It's always good for me to have an experience like reading the two articles for this week's discussion. I read and reread the articles and remained about as confused as the first time I read through them. It reminds me of how my students frequently feel in their own readings. The lexical approach was pretty straight forward. I agree that words and word combinations are important in language instruction. I think all programs for the computer assume that the teacher is merely a guide. Whereas I think a truly great curriculum includes as much technology as possible, but is managed by a qualified teacher. For example the COBUILD indicates that 700 of the most common English words account for 70% of all English text. I would assume that the most frequent words are articles. and not much good by themselves. I think the function of the word should determine how it is taught. For example of all the Greek I relearned for our trip the word for bathroom was one of the most important words we learned. Computer assisted programs that include correct pronunciation would be helpful to the independent learner, but even then, if you don't have a teacher who actually knows how to help you learn to say the correct pronunciation, the computer program would be pretty useless. My husband and I utilized a variety of Greek language programs, but only when we were able to hear Greeks using the words did we realize how far off we were. I had a French teacher in High School who only allowed French spoken in her classroom. This immersion approach was very effective.
The Johns article was so convoluted I kept reading the same sentences over and over. However I can see where the use of the concordance exercises would be helpful in any form of language instruction.
Julie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing up the idea that "a truly great curriculum includes as much technology as possible, but is managed by a qualified teacher". I agree with the idea that a teacher plays a central role in the instructional design.A qualified teacher will be able to make the best use of any kinds of materials and adjust the curriculum demands to the condition of his/her students' needs and conditions. But, I think the integration of current technology in a curriculum should be based on the instructional problems that the curriculum wants to address.
Classes based on the lexical approach and data-based learning do seem to demand a qualified teacher that is very familiar with these concepts. Maybe it is this technical knowledge that prevents some of these approaches from being used more frequently...or maybe I'm just now aware of how much it is used. Either way I think you bring up a good point about the lexical approach and how context can make a difference in the importance of a word or phrase despite its frequency.
ReplyDeleteJulie, your pronunciation comments made me think of the tool that google has on their translation software at www.google.com/translate
ReplyDeleteAlthough you will be dependent on the computer translation (which is never perfect), it does let you listen to the phonetic pronunciation of a word. Sometimes I'll mispronounce a Spanish word to a parent and they don't understand me, so I'll use this as a resource if I don't have another Spanish speaker nearby to cross-reference with me.
I really agree with Retno: "But, I think the integration of current technology in a curriculum should be based on the instructional problems that the curriculum wants to address." I think sometime administrators/ teachers think that just adding 'technology' to their classrooms makes them 'better'. I agree with Retno that the technology needs to address a need of the students. For example, from the article this week, we can see how concordancers can be useful in grammar classes as well as writing classes. I also think that students really get into the 'fun' aspect of concordancers and that will lead to increased motivation and learner autonomy. I have been in a colleagues computer lab when they were doing concordancing work for the first time, and some of the upper-level students who have become kind of blase about using computers in language class were really getting into the new tool.
ReplyDeleteHi Denise, thank you for the example!
ReplyDeleteJulie, I laughed when I read how 'bathroom' was one of the most important words for your trip to Greece because this is so true. "Where is the bathroom?" might be the single most important expression to learn when visiting a different country. I agree that relevance should play an important role for language learners and that teachers should try to assist students to learn useful langauge. Nathan, I've used google translate before, but I didn't know that they also had audio recordings as well, thanks for that insight! Julie, maybe that will help with your greek learning as well?
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