20/07/2014 by lizziepinard

Autonomous learning (4) – Graded Readers

This is the fourth in a series of posts whose goal is to explore ways of helping learners develop their language skills autonomously. The first two posts are specific to listening. The first post, which focuses on perception of connected speech can be read here , the second post on dictations as an autonomous learning tool here and the third on “text mining” can be read here. The first two posts focus on listening, the third on autonomous use of reading and listening texts, and, in keeping with my expansion of the series focus, this post is focusing on graded readers as means of autonomous learning – language development and skill development.

What?

Graded readers are books that are written in the target language, graded to suit learners of that language rather than being geared towards native speakers of that language. They exist for a range of levels, generally corresponding to those within the Common European Framework of Languages. Graded readers often (but don’t always) contain activities related to the text, either dispersed throughout the text or gathered at the end of the book.

A variety of well-known publishers have published collections of graded readers, information about which can be found on their websites. Here are some links to the graded reader sections of some of the publishers that do graded readers:

Choosing a Graded Reader

As the list of links above might suggest, there is no shortage of choice where graded readers are concerned. Of course each publisher produces one or more different types of graded reader. Graded readers can be:

a text, graded to a particular level.
a text and an audio disc recording of the text.
a text, an audio recording of the text and questions/activities that accompany the text.
an e-book, with above-mentioned features integrated.
probably other versions exist as well…!

I recently discovered that graded readers do not only exist in English for learners of English but in other languages for learners of those languages. Including Italian! The main focus for this post will be book-plus-audio graded readers, based on my recent experience of working my way through Villa dei Mughetti, published by Black Cat.

Screenshot from Blackcat-cideb website

Having worked my way through a graded reader, I now feel a lot better placed to help my learners get the most out of theirs, where before I tended to leave them to it, within the remit of my reading project.

In terms of choosing a graded reader, availability will be the major factor. When I bought my graded reader, in Palermo, it was the only one they had in Italian! I would recommend choosing one that comes with an audio recording, if possible, as this is a very valuable additional resource. Fortunately for me, Black Cat readers generally seem to come with accompanying cd.

Getting Started

My top tips for getting started with a graded reader would be:

Locate the answer key for the accompanying activities (if you have a version with activities!): with some, that’s as easy as checking the back of the book and finding that they are there. With Villa dei Mughetti I had to go to the Black Cat website, register as a teacher and then I was able to download them. Not the easiest, and if students are expecting the usual back-of-the-book scenario, they may be a bit perplexed and therefore a bit of help might not go amiss!

Decide how to begin: Think about your goals in using the reader and the different approaches you could take (dependent on what kind of graded reader you have chosen). Decide which approach(es) you want to try.

Different Approaches

Here are some approaches a learner could use:

Read through the text without looking at the questions.
Read the text and answer the questions/do the activities as you go along.
Listen to the complete audio cd without looking at the questions or text.
Listen to/read a section first, then read it/listen to it, then answer questions as you go along.
Listen to a section first, then answer questions, then read it to check.
Listen and read simultaneously, the whole text, without looking at any questions.
Listen and read simultaneously, answering the questions as you go

A learner might use the same approach throughout or vary the approach from chapter to chapter. As mentioned above, learners’ goals will/should influence the choice of approach. For example, my dominant approach was to listen to a chapter, do the activities, read to check, then mark the score-able activities using the answer key. I.e. (5) above. My goal was to work intensively on my listening.

Here is how I perceive the above activities could match to different goals:

Extensive reading
Intensive reading/language work
Extensive listening
Supported intensive listening/reading (depending which you are stronger at and which you are weaker at, the other supports it)/language work
Intensive listening/language work
Sound-spelling awareness/pronunciation
Sound-spelling awareness/pronunciation, plus comprehension/language work.

It could be useful to discuss different approaches with learners, to raise awareness of how different approaches map to different learning goals. Encourage them to experiment with different approaches and report back to their peers, so that they are encouraged to reflect on their experience of trying the various approaches – they could initially all experiment with the same approach and then compare notes, even if they were all using different graded readers (provided the graded readers all had the same resources e.g. audio and activities), and then move on to deciding which they prefer, or they could all experiment with whichever approach they wanted to and report back on whatever they have done. They could also group themselves according to what approach they wanted to try.

This experimentation and discussion would fit in quite nicely with both my Experimentation with English and Reading Project approaches. As mentioned in those projects, it needn’t be very time-consuming in class.

Graded Reader Activities

In Villa dei Mughetti, there was a chunk of activities at the end of each chapter. Each chunk included a mixture of score-able and un-score-able activities.

There were:

Comprehension activities: T/F; Y/N; ordering events; matching utterances and characters etc.

Language focus activities: grammar explanation plus practice activity, vocabulary activities e.g. matching pictures and words, a crossword, matching words and definitions etc.

Productive skills-focused activities: each chunk of activities had both a writing activity and a speaking activity.

Comprehension activities

These are straightforward and can be done as a reading exercise or a listening exercise. If learners choose to listen and answer the questions, as I did, it would be useful to encourage them to use the text as a transcript to identify why they make any mistakes. Of course this would be easier for them to do if you have done with them in class before, in your listening lessons.

Language focus activities

Vocabulary: learners need to be selective in deciding what to do with the vocabulary that the activities encourage them to focus on. Is it vocabulary they want to actually learn? It won’t necessarily be – some of the vocabulary in Villa dei Mughetti was very random and I wouldn’t choose to focus on it sufficiently for it become part of my productive linguistic resources (e.g. names of flowers whose names I don’t even know in English – I’m happy for the flowers to be pretty, I’m happy enough to learn what the names are in Italian, but I’m really not fussed about *learning* all their Italian names.)

So, if the vocabulary isn’t useful, that’s fine, do the activities and move on. However, if is vocabulary that learners want to learn, then they need to do something with it beyond the activities in the book. For example, input it into Quizlet and use the various study and game modes; try to use it in the writing activities etc.

Grammar: This (at least in Villa dei Mughetti) is generally based on language/examples from the text. If a learner is familiar with the grammar and gets all the questions in the practice activity right, great. Move on but don’t forget to look out for more examples, in context, in the ensuing text and in other texts that you encounter. However, if there are a few mistakes, it could be worth using a website or book with grammar explanations and activities, to try and clarify any misunderstanding. Once it’s under control, at least on a declarative level, it’s even more important to look out for further examples of it in context – in future chapters and other texts (written or spoken). In this way, the grammar activities become diagnostic, either confirming what you are familiar with or acting as a springboard to working on what you are less familiar with.

Productive skills focus activities

These activities, at least in Villa dei Mughetti, are the un-score-able ones. I’m of the opinion that self-study material doesn’t have to be score-able to be useful, so I am glad these activities feature in my current preferred graded reader series!

In order to get the most out of them, it is useful to have tools to use alongside them: i.e. a blog for the writing and a voice-recording tool (e.g. Audioboo, Audacity, a mobile phone, vocaroo etc, for the speaking. That way, you can collect your writing activities on your blog, and accumulate a series of voice recordings too. If using a website to record your voice, you can usually link to the recording in your blog, or if you make files on your computer, this can usually be uploaded. Evernote could be used in a similar way.

This enables progress to be charted. You could also encourage learners to share blog links with each other, and compare their production. Or, if you use Edmodo with them, they could post things on it instead of creating blogs etc. Of course a class blog could be used too. Once learners have reached the end of the graded reader, they could go back through their recorded written and spoken activities, to see if they can identify progress and identify/correct any errors.

Some of the activities might seem a bit lame (in my limited experience) but they may be able to be combined, with a bit of imagination. Thus, as you might have picked up on, I don’t think it’s necessary to complete the productive activities before moving on to the next chapter. As long as you are doing the activities regularly, then it just becomes a matter of how it best fits the time frame you have available. Writing a text takes longer than answering a few T/F questions, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop doing the T/F questions until you have time to do a longer activity.

Other Activities

Graded Readers can yield activities beyond those contained in the book (if it’s the type of reader with activities):

Dictations: A great additional use for the accompanying audio disc. Dictations may not immediately come to mind as a potential activity but actually it works well, as the language is graded to the reader’s level and it tends to be read clearly. Of course it won’t be a dictation speed or with built in pauses, but as one has control of the recording, one can repeat a short passage (a minute at most) multiple times and see how many times it takes to get everything done. If the activity is repeated at regular intervals, comparisons regarding number of times necessary can enable progress to be tracked. Comparison with the transcript, as with standard dictations, can indicate weaknesses in decoding skills.

Writing/speaking: As mentioned, those in the book may not seem the most exciting, but the concept is sound. So, if a group of students are using the same graded reader, then get them to come up with alternative ideas for productive activities, that they actually want to do. You as the teacher could collect these and over time build up a collection of supplementary materials to share with future students. If your school has a library of graded readers, copies of those materials could live with the collection of readers.Students may be concerned about lack of feedback with the productive activities, so it may be useful to explain that a) it’s still a useful activity even without feedback, as it helps the development of fluency (of writing or of speaking) and b) it’s also useful to go back over the texts produced (written or spoken) and see if any mistakes can be identified, especially as time passes and language level (hopefully) consolidates.

