages and disadvantages

 

An Example: Vocabulary Learning

·    Learning a language means learning words, but how?

·    If we consider the word as a group of letters, learner has to learn the spelling. Good spellers see the words in their minds. We should teach learners to think about letters. It will help them to develop a “seeing” strategy.

·    If we consider the word as a sequence of sounds, learner should use auditory strategy: saying it aloud and silently, paying attention to a native speaker when it is said by him, recording his/her voice and listening to it.

·    If we consider the word as a label for a shared meaning, students can link the word to the internal image they have for that concept, like visual information.

·    And if we consider the word as a trigger for all personal internal experiences one links to that word, students should make the words their own, and then they really learn them. Learning a word is then much more than just memorizing and spelling, it becomes a process of adding learning to learning.

·    In-depth learning of a word is a matter of time, of reprocessing it and using it in many ways.

·    Humanistic approach provides a link between language leaning and learner’s inner world.

·    As a whole learning a word entails learning different pieces of content, meaning, spelling, pronunciation, and personal interpretation. Each of those pieces requires different strategies.

·    The task of the teacher is to expand students’ awareness of different techniques by studying how each of them learns and by exploring with them the different strategies.

·    When students learn that there are many ways to learn, they will search for those that fits their needs better.

Culture Shock

 Culture Shock

Culture Shock can be difficult to deal with, it can affect you at work and in your daily life. The best thing to do is to be aware of culture shock and how to deal with it. Try reading up on culture shock before leaving and understand how you can deal with it. If you’re prepared for what to expect, it will make overcoming culture shock that much easier. Having pictures from home, talking to people in your native language, talking a walk in the park, or even sleeping can all help with culture shock. Read more about getting ready to go overseas in Moving to Another Country.

Learning the language is probably one of the most important steps you can take to getting accustomed to your host country. Even if you speak the language of the country you’re moving to, you’ll find yourself going through culture shock. It starts with fascination with everything and seeing things through rose coloured glass and then goes to not being able to accept anything. Though people usually grow to accept things over time, even after years of living in the country, small things might still frustrate you, but with time and effort, you can get over culture shock. Read more tips in Learning the Local Lingo.

If people speak English where you work, you’ll probably face less problems. But you will still have to deal with culturally issues, such as greetings, time, personal space, or dealing with co-workers and management. Observe how other people interact at work and when in doubt, ask others what you should do in a given situation.

Bureaucracy is often less organized in other countries, people love paperwork and bureaucracy. Standing in line to do simple things, such as pay the bills in common, not to mention going through immigration. Lots of people mean that you might have to wait for a couple of hours just to pay bills. If you have to get a work visa, be prepared to run around to lots of different places to get notarisations, legalisations, and translations.

You’ll have to be a patient person to deal with all this paper pushing. I personally think that they do this to create jobs. So if it helps you to think that all this paperwork allows someone to feed their family, then all the better. If you’re not a patient person, bring something to do or find something to do. Let’s say you’re in the bank and you just got ticket 301 and they’re on ticket 199. You probably have a good hour wait. You can either stay in the bank, read a book, listen to music, correct papers, or lesson plan, or leave the bank. If you leave the bank, you can get other errands done, maybe grab a coffee, go to the internet, call a friend, or exchange money. After about 45 minutes, pop back over to the bank and see what number they’re on. If they’re close to yours, stick around, if not, head back out and get more errands done. Be patient, smile, and bring something to do to pass the time. If you’re nice to those who are helping you, they’ll be nice to you and more likely to help you out.

You can, change the way you dress, act and speak. Try wearing less casual clothes. Tank tops, shorts, flip-flops, cargo pants, swishy pants, tennis shoes, hats, and sunglasses are pretty casual wear in many countries. And when you decide to go on a trip or out to see some sites, forget the cameras, guidebooks, and maps.

The way you act is also key, don’t try to call attention to yourself, by looking lost or staring at everything around you. The way you speak can also go a long way. If you don’t speak the language of the host country, that’s fine, but try to make an effort to at least learn the basics. If you have to speak English, don’t shout or speak to people like they’re stupid. Use simple words and gestures. If they can help you, great, if not try asking someone else. So if you take into account the problems you may face, you’ll be prepared and more ready to conquer them during your time abroad. Read more about fitting in in the article, Respectful Travel. Learn other tips about life in different countries by reading Living in a Foreign Country.

Contrastive Analysis of Yarmohammadi

کتاب بررسی مقابله ای ساخت جمله تالیف دکتر یارمحمدی به صورت خلاصه شده

در یک فایل Word  جمع آوری شده است. برای دوستانی که حال خوندن این کتابو ندارن!

اینجا گذاشتم برای دانلود....

دانلود

How To Learn A New Language?

چگونه زبان جدید بیاموزیم ؟   

    شاید شما دلایل گوناگونی برای یادگیری زبان جدید داشته باشید. روشهایی برای یادگیری و افزایش آگاهی

شما وجود دارد که حالت سرگرمی نیز در آنها دیده می شود: 

   
● هدف هایتان را تعیین کنید 

شاید شما دلایل گوناگونی برای یادگیری زبان جدید داشته باشید. اگر بخواهید به خارج از کشور مسافرت کنید

و به نظر شما دانستن زبان جدید مسافرت شما را لذت بخش تر می سازد و شاید برای استخدام در اداره یا

سازمانی، در امور دولتی یا بازرگانی بین المللی و یا در تحصیلات خود نیازمند به یادگیری زبان جدید هستید. یا

اینکه می خواهید به عنوان مترجم، آموزگار، متصدی فروش ، راهنمای تور مسافرتی فعالیت کنید.

