4/8 Task

I am using the BBC Italian Steps program. My objective during this task was simply to try to understand as much of the dialogues as I could without having to look at the transcripts. I am now taking an introductory Italian class, so I have a little (very little, I should say!) knowledge of basic Italian grammar. Therefore, I basically just wanted to put myself to the test to see how much I could understand. The BBC program is set up so that the learner first views a slideshow along with a recorded dialogue. Although I found the slideshow to be of interest, I also found that it interfered with my ability to concentrate fully on the conversations. I decided to close my eyes and listen carefully to the dialogue; doing so allowed me to focus all of my attention on the conversations and I found that in most cases, I was able to understand what was being said. If I couldn't understand it the first time around, I replayed the section until I was able to get it. In cases when there was something I couldn't understand no matter how many times I listened, I pulled up the Italian transcript to see if I could then piece it all together. Once or twice I encountered a word or phrase I was not familiar with and had to check the English translation. In most cases, however, I was able to discern the meaning by context. At the end of each slideshow, I went back and listened to the entire conversation a few more times. One thing that I found frustrating with the program was that after advancing on to the next frame of the slideshow, the learner is no longer able to go back to a previous frame until the end of the entire slideshow. This was a minor problem, though, which I was able to work around by jotting down any new vocabulary I had encountered. After the slideshow there is a section called "Guess the Words" which was a little too easy and not much of a challenge. Following that I did the "Build the Sentences" section in which the learner has to drag words to fill in the blanks in sentences. I wasn't crazy about this part of the program, either, since a lot of the words keep bouncing back to their original positions if they aren't placed "just so" - rather annoying! After that I focused on the "Speak and Write" section. This part of the program provides one part of a dialogue and requires the learner to produce the other half. Being in the computer lab, I felt too embarrassed to actually produce the spoken part aloud, so just ran the words through in my head. There is an option for checking what the correct answers are before moving on to the writing section (which uses the same dialogue), but I decided to move on to the writing section without first checking my answers, just to make it a bit more challenging. I didn't bother trying to figure out how to type the accents, although the site did provide a little help window which explained how to do so. At the end of each section there is a "Challenge" which puts everything learned in four slideshows together. All in all, I found it to be quite useful and also lots of fun.

Advanced Learners of Non-Alphabetic Languages

I have been doing several vocabulary exercises on mandarintools.com to increase my Chinese character recognition. Selecting the program is not difficult, considering all the instructions are in English. The program I chose is in a flashcard format--one character appears on screen for a selected length of time and the pinyin romanization or English meaning needs to be chosen by the learner. I surmised this would help me to increase my reading comprehension. After setting most of the parameters for the program, I decided that I could handle Level 10, the most advanced vocabulary. There were some characters that I was able to guess the meaning for based on ideographic roots, but identifying the correct written pronunciation required an extensive knowledge of the phonetic elements, which is well beyond my 2,200 character recognition range. (Incidentally, the government of Mainland China has published a list of the 2,000 most commonly used characters necessary for minimal literacy. A more substantial vocabulary would be five to seven thousand!)
The main problem with the program is that the characters do not appear in context. There are no options which allow a learner to see example sentences with the new vocabulary. Most of the time, Chinese words are in combinations of two or more. The characters in the program are presented in isolation. This might be acceptable at a beginning level but not at an intermediate or advanced one. Also, corrective feedback is not given until the end of the exercise. I found myself pausing the running list to write the characters that I had gotten wrong for immediate correction.
Given the fact that I am a visual learner, I can see a character one time and memorize it. So, a program like this can be somewhat helpful to a person like me. I am forced, however, to consider what would happen if I were not a visual learner. This program would be a very poor choice indeed. It also makes me wonder about Chinese and Japanese students who are learning English. What is it like for them to go from reading ideographically to alphabetically?