Gapping the text: A bit more work is involved with this activity, but it should be worth it. Learners type up a small portion of the text. (A similar length to that used for the dictation) and then gap some words. This could be words that they struggled to hear/decode the first time round (to facilitate this, after they listen to a chapter, do exercises and read to check, they could also check if they read anything different from what they had heard. Alternatively, listening first and then listening/reading simultaneously to compare). It could be chunks relating to the language/grammar point in that chapter, or a previous chapter. It could be any chunks that they understand but wouldn’t produce unprompted, that they think might be useful to activate. (See my post on text mining for more information about this approach.) Students then leave the reproduced, gapped text aside for a while. Later, they come back to it to play the audio and attempt to fill in the gaps. (NB: If you think this would be too easy, I can only say that I have done something similar with dictations: I’ve listened, made mistakes, identified mistakes through transcript comparison, marked mistakes but not corrected them, left it aside for awhile, come back to it and tried to listen and correct the mistakes – now gaps where something is wrong – and struggled! Generally I’ve been able to correct some and still failed on some, even though I’ve seen the correct answer previously.)

Is it extensive reading?

Some might argue that with all the activities breaking the text into small portions, reading graded readers doesn’t count as “proper” extensive reading. However, I would say that:

a graded reader can still be used for extensive reading/listening if the text is heard/read through first time round without using the activities. Or, after the activities have all been done, one could read/listen through the whole text without stopping for activities, enjoying a greater understanding of the text.

a graded reader is a beneficial learning resource that can be used as well as more traditional texts. E.g. I read other things to read extensively and use my graded readers mainly for intensive listening. As with anything, alone it might be insufficient but as part of a varied diet of activities, including extensive reading/listening without activities, it can be very valuable.

So, I don’t think it’s such an important issue to worry about. As long as students are aware of different ways of using their graded readers, of how these ways map to different learning goals, which may change as they progress through their graded reader, and, finally, of the benefits and limitations of graded readers as learning resource, then they can use their graded readers as suits their purpose and get as much out of them as possible.

Conclusion

Graded readers are a rich resource of learning, perfect for autonomous study. This is particularly true if you have access to an audio recording as well. A wide range of approaches can be used with a graded reader, depending on learning aims. There is also potential for a students to do further activities not stipulated by the graded reader, and create supplementary materials for use with them. Both the process of creation and the use of these can be another valuable part of the process of using a graded reader. Some teacher guidance could be helpful in enabling learners to make the most of their graded reader, through a cycle of experimentation and metacognitive discussion. This could be achieved without the graded readers necessarily becoming a teacher-led/controlled activity.

I’ve really enjoyed using my graded reader in Italian and look forward to using more! (And, I confess, I do still have a couple of productive activities to do – one of which is next on my agenda for this afternoon!) I also look forward to being able to help my learners get more out of their graded readers when I re-launch my reading project at IHPA in October! 🙂

If you have any more ideas for helping learners use graded readers more effectively as an autonomous learning tool, please share them by commenting on this post.

17/07/2014 by lizziepinard

Autonomous skill development (3) – text mining

This is the third in a series of posts whose goal is to explore ways of helping learners develop their language skills autonomously. The first two posts are specific to listening. The first post, which focuses on perception of connected speech can be read here and the second post on dictations as an autonomous learning tool here . This post doesn’t focus specifically on listening skill development but I have decided to include it in this series as it focuses on an autonomous learning activity. So I hereby declare the series focus expanded!

The inspiration for this post is in part my own language learning and in part a workshop I attended this afternoon on developing speaking fluency. Text mining was one of the techniques mentioned, in terms of being a way of supporting learners to complete speaking tasks more successfully. As I understand it, learners use a text that has previously been exploited for listening/reading and highlight language that they do understand but wouldn’t use themselves unprompted. The idea is that they can then carry the language over for use in a speaking task on a similar topic. Beautifully simple. It was one of several techniques for lessening cognitive load and enabling learners to use more complex language. And, I imagine (and as was suggested), motivating for learners to be focusing on the language that they do “know” in a text, rather than only the language they aren’t familiar with, which is usually the case. I gather the idea, as explained to us today, originally came from this talk by Joan Saslow at IATEFL in 2013

So that was the workshop. What excited me is that “text mining” is something I have been doing myself, autonomously, on a regular basis this summer, in my Italian learning. Only, I hadn’t given it a label, it was just something I do and have found a lot of value in, particularly because of what I’ve done with the language mined post-mining. So the focus of this post isn’t on text mining as a means of working on spoken fluency in the classroom, but on text mining as an autonomous activity for bridging the gap between receptive and productive skills.

Aims:

Develop productive language resources
Expand vocabulary
Develop language awareness

Materials/tools:

Texts! Of any description – the more varied, the better.
Quizlet
A blog or similar

Procedure:

Encourage learners to read and listen extensively (for a start!). Ideally a range of texts – authentic original, authentic translations (i.e. books translated from another language into the target language, not for a language learning audience) graded readers, non-fiction, written, audio of whatever description, the more varied the better. (I’m currently actively in the middle of two books (one original Italian, one translation into Italian), two audiobooks (both translations into Italian), a science-y/technology magazine (authentic Italian) and a graded reader (Italian for learners!), currently! As well as the inevitable dvd.)

Get them to highlight language that they understand but don’t produce, that could be useful for them to produce. (So that they don’t just highlight everything. Part of the trick is being selective. And how you select obviously depends on purpose, amongst other things. I don’t have a specific purpose for learning Italian but I select chunks because I can imagine myself wanting to express that meaning when I converse in Italian once I’m back in Sicily. I also select chunks if they include a structure or language point that I’ve come across and started learning about – so for example the subjunctive or use of prepositions. Of course when purpose is considered in this way, then it will probably vary from reading/listening occasion to reading/listening occasion. E.g. I won’t always be on the look out for prepositional phrases but for a spell I might be. Then I’ll move on to a new focus.)

Obviously if that was it, it would be a bit useless. A sort of “ah that’s a nice chunk…ok, bye bye chunk.” The trick is recycling. And lots of it. Of course seeing it used (or if not specifically it then a variation of it – that often happens) in further reading/listening is great – but if you’ve forgotten about it you might not notice it and you are also unlikely to produce it. In order to avoid this, I like to use Quizlet. I input the chunks – so already that makes me focus on them some more – and then I use the learn mode (generally on my iPad because I prefer the mobile app learn mode to the website learn mode) to help me memorise them a bit. That way, I’m more likely to remember them when I come across them again. And I do! Come across them again, that is.

Still not enough. Further steps much depend on the chunk. I have variously i) tried to manipulate it if it is not a fixed chunk (could I make it refer to another time frame? could I make it stronger or weaker? how formal is it? what is a more/less formal way of expressing that? could I change the context of use/topic?) ii) tried to use in the little blog posts I write on my Italian post iii) tried to use in conversation – currently limited to Facebook chatting but once I’m back in Sicily…! iv) used it while talking to myself. And I really do think talking to yourself in the target language has value. It may mean you are crazy, I don’t know, but it’s a great way to experiment with language in a very non-threatening way. Doesn’t even have to be aloud, can be internally, in your head. I usually do it aloud when I’m cycling to and from work! I do it internally at various other times. v) used it during my weekly self-recording speaking sessions. vi) tried to use all my linguistic resources, including those acquired in this way, in my solitaire “scrabble” games. Over time, I become aware that these chunks, that I wouldn’t have produced before, have made their way into my active productive language resources.

So, it’s pretty simple really! But the keys are:

*The* keys! 🙂 Image taken from Google image search for images licensed for commercial reuse with modification.

Variety of activities – for genuine recycling. And I think language learning contracts may play an important role in this: I didn’t do a wide variety of learning activities regularly until I made myself a contract, and it is only through making myself (initially) follow that contract that I discovered how useful variety is. They started off as discrete individual activities on a list, but by doing them and learning more about them and how to benefit as much as possible from the interplay between them, they have now become a sort of language learning web, catching new language for me. I think in terms of scaffolding learners, then my Experimenting with English project (or anything along similar lines) could be helpful too.

A web for catching language! image from commons.wikimedia.org via Google search for images licensed for commercial use with modification.

Being on the look out for “your” language. So that when you hear or see it, you get that little glow of recognition.

Being willing to talk to yourself and experiment with the language that way. And talk to others too, when the opportunity arises.

Some memorisation. (It’s useful! Insufficient on its own but valuable as a component of a larger approach)

Being selective – or you highlight the whole book/article/whatever. And I think this would be the most difficult thing for learners. However, perhaps this is another facet of the activity as described in the opening to this blog post, as a classroom activity for scaffolding speaking. Perhaps it can be used as a way of helping learners become better able to use it as an autonomous learning activity. I.e. get them to discuss what chunks they’ve chosen and why. How could those chunks be useful?

Having time off: I still do a lot of “just” reading. I’m not reading to stop every ten seconds to highlight. If a chunk really stands out, I’ll grab it. But because of how this seems to work, even when I’m “off” – I’m still very tuned in to noticing any language I’ve grabbed previously. But I don’t transfer it to Quizlet immediately necessarily. Sometimes I do – if it’s a – to me – particularly yummy piece of language and my computer is to hand. But often I let a handful “build up” and then transfer them over and start working on them. So, it’s not intrusive to the reading.

I think on it as a sort of “active” reading/listening – rather than just letting it all wash over me, in the hopes that some might stick, I’m actually doing something to start making it stick.

Does it work?

For me, yes. Absolutely. My productive language resources have increased a lot since I started my language learning contract (i.e. doing a variety of activities including text mining) My receptive skills have improved too, but I think this approach has helped the gap between my receptive and productive skills to not widen in the process. “Process” is perhaps the key word. This is more of an on-going process than an activity, really. More of a mindset that I’ve developed, which I think is useful for approaching language learning.

