Concordance? But I'm a terrible dancer...

I think with concordance that it’s important to remember that conjunctive thinking is an acquired skill. We may be dealing with people that are unable to use the tools available for reasons that have very little to do with language processing. In fact, I’d like to open this issue up for general discussion, if anyone is willing.

Podcast Info

Tackling Tipping: A Discussion of Paying for Service

In this two-person podcast English Language Learners living in the United States will hear differing opinions on the act of tipping. Speakers, Aja Gorham and Jesse Ackles, present two different views on popular American practice of tipping to rouse class debate/discussion amongst beginning and intermediate students about tipping practices and beliefs in the classroom. These opinions do not represent rules about American practices, but two viewpoints on a large scale.

For more thorough, researched facts regarding tipping practices please consult the independent website listed below:

* http://www.tipping.org/tips/us.html
* http://www.essortment.com/all/tipping_rdef.htm

This podcast can be incorporated as the cultural competency component into a restaurant-themed lesson: set-up by the restaurant subject matter, used the crux of a listening activity with the question serving a follow up activity.

Vocabulary

While this podcast is intended for cultural competency purposes, students may need to know the following words:

* Waitress
* Job
* Service

Voicethread/Prehistoric Beasts

I can see how Voicethread could be a useful tool but I’m a little confused by the purposes of the demonstrations on the “Voicethreads 4 Teaching” site. I guess the idea of having a common theme around which to organize the students’ thoughts could have some relevance, but only if the purpose of the exercise is to encourage production. What is the theory behind this approach? It’s sort of a non-linear, theme-based brainstorming exercise, from what I can tell.

I think isolating the program for a specific purpose could work; it could be an excellent way to have students “turn in” their pronunciation assignments. Here we’re starting to see some real potential benefit to the internet as an alternative forum. I would think that Voicethread would still have to be relegated to one aspect of a multimedia course, however; the way it functions here is almost as an audio chat room. And I, too, would probably avoid walking by all those crocodiles if I could. I don’t even like driving near them unless there’s a glass wall between us, or if I know that they’ve recently eaten.

Good French Lesson, Questionable English Lesson

“Ma France” (L2 French)
This is part of the BBC series of language videos. This particular series is for French but they have dozens of others. They seem to have the bases pretty well covered; the lessons are interactive, allowing the user to navigate to vocabulary and grammar exercises in the course of the video. One can also choose to turn the French or English subtitles on or off at will—I think this is a good blend of interaction and passive learning, allowing the user to select the proper approach. There is also an overall choice of topic, but I found that within each theme there is a lot of material to cover.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/mafrance/flash/#

“Real English” (L2 English)
Um, what? This is a series of interviews with people on the street about their astrological signs. This is purportedly lower-mid-level L1 material, with the purpose of introducing the verb “like”. Problem #1: The introduction of terms like “Capricorn” and “Taurus” into L1 vocabulary doesn’t strike me as being terribly useful. Problem #2: the speakers they interview are often a little awkward and I don’t think their body language really matches what they are saying about their own personality traits. They simply should have some editorial restraint in choosing which videos to use—“dogmatic” is also not an L1 word, to name one example. Neither is “ostentatious.” I’ll stop there.
http://www.real-english.com/reo/7/unit7.html

Second Language Learners Stay Away!

http://eslbears.homestead.com/Contact_Info.html

In terms of "deep processing" i'm not sure anything on this website is helpful at all. These games look like they were probably created as a class assignment rather than in the interest of writing a useful tool for esl instruction. The first set of exercises is not so much a lesson as teaching by association/elimination. The "hangman" feature could be useful but not any more so than the original game. There is a series of homonym/synonym games and cloze exercises that strike me as being really trite and outdated. They are the equivalent of online flashcards.

Ha ha...ha?

I found a site that has an index of jokes in English written specifically for comprehension by ESL learners. Some of them even provide alternate versions depending on which tense is used. I can’t promise that you’ll do any gut-busting here, but I’m pretty impressed at what an effective tool this could be. As the majority of jokes, at least in English, are based on semantics, any of these could provide an effective tool for analysis by students—and what better watermark of fluency than to be able to understand jokes in one’s L2? Enjoy and have fun impressing your friends with your new arsenal of knee-slappers.

http://www.angelfire.com/on/topfen/jokes01.html

Educational Tool or Death of Humankind? Why Not Both?

My own acquaintance with Computer Assisted Language Learning comes in the form of various podcasts I have downloaded in order to enhance my own abilities. Like a lot of people, my expertise in any of the foreign languages I have been introduced to is fairly lopsided; this makes any particular format or lesson, in any media, insufficient to address all of my own shortcomings.

I have therefore sifted through quite a number of podcasts over the years, hoping to find one tailored to my needs in, say, French or Spanish. I have seen the quantity and variety of podcasts multiply substantially in the last year or so, which leads me to wonder if we won’t eventually reach a state where every second language learner on the planet is in possession of his or her own needs-based curriculum, available on the internet or some other unforeseen method of distribution.

My reservations are that this could seemingly lead to the creation of a dystopian “hive-mind” in which each of us represents a single cell in a unified organism—but, then, I am prone to consider such things. I only hope that we, as a species, are blessed with an enlightened and benevolent Queen.

As for the reading, I have long suspected that pedagogical texts require a certain quota of graphic insertion in order to present the illusion that they are embracing a multimedia approach to instruction. In the present article we are offered the conceptual benefit of triangles, as well as a set of concentric circles; in the next chapter I fully expect to be entertained by a trapezoid.

In the end, I guess the real question here is how to use CALL technology for good without making our roles as teachers (or our species) obsolete?