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joyce L

newlits - Integrating viewing across the curriculum - 0 views

newlits.wikispaces.com/+viewing+across+the+curriculum

visualit_lesson picturebooks shauntan viewing curriculum integrating newlits multiliteracies multimodality

shared by joyce L on 23 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • As a viewer, we are positioned as quite dominant here. This high angle shot, looking down on the sea of people, most of who are looking up to us, portrays them as much less powerful than we, the viewers, are. While the ropes and masts take some of our attention, it is the sheer number of passengers staring upwards that is a salient feature of this photo. Historically we know that most have given all they have to travel to the land of opportunity, often leaving family and friends behind in their birth country. How might an individual feel in the midst of this? Can one historical photo give insight into the emotional experiences of these people? How does this photo suggest we "should" feel about immigrants in general? By explicitly combining knowledge of the photo’s composition and its implied power relations, teachers can help students understand how some images can create empathy, while some can suggest superiority or dominance. It is here that reading a graphic novel such as The Arrival can provide another "account" of the immigrant experience. Compare the historic photo here to the images on Shaun Tan’s website, taken from The Arrival. The images of the harbor entry are particularly poignant, when compared to similar historical photos of the Statue of Liberty who greeted ships coming to Ellis Island. Tan studied many photos and documents from that period and students can find many points of connection when viewing the graphic novel with other historical photos.
  • but for teachers to clearly understand how to guide students in reading visual elements. Making meaning, extracting relevant information, developing relevant, shared metalinguistic terms to describe what is seen, and understanding how images and multimodal texts position viewers are key skills. T
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    Teaching viewing
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    a wonderful resource
joyce L

Film as Text - Swinburne Senior Secondary College - 0 views

www.sssc.vic.edu.au/blade.htm

film

shared by joyce L on 23 Sep 11 - Cached
  • Some questions you might like to ask your class to provoke a response to the opening scenes- What did you see? What did you hear? Where and when is this film set? How do you know? What do you know about this period? Who are the main characters? How do you know? What is this film going to be about ? How do you know? What do the titles and theme music contribute to our understanding of the text?
  • Try showing a key scene, perhaps one suggested by students, and calling the shots or the editing or the lighting for them. Ask them to do the same for the next key scene. My students always end up laughing that for me every scene is a key scene! Show a scene with the sound turned off. Ask students to listen to the same scene with their eyes closed. Get students to identify films where the same techniques have been used, is this a function of genre, time, culture, style, homage or rip off? Ask them to identify how they used this prior experience to understand the narrative of the film being studied. Spend a whole lesson on visual imagery. Spend a whole lesson on symbolism- visual, character, story, sound. In films like Blade Runner it is possible to find all four in one short scene. Ask students to consider the differences between novel, story, plot and script.
  • I like to ask students to set some tasks to be undertaken during a second viewing. Perhaps they might like to divide these tasks amongst the class and pool the information gathered later. You can always seed the things you want them to identify as part of the discussion. Students should view the film a second time, viewing conditions are not so critical at this time. Discussion after the second viewing should be much deeper, it is great to see the lights go on during this discussion. Again, a viewing diary is a good idea.
joyce L

A is for Aspect « An A-Z of ELT - 0 views

scottthornbury.wordpress.com/...a-is-for-aspect

aspect Thornbury ELT

shared by joyce L on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • “Phrases like in an hour and for an hour are part of a mental system in which stretches of time are dynamically spun out, measured, and sliced off … They are temporal versions of the mental packager in the noun system which can convert substances into objects, as when you order a beer or take out three coffees“.
  • progressive aspect
    • joyce L
      joyce L on 06 Aug 11
       
      again aspect as perspective - the way you see something
  • aspect
    • joyce L
      joyce L on 06 Aug 11
       