For other learners? Further research is needed! I shall be experimenting come October… Meanwhile, try it out with your learners and let me know!

04/07/2014 by lizziepinard

Learning Contracts and Language Learning (part 2): how I’ve used one and what I’ve learnt (other than a lot of Italian!)

On the 4th June this year, a day after I arrived back in the UK from la bella Sicilia, I considered the potential utility of learning contracts and then proceeded to make myself one, with the vague goal of maintaining my Italian while in a non-Italian-speaking environment:

This is my learning contract, dutifully copied and pasted into Evernote!

And here are the research questions that I also had in mind when I made it:

I wondered…

I also promised an update regarding my use of my learning contract, and its effect on my learning, one month on. And here we are, one month on! That was quick. I am happy to say that learning Italian has become a regular feature in my days and weeks, despite the last two being swamped by induction into a new job and first week doing said job.

But the big question is…

Have I managed to keep to my contract?

Pretty well, yes!

There were two days in the first week where I didn’t manage to do my extensive listening, because I wasn’t organised and I was on the move. (By lack of organisation, I mean I hadn’t got as far as putting something in Italian on either my iPod or iPad, so couldn’t listen on the train, which was the only free time I had on those days.) Apart from that, I have mostly stuck to it. The first week was the most difficult because I spent several days not quite getting on with it. I was on the move, so even the easy bits like extensive listening weren’t easy logistically, and as for the rest, basically there were all these activities many of which I wasn’t in the habit of doing, and I just wasn’t sure which to start with. However, as the week wore on, I decided I had better pull my finger out and managed to do everything on my contract just in time. The second week and onwards, I’ve got stuck in right from day 1 of the week, and have managed to fulfil the contract with time and activities to spare. Except for Saturday 28th June, when I was at a conference and the train ride was spent finishing preparations for that, and on a bit of extensive reading, and the rest of the day was full of conferencing and catching up with one of my friends from my M.A. course who was also attending. Extensive listening fell by the wayside again! (Even though I had Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale on my iPad! If only the journey had been half an hour longer…)

Harry Potter is good for journeys – as long as there isn’t a conference I haven’t prepared fully for at the other end of the journey…

I would give myself 97% success rate of sticking to the contract. (My maths isn’t great but there were lots of successful days and only three non-successful days.) Also, with regards to extensive listening and reading, on the majority of days I have done more than then stipulated 20 mins a day.

What difference has it made to my learning?

It’s pushed me to do a variety of activities which I wouldn’t otherwise be doing: and, in doing this variety of activities, over time, I’ve noticed how they can feed into each other and used this to my benefit. [And this is exactly what my Experimenting with English project is based on: encouraging learners to do a variety of out-of-class activities through scaffolding experimentation!]

It’s enabled me to do a lot of language recycling: I’ve noticed that language I pick up in a given activity (e.g. doing dictations) I sometimes meet in my input activities (e.g. extensive reading/listening) or I’m able to use productively (e.g. writing my blog or chatting on Facebook messenger)

It’s motivated me: If I didn’t need to do all those activities each week, I wouldn’t be waking up extra early to get something done before going to work, for a start! And I’d probably just be drifting along reading and listening a bit. Also, the noticing (bullet 1) has become another motivating factor – I love it when something I’ve learned from one activity crops up in another!

My productive vocabulary is growing: for starters, I take language from input-based activities and use it, rather than just recognising it ad nauseum. Quizlet has become my friend, I put a lot of language into it and use it to drill myself. But I particularly like the mobile app, which I use on my iPad, and specifically within that, the learn function. It gives me a prompt and I have to type in the Italian. If I get it right, I get a green tick and it goes to learnt, but I have to get it right a few times before it goes to mastered. If I get it wrong, it highlights the mistakes and then corrects them. I like that because it makes the errors vs the correct version really visual. Eventually they all transfer to mastered and you get a percentage score based on your accuracy during the process. I have scored 100%…once! The increase in my productive vocabulary has helped me feel more confident in my speaking and writing. (Speaking in terms of chatting on FB messenger and in terms of recording myself speaking. I also chatter away to myself in Italian while cycling to and from work each day – but perhaps I shouldn’t be admitting to that! :-p ) I use Quizlet a lot more often than once a week now (most days in fact!) and have 6 sets so far:

My Quizlet Sets!

It’s given me a sense of control over my learning: I chose the activities, and how I fit them into my week is flexible. I think a week is a useful unit. It means you can have slightly more and less productive days, though by the nature of my contract some stuff needs to be done every day, as long as within a week you do everything you stipulated in the learning contract. The quantity of stuff encourages piecemeal chipping away at it. Also, by keeping a record of what I do each day, I know exactly where I am with my list and what I still need to do in any given week. I manage my study time accordingly.

It’s give me a framework for my learning, yet it is flexible: Since starting with my LC, I have experimented with activities not on the list too. For example, a trip to Foyles bookshop resulted in the purchase of a set of Italian Magnetic Poetry, which has taken up residence on my fridge. The first thing I did was classify them all into (from left to right) adjective stems, noun stems, verb stems, conjugated verbs, verb/other endings (I started out just with “verbs” but there were too many!), prepositions, articles, pronouns, adverbs, question words, conjunctions, and expressions/negatives. There were also a few I didn’t know what to do with (the column starting celeste) and the cluster I wasn’t sure of the meaning of (to the right). They were all mixed up on sheets that I had to break into individual words. This classification activity was very satisfying:

I particularly enjoyed classifying All The Words…well, nearly all!

I have also used them to try and make actual sentences:

How many mistakes can you spot? :-p

I haven’t used them as much as I would have liked though. One of my goals for the next month is to experiment with them and try to find different ways of using them.

Buying this set of magnets got me thinking about word games in general, and that started a little trend. First I got out my bananagrams game and did some solitaire criss-crosses:

My first attempt!

There is a cluster of useless letters to the right, which I had to remove, and then two letters I was unable to use. The canny amongst you will notice there are 2 “z”‘s there: that was a mistake – first I thought there was only one “z” as per Scrabble and thought there weren’t any words with only one “z” (I could only think of double “z” examples) and by the time the second one emerged I had forgotten about the first. In the second game, I managed to use up all but one letter:

Only one left out! Although looking at the picture now, why didn’t I just make “tu” using the “t” in “ripete”?! I didn’t suss the whole “z” thing till game 3…

I didn’t complete these games in one go, of course. I just added a word here and there when I came up to my room (where the table is). My justification for these little forays: It’s all incidental use of language. I thought about Italian and Italian words slightly more than I otherwise would have done: couldn’t hurt. Also had me drilling myself with all the words I could think of, trying to find one which would match whichever letters I had at the time! And finally, it’s FUN! 🙂

I also picked up a very cheap set of Scrabble Fridge magnets. Now, there’s no room on my fridge (for obvious reasons) but that hasn’t stopped me using them to a play a very odd version of Scrabble:

Strange Scrabble

It was fun to introduce scoring into the equation, however strangely the scoring worked. Of course, now I have a hankering to play real Italian Scrabble with an Italian Scrabble set and ideally an Italian opponent! 🙂

I’ve discovered more about how the activities I do can be useful. A good example of this is dictations: dictations are back in fashion these days, various versions (e.g. running, shouting etc. dictations) are popular in the classroom, and some websites offer learners the opportunity to use them outside the classroom too. I hadn’t thought about dictations as an autonomous listening development tool, but through using them myself, I have understood more about their potential, which resulted in this blog post. This is something I will be able to pass on to my learners.

A dictation: If you want to know what all the highlighting and colours are all about, click on the picture...

A dictation of mine: If you want to know what all the highlighting and colours are all about, click on the picture…

What have I learnt so far?

Variety is great: Doing a variety of activities increases exposure to language, productive use of language and recycling of language in different contexts. This can’t be a bad thing.

Regularity is great: Working with the unit of a week, and having a fairly lengthy list of activities, study periods need to be regular for me to get through it all. Little and often has worked well. (With the odd longer session thrown in on the rare occasions where time has permitted!)

Record-keeping is key: It’s so much easier to operate when you know what you’ve done and what you want to do within a given time-frame. Having a record of activities done (and lengths of time where relevant) is also motivating, as the list grows.

Reflection is satisfying: I did a written reflection each week, looking back on the week and what I’d achieved as well as how I felt about my progress. It’s very satisfying to reach reflection day each week and look back on a week full of activities and the new relationships emerging between said activities.

Activities don’t have to involve “meaningful use of language” to be meaningful and valuable: As long as there is variety and within that variety there are activities which do involve meaningful use of language, other activities e.g. Quizlet and dictations etc. have their place too. Both, for example, have improved my spelling! Quizlet has improved my recall, dictations have improved my decoding skills.

How activities interact is also key: Within a variety of activities, it’s helpful if you can link them together, and thus wind up doing a lot of language recycling. E.g. picking up a phrase through a dictation activity and then using it in a Facebook chat.

Real communication is hugely motivating: I’ve enjoyed several chats on Facebook, with an Italian IHPA colleague of mine. Chatting with C. has given me the opportunity to experiment with the language that I’ve picked up through other activities and get feedback on what I produce. It’s also been a lot of fun, nice to keep in touch, and the source of a lot of learning. As I said, I’ve taken language from other activities to the chats, but also vice versa – e.g. recording what I thought were “good” phrases on Quizlet and using it to learn them. I’m particularly lucky because she uses a range of error correction techniques, and for the majority of the time these a) make me think and b) don’t disrupt the flow on the conversation.