4/8 task plus

Before I specifically respond to today's task I'll share some observations that I didn't have a chance to write about before. I've been working on the Spanish L2 site. I chose this site for a couple of reasons. First, my students are using LEI and it seemed that working on a site that presents the language in an organized and sequenced way would provide an experience more comparable to theirs than random exercises. Also, because of my frustration in not being able to produce Spanish, despite a fairly high level of comprehension, I was highly motivated to work on production, which is something this site allows me to do in writing. On the other hand, the listening/reading doesn't provide much of a challenge, and I am impatient with how slowly the speakers speak and the screens move. Last week I tried covering the screen and turning down the volume while listening and that did make it more of a challenge. I also tried waiting until the end of dictation to enter missing material, which also increased the difficulty. I got down to the writing part of the homework a couple of times, but didn't finish for various reasons, and came back to find that I had lost everything that I had done and had to start over. That is discouraging and helps me appreciate that with LEI each activity is corrected as it is completed. I've also experienced technological problems (while trying to use the Alt- numbers to type in the accent mark and tilde the whole page disappeared) and am more sympathetic with my students whose progress is slow because they are still learning how to navigate a computer program.
Today I first scanned the content of the lessons to choose one that would be more relevant than what I did last week. (Last week I practiced using vosotros; this week preterite of some irregular verbs and vocabulary related to computers.) Next, as I listened to the lecture, I focused on jotting down any new vocabulary or phrases that I wanted to remember while keeping my eyes averted from the screen, rather than just covering the screen. During the practice phase I realized that I could click on the next screen as soon as I felt I had enough feedback to confirm my response, rather than waiting for the correct answer to be repeated. This helped things to move along more quickly. My goal was to be able to produce some sentences using the new (or newly retrieved from 'ancient' memory) structures and vocabulary. After doing this, I had a gratifying sense of accomplishment and am looking forward to receiving feedback from an instructor.
Because of my goal of producing language, and the disparity between my receptive and productive abilities in Spanish, I have had the opportunity to try several techniques for making material more difficult. I'd also like to experience working with listening material that is difficult, and this week hope to do some work in other websites. I also need to do better at thinking through my goals and choosing material and methods that support them.

Moving along with Beginner German

As I do a Beginner German lesson, I am trying to analyze what works for me. I know what doesn't work. The first time I listen to a conversation, I have no success if I don't view the captions in both German and English. I simply am not familiar enough with the pronunciation to understand the German words without having visual support. Also, my hearing is not acute enough to catch the differences in pronunciation. Once I listen to a conversation with the captions, then I can understand that conversation the second time around without the captions. I would not be a good oral/aural learner.
I have noticed the importance of reviewing the vocabulary before listening to the conversation. Familiarity with the new words goes a long way to helping one understand the conversation. I believe that this shows the importance of always previewing vocabulary with our students prior to having them take notes on a topic. The unfamiliar words are what cause much of the difficulty.
I've noticed that for me it is much easier to translate words from L2 to L1. If I cover the L2 words (German) and try to produce them by looking at their English equivalents, I have a much harder time than translating the German words into English.
The receptive stage of language learning is much easier than the "production" stage but that is no surprise to any of us, I'm sure.
Looking forward to sharing experiences tomorrow.

What I did

Because I couldn't get into my UCC files from home, I logged onto a free Spanish learning site --don't recall the exact site. My goal was to do some grammar review, and I focused on the topic of the difference between ser and estar. I first read the explanation and then did an exercise that required simply choosing the correct verb. Although this was very basic, I found it both challenging and frustrating. The explanation was in English, which I had told myself I would avoid, and was not particularly helpful--something about the difference between "what" and "how". Then the exercise seemed even more confusing, as the sentences were all without any context. Nevertheless, I was surprised that I didn't find this a total waste of time. In fact, I repeated the same exercise three times. I was reminded that what I consider mechanical and boring in English can become quite different in a foreign language.
This reminder led me to reflect on and change something I was doing in a recent ESL054 class. After listening to an interview, students were to write a summary of what they heard. We discussed possible introductions, and I wrote a sample on the board. Ordinarily I would have given them the option of copying what was written on the board or writing their own, but I
decided to require them to use the model introduction.

I tried a new software program Tell Me More – Beginning Spanish because I wanted to have more listening.
What was my goal? My goal was listening to discrete items and pick out new vocabulary and grammar items. There are different pictures in a house and there is a dialog between 2 friends, one showing them her ne house. The person says something and you can choose one of 3 written sentences to respond to the sentence. All responses are correct, just give a different meaning. All the sentences are written in Spanish.
What strategies did I do to meet my goal: To meet my goal of listening I had to slightly change how to do the activity, I covered the words with a piece of paper. This totally changed this activitiy into a listening activity which it would not have been otherwise. I played the sentence and then played each response to see if I understood the response. If I didn’t understand, I used the built in glossary to help me with vocabulary words. Next time to practice more speaking when I do the dialog, I think I am going to go through the dialog again and try to respond without listening to or reading the sentences. (Tell Me More has speech recognition, but I did not have a microphone).
To work on vocabulary, spelling and grammar, After I completed the dialog, I skipped some vocabulary exercises and did a group of other activities, concluding with a dictation. The group of activities included a reading / grammar identification exercise, a crossword puzzles, a word order exercise. All the activities helped to reinforce the vocabulary and grammar points in the dialog and I was surprised the additional exposure was so helpful in doing the final dictation.
How did the difficulty level change what I did. I tried to do the dictation before the vocabulary activities, but it was too difficult so I went back and did the activities. Depending on the difficulty level, I used the glossary and get answer buttons when I couldn’t use any contextual clues. Throughout I added items to my on-line WORD vocabulary, grammar and elision lists. Then, I would go back and do the item again. I still can’t believe how little correct Spanish I know. I definitely enjoying learning the correct forms, but my confidence has been shaken.