      aspect is NOT tense
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • x-word grammar and have been encouraging students to say “the -ing form” instead of “present/past progressive” since those traditional terms can be so misleading and are also meaningless to students unfamiliar with them. I use examples like the ones you gave to help them see that the time meaning is found either in the context alone or in the context and the x-word (i.e. auxiliary is vs was etc). The sense of “temporary” is clear.
  • The only difference is syntactic (i.e. the way you make these sentences into questions or the way you negate them). But the meaning of ‘waiting’ is fairly constant, isn’t it?
  • when I tell them that time is not equal to tense. All those years of studying rule after rule leaves them in disbelief.
  • Labelling collocations like the present tense of the verb to be + -ing as the present progressive and then calling the whole thing a tense doesn’t seem to me to be of much use in developing that feel for what -ing means, au fond.
  • we should think of verbs as having a similar potential — to represent states, at times, and actions, at others. Thus, the verbs to know or to want normally describe a state, but occasionally we might want to look inside that state to see it evolving in a more dynamic fashion, hence we might (and do!) say “I find I’m knowing more and more about less and less” or — even more plausibly — “I’ve been wanting to meet you for ages”
  • steady state, as seen in its entirety.
  • I’m with you there; the progressive aspect is commonly used with those verbs traditionally described as ‘stative’ (and it’s become gradually more frequent over the last 20 years or so).
  • And that adding -ing marks them for dynamism. I think this is the line Michael Lewis takes in The English Verb, arguing that the base form – whether used as an infinitive or as a finite verb – is the unmarked form
  • affect (likes, dislikes, preferences, etc) is not normally thought of as being something that evolves, changes shape, has blurred edges, and so on. You either like something or you don’t. Just as you either know something or you don’t.
  • Which is all just to say that our perceptions influence our language choices. A different perception, a different language choice. That’s what I’m thinking/I think!
  • “You change the rules of the game by playing it”, as Diane Larsen-Freeman is fond of quoting. An advertising slogan (itself derived from a colloquialism) or a song lyric, or a line from a film, becomes a catchphrase, and it in turn influences how ‘the language of the tribe’ evolves. ‘I’m lovin’ it’ is a perfect example. ‘OK’ is another.
  • Now taking aspect to be taking a perspective/view on events/objects looking down from above the line we can either zoom out or zoom in. This can have 2 different effects: EFFECT 1– we LOSE OR GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS/ STRUCTURE (if there is any internal structure/process)
  • EFFECT 2 – we LOSE OR GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S OUTLINE (BOUNDARY) or the sense that it is a bounded whole entire UNIT
  • “I’ve been meaning to ask you…”, where MEAN is still solidly stative in general, but has become acceptably dynamic when used, as here, in conjunction with perfect aspect (at leat, in BrE). What is going on here, and can anyone spot other similar cases?
  • Given that perfect aspect allows us to ‘retrospect’ on situations (more on that in a further post) it’s probably not surprising that retrospection encourages an unfolding (i.e. progressive) view of what would normally be states. Hence, ‘I’ve been meaning to…’, ‘I’ve been wanting to…’
  • Could this also explain the difference between “I like swimming” and “I like to swim…” – the former used for the general enjoyment of the activity, the second used often with the (implied) context of a particular (!) occasion e.g.” …on a Saturday morning”. (unbounded vs bounded again) ?
  • Is it improbable to see an analogy in “It was interesting” vs “I was interested” the former being the unbounded experience, the latter the bounded bodily experience ?
  • – e.g. whether there is a core semantic difference between -ing forms and infinitives. I quoted The Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter and McCarthy, CUP, 2006) to the effect that the difference in meaning is often not great, but -ing emphasises the action or event in itself, while the infinitive places the emphasis more on the results of the action or event (p. 515).