Goals for next month:

Continue following the LC!! It’s working so far, can it work for another month or will I lose interest?

Experiment with the magnetic poetry and figure out how to make it work for me.

Investigate Italian corpora/concordancing tools (they must exist!) and find one that works for me: when I learn new words, I often think it would be really useful to have an Italian version of www.wordandphrase.info to generate a bunch of examples of that word/chunk in use, so that I can see how it used, rather than only knowing what it means and say one example of use.

Conclusions thus far:

My first research question remains unanswered: a longer period needs to pass before I’ll know whether the LC has helped me maintain motivation over a longer period!

My second research question seems to have been answered positively thus far: Yes, I have managed to do what is on my LC and then some, and yes it has definitely made a difference!

For the naysayers: You could argue that the motivation is also coming from the fact that I really want this LC to work. But, on a daily basis, that isn’t what is motivating me – my motivation is mostly from enjoying the mixture of activities and using the language (which I love!), and from the satisfaction of doing what is on the LC and producing my lengthy record of things I have done, which lives in Evernote and is growing into a source of lovely smugness :-p :

The smugness of doing.. 😉 [an extract from Evernote]

Overhauling my Experimenting with English project: Well, I was going to do this anyway, but now I have a bunch of activities that I’m very keen to add to the handout as well as more ideas for how to use it with learners! But that will have to wait until September when I’m back at good ol’ IHPA! (Meanwhile, I’m experimenting with applying my understanding and experience of learner autonomy development to a very different context: Sheffield University summer pre-sessional course, but that’s a whole nother blog post…)

Next update due: 5th August 2014: I shall report back on all my goals and progress with my LC then.

Meanwhile, have I convinced you to try using learning contracts/the concept of pushing experimentation with a variety of activities, either for your own language learning or with your learners? If so, let me know your thoughts by commenting on this post! I would also be interested to hear anybody’s thoughts on what I’ve been up to so far, whether or not you plan to try anything I’ve mentioned… 🙂

15/06/2014 by lizziepinard

Autonomous listening skill development (2) – Dictations

This is the second post in a series of posts whose goal is to explore ways of helping learners develop their listening skills autonomously. You can read the first post here.

This post is not going to focus on the use of dictations as a classroom activity (for some great ideas relating to classroom use of dictations, have a look at this great recent post of Marek’s) but at their use as a tool that students can use autonomously to work on receptive pronunciation/decoding processes, writing (in terms of spelling and punctuation, but potentially also grammar) and vocabulary.

Dictations may not immediately come to mind as an autonomous learning tool: you need someone to dictate something to you (be that the teacher or a classmate), to check what you write and to highlight mistakes, right? Well, not anymore. In the age of the internet, it is possible to take dictation away from the classroom and put learners in charge of using dictation as a learning tool. But for those who lack access to a decent internet connection, or whose students do, never fear: there are other ways and means too, so read on…

Potential Sources of Dictation Activity Materials

1. Websites with dictations on them

Essentially, all you need for a dictation is a recording which has a transcript. The internet has made a multitude of these freely available. “But they are too fast!” I hear you say. It’s true, most recordings don’t come at traditional dictation speed, complete with punctuation. That’s ok though. It’s all in how you use them…

Some sites have specially made dictations for language learners:

Breaking News English

Screenshot 1 from Breaking News English dictations page (don’t forget to sponsor Rio!)

On this site, amongst all the other things they can do, learners can choose from a list of dictations. As you can see, the dictations are labelled according to difficulty.

Once the learner clicks on one of the listed dictations, they are taken to a special screen:

Screenshot 2 from Breaking News English dictations page

The learner listens to the text and writes what he or she hears, in the box that is next to where it says “Guess“. If the word is correct, it will appears in the correct part of the right-hand box. The asterisks in this box correspond to the letters in the words that the learners will hear, and the gaps between them indicate where each word ends and another begins.

Screenshot 3 from Breaking News English dictations page

I think this is a valuable starting point for learners: these clues will help them become better at chunking correctly and hearing words within a speech stream. Of course, the instant feedback is useful too.

The British Council

The British Council have an ESOL website – esol.britishcouncil.org – which has a section with dictations that learners can do. You can access these by clicking on Listen and Watch and then selecting Dictations:

Screenshot 1 from the ESOL Nexus website

Selecting Dictations will take you to the following screen:

Screenshot 2 from ESOL Nexus

The approach taken to dictations on this site is very interesting. As well as the “Listen and Write” aspect of the dictation, learners who use these dictations can work through a series of tasks based on the speech features found in the dictation:

Screen shot 3 from ESOL Nexus

Here you can see tasks on word stress and identifying the verb. Other tasks I saw while playing with the site include counting the words, identifying the connecting sound (choosing between /r/, /w/ ), and distinguishing between sounds. If your learners are not interested in productive pronunciation, they can always ignore the “listen and repeat” parts!

So this website not only allows learners to use dictations autonomously, but also builds up an awareness of receptive pronunciation that will come in handy if they try to use other tools (e.g. recordings and transcripts) to do dictation-like activities. As a teacher, you could perhaps have a look at the tasks this website sets alongside the traditional dictations, and adapt them for use in class.

However, the reason I have become so interested in dictations as a learning tool is this Italian site:

Screenshot 1 from One World Italiano

The approach to dictation on this site is very basic: more basic, you might argue, than the other two afore-mentioned sites:

Screenshot 2 from One World Italiano

You listen at normal speed, listen and write at dictation speed (i.e. with pauses), listen and check at normal speed, then compare your product with the transcript. Obviously this is an approach that you could adopt with any recording and transcript, except that you wouldn’t get the dictation speed. It is also an approach that is flexible enough to be adapted in a number of ways, as we shall explore later in this post…

2. Websites with recordings and transcripts

Of course there are plenty of such sites these days… Here are a couple that I think are particularly good, as examples. (Feel free to comment on this post and suggest others if you feel strongly that they ought to be on this list!)

Elllo.org

Screenshot 1 from Elllo.org

If you click on Search by Level-Topic-Country, then you should be taken to a list of interviews:

Screenshot 2 from Elllo.org

As you can see, in addition to the title, the nationality of the speakers and the level of the recording are also provided. This site is good because it is not “native speaker”-centric. So for learners who are interested in using English as a lingua franca, rather than speaking to native speakers, this might complement other sources very nicely. That there are different levels of recording is useful too, as it makes using the recording and transcripts more accessible to lower level learners.

British Council Learn English

The British Council Learn English site has a “Listen and Watch” section that makes a very valuable learning resource:

Screenshot 1 from British Council Learn English

Here, you can find a variety of podcasts and series of podcasts, at a mixture of levels, which are accompanied by listening activities but also – all importantly for our dictation focus – a transcript!

3. Non-internet based resources

Dictations are not limited to the internet. Other resources your learners could use include:

Graded Readers

Screenshot from the Blackcat-cideb website

I have recently discovered graded readers as a language learner. (I knew about English graded readers as a teacher, but I think you can only fully appreciate them if you use one in a language that you are trying to learn!) What a revelation! I love them! (But that’s for another post…) Of course, as far as this post is concerned, we must limited “graded reader” to those that come with an accompanying audio recording.

Course book listenings/supplementary materials

Learners often get a cd with course book listening recordings or access to a cd rom containing either course book listening recordings or “extra practice” listening recordings/activities within similar topic areas. Transcripts are usually in the back of the student book or embedded somewhere in digital resources like cd-roms. (I know, for example, that this is the case with at least some levels of Speak Out; Headway digital has such materials that students may have access to etc.) As well as doing whatever language/skills practice activities come with these materials, learners could use the recordings and transcripts as another source of dictation practice.

Audio books

Remember the book-and-tape sets you used to get when you were young? Then they became book-and-cd. These are generally aimed at younger native speakers, but can be equally useful for language learners, provided they don’t get hung up on the target age of the materials.

Ok, so we’ve established that there is no shortage of potential material for autonomous use of dictations as a learning tool, but what do we do with them?

Activities

Let’s go back to the basic approach that my Italian website offered:

listen to the recording
listen to the recording at dictation speed and write what you hear
listen again at normal speed and check what you wrote
look at the transcript

A very good basic approach, which we could easily apply to the materials from both British Council resources and Elllo.org, but it can be extended and it is important to make full use of that “look at the transcript” phase.

How?

Don’t panic about only listening and writing once: you have control of the replay button, why not use it! Perhaps in due course you will be able to do it with one listen through, until then it’s ok to be human rather than give up!
Compare your product and the transcript
Highlight all your mistakes

My first Italian dictation with errors highlighted.

But don’t stop there. Look at each mistake and the correct version, identify why you made that mistake, what/why you misheard:

My analysis of my errors (added to the second time round)

Then identify any patterns in your mistakes i.e. your general weaknesses:

Pattern/weaknesses identification

Note: I haven’t corrected the mistakes, only analysed them.

Leave it all for a few days. Yes, uncorrected.
After a few days, use your highlighted transcript and repeat the dictation process. Try to correct your errors by focusing particularly hard on the highlighting and trying to remember what caused the mistake.

Take 2! Correcting the errors…

Make any corrections in a different colour so that it is easy to see them.
Compare your corrections to the transcript and see how you did this time round.
Underline any remaining mistakes/omissions so that they are in evidence.
Analyse them as before.

