Group items tagged

"The Foreign Language Teaching Forum is an integrated service for FL teachers, dedicated to encouraging communication, sharing, and collaboration at all levels. Our broad discussion topic is foreign language teaching methods for any level of instruction in all languages."

"Music is a wonderful tool to integrate into your teaching repertoire, especially if you are a foreign language teacher."

This sounds fun! I would love to try it next year!

"Abstract Despite its obvious importance, it appears that in many foreign language programs, oral practice is not given as much time and attention as it deserves. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that foreign language professionals recognize the need for more oral practice, but do not have at their disposal a convenient means to provide it. An online oral practice/assessment platform, Speak Everywhere, has been developed to fill this void. It allows instructors without special computer knowledge to quickly create video-based speaking exercises and quizzes for their students to work on outside the classroom. The instructor can access the oral productions that the students submit to the system, and grade them or give individual feedback on them either in text or audio or both. Using its flexible and easy-to-use authoring sub-system, it is possible to create exercises of various formats (e.g. Q&A, repeat after the model, structure drills, role-play, and oral reading)."

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the use of Facebook (FB) as a social networking tool in an intermediate French class. After reviewing the available studies on FB in language instruction, we analyze surveys that were administered to students as well as student FB posts. We look at the potential benefits of social media, specifically FB, and discuss its impact on foreign language learning. We aim to address how FB is being used in the language classroom, how students respond to the integration of this social networking site in courses, the attitudes of higher education foreign language learners towards FB, as well as the role of FB in new learning spaces and with today's learners. An analysis of survey data suggests that students respond in a positive manner toward the use of FB in education and highlights some differences in the way FB is used in both personal and academic settings.

Abstract: Since their emergence in 2005, Web 2.0 technologies have been advanced as potentially transformative in the area of education in general and foreign language learning in particular. Web 2.0 technologies are presenting new opportunities for developing diverse online learning environments and enhancing interactivity, participation and feedback between students, their peer groups and teachers. This article examines one of the most significant Web 2.0 tools, Social Networking Sites (SNS), and focuses on Livemocha, an example of an online community specifically aimed at encouraging collaboration between foreign language learners. Results from the ethnographic approach adopted in the paper indicate that: (a) SNSs can be used by language learners to explore new relationships rather than merely maintain existing ones and that (b) longitudinal studies are required to achieve a better understanding of the complex processes of mediation involved in online community formation and maintenance

Funny! I also found this article last week and even attached it to last week's blog post in the ning. I've noticed this morning, that reading and commenting on it is also one of this week's assignments. I guess I chose well :)

ACTFL 2012 presentation How can iPads enrich language acquisition? In this session, results from a 1:1 iPad pilot program in a foreign  language classroom will be analyzed  Lesson plans, activities and assessments will be shared and strategies for applying best practices, even in classrooms without iPads, will be discussed.

Technology in the classroom

Telling and listening to stories is an ancient tradition that can benefit foreign language learners of all ages, languages, and levels of proficiency. Stories contain linguistic, paralinguistic, discourse, and cultural features that provide the comprehensible input and output that students need to develop their conversational skills. Instructors and students can select and tell stories that they enjoy and that interest their listeners. Some interactive story telling activities are presented, categorized as: Change the Story, Group Picture Story, Jigsaw Story, My Story, Oral Reading, Picture Stories, Psycho Story, Rumor, Shuffled Comics, Story Hour, Strip Story, and Tell Us a Story. Contains 33 references. (Author/LB)

This article summarizes various types of useful technological tools for foreign language teaching.

This is a practice-oriented publication that's a bit more casual in tone and practical in content than its scholarly counterparts, while still rigorous in the quality of information it offers. We will feature articles, interviews with notable folks in the field of language teaching and learning, reviews of software, materials, and books, and more!

A lot of great ideas and a nice way to stay informed and to, at the same time, feel connected with a network of language educators who are addressing the same challenges and concerns.

SpatialChat looks so fun! I'll be curious about pricing, and appropriateness and safety for high schoolers.

is an online oral practice/instruction/assessment platform for foreign language teaching. It dramatically increases your students' oral practice opportunities by making it possible to give speaking homework. developed at Purdue

This looks great and it is reasonably priced! Have any of the group memebers used it and can give us an insight about it? Is it possible to purchase more storage?

Abstract This study contributes to the body of research that aims to understand the relationship between online communication and foreign language (FL) learning, in particular when teachers seek to provide authentic opportunities for interaction for their learners. The study was motivated by efforts made in the New Zealand context to overcome the geographic limitations of interaction between FL learners and native speakers. We report on the findings of an exploratory study into an online reciprocal peer tutoring program established to enhance the FL learning of a group of beginner eleven-year old students of Spanish, with particular focus on the benefits of written corrective feedback. The project aimed to examine the processes by which students tutored each other in the online environment as they responded to each other's texts. The analysis of the students' messages focused on (1) the aspects of language corrected by the tutors, (2) the frequency with which tutors accurately identified and provided input on errors, (3) the types of feedback provided by the tutors, and (4) what the learners did with the corrections and feedback. The findings indicate that the students were willing to contribute to peer correction and used different strategies and correction techniques to foster attention to linguistic form, although they were not always capable of providing accurate feedback or metalinguistic explanations.

Flipped or inverted classroom (IC) models are promising for foreign language instruction in that they appear to promote well‐regarded practices that bridge both sociocultural and cognitive theoretical...

I vividly recall sitting in my son's Spanish classroom during an Open House back in 2011, listening to the teacher explain how they reviewed vocabulary and grammar during class. She reminded us of the importance of finding opportunities for students to listen to, and even better, speak the language outside of class.

Interesting comment promoting the discussed topic applied to Spanish.

Click the box next to foreign languages on the left for a filtered list of apps good for language teaching.