  • ater he goes horribly wrong: “In describing a current state… you have to use the simple present — he knows the answer; he wants a drink, not he is knowing the answer; he is wanting a drink. … Presumably this is because the progressive, which turns an action into a state, is redundant with verbs like know and want that already are states” (p.203). The progressive turns an action into a state? Surely it’s the exact opposite!
  • So I propose we stop talking about stative verbs and dynamic verbs, and simply talk about verbs being used sometimes statively and sometimes dynamically. And the same goes for countability in nouns.
  • we seeing these experiences as somehow bounded? ‘I like…’ and ‘I know…’ are definitely not as clear-cut as ‘She crossed the street’, which is an event, and has a definite beginning and end to it. Is ‘boundedness’ perhaps a continuum?
  • If time is represented on a line heading with an arrow from left to right (past –> future) with events placed along it, the tense locates events/objects along the line [relative to points in time, or relative to other objects/events on the line].
  • no internal structure or process to it; (in the noun analogy – we don’t see the dimples on the lemon, we just see a yellow dot)  we LOSE sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS
  • zooming in on an events/objects leads to us to start to see some of its internal structure and processes (in the noun analogy – we start to see the dimples, pips, segments etc).  we GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS
  • noun analogy – see an entire and whole lemon ‘bounded’ by its lemon shape) > we GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S OUTLINE (BOUNDARY)
  • magnifying a bit of an object/event (in the noun analogy – we will then see just a glob of lemon-like stuff – ‘unbounded’
  • But even though verbs such as ‘like’ normally describe a homogenous state, “occasionally we might want to look inside that state to see it evolving in a more dynamic fashion”. It’s because it’s only occasionally that makes it ‘marked’. To use a song as an example of something we like, we could use progressive when We want to show a dynamic change in degree in how much we like it: Okay, I’m liking this song more now, even with the vocals. I’m liking this song more and more every time I sing it. We want to express the dynamic process of beginning to like it: Even it’s only 20 seconds, I’m liking this song already. Or express that it is a dynamic changeable state of affairs: I’m liking this song though it’s surprisingly more country influence than I expected. It still sounds great though.
  • The first, inner circle, represents the here-and-now; the outer circle represents there-and-then. In this way we capture the fact that tense is about distance – typically distance in time, but not necessarily.
  • y way of comparison there are 256 examples of is/are/am wanting (and contractions) although in quite a few of these wanting is an adjective. But: If that’s what Mr. Shipp is wanting, ” she said, ” that’s not possible. The one other point, Daryn, that the marine general is wanting to make is, they are calling this not an evacuation. Bill is wanting to get a job but we can’t because we ain’t got a car And, of course, people are wanting to know who to blame. Is it the band? is it because of my allergies? I am wanting to know because sometimes I stop breathing while I am sleeping.
  • You’ll be wanting a bed for the night, then, I suppose?’ and ‘You want to get married, you want kids, next thing you’ll be wanting Tupperware.
  • progressive aspect with so-called stative verbs is that a lot of the citations with ‘be loving’ relate to enjoyment, e.g. ‘She’s been at university for three months now, and she’s loving it.’ Here, ‘love’ is more or less synonymous with ‘enjoy’, which is traditionally seen and used dynamically, and so it is less marked
  • slightly different sense of ‘love’ that people use when they see something they appreciate, and comment on it, as in ‘I’m loving the new hairstyle!’ Interestingly, people don’t seem to be using ‘want’ in this way, as in *’I'm wanting that car!’
joyce L