Thus, instead of transcript comparison being: “Oh, I made x number of mistakes, not too bad, will try again next time.” and that being the end of the dictation activity, it becomes an extended learning opportunity. The mistakes are where the learning is. Obviously I benefit from having a reasonable awareness of what contributes to receptive difficulties and therefore can analyse my mistakes reasonably easily. To help learners gain this awareness, why not do the activity with them in class and provide a handout to help scaffold their analysis? (Such as that found in Vandergrift and Goh, 2012 consisting of a list, written in the first person, of potential error causes, for learners to match to their errors) Of course, as mentioned earlier, the British Council ESOL Nexus site is a good way in to being able to analyse errors more effectively too.

What about when the recordings don’t come with the dictation pauses and are quite fast?

That’s ok. There are several ways to work with more challenging recordings in a similar way.

Chunk-grabbing

Take one minute of your graded reader recording – that is plenty! (It also means you have a lot of potential dictations in one graded reader! 😉 ) I recommend that you listen without trying to write anything first. As per the approach above, where you listen at normal speed before you do the dictation activity. So, listen for meaning. It also works if you do it after having used that part of the graded reader normally i.e. listened and/or read and done the activities in the reader, as long as you let some time elapse before you do so.
Listen again and write down any chunks that you can. It’s moving pretty quickly, so you will grab a few phrases and a few words here and there. I did this on the computer, and entered after each chunk.
Play it again and try to fill in a few gaps.
Repeat until you’ve captured that one minute of recording.
Compare with the transcript – again, thoroughly- as per the approach described with the gato e topo dictation.

My first graded reader dictation

Here, I have highlighted my errors and put in underlining where I have omitted something. I will return to it in a few days and try to correct those mistakes by listening again.

Chunk-grabbing variation

Start as per the chunk-grabbing activity above.
After listening and grabbing a few chunks and words, listen again but don’t add anything else.
Then use your chunks and words, and what you can remember, and try to reconstruct the text. So, do a dictogloss.
Compare your dictogloss with the transcript. This time you will the analyse grammatical and lexical choices you’ve made as well as what you’ve (mis)heard.

(I will come back to this activity in more depth, including how to scaffold it in class and use it as a pronunciation tool, in a future post…)

I think the important thing when doing dictation activities with more challenging recordings i.e. recordings that are not geared towards it (and even when you are struggling with the gatto e topo recording, which is geared towards it 😉 ) is to not get stressed by it. Accept that it will be difficult, possibly frustrating too, and that you will make mistakes. The mistakes are the best part of it – they are a wonderful opportunity to learn. And there’s nothing like that moment of comparison, and the “ohhhhh” when you realise what you’ve done! So rather than it being traumatic and off-putting, it’s fun and focuses you very intently on what you are hearing. (For anybody interested in metacognition, this would be a mixture of person and task awareness! Being aware of how you might feel when doing a task and being ready to minimise negative feelings that may interfere with the task, and being aware of what the task will require [including where to find the resources and the effects of using different resources e.g. more challenging recordings vs. “easier” recordings] and its outcomes)

Using the resources and activities for autonomous learning

As with any activities that you want learners to do autonomously, it is important to:

model it in class first – do a small dictation, collaboratively analyse the errors learners make (and if you share their first language and are learning it, and have tried doing dictations, you could also show them yours! I plan to show my efforts to my classes during my next courses at IHPA. Seeing analysis of their own language might make the idea of error analysis in the target language less opaque, and seeing all your errors will hopefully make the idea of making them less taboo.)
point them towards scaffolding resources such as the ESOL Nexus site before you ask them to do the more complex sequences of activities.
in due course, get them to do it as homework (perhaps post outcomes on Edmodo or similar too – my learners enjoyed that)
provide time for discussion in class subsequently. (e.g. Learners could compare their error analysis, swap products and transcripts and see if they can help each other analyse or work in groups and look together at each in turn, while you go round and contribute as you see fit.)
encourage them to set goals regarding how often they will try these activities themselves, not as homework
ensure they have understood where to locate suitable resources
allow them to report back subsequently, to share successes (or failures, which can then be troubleshot), and help them to maintain motivation.

Enjoy!

I hope these ideas are useful and look forward to hearing how you/your learners got on with using them. 🙂 (As ever, related guest posts are always welcome!)

04/06/2014 by lizziepinard

Learning contracts and language learning

The concept

Have you or your students ever made a learning contract before? Up to now, I’ve mostly encountered the concept in association with teaching young learners/teenagers and it generally includes rules for behaviour, which the student and teachers should follow. The idea is that by involving the learners in decisions regarding what should and shouldn’t be done in class, they will be more invested in adhering to these rules and take more responsibility for their own and each others’ actions. If we extend the scope of these contracts to include language learning behaviours then I think (hope!) they could become a very useful motivational tool. As my students have identified, through the projects I’ve done with them, “making goals and communicating them to others is a good way to gain motivation” (Student Feedback).

There would be echoes of:

goal setting theory (Locke and Latham, 1990, in Dornyei and Ushioda 2012:loc 569, in terms of goal difficulty, goal specificity, goal importance and commitment)
motivation theory (e.g. Egbert, 2003, in Dornyei and Ushioda 2012:loc 2039, and Motivational Flow, which requires a balance of challenge and skills, opportunities for focus, clear goals, intrinsic interest and authenticity of task and sense of control over the task process)
learner autonomy theory (in terms of taking responsibility for own learning, making decisions regarding one’s learning etc. e.g. Benson, 2011).

So, I think (hope!) learning contracts, if the scope were extended to include language learning behaviours rather than just classroom behaviours, could be a very useful motivational tool.

How useful? Well, I hope to find out this summer…

The experiment

I’ve just come back to England for approximately three months. During this time, unlike the past 8 months, I won’t be regularly exposed to Italian by default, which means it would be very easy to just ‘not get round to’ working on my language skills and systems. This would be rather a shame as I would inevitably regress fairly significantly in the process. In a vain attempt to maintain my Italian, I am going to make myself a learning contract.

My research questions:

Will making a learning contract help me be more motivated, for a longer period, to keep up my Italian learning while away from la bella Sicilia?
Will I actually do what is on my learning contract or will it have more power than that? What difference will it make?

My methodology:

Make the learning contract on this blog (therefore communicating it to a LOT of people!); copy it to Evernote as a checklist and check things off as I do them. Then uncheck them for take 2, recheck for take 3 etc. In order to keep track of what I’m doing.
Attempt to do what I said I’d do. (!)
Be aware of and make a note of when the learning contract influences my language learning behaviour.
Reflect on my progress with the language and with regards to the contract at regular intervals. (So the contract doesn’t get forgotten!)
See how rusty/otherwise my Italian is by the time I go back to Palermo!

My learning contract:

Read extensively in Italian for at least 20 minutes every day. (I did this in Sicily, so it’s not a huge ask!)
Listen extensively to Italian for at least 20 minutes every day. (This can include radio, podcasts, tv series, films etc.)
Use my Italian graded reader regularly: To include reading it, listening to the audio, completing all the activities, reflecting on the process of using a graded reader for language learning. (I’m very curious to find out what it will be like! Will be a first for me!)
Write on my Italian blog at least once a week. (If I do it more often, great, but a minimum of once a week.) I wrote on the plane yesterday, still need to upload it, so I have done so this week = a good start!
Study grammar at least once a week. (Again, if more, so much the better but at least once is better than nothing!)
Do intensive listening practice at least once a week. E.g. use this site . (Re frequency, as above!)
Record myself (following muttering along to recordings or speaking freely, depending on my focus) at least once a week. (Re frequency, as above!)
Use Quizlet to learn vocabulary at least once a week. Alternate between adding words and playing with words each week. (Re frequency, as above!)
Read something from my Italian magazine at least once a week. (It’s a big magazine, full of lots of articles of varying sizes. It’s sort of science-y, technology-y, news-y in content. I’ve only read about two things so far!)
Send a message to one or more Italian friends on Facebook once a week. (Dual benefit of keeping in touch with people and using Italian!)

Signed: Lizzie Pinard Date: 4/6/14

Next update on my progress due: 4th July or as near thereafter as work permits!

Wish me luck! Let’s see what happens to my Italian in the next few months…

Depending how things go, I may attempt to transfer what I have learnt through this experiment to my teaching in the autumn! I.e. try learning contracts with some of my learners.

References:

Dornyei, Z. and Ushioda, E. (2012) Teaching and Researching Motivation. Pearson Education Limited.

Benson, P. (2011) Teaching and Researching: Autonomy in Language Learning. Pearson Education Limited.

04/05/2014 by lizziepinard

How I’m learning Italian (inspired by the one and only Sandy Millin!)

Sandy’s brilliant post on how she’s learning Russian has inspired me to reflect on and write about my own efforts to learn Italian, with a bit of comparison between my way and hers.

The first difference between our learning is that, when not cancelling them, she is having lessons. What’s more, they are one-to-one lessons. I had a few small group lessons when I first arrived in Italy, and established that I was a terrible classroom learner. Like Sandy, I, too, felt sorry for my teacher having me as a student! I wonder if I would do better in one-to-one classes? It would be interesting to have a few and find out…

I suspect, though, like any adult learner of a foreign language, time management would be an issue. Especially, like Sandy, the whole HOMEWORK bit! During the time period of the small-group lessons, near the beginning of my time here, I mostly did my homework half an hour before the lesson started – it couldn’t have been any nearer the time because our weekly staff meetings immediately preceded the lesson time-slot! On the surface you’d have assumed I was an unmotivated, bad learner. Not so. The problem was that I was too motivated – I had already met what we were looking at in class during my own self-study. So the homework – gap fills and writing out verb conjugations and so forth – was boring.

