Social Networking-related and professional podcast presentations on July 16th
On July 16th you will give oral reports on your experiences in exploring the scholarly and professional potential of several social networking services that I will introduce to you. You’ll have a maximum of 30 minutes for your presentation.
Social networking sites can be used by students of foreign languages to increase opportunities for interaction with native speakers [see “Social networking for language learners: Creating meaningful output with Web 2.0 tools” by Robert Chartrand and “Online Tools for Language Teaching” by Jeong-Bae Son]. They can also be used by researchers or instructors to network and facilitate collaboration with colleagues [see “Teacher professional identity development with social networking technologies: learning reform through blogging” by Luehmann & Tinelli]. In addition, language samples used in social networking platforms can be studied and analyzed as corpora [see “The Linguistics of Social Networking: A Study of Writing Conventions on Facebook” by Carmen Pérez-Sabater].
Here is a list of some of the social networking sites to explore:
example sites: Steven Pinker, Morten Hunke, Joseph Dias
example sites: Peter Robinson’s page & Joseph Dias’ page
- Path (for communicating in small groups of people who know each other; similar to Facebook but “it’s so personal, you don’t have a profile”).
example site: JALT Lifelong Language Learning Facebook Page
- Delicious (social bookmarking)
example site: Joseph Dias’ “bookmarks”
Useful reference for using Twitter in ESL: Using Twitter as an ESL resource
There are some Twitter feeds that are useful to follow: Linguist List is one example.
Another one is a Twitter group of linguists: linguistics Twibe
Twitter and other social networking services can also be used to study language and language change As explained in this interesting BBC article
example blog on “Whaling” created by Dias to demonstrate to students how to properly paraphrase, quote, and cite sources.
- Linkedin (You can put your CV online, colleagues can “endorse” you, and someone might offer you a job. You won’t really be able to see the potential for this service until you join and begin using it. You will only be able to see the profiles of those who you are “connected” to. You can join professional groups and use the service as a sort of BBS, asking questions to experts in various fields.)
- lang-8: Users write something in the target language and native speakers provide corrections.
Other applications or services that are useful and can be used for collaboration among teachers and students:
Finally, a 400-500 word reflection paper on your understanding of professional development and how it was influenced by this Kiso Enshu is due by the 30th of July. You should send it to me by email AND put a hard copy of it in the box on my office (15-1015) door.
Part 2 of the July 16th Presentation: Podcasts
I will be introducing you to some podcasts for teachers and learners of English. You should “subscribe” to, at least, a few podcasts for teachers and one for learners. And, over the next few weeks, you should keep a journal about your podcast monitoring. In your podcast journal entries, you should…
- Describe the title of the Podcast and its purpose.
- Give the title of the particular podcasts (i.e., episodes) you’re focusing on for the week.
- Describe the episode(s) and what you learned from them.
- From the perspective of a teacher or learner, evaluate the quality of the content, delivery, and usefulness.
- If you are currently teaching, try to apply something you learned from a podcast into a lesson plan.
For your reference, you can find a huge list of podcasts on educational technology (some relevant to language teaching but most not relevant) at this site:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/podcasts-education-educational/id1468?mt=2
Here’s an example of a podcast for students: Splendid Speaking
You can sign up to a newsletter that offers transcripts of the podcasts at…
http://www.splendidspeaking.com/
Homework for Thursday, July 9th
Observation Before our July 9th class, you should watch the Youtube videos which I have assigned to you. They each show an English (or “language arts”) lesson in progress. Use THIS FORM to record your observations of the classes. You will need to photocopy multiple copies of the sheet since just one will be insufficient. [NOTE: Change the last category, “teacher reflections,” to “My reflections.” Try your best to understand the dialog in the videos. I realize that it will be very difficult to understand 100% of it. Each trio of students should divide the videos in equal parts and transcribe their respective parts. Make sure your transcripts are highly detailed as we will use them to practice coding in our next class.
YUKA is responsible for this video (African American students):
KOHEI is responsible for this video (British class):
YUKA AND KOHEI are responsible for this video (sitting students):
PART 2: Also, read this chapter (Huh? Oh. Aha!) from an upcoming book by Prof. John Fanselow. As the book hasn’t been published yet, be sure not to give the article to anyone else. It’s only for your eyes. It was sent to me by Prof. Fanselow as a “sneak preview.” In addition, read this informative chapter about OBSERVATION. If you have time, you might also check out this recent article about John Fanselow’s approach (and emphasis on) observation–co-written by me and several of my colleagues.
Homework for Thursday, June 18: Questioning
Here is the reading for our class on 6/18: asking questions PDF, from the book Social Research Methods, 2nd Edition, by Alan Bryman, OUP.
I have broken up the chapter so that various members of the class can present parts of it to the class, while also providing us with examples of their own and an evaluation of the content. We will conduct the class as a workshop that we’ll be jointly conducted by all the members of the class, so, each student is encouraged to have his/her classmates try out the techniques and suggestions covered in the chapter. You should prepare a PPT on your assigned section. Here are the parts I will assign to you:
Kohei Nemoto: pp. 145 – 148 Open Questions
pp. 146 – 147 What is coding? Coding open questions
pp. 148 – 150 Closed questions
Yuka Ibayashi: pp. 150 – 151 Types of questions
EVERYBODY READS: pp. 152 – 157 Rules for designing questions
Honoka Yasuda: pp. 158 – 159 Vignette questions
pp. 159 – 160 Piloting & pre-testing questions plus pp. 160 – 161 Using existing questions
_________________
Also, here’s a rubric we’ll use for vetting our classmates’ conference proposals:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/TESOLwebsite/docs/march_2012/2013_TESOL_Call_for_Proposals.pdf.