● در یادگیری زبان جدیدتان پیشرفت کنید 

اگر مقدارزیادی از آنچه را که در کلاس زبان بیان می شود نفهمیدید، عقب ننشسته و انتظار نداشته

باشید ابهامات شما بعدا رفع گردد. از آنجایی که درک مطلب، یک امر ضروری است برای پیشرفت زبان

جدید محسوب می شود، مطمئن شوید که آنچه در کلاس گفته شده است ، برای شما قابل فهم بوده

است. آموزش و فراگیری زبان در داخل و خارج از کلاس صورت می گیرد. از سویی به صحبت کردن،

گوش دادن و خواندن زبان جدیدتان مرتبط می باشد. انجام این امر در هر زمان ممکن است. هر فردی

در طول روز آنگاه که فکرش راحت است اوقاتی برای مطالعه دارد. برخی مردم در شب بهتر می توانند

یاد بگیرند و برخی دیگر در صبح، اگر قادرباشید که زبان جدیدتان را در بهترین مواقع خود فرا بگیرید

بیشتر و بهتر یاد می گیرید. در شروع یادگیری زبان،باید خود را با یک فرهنگ جدید همانگ کنید.

روشهایی برای یادگیری و افزایش آگاهی شما وجود دارد که حالت سرگرمی نیز در آنها دیده می شود.

ادامه نوشته

Children’s Cognitive Development

Children’s Cognitive Development

    Stage theory of development - older children think qualitatively differently to younger children. In other words, at each successive stage, it's not just a matter of doing something better, but of doing a different thing altogether.
   4 stages:
–    Stage 1: Sensorimoter Period (0-2 years)

–    Stage 2: Pre-operational stage (2-7 years)

–    Stage 3:  Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)

–    Stage 4:  Formal Operational Stage a(11+ years)

–    Development is the combined result of:

–    maturation of the brain and nervous system

–    experiences that help children adapt to new environments - adaptation: an organism’s ability to fit in with it’s environment (through the process of assimilation and accommodation).

دانلود فایل پاورپوینت این پست

ادامه نوشته

The Cognitive Approach

 

The Cognitive Approach (awareness of the rules)

Cognitive theory assumes that responses are also the result of insight and intentional patterning.

Insight can be directed to (a) the concepts behind language i.e. to traditional grammar.
It can also be directed to (b) language as an operation - sets of communicative functions.

A variety of activities practised in new situations will allow assimilation of what has already been learnt or partly learnt. It will also create further situations for which existing language resources are inadequate and must accordingly be modified or extended - "accommodation". This ensures an awareness and a continuing supply of learning goals as well as aiding the motivation of the learner.

Cognitive theory therefore acknowledges the role of mistakes. See Dakin's Novish lesson in which he sets deliberate traps in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning" by Julian Dakin published by Longman 1973. Dakin: "We must design our lessons and language laboratory tapes so as to invite the learner to make the minimum number of mistakes consonant with, and conducive to, learning new rules. Equally important to the principles underlying the use of "meaningful drills" and also relevant to the role of mistakes in cognotive theory is the association of mentalism with notionalism.

ادامه نوشته

General form of a research paper

General form of a research paper

An objective of organizing a research paper is to allow people to read your work selectively. When I research a topic, I may be interested in just the methods, a specific result, the interpretation, or perhaps I just want to see a summary of the paper to determine if it is relevant to my study. To this end, many journals require the following sections, submitted in the order listed, each section to start on a new page. There are variations of course. Some journals call for a combined results and discussion, for example, or include materials and methods after the body of the paper. The well known journal Science does away with separate sections altogether, except for the abstract.

Your papers are to adhere to the form and style required for the Journal of Biological Chemistry, requirements that are shared by many journals in the life sciences.
General style

Specific editorial requirements for submission of a manuscript will always supersede instructions in these general guidelines.

....................>

ادامه نوشته

Ten core themes in pronunciation teaching

 

Ten core themes in pronunciation teaching

Karen Steffen Chung, National Taiwan University

At least one specific theme has emerged in each of my past fifteen years of teaching
pronunciation and phonetics at Taiwan University, based on observations of the
skills – and weaknesses – the students bring to class. This paper provides an
overview of ten of these core themes and how they can be incorporated into
pronunciation teaching. Student improvement in each of the areas is also reviewed,
along with student feedback on the learning process and effectiveness of the training.
(1) Understandable or nativelike? There are two main approaches in pronunciation
teaching: one is to try to get the students to develop a pronunciation style that is clear
and understandable to both native and non-native speakers, but not necessarily
nativelike. This approach does not aim for perfection, considering it too ambitious and
perhaps even unattainable a goal for most learners. It also is open to incorporating
features from different dialects of the language, e.g. General American (GA) and
Standard Southern British (SSB).
The second approach is the “100%” approach. The teacher offers a model of one
dialectal variety of the target language as a model and expects perfection or near
perfection from the students; and also that they learn one variety consistently and not
mix in features from other dialects as they please, nor that they use personally
convenient substitutions for certain sounds, e.g. [l] for initial [ð], in the case of Taiwan
students.

ادامه نوشته