(Or would it? If I were in a one-to-one class, then theoretically we’d be doing stuff I was interested in knowing, both in the classes and, by extension, for homework. Ah, homework. It’s compulsory to set it here, so with my own experiences in mind, I’ve worked very hard on trying to ensure that the homework I set is meaningful and of interest to my learners.)

Needless to say, I stopped the lessons (time was at a premium and the lessons weren’t doing it for me) and went it alone.

Reading

Harry Potter: tutti i libri!

Knowing that I enjoy reading in languages others than English (especially French), I immediately decided I had to start reading in Italian. So I bought Il piccolo principe from the local bookshop (had to be done, was the first book I ever read in French too…) and downloaded a complete set of Harry Potter books in Italian onto my e-book reader. I also dug out a pdf. of Harry Potter 1 in English. I used them side by side. Sometimes I read a few paragraphs in English, followed by those paragraphs in Italian, and repeat. Sometimes I did the reverse. It was a fascinating voyage of discovery, seeing how things were said in Italian and taking care to keep an eye out for any similarities with French – lexical or grammatical. So I suppose, though I was reading extensively, I was also reading intensively – using the text to learn about language.

Eventually (somewhere part way through this first in the series), I gave up using the English version and just used the Italian version. It wasn’t a conscious decision, so much as a gradual realisation that I had enough language not to need the side-by-side translating any more. I graduated to looking words up when necessary. Initially, quite a few words. (What a terrible language learner! You’re supposed to guess by context/ignore etc. Oh well!) As time passed, fewer and fewer words. What I now rather like doing with words I don’t know is guessing what they mean and then looking them up to see if I’m right or not.

I also downloaded an audio book of Harry Potter 1, having read an article suggesting that extensive listening to audio books, in addition to extensive reading of the same books, can be beneficial. I still haven’t finished listening to it. But I’ve listened to a few chapters, some while reading at the same time and some just listening. A few of my students swear by it (they like graded readers that come complete with audio!).

It’s ok, I haven’t read Harry Potter exclusively – I’m also ploughing my way through a series of books about horses aimed at teenagers. Which is actually useful because I’ve taken up horse-riding again since I’ve been in Sicily, so having a working knowledge of that vocabulary is relevant! I’ve yet to find a use for all the magic-related vocabulary I’ve picked up… 😉

Actually, reading didn’t come first. What came first started before I even got to Italy: Memrise.

Memrise

Screenshot of Memrise site

Once I accepted the job at IH Palermo, I downloaded “Basic Italian” from Memrise, using the app on my Ipad. From this little gem, I learnt how to say something could be dangerous (potrebbe essere pericoloso), to comment on how many taxis I could see (ci sono molti taxi), to ask where the Vatican is (dov’e il Vaticano?), and the Italian for pork (carne di maiale). Which, as a vegetarian, I haven’t had to ask for, but it’s useful to avoid on menus! *NB excuse any errors – it’s been a while since I reviewed these and I don’t often write!

Memrise teaches you chunks and provides lots of random pictures which are supposed to help you remember words. (All I can remember of the pictures was that an alarming number of them featured busty women which had nothing to do with the chunks in question! But I’m sure there were some good ones too.) It also gives you a sense of progress by likening the learning progress to growing flowers. You plant seeds, you grow them, you water them, etc.

Things I like about Memrise:

It gives you chunks: I like chunks. Once I’ve learnt them and can say them, I like analysing them and seeing how they’re made and seeing if I can manipulate them to do other things.

Instant feedback: It gives you a chunk, in Italian or English, you touch what you think is the translation (out of the choice they give you) and it tells you if that is correct or incorrect.

The inbuilt spaced review: It “locks” sets until you need to “water” them.

Audio and visual: As well as seeing the chunks, a voice says them to you. Therefore you can repeat them after the voice.

Priming: You see language in the multiple choices given that you focus on subsequently. So you’ve seen it repeatedly before you focus on it, so it’s a little bit familiar already. Although, who knows how useful that is when it’s all out of context?

Things I don’t like about Memrise:

For the most part, it’s matching/multiple choice. It would be nice if, as well as that, you could graduate on to typing in the translation for long chunks. With multiple choice, sometimes you know which one it is because you know which ones it isn’t. (Though that in itself is an interesting exercise and tests your knowledge of other chunks, I suppose!) I think the closest you get is choosing words from a selection to form the chunks and spelling out words from a selection of letters they give you.

The randomness: There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to the chunks selected. I suppose you could make your own sets like on Quizlet, and then it would be more specific/tailored, but I haven’t got that far with it – it got forgotten before that!

Memrise has the dubious honour of being the only language learning app/programme that I’ve ever used properly. (I’ve also dabbled with Babel but abandoned it very quickly!) Unlike Sandy, I haven’t used Quizlet as a language learner. I’ve used it to revise Delta terminology and I’ve made self-access materials to help my learners use it (though very few of them have got particularly keen on it) but I haven’t tried to use it to learn language. I used Memrise prior to departure from the UK to give myself *something* – as that would be better than arriving in Italy with absolutely *nothing*! I didn’t use it for long after I actually got to Italy. Now that I’ve said that, I plan to open it, run through the sets and see if I can get 100% or what it teaches me this time round!

Vocabulary

So if I don’t use Quizlet and my use of Memrise has died a death, how do I learn vocabulary? Well, I haven’t used vocabulary lists, I haven’t post-it’ed my flat, I haven’t made index cards. I did have a vocabulary note book (which was an appalling example of a vocabulary notebook!) – where I’d note down any words or phrases that interested me, higgledy piggledy, and look over them periodically. I’ve also learnt a bit of various topic-related vocabulary from my course book (daily routine, things in a house, going on holiday, shopping and eating etc. the usual kind of thing!). But the majority of it, I have learnt through reading, as described above. I like the idea of using Quizlet but… a) I’m not sure what vocabulary I’d choose to input. But more importantly, b) I have limited time to devote to language learning and I really like reading and watching dvd series or films. <Bad learner flag!> …although I think I pick up a fair bit of vocabulary from those activities. I feel it’s slightly more meaningful to see vocabulary repeatedly in context rather than in flashcards/lists. Perhaps another thing for my to-do list, though, is use Sandy’s Quizlet guide and see what other people have done with it in terms of learning Italian. That will be most interesting, even if I don’t actually do the games and stuff.

I learnt fruit and vegetable vocabulary from the market, which is also my main location for recycling that vocabulary! Other food vocabulary has come via studying menus in various restaurants. Helpfully enough, my course book had a sequence dedicated to market shopping, so I learnt a few useful phrases that way too.

Listening

I’ve been watching dvds – films or episodes of series – in Italian fairly regularly since my arrival in Palermo. To start with, I used subtitles in English and then very soon switched to Italian subtitles. Then I bought a DVD series with no Italian subtitles! Shock horror! So I had to watch without subtitles. At first, it was just a case of looking at moving pictures and catching the very odd word once in a while. I persevered. A few episodes in, I noticed I was no longer just looking at pictures but also actually understanding some of what was said. Now I can follow reasonably well. I haven’t used subtitles since buying this DVD series, even on subsequently bought DVDs which do have them. Why? I tried it and found the subtitles annoying.

As mentioned earlier in the post, I’m also listening to Harry Potter 1 very sporadically.

….very sporadically!

I’m very unlikely to finish it in the next few weeks, but it will come in very useful over the summer, when I need to find ways to maintain my Italian while not in Italy!

Another good source of things to watch and listen to in other languages is Youtube. I found a lovely cartoon film which had been dubbed in Italian, which I really enjoyed watching while I was in England over Christmas, in a desperate attempt to hold on to some Italian:

Such a lovely little story – do watch it, in whichever language you want to! 🙂

I haven’t used Youtube overly much while in Italy, though, due to my internet connection being limited – I get a certain number of gigabytes of data per month, which streaming would eat into massively. I plan to mine it over the summer – another thing for the Italian Maintenance list…

For the same reason (limited data connection), my use of Italian radio has been… limited. I really should either find my Ipod, which picks up radio but which I’ve managed to lose, or pick up a cheap little FM radio.

My TV doesn’t work, so that hasn’t been a possibility – perhaps next year! (I shall be living in a different flat – hurrah!)

I had some good listening practice during my recent holiday – I wound up having to make and receive a couple of phone calls – every language learner’s nightmare. I used context and key words to get by! I didn’t understand everything but I understood enough – and more than I would have expected to understand. I didn’t worry about the bits I didn’t understand. I also used strategies to check my understanding of what was important e.g. repeating it back and paraphrasing.

Maybe I should do more intensive listening? Make myself do mini-dictations and the like?

Writing

I don’t do a lot of writing. I have, however, tried one thing to give myself writing practice: I started an Italian blog. No, you can’t see it – it’s deliberately set to private!! It has a grand total of about three entries, though there is one entry in my Ipad notes that I haven’t yet uploaded, I don’t think. I can’t even remember. The majority of the writing has been done in Ipad notes, while on planes to and from Palermo. Being captive for three hours seems to work!

What I like about blogging in Italian:

It makes me actually use the language productively. (My receptive skills are so much stronger than my productive skills!)

What I dislike about blogging in Italian:

Time-consuming! So I should maybe set myself a mini-goal such as writing something once a week. Or write less per post and more frequently, until I can do it more quickly.

