Bringing together the varied and multifaceted expertise of teachers and linguists in one accessible volume, this book presents practical tools, grounded in cutting-edge research, for teaching about language and language diversity in the ELA classroom. By demonstrating practical ways teachers can implement research-driven linguistic concepts in their own teaching environment, each chapter offers real-world lessons as well as clear methods for instructing students on the diversity of language. Written for pre-service and in-service teachers, this book includes easy-to-use lesson plans, pedagogical strategies and activities, as well as a wealth of resources carefully designed to optimize student comprehension of language variation.
Your essential guide for teaching core competencies that every child needs for developing into a highly engaged, self-motivated learner. The Language of Learning offers a practical approach to teaching essential communication skills: Listening and understanding; Thinking before speaking; Speaking clearly and concisely; Asking thoughtful questions; Giving high-quality answers; Backing up opinions with reasons and evidence; Agreeing thoughtfully; Disagreeing respectfully.
This book makes a unique contribution to classroom assessment literature, linking teacher-friendly examples to scholarly work and current research in the field, and providing comprehensive, hands-on information on core concepts in accessible terms. Examples of real activities and questions for reflection and discussion aim to enrich understanding.
First of all, I must praise to God, who has given me, as a human being, an ability to use and communicate using language, both spoken and written language. Because of His favour of giving us ‘Language Acquisition Device’, we human beings are able to acquire and learn languages.
The incorporation of social and emotional learning (SEL) practices has been growing in the United States and around the world for some years. Many public and private educational systems, community organizations, and higher education institutions embrace SEL practices in various forms, such as wellness conversations, mindfulness interventions, trauma-informed practices, restorative circles, yoga, among many other interventions. Recent global events that our children, youth, and adults are experiencing, such as global pandemics, natural disasters, religious persecutions, forced migrations, social and political unrest, and violence, are reminding us of our interconnectedness as global citizens. At the same time, society and employers are now, more than ever, in desperate need of individuals who are emotionally intelligent (Harvard Business Review, 2015). While SEL is becoming increasing critical for learners' success, teachers often feel unprepared to incorporate or address it in their classrooms. This book serves as a practical, concise, and easy-to-follow reference that English language teachers in K-12 and adult education and English language teacher educators can use in their classrooms. It is one of the limited emerging SEL resources available that is tailored to the English language teaching field and contributes to filling the existing gap of SEL in English language education. Teachers will be equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to practice self-care and be confident in implementing SEL in their learning spaces to support and benefit their learners.
The current thrust in the field of education is to improve teachers’ understanding of how research on best practices can improve student learning. The field of world language education introduces a double, perhaps a triple, bind: teachers must be able to design and deliver instruction that aligns with national expectations for developing students’ language and intercultural abilities for success in the global workplace, yet in schools across America, all K-12 students do not have the opportunity to study languages, even though research supports their astonishing facility for acquisition. Schools and teachers without resources, including time to investigate and implement evidence-based best practices, are ultimately held accountable for student performance. If world language teachers are to advocate for languages, they must use their expertise and share evidence of their students’ progress. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) recently began development of a national research priorities agenda for grades preK-16. Action research, which is classroom-centered and inquiry-based, can contribute to our profession’s efforts, as it helps us to increase awareness of the critical need for language study in grades preK-16. World language teachers can become teacher-researchers in their own classrooms, gathering deeply meaningful insights into their students’ progress that they can share with others. Teacher-researchers investigate innovative approaches in response to their questions about teaching and learning, which are rooted in daily experience. They engage their students in fresh learning activities, and student feedback helps them to make better decisions about instructional and assessment strategies. Results can be shared with stakeholders, including parents, administrators, school board members, and guidance counselors, as evidence of what all kinds of students can do in languages. At a time in our history when we are striving to prepare teachers for 21st-century schools that prioritize global competence, Action Research in the World Language Classroom is a timely resource for the profession. It describes a natural, engaging, motivating way to contribute, particularly for preservice teachers who are shaping their views and understanding about world language instruction and the connections between research and best practices. The book includes four studies conducted by preservice teachers during their student teaching internships in North Carolina public schools. The editor hopes that their work and observations will inspire and assist world language educators at all stages of their careers.
Code Choice in the Language Classroom argues that the foreign language classroom is and should be regarded as a multilingual community of practice rather than as a perpetually deficient imitator of an exclusive second-language environment. From a sociocultural and ecological perspective, Levine guides the reader through a theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical treatment of the important roles of the first language, and of code-switching practices, in the language classroom. Intended for SLA researchers, language teachers, language program directors, and graduate students of foreign languages and literatures, the book develops a framework for thinking about all aspects of code choice in the language classroom and offers concrete proposals for designing and carrying out instruction in a multilingual classroom community of practice.
The starting point for this collection is a chapter by Dick Allwright on the language learning and teaching classroom experience entitled Six Promising Directions in Applied Linguistics. The other distinguished contributors respond to this discussion with their own interpretations and from their own experience. The collection problematizes prescription, efficiency, and technical solutions as orientations to classroom language learning. Complexity and idiosyncrasy, on the other hand, are recognized as central concepts in a move towards centralizing teachers' and learners' own understanding of 'classroom life', in the contexts of language learning, adult literacy education and language teacher education.
The authors present a social linguistic/social interactional approach to the discourse analysis of classroom language and literacy events. Building on recent theories in interactional sociolinguistics, literary theory, social anthropology, critical discourse analysis, and the New Literacy Studies, they describe a microethnographic approach to discourse analysis that provides a reflexive and recursive research process that continually questions what counts as knowledge in and of the interactions among teachers and students. The approach combines attention to how people use language and other systems of communication in constructing classroom events with attention to social, cultural, and political processes. The focus of attention is on actual people acting and reacting to each other, creating and recreating the worlds in which they live. One contribution of the microethnographic approach is to highlight the conception of people as complex, multi-dimensional actors who together use what is given by culture, language, social, and economic capital to create new meanings, social relationships and possibilities, and to recreate culture and language. The approach presented by the authors does not separate methodological, theoretical, and epistemological issues. Instead, they argue that research always involves a dialectical relationship among the object of the research, the theoretical frameworks and methodologies driving the research, and the situations within which the research is being conducted. Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: A Microethnographic Perspective: *introduces key constructs and the intellectual and disciplinary foundations of the microethnographic approach; *addresses the use of this approach to gain insight into three often discussed issues in research on classroom literacy events--classroom literacy events as cultural action, the social construction of identity, and power relations in and through classroom literacy events; *presents transcripts of classroom literacy events to illustrate how theoretical constructs, the research issue, the research site, methods, research techniques, and previous studies of discourse analysis come together to constitute a discourse analysis; and *discusses the complexity of "locating" microethnographic discourse analysis studies within the field of literacy studies and within broader intellectual movements. This volume is of broad interest and will be widely welcomed by scholars and students in the field language and literacy studies, educational researchers focusing on analysis of classroom discourse, educational sociolinguists, and sociologists and anthropologists focusing on face-to-face interaction and language use.
