Poster Presentation

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POSTER PRESENTATION

Topic Activities Unit 10

TOPIC 1:  Unit 10

Some of the accents were drastically different and other accents sounded extremely similar to me.  I was thinking that it also has a lot to do with the background of the listener.  Maybe some of the accents did not seem that different to me because I’ve been to that area of the country and can more easily understand those speakers.  We have to consider that some of our learners may not have ever heard a certain accent before and it could sound completely different from the English they are familiar with!

TOPIC 2:  Unit 10

1.        I found this to be so sad but I know that this isn’t an exaggeration.  This type of thing really happens.  I’ve been places where some of the conversation in the faculty room suggests that some of my colleagues would not only accept, but support this type of behavior.  If they were a bystander in this situation, I don’t think they would do anything at all, in fact, I think they would encourage it.  What would I do?  I like to think that I would have the courage to stand up for these people I don’t know because it’s the right thing to do…I can’t say for sure that my nerves wouldn’t get the best of me.  I can say that I would stand up for my own students and make sure that they felt safe and supported in my classroom, in school and in the community where they live.

2.        I found each of these websites very interesting.  I was especially fascinated by the website about Eubonics as a foreign language.  I like the comment in that article and agree that it is important to at least recognize the language that students bring with them to school. 

I also found the website that provided the “myth/reality” section very interesting.  My favorite myth/reality was:

·         MYTH: Dialects result from unsuccessful attempts to speak the "correct" form of a language.

REALITY: Dialect speakers acquire their language by adopting the speech features of those around them, not by failing in their attempts to adopt standard language features.

Isn’t that how we sometimes look at it?  We assume they are just “messing it up”!  Very interesting and very eye-opening!

Topic 2: Timelines

Please click on the following link to view my timelines.
http://www.slideshare.net/Jbo522/timelines-8618493

Topic 2: Grammar Video

I believe that grammar needs to be taught.  The woman and two gentlemen in the video provide great examples of why it is important to teach grammar.  Betty Azar says that vocabulary is essential but there is a place for grammar.  She also states that “Language should be fluent and accurate.”  In order for language to be accurate, grammar teaching is necessary. 

I agree that immersion is important to reinforce the correct use of the language, but students need the grammatical basis to be able to use the language accurately.  I often find myself pausing during a lesson and giving a quick 1 minute review of a grammatical concept.  Sometimes it’s about Spanish grammar and sometimes it’s English grammar to help clarify a concept that’s making it difficult for students to build connections between Spanish and English.

I also agree that the "zero grammar" approach to teaching to language is wrong.  I was taught to teach that way and have resisted as much as I could.  Students most certainly need to hear the language as much as possible but they also need to receive instruction on the strucutre of the language.

Topic 1: Fisherman Story

1.  His brother bought land last winter. His brother  sold the land to the neighbor when there was trouble with the economy . John loves fishing, but wants to be more successful. When he was sad, he painted his boat, “Troubled Waters,” blue and made it shiny. John asked his brother what he thought of the new look but his brother just laughed and said, “You’re always searching for compliments.”

Since John had no energy he did not argue with his brother. Instead, he created more nets and hoped to catch more fish the next day.

2.  This paragraph may be confusing to ELL’s because of some of the word choice.  The phrases “economy crashed”, “longs to be”, “shined it up”, “fishing for compliments” and “hopes of increasing” may be difficult for ELL’s to understand.  If students take some of these phrases literally, they would not be able to understand the sentence.   I chose to change these phrases because I think using different words would help them better understand the meaning of each of these sentences.

Unit 8 Application Question

I chose the first conversation.

#1  A good school?

(Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Rashid are both parents of students in the district where Mrs. Thomas also teaches.)
Mrs. Thomas: Johnny has Mr. Smith as a teacher next year. I hear he is an excellent teacher.
Mrs. Rashid: He’s very nice.
Mrs. T: Are you happy with the school district?
Mrs. Rashid: There are many lovely people in the neighborhood.

The miscommunication occurs in the way that Mrs. Rashid responded to each of Mrs. Thomas’ questions/statements.  Both of her responses violate the Maxim of relevance because the information she gave in response the question was not relevant.  Mrs. Thomas stated that Mr. Smith was an excellent teacher.  She is expecting Mrs. Rashid to give her opinion or what she’d heard from others about Mr. Smith’s teaching.  Instead, she says he is nice.  This gives her opinion of his personality and does not express her opinion of his effectiveness as a teacher.  When Mrs. Thomas asks Mrs. Rashid the specific question about her satisfaction with the school district, Mrs. Rashid responds with a comment about her neighborhood.  Mrs. Thomas’ question remains unanswered because Mrs. Rashid responded with information that is irrelevant to the questions she was asked.

Perhaps Mrs. Rashid had heard negative things about Mr. Smith and politely tried to avoid contributing to this topic.  Perhaps for the second question, Mrs. Rashid is having difficulty differentiating between her neighborhood community and the school district.  Mrs. Rashid is commenting specifically about the people, not her pleasure or displeasure with the way the school district conducts business.  Both of Mrs. Rashid’s responses reflect how she feels about people.  She may not recognize that Mrs. Thomas is asking about the way Mr. Smith teachers and the way the district serves students and parents.

Grice's Maxims

Maxim of Relevance

In a recent conversation with a colleague, I was guilty of violating this Maxim.  My colleague asked me about something that was clearly at the time very important to her, and I answered with something completely irrelevant!  This colleague is a first-year teacher who often consults me with ideas, problems or questions.  She came to me to ask about how I would handle a situation with an individual student.  In her explanation of the problem, she mentioned “assessment” and instead of answering her specific question, I started talking about the end of year assessment we had recently worked on developing.

I completely changed the topic of our conversation.  I did catch myself and said, “nevermind, I apologize for changing the topic, we can talk about the assessment later” but I still felt badly about the conversation.

                 Maxim of Quality

I often find that students, among many others, violate this maxim.  They sometimes either say what you want to hear instead of communicating how they really feel and sometimes use sarcasm to indicate that what they are saying is false but meant to be entertaining.  In April, I asked a student why he did not have his homework.  Instead of giving me a “quality” answer, he responded that he did not do his homework because the world was coming to an end that weekend.  It was clear through the sarcasm in his voice that he did not actually believe this, but was trying to be funny.

Maxim of Quantity

Me:  What time do you think we should leave to get to your sister’s tomorrow.

Husband:  Whenever.

 This is a conversation that happens too frequently.  Some would agree that it was clear that I was asking for a specific time as part of his answer.  His unclear and unspecific answer got us no closer to making a plan for the next day.

Maxim of Manner

 

I observed a conversation between two colleagues the morning of our last day at school.

 Colleague 1 says,  “Do you think you’ll ever see the sun this summer?”

Colleague 2 did not understand exactly what he meant and said, “Why do you say that?  I’m not working that many hours this summer.” And he responds, “No, I meant if you are going to reorganize all those papers and books over there, you’ll be here all summer.”  She was visibly annoyed by his comment, beyond the fact that she didn’t have any idea what he was talking about until she asked for clarification.