Before I summarize the painful readings for this week I would just like to say that I have acquired even more respect for people who have learned English as a second or foreign language! Holy Cow! The two chapters in Finnegan illustrated how dreadful learning English can be and I did not realize how complicated it was! So, if you are reading this and English is not your native language CONGRATULATIONS!
Anyway, Chapter 3 in Finnegan concentrated on Phonetics. After realizing that my career as a linguist was over before it started I read some really interesting information. It was so interesting that I drew a smiley face next to the things that really got me excited. The first smiley face worthy information was about voicing. The difference between s and z is that z is voiced and s is not. In other words people use their glottis and larynx when speaking the z. The tongue is in the same spot for both the consonants but like the book said I put my hand near my Adam's apple(Wait, do girls have Adam's apples?) and felt the vibration and it was amazing! I never ever noticed that in my whole 24 years of speaking!
Another point in the book that was very interesting was about the nasal sound of m. The book said to say, mmmmmmmmmm and then try and plug our nose. I did it and I could not speak the mmmmmmmmmmm anymore which illustrated perfectly the way nasal sounds work.
After Chapter 3 I found that I am either going to create a word bank of all the important terms or possibly commit an educational faux pas and make flash cards. (Lately I have heard bad things about them).
Chapter 4 was much more painful and I found it to be rather wordy. I did learn that children need to differentiate between all the words that adults make. That is to say that a sentence can seem like a giant string of noises to a child. Over time children learn the words and where they belong in different contexts.
Now I bring up a question. I did NOT understand the concept of complementary distribution on page 108-109. Along with that I do not understand the exact concept of phonemes and allophones. If anyone can give the definitions to me in layman's terms that would be amazing.
To go back to topic, this chapter further dissected the English language and one thing I found interesting was that when speaking we anticipate the next letter in the word which formulates how we say the previous letter. The book used the example of cop and keep. Our tongues go to different places when anticipated the upcoming vowel. While I was reading this in the coffee shop I am sure people thought I was crazy to see a girl sitting over a book saying, "cop, keep" or with her hand up to her mouth saying "pet, pen".
To conclude, although these 2 chapters were painful I am glad they gave me such insight on how the English language works and what that means for my students in the future.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Week 2 Class Reflection
The class session for Week 2 (actually week 1 for me but lets not get into technicalities) was a good session because I think I overcame my fear of online classes and I learned a lot about Krashen's theories and hypotheses.
My group had the "Natural Order Hypothesis" and I am happy about that because to me it seemed to be the most interesting. Krashen claims in this hypothesis that there is a natural order when learning a language. This is especially important when thinking of second or foreign language acquisition.
With respects to L1 learning it is clear that this hypothesis can be proven time and time again when an English speaking baby says "mama" over "sister". Although, most parents like to think that the baby says their name first because they love them the most there is only a kernel of truth within that belief. The consonant of "m" is far easier to say for a young child than for example, "s".
I am disappointed to a certain degree as this is very interesting reading there are not implications for teaching. In an ideal world there would be a handbook of what aspect of the English language to teach first and then second and so on and so forth.
It seems that this is not the last I will see of Krashen and his beliefs but so far so good. I think he contains some valid points within his research and scholarly suggestions.
It seems that we have a very smart class and I like that everyone has different backgrounds with respect to education, language, culture, etc. I view this as an advantage because for most of my life I have been living under a rock that I like to call, Minnesota and I find the experiences of others in my class something that a text book could never teach.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Week 2-Readings
Chapter 1: First Language Acquisition
This chapter covered many interesting facts and studies about how children learn their first language. I enjoyed hearing about the research findings and the implications for ESL/EFL instruction.
Some facts I found most surprising and interesting were:
Children do not simply imitate adults
This is proven with the fact that adults do not ever say sentences such as, "I gaved Sally a book". This proves that children are scientists of language and they are simply testing what works and what does not.
Telegraphic speech
In the early months of a child's life they often speak using only necessary words such as nouns and verbs. A child may say something like "More milk". Over time these short sentences become fleshed out with adjectives and adverbs.
Children are aware of and able to practice Communicative Competence
This idea shows that a child's culture and background can illustrate and define the type of language that child uses and where he/she uses it.
Norm Chomsky's idea of ambiguous sentences
English seems to be a very complicated language when looking at it through Chomsky's eyes. He claims that many sentences are ambiguous in nature and on their surface structure and can contain two deep structure meanings. For example, "I feel frustrated with you right now". One could mean on a deeper level that he/she is frustrated because of the other person or they could imply that they are frustrated at the same source with that other person.
