We will be offering 5 pre-conference workshops. All workshops will be from 3-6pm on Thursday, Feb 2, 2017 in Covel Commons. Interested participants can select one workshop.
Beyond Theory and the Classroom Through Community Engagement: Perspectives from TESL Trainers and Students
Anna Dina L. Joaquin - Associate Professor of the Department of Linguistics/TESL at California State University, Northridge
Stephanie Hyeri Kim - Assistant Professor of the Department of Linguistics/TESL at California State University, Northridge
In this workshop we will present a preliminary survey reporting on student perceptions and expectations regarding their needs in the new ESL landscape. We will then discuss how service learning or community engagement can help meet those expectations and provide new experiences that are not possible in the classroom. We will offer practical tips of how to incorporate service learning into teacher training courses, as well as discuss the challenges and benefits from both TESL trainers’ and students’ perspectives.
Guiding Language Learning – Applying Proficiency
Paul Sandrock, Director of Education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), directs this national organization’s professional development and initiatives around standards, curriculum, instruction, and performance assessment. Previously, Paul was Assistant Director of Content and Learning at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) , coordinating the areas of English language arts, mathematics, international education, and world languages. He earlier served as the DPI state-wide consultant for world languages. Paul taught Spanish for 16 years in middle school and high school and authored The Keys to Assessing Language Performance and Planning Curriculum for Learning World Languages. Paul previously served ACTFL as a board member and president and received ACTFL’s Florence Steiner Award for Leadership in Foreign Language Education, K-12.
Proficiency is at the core of language learning, from measuring progress to identifying effective strategies for learning. What can learners do at each proficiency level (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced) and what does it take to move to the next level? What is the proof that learners are able to use their new language? Experience tasks that serve to develop and assess learners as they demonstrate interacting in conversations; understanding what is heard, read, or viewed; and creating written messages. Assessment strategies are critical to evaluate learners’ language performance daily (formative) and near the program’s end (summative). Learn to set clear targets for each daily learning plan and create demonstrable checks for each learning episode. The overarching question is: “How do you know what learners can do with what they have learned?” Experience how to gather evidence of performance frequently, so both learners and educators can reflect on progress.
Exploring learner language in language teacher education
Elaine Tarone -Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota and past Director of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
Using a framework of Exploratory Practice, this workshop demonstrates for language teacher educators tools and techniques useful for helping language teachers see the relevance of SLA as they learn to elicit and describe the learner language that occurs in their own classrooms, and fine-tune their pedagogy to better address learning needs. Viewing videos of learners using their L2 in a range of tasks along with transcriptions of the learner language they produced, participants will walk through a set of activities showing teachers how to: do an error analysis, see evidence of developmental sequence, see learning in interaction as they scaffold or respond to corrective feedback, identify instances of communicative resilience in the use of communication strategies, and see how cognitively demanding problem-solving activities elicit more complex learner language.
Assessment for Language Teacher Educators
Margaret E. Malone (Ph.D., Georgetown University) is Director of the Center for Assessment, Research and Development at ACTFL and the Director of the Assessment and Evaluation Language Resource Center (AELRC) and Professor of the Practice at Georgetown. She has more than two decades of experience in language test development, materials development, delivery of professional development and teacher training through both online and face-to-face methods, data collection and survey research, and program evaluation. Dr. Malone has directed a variety of projects, including a three-year research study investigating student language learning outcomes from study abroad, the annual evaluation of a federal initiative to train teachers of and teach languages to students of critical languages in grades K-16, and a study of similarities and differences between English language academic writing and test tasks. Her current projects focus on exploring whether some languages are more difficult to learn than others, language assessment literacy and oral proficiency assessment. Dr. Malone has taught graduate courses in language testing and language teaching methods at American and Georgetown Universities and the University of Maryland and undergraduate courses on second language acquisition at Georgetown University.
Assessment is one way that language teachers can determine the extent to which students are reaching the intended course goals, as well as to reflect on the effectiveness of their own teaching. However, many teacher education programs do not require a course on language assessment. As a result, future language teachers may arrive in teaching positions ill-equipped for designing and administering as well as analyzing and describing the results of the assessments they use both in their own classrooms and to meet school, district and national requirements. This three-hour workshop identifies the basic principles of language assessment, including reliability, validity, impact and practicality and suggests ways that language teacher educators can include such principles in courses outside of language assessment.
The workshop will first review the results of a survey in which participants indicated their own questions about language assessment literacy. The workshop will then review the basic principles of language assessment (reliability, validity, impact and practicality) relative to both the needs identified by participants and current research on language assessment literacy. The workshop will then review the continuum of formative and summative assessment and illustrated via authentic scenarios. The workshop will then allow participants to reflect on how to incorporate such information and approaches into their courses.
Project-based Learning for Heritage Language Instruction
Maria Carreira - Professor of Spanish of the Romance/German/Russian Languages and Literature Department at the California State University, Long Beach
Claire Chik - Associate Director of the Center for World Languages and National Heritage Language Resource Center at the University of California, Los Angeles
Project-based learning (PBL) is a learner-centered teaching approach in which students work over a period of time on a multi-faceted task, which involves engaging with complex issues, solving problems, or meeting particular challenges. To communicate their learning, students develop a product such as timelines, blogs, brochures, reports, public-service announcements, etc.
This workshop will present a model of PBL for heritage language (HL) teaching and learning, which is designed to facilitate the development of oral and written skills in the HL, increase linguistic and cultural awareness, and foster involvement with the heritage community.
Presenters will discuss the guiding principles and strategies that comprise this model and illustrate them through sample projects from their own teaching. Adaptations of these projects for a range of languages, levels, and teaching contexts will be discussed, along with teaching practices and tools for managing PBL in HL-only and mixed classes. Working in small groups, participants will discuss how to apply the proposed principles and strategies in their own teaching and subsequently share their ideas with the group at large.