G is for Guided Discovery « An A-Z of ELT - 0 views

scottthornbury.wordpress.com/...g-is-for-guided-discovery

Thornbury teaching grammar 'guided discovery'

shared by joyce L on 07 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • most students in the study intially preferred deductive presentations – of the Murphy (English Grammar in Use) type, but after experiencing a more discovery-oriented approach, a signifcant number ‘came round’.
  • I.e. guided discovery applies as much to textual features as it does to lower-level language features such as vocabulary and grammar.
  • model (observe – hypothesise – experiment). In similar fashion, Mike McCarthy and Ron Carter (1995) offered, as an alternative to PPP, their III model: illusration – interaction – induction), which is clearly discovery based.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • “it is easier to build prefabricated bits, with comparatively little grammatical processing, than from single words with much more processing”. Lewis, M. (1997): Implementing the Lexical Approach. Heinle.
  • Instead, they would count as ‘exemplar learning’, i.e. the learning of items, either individual words, multi-word phrases, or prototypical examples of ‘constructions’ – which might subsequently be analysed into their components. Cognitive accounts argue that both rule-learning and item-learning are implicated in language learning – with some competition between the two systems.
  • Emergentist accounts, on the other hand, argue that most, if not all, language learning is exemplar-based: “The knowledge underlying fluent language is not grammar in the sense of abstract rules or structure but a huge collection of memories of previous experienced utterances” (N. Ellis, 2002, p. 166).
  • One great example is using descriptions of situations which the learners have to categorise to help them understand the difference between “He told me he would meet the client today” vs. “He told me he will meet the client today”. I
  • but guiding them through examples and questions gets you to that “ah-ha!” moment. Using extracts from business emails and asking the learners to work out the relationship between the sender and receiver by looking at the complexity of language used is another example of th
  • ’ve observed many teachers struggle to discover the best way to teach. They beg for the answers. However, I don’t believe there are right or wrong answers to their questions.
  • Very briefly, I wonder if the issue of how knowledge is arrived at – e.g. whether inductively or deductively – is of less importance than what you actually do with that knowledge. If it remains inert, then it’s of little use. In other words, (and I think I argued this in a comment on P is for PPP) language development is optimised through language use
  • Brumfit (2001) puts it: “We may learn the tokens of language formally, but we learn the system by using it through reading or writing, or conversing” (p. 12).
  • Good learners are ‘language detectives’. As Joan Rubin wrote, as long ago as 1981: “The good language learner is constantly looking for patterns in the language. He [sic] attends to the form in a particular way, constantly analyzing, categorizing and synthesizing. He is constantly trying to find schemes for classifying information” (Rubin, J. 1981. What the ‘good language learner’ can teach us. TESOL Quarterly, 9).
  • t seems to be used in our field to connote the kind of scaffolding that is able to anticipate the learner’s inductive thought processes, and pre-empt false hypothesising.
  • “Another name for a scaffolding-teaching process is instructional conversation… or prolepsis. I like the concept of proleptic teaching because I now have a name for what I had done as a teacher for many years. I used to think that my teaching approach was inductive. I used a discovery process — some might call it a constructivist approach — to encourage students to come to their own understanding of a particular linguistic point.
  • Prolepsis requires teacher and students to achieve a degree of intersubjectivity, which makes it possible for the teacher to guide the student and for the student to be guided through the process of completing a task. In other words, both teacher and student try to come to an understanding of how each of them views the task and its solution, with the goal of helping the student reshape and extend his or her use of language.” (Teaching Language: from grammar to grammaring, 2003, p.95).
  • in his book The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning (2004) Leo van Lier defines prolepsis as occurring when “we assume (pretend) that learners already have the abilities we and they wish to develop. Together with this assumption we create invitational structures and spaces for learners to step into and grow into” (p.162
  • students looked at a number of T/F questions I had written. Rather than basing these Q’s on vocab’ as so often happens, I tried to make each one relate to the verb forms. For example, the text read: ‘When the bank realised its mistake, Bill had already spent £85,000′. So the T/F Q was: ‘Bill spent £85,000 after the bank noticed the mistake’ – false of course. Students discussed Q’s together then during feedback, I asked why it was ‘true’ or ‘false’ in each case. As we went through each Q, the students got the hang of it more and more.
  • Your approach, based on learners’ comprehension of sentences, is very much consistent with the way that VanPatten’s ‘Input processing’ theory is applied – sometimes known as ‘processing instruction’, and mediated by what Rod Ellis calls ‘structured input activities’:
  • Structured-input activities are comprehension-based grammar activities that go beyond simply presenting learners with enriched input containing the target structure (the stimulus) by means of some instruction that forces them to process it (the response). …
  • anPatten (1996) defines this as ‘a type of grammar instruction whose purpose is to affect the ways in which learners attend to input data. It is input-based rather than output-based.’ (p. 2)
  • As Ellis (2008) points out, “Explicit instruction can take the form of an inductive treatment, where learners are required to induce rules from examples given to them, or an explicit treatment, where learners are given a rule which they then practise using” (p. 882). In other words both an inductive and deductive approach can lead to explicit knowledg
  • I think implicit and explicit make all the difference
  • discovery learning in which students are presented with input and work on it for the sake of meaning, interpretation, communication, and only then are led to focus explicitly on its form, by which time part of it will have been processed implicitly
  • ocusing on form, students are led to notice patterns and draw conclusions, which must be later confirmed by the teacher (or the grammar chart in the book!).
  • As Nick Ellis (2006) reminds us “Not only are many grammatical meaning-form relationships low in salience, but they can also be redundant in the understanding of the meaning of an utterance. It is often unnecessary to interpret inflections marking grammatical meanings such as tense because they are usually accompanied by adverbs that indicate temporal reference”.
  • ick Schmidt (2001) argues, therefore, that “since many features of L2 input are likely to be infrequent, non-salient, and communicatively redundant, intentionally focused attention may be a practical (though not theoretical) necessity for successful language learning”.
  • umphrey’s role would seem to be one that teachers might adopt — drawing learners’ attention to features of their output that are still non-target like, or that threaten their communicative effectiveness – but granting the learner a degree of autonomy in terms of whether and how they deal with the issue
joyce L

Digital Narratives - 1 views

www.teachingthroughdigitalstories.blogspot.com

narratives digital viewing visualit

shared by joyce L on 23 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    great blog discussing teaching digital narratives.
joyce L

home - 1 views

www.shauntan.net

visualit reading viewing picturebooks

shared by joyce L on 23 Sep 11 - Cached
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    highly recommend this author and his picturebooks esp The Arrival which is a wordless picturebook.
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