Overall this chapter was very informative and I was excited to read more about how 1st language acquisition research offers insights into 2ND language acquisition.
Chapter 2: Written and Second Language Acquisition
Although I am very aware that I am not an experienced teacher I have made a few decisions from this chapter about how I want to approach reading, writing and literacy in general in my future classroom. It is easy for me to make this decision as a student because I am not faced with students, however, I find it helpful to apply my teaching tool box to my imaginary classroom.
I found that I appreciate the sociopsycholinguistic approach to reading more than the word recognition approach. Background knowledge seems to be of the utmost importance when learning or acquiring something knew. It allows students to make connections to information they already know and therefore cementing the new information.
I also appreciate the idea of acquiring new vocabulary in a variety of contexts and not simply give a list of words to look up. To use my own background knowledge on the subject, when learning Spanish I would feel frustrated at times because I felt I was looking up the same words over and over again. This frustration was experienced even after using flashcards over and over again. I expressed this frustration with one of my Spanish professors and he told me something I will never forget. "It takes 10 times of looking up one vocabulary word to retain it. When finding it in context it takes only have that to retain it." Now I have never verified this statement through research but I can attest even to this day that I can never remember the meaning of "a traves".
With the approach to writing I find that I appreciate the Process classroom. I love the idea of using reading to enrich writing. Also, the activity and research surrounding "read and retell" is fascinating and undeniably effective. (I can never remember which to use affect vs. effect). Also, the idea of error correction in the process classroom appears to work well with students. It is hard to speak a foreign language in front of people and to be corrected out right can be damaging not only to a student's confidence but to their whole language process.
This chapter covered many interesting facts and studies about how children learn their first language. I enjoyed hearing about the research findings and the implications for ESL/EFL instruction.
Some facts I found most surprising and interesting were:
Children do not simply imitate adults
This is proven with the fact that adults do not ever say sentences such as, "I gaved Sally a book". This proves that children are scientists of language and they are simply testing what works and what does not.
Telegraphic speech
In the early months of a child's life they often speak using only necessary words such as nouns and verbs. A child may say something like "More milk". Over time these short sentences become fleshed out with adjectives and adverbs.
Children are aware of and able to practice Communicative Competence
This idea shows that a child's culture and background can illustrate and define the type of language that child uses and where he/she uses it.
Norm Chomsky's idea of ambiguous sentences
English seems to be a very complicated language when looking at it through Chomsky's eyes. He claims that many sentences are ambiguous in nature and on their surface structure and can contain two deep structure meanings. For example, "I feel frustrated with you right now". One could mean on a deeper level that he/she is frustrated because of the other person or they could imply that they are frustrated at the same source with that other person.
Overall this chapter was very informative and I was excited to read more about how 1st language acquisition research offers insights into 2ND language acquisition.
Chapter 2: Written and Second Language Acquisition
Although I am very aware that I am not an experienced teacher I have made a few decisions from this chapter about how I want to approach reading, writing and literacy in general in my future classroom. It is easy for me to make this decision as a student because I am not faced with students, however, I find it helpful to apply my teaching tool box to my imaginary classroom.
I found that I appreciate the sociopsycholinguistic approach to reading more than the word recognition approach. Background knowledge seems to be of the utmost importance when learning or acquiring something knew. It allows students to make connections to information they already know and therefore cementing the new information.
I also appreciate the idea of acquiring new vocabulary in a variety of contexts and not simply give a list of words to look up. To use my own background knowledge on the subject, when learning Spanish I would feel frustrated at times because I felt I was looking up the same words over and over again. This frustration was experienced even after using flashcards over and over again. I expressed this frustration with one of my Spanish professors and he told me something I will never forget. "It takes 10 times of looking up one vocabulary word to retain it. When finding it in context it takes only have that to retain it." Now I have never verified this statement through research but I can attest even to this day that I can never remember the meaning of "a traves".
With the approach to writing I find that I appreciate the Process classroom. I love the idea of using reading to enrich writing. Also, the activity and research surrounding "read and retell" is fascinating and undeniably effective. (I can never remember which to use affect vs. effect). Also, the idea of error correction in the process classroom appears to work well with students. It is hard to speak a foreign language in front of people and to be corrected out right can be damaging not only to a student's confidence but to their whole language process.
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