I can’t say complex things yet (or at least couldn’t when last I tried!) so frustration often accompanies it!

I really ought to dust the blog off and get using it again…

Speaking

Speaking is the missing link in my language learning. I don’t do it nearly enough. For ages I’ve been meaning to try and set up a language exchange but have kept putting it off. Why? Well, what will I say? I’m not that talkative at the best of times! What I’d really like is PSP Speaking sessions like we have in our school (an hour-long, mixed level, group discussion in English on different topics, done in pairs/small groups and then whole-group, with some feedback given) in Italian! Maybe next year I’ll get round to setting up a language exchange…

Grammar

I’ve learnt quite a bit of grammar from an A1/A2 course book that I’ve worked my way through. It’s not bad – generally involves giving you a text in Italian, reading or listening. If a listening text, the transcript is then printed for mining in subsequent activities once you’ve listened for meaning. The grammar comes out of the texts, which have clearly been written for that purpose. I suppose it works for me because I like language in context. I’ve got the B1/B2 book, but I haven’t yet done much of it. I lost my habit of getting the book out first thing in the morning, sometime soon after Christmas. I really should find it again. And remember how lucky I am that I’ve found some Italian course materials that work for me – sounds like it’s much harder with Russian!

What I haven’t done is sit down and learn verb endings. I know plenty of regular verbs/endings in the present, and I can form the past. I have quite a few past participles (or whatever they are called in Italian, the form you use to express the past along with avere). I know some future forms. I know a handful of conditionals. But during the holidays, I noticed that since I never say “we”, I struggled when I wanted to use a conditional “we” form. Of course I found ways around it. So it probably wasn’t necessary. But perhaps it would help to have a look at some verb tables, now that I have picked up a variety of verbs and endings via reading and listening, and compare it with what I’ve picked up.

Productive vs. Receptive

Like many learners, I have a very spiky profile. My receptive skills are pretty strong, while my productive skills are a lot weaker. My receptive vocabulary is pretty big now, my productive vocabulary a lot smaller – though words and chunks are moving across all the time, the more I meet them in various contexts. Perhaps, like Sandy, I should record myself speaking and listen back for mistakes. Perhaps I should pull my finger out and sort out that language exchange. Or, have a few private lessons… I also definitely need to do more writing, as that at least would also force me to produce.

Time

I’m a big fan of little and often, so I don’t need to challenge myself to do ten minutes a day as Sandy did. What I need to do is challenge myself to vary what I do more within the time that I do use. Difficult, though, as the reading I do in the evening (20 minutes) doubles as unwinding and when I watch series in the morning, I’m eating at the same time. When I read Harry Potter during the day, again I’m generally eating. So, maybe, then, I need to *add* ten minutes of non-extensive reading/listening – related activities to what I already do.

Some conclusions

Well, I’ve already drawn plenty of conclusions here , but…

Homework needs to be meaningful if you want your learners to actually do it!

Extensive reading is a very valuable learning tool and should be encouraged. It can be combined with intensive reading of the same text. (I’m sure people won’t necessarily agree with this, but it worked for me so I can live with the disagreement!)

Extensive listening is too!

Language learning is very personal: One man’s meat is another man’s poison. Many of Sandy’s methods don’t appeal to me at all and require much more discipline than I have, but they clearly work for her. Don’t force learners to learn outside the classroom in ways they don’t find useful/appealing. But do encourage experimentation with new ways of learning. (I will try Quizlet, honest…) – This way, they/we may find more ways of learning that work for them/us.

Chunks are good! I agree with Sandy here. As a beginner, starting with chunks then analysing them for grammar later on is a good way forward.

Comparing texts in L1 and target language is useful: I found it invaluable when I started reading. I would have struggled a lot more if I hadn’t had that way in. It made reading in Italian accessible to me.

Reflecting on your learning is also useful: It enables you to be clear about what you’re doing and why, and to identify the gaps in it, as well as look for ways to try and fill those. Metacognitive awareness is very valuable.

I think, also, interestingly, I may be a terrible language student (in a classroom situation) but I’m not too bad of a language learner. I’m motivated, I’m self-aware, I’m fairly disciplined, I work hard. However, I could be better: I don’t vary my activities enough, I rely too heavily on extensive reading and listening.

Methodology

Well, I haven’t experienced Dogme as a learner yet, but, as with Sandy:

All good in my experience!

I would also add:

Looking ahead

What do I need to do in order to develop my Italian? And what do I need to do in order to maintain it for the nearly four months that I’ll be in the UK over this summer?

Keep reading! (That shouldn’t be a problem – I’m only on Harry Potter 5, L’Ordine della Fenice …)

Broaden my reading: investigate different genres – there must be plenty to find on the Internet: newspapers, magazines, forums etc.

Watch films/series in Italian regularly: I will have a decent internet connection while in the UK so no excuses!

Listen to Italian radio: As above!

Speak!: Really need to set up that language exchange…

Try Quizlet?: Investigate it again and see if I can make it work for me. And/or maybe try making a set on Memrise…

Get a grammar book out: Look at the verbs, look at some other grammar and see what I have picked up from reading/listening extensively. Give it names. Look at a few rules. That kind of thing!

Get my course book out: It wouldn’t hurt, would it? Get that routine going again…

Add ten minutes! Do at least ten minutes of studying a day that isn’t extensive reading/listening.

I know from experience (the Christmas holidays – 2 weeks) I will have to make an extra effort to keep it going during the summer. At least the fact that I’m coming back here after the summer should be a good motivating factor!

Watch this space – I’ll post an update on how my aims, above, panned out – especially over summer…

And thank you, Sandy, for inspiring this post!

(PS: to those who are waiting for me to pick up where I left off with the social side of language learning and to respond to comments on the last post I wrote in relation to this, I will get there soon, honest! I’ve been on holiday for a few days so got some catching up to do…)

28/04/2014 by lizziepinard

12 things I’ve learnt about language learning by being a language learner!

Italian and I…

We had barely met when I first arrived in Palermo. I called bruschetta “brooshetta” , pizzeria “pizzERia” and could barely string a sentence together. I had a few Memrise chunks – they meant I could ask where the vatican is (might have got some odd looks from the good people of Palermo if I tried that!*) and comment on the large number of taxies in sight, or surmise that something might be dangerous (me attempting to do anything in Italian, perhaps?) but when I went into a bar/cafe near where I work, I didn’t have the confidence to attract their attention or the language to follow it up with getting what I wanted.

I did have a few lessons but dropped out fairly early on because of a combination of lack of time and being driven slightly mad (much as it was interesting to see the classroom from the learner point of view!). I was, however, very motivated to learn, so worked my way through an A1/A2 coursebook and picked up some useful stuff and some less than useful (the only time I’ve needed to describe my daily routine at length was in a speaking test which formed part of an entrance test when I was thinking of joining a class again! :-p ). I’ve watched a load of dvds, films and series, with then without subtitles. I’ve read extensively. I’ve used what little language I have with various people. The latter three things I’ve kept up while the coursebook (the B1 version now) has fallen by the wayside. Though now that I’ve decided to do another year here, I have renewed my intentions to pick it up and continue…

I love Italian and have enjoyed the learning process thus far. Having just been on holiday around Sicily and having succeeded in putting my language to good use, I feel extra positive about it now! So I thought I’d pull together some things I’ve learnt on my journey as a learner up til now…

12 things I’ve learnt so far from my language learning:

20 mins morning and evening is worthwhile. It must be-it’s all I’ve ever have time to do during the week and I’ve dragged myself from zero to A2 in my 7 months here so far. (In my entrance test I was one point off B1 for the written bit and my speaking was in the same general ball park). However, learners often think that if they don’t have an hour or so to spend, it’s not worth starting. Being busy people, finding that hour is, of course, difficult. 20 mins could be much easier! (I’ve a project under way currently to work on making small slots of time more appealing and likely to be used!)

Read, read, read! When I started Harry Potter one, I was looking up rather a lot of words and I also used a parallel English text alongside the Italian, varying which I’d read first; but now (I’m half way through Order of the Phoenix) I can read, understand and only look up the occasional word (or ignore it and read on!) Also, just because I was a (very) basic user, that didn’t mean I couldn’t start reading books in Italian. Familiar stories can be very useful for soaking up new language. My experiences of extensive reading have fed into my reading project.

I should listen more. I’ve done well with dvd films and series but I haven’t mined radio – took ages to discover I could get it through my ipod and plug that into speakers then promptly forgot ever to do so. (Internet radio is no go because I have a limited monthly data allowance which streaming radio would kill!) I really need to dig out my ipod again…

(Related to above point) getting into a learning routine is really useful! I automatically do my reading each evening (and often with lunch too); for a while (3 months?) I also opened my coursebook religiously each morning with my morning cuppa. Then it just becomes what you do as part of a day rather than an added extra that can be forgotten. How can we help our learners develop helpful routines?

Mapping to other languages is so helpful. French is related to Italian and I have reasonable French, which I’ve used to my advantage in looking for similarities and differences, both of which are useful memory aids. Not to mention just being really *interesting*! While on holiday, my aunt (who has good Spanish and French, but little Italian) and I (good French, basic Italian) were often making comparisons between these languages and also German (we both have a smattering of that too) for both of the reasons mentioned above. So, other languages should be welcomed in the classroom, I think.

