"A strategy to support pupils improve their spelling strategies, by circling words which they think require attention.
The Standards & Testing Agency have in some ways made the marking of spellings more problematic than it's ever been. They state quite clearly, that individual spellings should no longer be pointed out to children if you wish to mark it as an independent piece. This, coupled with Ofsted's move away from heavy amounts of marking needing to be seen in books, could make the marking of spelling seem tricky."
Strategies and techniques for autonomous recording activities in (or outside of) language classes with portable mp3 recorders, including sample materials, and guidelines for evaluation\n
This is a temporary webpage for gathering information on strategies and methods for supporting the International Year of Languages (IYL). It is intended as a location to collect and display information relating to discussions leading up to, among other things, a more permanent web presence.
Advice for language learners
General warning: what follows may or may not apply to you. It's based on what linguistics knows about people in general (but any general advice will be ludicrously inappropriate for some people) and on my own experience (but you're not the same as me). If you have another way of learning that works, more power to you.
Given the discussion so far, the prospects for language learning may seem pretty bleak. It seems that you'll only learn a language if you really need to; but the fact that you haven't done so already is a pretty good indication that you don't really need to. How to break out of this paradox?
At the least, try to make the facts of language learning work for you, not against you. Exposure to the language, for instance, works in your favor. So create exposure.
* Read books in the target language.
* Better yet, read comics and magazines. (They're easier, more colloquial, and easier to incorporate into your weekly routine.)
* Buy music that's sung in it; play it while you're doing other things.
* Read websites and participate in newsgroups that use it.
* Play language tapes in your car. If you have none, make some for yourself.
* Hang out in the neighborhood where they speak it.
* Try it out with anyone you know who speaks it. If necessary, go make new friends.
* Seek out opportunities to work using the language.
* Babysit a child, or hire a sitter, who speaks the language.
* Take notes in your classes or at meetings in the language.
* Marry a speaker of the language. (Warning: marry someone patient: some people want you to know their language-- they don't want to teach it. Also, this strategy is tricky for multiple languages.)
Taking a class can be effective, partly for the instruction, but also because you can meet others who are learning the language, and because, psychologically, classes may be needed to make us give the subject matter time and attention. Self-study is too eas
" "Interactives" provides educators and students with strategies, content, and activities that can enhance and improve students' skills in a variety of curricular areas. "
Novelinks is maintained by the Education section of the English Department at Brigham Young University. Our goal is to provide educators with quality teaching materials that will enhance classroom instruction for a wide variety of commonly taught novels in middle through secondary schools.
Novelinks includes online as well as printed references to biographical, historical and critical insights on authors and their works. We also offer reading strategies and units for specific novels under the heading reading resources.
For language teachers, this accepted presumption of incapacity is a huge hurdle, because it keeps many children and adults from even dipping a toe into the language
pool!
TPR was and is a wonderful way to turn that presumption on its head and show the learner
that, not only can we learn, but under the right circumstances, it's fun!
When we are infants our exposure to language is virtually inseparable
from physical activities. People talk to us while tickling us, feeding
us, changing our diapers... We are immersed in a language we don't
speak, in an environment that we explore with every part of our body.
Our parents and caregivers literally walk and talk us through
activities - for example, we learn lots of vocabulary while someone
stands behind us at the bathroom sink, soaping our hands until they're
slippery, holding them under warm water, rubbing or scrubbing, all the
while talking about what we're doing and what it feels like. In this
way, movement and feeling are intimately tied to the process of
internalizing the language.
Classes are active - you are not in your seat all period. The focus
for the first weeks is on listening and moving in response to what the
teacher says.
There is heavy emphasis on listening comprehension,
because the larger your listening comprehension vocabulary is, the
larger your speaking vocabulary will become.
Lots of
language is learned in happy circumstances, especially while you're
having fun.
In a TPR class,
grammar and syntax are not taught directly. Rather, the teacher
designs activities that expose the student to language in context,
especially in the context of some kind of movement.
I'm asked with some regularity about appropriate foreign language instruction for students with a dyslexic learning or thinking style. I'm quick to recommend finding a school or program that includes - or even better - relies on TPR as its principal instructional strategy.
Typically, the initial TPR lessons are commands involving the whole
body - stand up, sit down, turn around, walk, stop.
Fairly soon, the teacher
quietly stops demonstrating, and the students realize that they
somehow just know what to do in response to the words.
You're
also encouraged to trust your body, because sometimes it knows what to
do before your brain does!
As class proceeds, nouns, adverbs,
prepositions are added until before you know it, students are
performing commands like, 'Stand up, walk to the door, open it, stick
your tongue out, close the door, turn around, hop to Jessica's desk,
kiss your right knee four times, and lie down on Jessica's desk."
It's just that
the instruction is designed to facilitate language acquisition, not
learning a language through analysis, memorization and application of
rules.
But
consider your native language: you did not need to learn the grammar
and syntax of your native language in order to learn to
speak it. You learned those structures, unconsciously as
you learned to speak.
The
first is that in a TPR classroom, the focus is not on analysis of
linguistic structures, but on internalizing those structures for
unconscious use.
When we use TPR
strategies to teach, our goal is truly to be able to understand,
speak, read and write the language, not "about" the language.
I think this creativity, the synthetic rather than analytic experience,
the low stress, and generally accepting environment engineered by the
teacher, are a large part of the reason so many students, including
students with learning challenges, find TPR classes so effective and
enjoyable.
Within these real experiences, students are free to
generate all kinds of expressions using the language they're studying,
and to lead instruction in unique directions.