Homework for Thursday, June 4th
Presenting at an International Conference
Find an INTERNATIONAL academic or teaching conference that deals with a topic that interests you. The conference need not be one which is associated with the organization you selected for the presentation that you gave a few weeks ago. Make sure that the conference has an open “call for papers,” which means that the deadline for submitting proposals has not passed. The best way to find such a conference is by using the conference search page on The Linguist List: http://linguistlist.org/callconf/search.cfm . At the top of that page, I would strongly advise you to click in the circle for “Calls” (NOT “Calls & Conferences”) and “Current” (not “All”); select your linguistic field, or the closest category to it, at the bottom of the page (“Applied Linguistics” for language teaching-related conferences).
You can see an example of a “call for papers” for an upcoming conference in India by going here: http://linguistlist.org/callconf/browse-conf-action.cfm?ConfID=212856 .
You should read the “call for papers” connected to your chosen conference carefully and, by next Wednesday, try to come up with a plan for a presentation you would like to give at the conference. At this point, the plan should include:
- a tentative title
- a thesis statement
- an outline of what you would want to cover in the presentation
Also, please print out the “call for papers” and bring it to class so that we can compare their requirements.
Homework for Thursday, May 14th
PART 1:
As I mentioned last week, you should use the book reviews that I gave you as models for writing a one-page (approximately 500-word) review of one of the articles from the journal which you introduced to us in the previous class. Also, prepare an appropriate title for the review and cite the article in either MLA or APA style, whichever seems more appropriate. As you will have noticed in the sample reviews that I prepared for you, a variety of verbs should be used to introduce the content of the article (e.g., the author presents/ argues that / contends / suggests / focuses on / emphasizes, etc.) and you will need to evaluate the article in such a way that will give readers a balanced view of its positive and negative points.
PART 2:
Choose a professional organization (not just a conference!) that is related to the area of your research. You will introduce that organization to us in the next class. Here are several organizations that students have selected in previous classes:
- Mai Tsukahara: [JACET–Japan Association of College English Teachers]
- Erina Iwai: [The Japanese Association Of Sociolinguistic Sciences （社会言語科学会）]
- Shunsuke Morikawa: [JASTEC–Japan Association for the Study of Teaching English to Children]
- Nobumitsu Nishida: [IPrA–The International Pragmatics Association]
- Haruka Wada: [ELEC–The English Language Education Council, Inc.]
- Emiko Kitajima: [SIETAR–Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research]
- Tomohiro Kato: [English Linguistic Society of Japan (日本英語学会)]
- Anna Inaba: [JAITS (日本通訳翻訳学会：The Japan Association for Interpreting and Translation Studies)]
Each student will have to introduce his/ her chosen organization to the class in a presentation. Imagine that you are a formal representative from the organization who has come to AGU in order to recruit new members. Therefore, your presentation should show the organization in its best light. Presentations should be no more than 7 minutes each–including Q & A. In addition to answering all the questions about it (listed below), you may make an emotional appeal by showing what is so exceptional about the organization using testimonials or examples of what the organization has done for individuals involved in it, such as the woman in this YouTube video who speaks about her first-time involvement in a TESOL conference in the U.S.:
The following questions will help you to EXPLAIN about the organization you chose. Research and prepare to introduce the organization to class.
- What does the organization specialize in?
- How does one become a member?
- When and where are its conferences or meetings held?
- How can you become an officer and what roles do the officers have?
- What are the organization’s accomplishments to date?
- Can you find any testimonials given by members of the organization? If so, show some of them.
- What affiliations does the group have with other organizations?
- What publications, if any, does the group produce?
- Does the group have any professional development opportunities, other than conferences?
- Does the organization help with job hunting? If so, how?
- Is the organization involved in any social justice or volunteer activities?
- How do the members of the group keep in touch with each other (for example, do they have a mailing list, Facebook page or Twitter feed)?
- What do you think about this group and can you see yourself as a member?
Homework for Thursday, May 21st
Find an INTERNATIONAL academic or teaching conference that deals with a topic that interests you. The conference need not be one which is associated with the organization you selected for our May 14th class. Make sure that the conference has an open “call for papers,” which means that the deadline for submitting proposals has not passed. The best way to find such a conference is by using the conference search page on The Linguist List: http://linguistlist.org/callconf/search.cfm . At the top of that page, I would strongly advise you to click in the circle for “Calls” (NOT “Calls & Conferences”) and “Current” (not “All”); select your linguistic field, or the closest category to it, at the bottom of the page (“Applied Linguistics” for language teaching-related conferences).
You can see an example of a “call for papers” for an upcoming conference in Naples, Italy by going here: http://linguistlist.org/callconf/browse-conf-action.cfm?ConfID=180655 .
You should read the “call for papers” connected to your chosen conference carefully and, by Thursday the 21st of May, try to come up with a plan for a presentation you would like to give at the conference. At this point, the plan should include:
- a tentative title
- a thesis statement
- an outline of what you would want to cover in the presentation
Also, please print out the “call for papers” and bring it to class so that we can put them on the OHC and compare them.