I can do more than I perceive. Have just been on this holiday around Sicily, which involved doing a lot of taking charge, as my aunt and uncle, who travelled round Sicily with me, have little (her) to no (him) Italian. I managed. Including several phone calls! I found I had more vocabulary than I realised and could make myself understood fairly easily. When I first arrived, as I said earlier, I once went into a bar to try and get a slice of pizza or similar, but didn’t even have enough language to get their attention and was also too scared to say anything. Progress has definitely been made and that is hugely motivating! (Which underlines how important it is to help learners discover that they can use language – a bit like the budding readers in my classes have done with reading in English…)

Though I didn’t give myself another (Italian) name in the end (see my post about identity here), I’ve noticed that before I speak in Italian, there is a split-second moment where my Italian mindset slips into place, just before I open my mouth. It’s not a “how do you say xxx?” type switch, more of a changing channels to my Italian channel. Maybe this is slightly related to second language identity? (I have to become “Lizzie who CAN speak Italian”…) I’ve also noticed that I respond in Italian automatically when, for example, I bump into someone and need to apologise or what have you. Without thinking. So maybe the Italian mindset is on more than I realise, but when I speak with purpose, I become aware of it?

I have found myself at times trying to apply what I teach to my own learning, especially, for example, the metacognitive approach for listening to stuff, and at times going completely against it (e.g. all the words I looked up initially in Harry Potter!) I have concluded that all is very useful to be aware of, but it’s important to feel the freedom to break rules too: language learning is so personal. Rather than tell a learner you should/shouldn’t do this or that, I’d involve them in a discussion about possible ways of doing things and benefits/limitations of each.

Living in a country doesn’t necessarily mean you do tons of speaking to native speakers, especially if you are low level. But nevertheless, being surrounded by the language counts for a lot. Even just in terms of reminding you to study :-p But also you hear it and see it regularly, even if you don’t do much speaking. When I went to UK at Christmas, I found it much harder to study, a) having lost my routine and b) being surrounded by English again. However, as time passes, and you become more comfortable in your use of the language, exploiting opportunities that DO arise becomes easier.

Losing self-consciousness and focusing on communicating definitely helps. A dash of necessity is useful in making this step. And when you are understood, and manage to do what you want to do, you feel dead chuffed! Again helpful to try and replicate this to some degree in the language classroom, at whatever level. (I think I’d have found it much more motivating to do a task where use of personal details was needed than I did the language practice activity I did have to do, which was pretty much a communicative drill. Not knocking the communicative drill, but maybe an extra task too…)

If you speak other languages, it’s good to try and maintain them while learning the new one. I read in French regularly – generally every evening after I’ve done my 20 mins of Italian reading. (I have a 40 min piece of music that is neatly divided into two sections, so no clock watching needed!) I think a) it’s nice not to lose the previously learnt language and b) it must be good brain gym switching between languages!

If you learn a new word, it’s like making a new friend – in a crowd of other words, where before it would have been just part of that “sea of faces”, once you make friends with a word, it stands out. E.g. I learnt “condividere” today and then overheard some random Italians speaking and picked out that word amongst others. (Was I primed to notice it by having focused on it earlier in the day?) But like human relationships, if you only meet someone once, you may then forget their name/face and need reminding at the next meeting, when you know you know them from somewhere but can’t place them. (Which is more likely to happen when you meet them out of what you perceive as their usual context)

And last but not least, though more being reminded than having learnt:

How much I love languages, language learning and language teaching! 🙂

(* I know – I can substitute other things too…)

La bella Italia – Italian flag: from commons.wikimedia.org – licensed for commercial reuse with modification

11/10/2013 by lizziepinard

Being an Elementary language learner again…

I’ve already written a couple of posts related to being a language learner again, due to my general lack of Italian combined with a job in Palermo – you can see those posts here and here. In contrast with those, this post focuses on being in the language classroom.

I haven’t been a language learner *in a classroom* since I left university in 2006. I haven’t been an elementary language learner in a classroom since I was about 11 or 12. When I went to Indonesia, I didn’t have formal lessons – I learnt from a mixture of self-teaching from a book and ad hoc ‘tuition’ from colleagues (of the “Say it like this…. x” variety). Today I had my second lesson. Two weeks after the first.

It turns out I’m the world’s worst student. This might come as rather a surprise to my tutors at Leeds Met and, indeed, my course mates there, but it is true! Perhaps, then, what I should say is, I’m the world’s worst *language* student. I love learning languages. But, I discovered, I hate being in the classroom as an Elementary (or less) language learner. I basically was the student that no teacher wants in their classroom.

What did I do? Let’s see…

I wasn’t properly engaged with what we were doing.
When we did alphabet flashcards, I didn’t say the letters loud and clear – I mumbled them under my breath.
I didn’t take notes properly.
I didn’t participate whole-heartedly in the group work (we had to introduce ourselves and ask basic questions to each other).
When we did a matching artists to their nationalities activity, I said words instead of sentences in the feedback.

I’m really not proud of this. My poor, poor teacher (who is really lovely!)… I wasn’t being deliberately obnoxious, though – I promise! I *do* want to learn Italian. I’ve even been trying to teach myself using Memrise (the ipad app version) and reading Harry Potter in Italian, switching between the Italian and the English version. I’m really enjoying it too – it’s so interesting finding all the similarities between Italian and French. I’ve done some studying of this sort most days since I have been here. I think I have missed either one or two. This weekend I am going back to the U.K. and will finally be reunited with the books I had bought with the intention of bringing here and learning Italian from and accidentally left in my sister’s flat.

So it’s not that I lack motivation. So what is the problem then?

I think a big part of the problem was I hadn’t finished planning the lesson I was due to teach half an hour after the Italian class was to finish. I had done some planning prior to the class but I also had a bunch of other stuff to catch up with – paperwork, things I’d promised students I’d do etc. So I wanted to be planning. When I’m at work, I want to focus fully on work. Whereas, when I study at home, usually between 8 and 9 in the morning, before I go to work, I can then focus fully on the studying.

However, I will admit, I was also frustrated by the lesson content:

The flashcards annoyed me. Not in and of themselves, but what was on them. Which was a letter, a picture and an example word. What annoyed me was that I was trying to guess the letter pronunciation by how the letter is pronounced in the example word/picture. But it was random – some worked like that, many didn’t. G is a soft ‘g’ when you say the letter but was a hard ‘g’ for the example word, which was il gatto if I remember correctly. Also, prior to forgetting my books in the U.K., I’d had a look in them and had looked at the sounds of Italian and how letters are pronounced in combination. But when you say some as the letter of the alphabet, it sounds different. Much like happens in English. And some I had forgotten probably. So all in all, I kept getting caught out, which frustrated me. Of course it’s useful to be able to spell your name etc., so I’m not knocking it. I’m just pondering why I got so fed up with this activity during the lesson. Maybe I would have been happier if the flashcards had had only letters on and nothing else! I.e. if the picture/word isn’t going to help me say/remember how to say the letter, then I don’t want it there. I already know ‘c’ is for cat or, rather, ‘g’ is for gatto… :-p

Matching the picture of the painting complete with artist’s name with said artist’s country and nationality didn’t grab me. My bad – I should have focused on the fact that knowing nationalities is a good thing. (Of course, that was towards the end of the lesson so the start time of my as yet incompletely planned class was getting imminent.)

Other than the fact that this is a basic Italian course, I don’t know anything e.g. where we are going: we don’t have a course book – which is fine, no problem with that. But in its absence, some kind of vague plan of what we are going to cover would be nice. So that when I get frustrated with the alphabet, I can think, “it’s ok we will be covering x soon, that will be really good.” Of course, I could/should have asked. It’s only occurred to me now, as I reflect, that this is is one of the underlying things that was bugging me/making me irate earlier! So again, my bad.

I’m not averse to pair/group work (you would not have believed this if you were in the classroom earlier…) but I want to be saying more than “What is your name, what is your address, what is your email address etc” (Oooh but it was interesting that the word for the @ symbol in Italian is the word for snail – or is it snail shell, I’m not quite sure – either way, very cool!) Which means, I’m impatient? I’m a less than elementary language learner, “my name is” etc is appropriate, surely? So yet again, my bad…

I left the lesson with every intention of opting out of future lessons. But on reflection, I will definitely give it another go next week. I will try and be more organised with my lesson planning i.e. just get into work earlier (I faffed a bit this morning, I’ll admit. I wasn’t in *quite* as early as usual – though still pretty early. Not early enough with the list of things to do that I had…) so that I can eliminate that stress. And I will ask about the syllabus, maybe initiate some negotiation too. This will be a much more positive response than “I don’t want to do this anymore”! Especially as I fully recognise how fortunate I am that IH Palermo offers new teachers who need it the chance to have 20hrs of Italian lessons for free. It really is a brilliant school to work for. I am so lucky to work here.

Anyway, apologies for this self-indulgent reflection, but on the other hand my blog address is reflectiveteachingreflectivelearning.com, so…. 😉 I do find it incredibly interesting, though, being in the learning seat, especially the elementary learning seat, for the first time since qualifying as a teacher. (Not counting Indonesia/Indonesian because as I mentioned I had no formal instruction…) I think it’s a very valuable experience. What do you think?

Have you undertaken formal language instruction, esp. in a language you have no prior experience of learning, recently? Are you a good language learner? I’d love to hear about your experience of being a learner in the language classroom instead of a teacher. Has anybody else ever been as bad an adult learner as I was today?!

Meanwhile, here’s hoping next Friday will be a very different story from today for me! 🙂 Watch this space. :-p