I was looking through an old website to resurrect an old class. What I didn’t expect to find was this picture of me with beard and an extra 60lbs. This flash from the past drove the point home that the Internet never does forget. Like an old photo album, this can bring back great memories, but it can also lead to significant embarrassment for some.
I often have students post assignments online. For years I brushed aside concerns about having their products available to the public. I put everything out there for the world to see, why shouldn’t they? The reason is that some of that material could be embarrassing or even damaging to job hunters. While seeing your English improve over the years is a great reason to keep a running achieve (portfolio) of your work, at a time when employers scour the Web for information about their potential employees, job seekers might not want their older products out there for employers to find.
This probably isn’t the greatest concern, but it is one that I pay more attention to these days. Identity management is important and only becoming more so. For this reason, much of the required coursework I require online is behind a wall. This doesn’t really agree with my personal belief about putting myself out there for the world to see, but it does put the decision in my students’ hands, which is essential. For those assignments that are out there for the world to see (Twitter, for example), I give students the ability to use pseudonyms (and instruct them how to do so).
What I love about CALL is the focus on extending learning outside of the classroom. I still believe this is a wonderful goal for teachers and students. However, we really do have to consider their feelings on the subject. Give them the opportunity to participate, but also give them the possibility to do so on the down-low.
I’m amazed that I’m now getting bilingual spam in my inbox. It’s amazing that someone figured out that I’m an English speaker with Korean connections and then sent spam accordingly.
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My warmest greetings to you, how are you and your precious life and health?
I hope you are well sounded in good health, my name is Diana, with a gentle tender heart humble and respectful.
I really want to know more about you.
Please, I hope to hear from you soon, because I have something very important to share with you.
Diana
제가 번역하려고
여러분에게 따뜻한 인사 어떻게 귀하와 귀하의 소중한 생명과 건강은?
난 당신이 잘 건강 같았 으면, 내 이름은 겸손과 존경 부드러운 부드러운 마음으로, 다이애나입니다.
난 정말 당신에 대한 자세한 내용을 알고 싶습니다.
당신과 함께 공유 할 수있는 아주 중요한 무언가를 가지고 있기 때문에, 당신이 빨리 왔으면하는 기대하시기 바랍니다.
다이아나
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I give “Diana” great credit for all the work she put into this spam.
Just today I had a revelation when ordering coffee and a scone a local coffee shop (Caribou Coffee). For those of you who know me, you’ll probably say that’s where all of my revelations come from because I spend all of my time in coffee shops. That’s true. What’s more true is that I even use coffee shops and the language used in them as my favorite examples in my methods classes.
I like to talk about the importance of scripts. These are common patterns of interactions embedded in specific contexts. The coffee shop is one of my favorites. The understanding of scripts helps people with limited L2 language skills to cope and communicate in L2 contexts. Ordering at a coffee shop is relatively standard across shops and countries (thanks to Starbucks), particularly across Starbucks shops. Even if I understand little Korean, I can still order at Starbucks in Korea. The more differences between scripts, the greater the likelihood of confusion and breakdowns in communication (not to mention failure to accomplish your task).
At a coffee shop today (granted it wasn’t Starbucks), I came to the realization that my time away from the US makes me a less reliable guide to operating in this culture. It was a small thing, but similar differences can reduce teachers’ effectiveness the longer they are abroad. Now, we can have discussions of whether one needs up to date knowledge of one of the target language cultures to this degree, but I do think it is another hole in the cult of the native speaker.
By now, you may be asking what brought on this realization. As I say in the title, it’s the small things. Coffee shops here (at least the big ones) don’t really do mugs. They might have them, but the default is a to go cup. Even the ones that they had at this Caribou Coffee were only for smalls. So, while they did say, “for here or to go,” staying true to the script, my response didn’t determine which type of cup I received. Secondly, I got a scone. The same thing I get when I go to Starbucks in Korea just about every time. There, scones are served with jelly and butter. When I asked for that here, I was met with a confused look and an employee digging through the refrig to see if they had either of those (they didn’t).
What does all of this mean? First, it means that while I am in Korean, things change in the US. Yes, I know, really deep, Dan. However, these change without my notice and leave me less prepared to operate in my native culture. That is a strange feeling. Second, it means that my expectations of my native culture are influenced by businesses (and thus culture) that I associate with the US, but in reality operate outside of US cultural expectations. This is a subconscious expectation on my part, but one that is very real. In this way, I develop Korean expectations for US language and culture that color my interactions with those people, businesses, and contexts in my native land.
I don’t have anywhere else to go with this. It was just something of my lived experience that I wanted to get out there.
If you hadn’t noticed, I moved my blog to my main site. I thought it was about time for me to bring my blogs back to danielcraig.com. I have the URL, but I wasn’t really using it well to get my name out there. I loved Posterous, but I didn’t want to host my main site there and I felt a little constrained. Add to that the fact that Twitter bought them and Twitter has ruined a number of my favorite apps and I knew it was time to move.
I’ve also wanted to get to know WordPress a little better so I’m going to be playing around with different widgets, add-ons, and themes until I get to a place that I’m comfortable. I’m also experimenting with Drupal on http://www.linguavita.com, but that’s going a lot slower. I’m having a hard time figuring out the basics much less the more complex customizations.
So, check back occasionally. I hope to have this serving as a good base for my activities before too long.
I know that this is a rare post for me. This blog hasn’t been action-packed this year. However, this experience motivated me.
At this time of year, many of us teachers, particularly those of us in Korea, are likely dreading end of semester student evaluations. Not only are these painful due to their impact on our employment status, but they are often worthless in terms of beneficial feedback. Student evaluations can be wonderful sources of feedback on our teaching methods, materials, and overall classroom environment. However, most evaluations focus more on what the administration cares about: Did you teacher come on time, where the materials good, and so on. These are so vague that they are unlikely to help any concerned teacher improve their practice.
I’ve taken a number of approaches to this problem over the years, most included direct questioning, additional surveys (Google Docs is great for this), and even anonymous notes slipped under my door. I don’t know why it’s taken so long for me to come to my most recent approach.
I teach quite a few writing classes, which are some of my most popular courses (not necessarily my favorite to teach). I’ve been doing the same courses long enough that I have my approach down, but I’m always in need of feedback on the topics, classroom management (grouping strategies), and new technologies or tasks. This semester I taught a couple courses that focus on preparing students to take the Korean English teacher exam. The class focuses on writing 2-3 paragraph responses to prompts relating to SLA, TESOL, and classroom management. I had the class write their feedback as a final in-class, timed writing assignment. I was amazed with the feedback.
Now, first let me say that I was nervous before reading each one. It’s tough to get feedback. I don’t think anyone likes negative feedback, but it was required for this assignment. They had to write 2 paragraphs: what should stay the same in this class and what should change in this class. I knew that I was going to get some good criticism….and I did.
I generally don’t take isolated criticism to heart unless it is something that I was worried about previously. There were plenty of these isolated problems that I really didn’t give too much thought about: too many/much reflections for the portfolio, provide detailed outlines for your lectures (never really a lecture in actuality), and so forth.
However, when I start seeing the same ideas/categories repeated, I take note. Some are things that students universally agreed on where the benefits of peer review (this is the first year I’ve seen this agreed on), the number of assignments (this has been the biggest complain in the past…this year I had more), the creation of portfolios, and my “teaching style” (of course, they did this before I had given them a grade, LOL). Agreement on what should be changed was a little more elusive: student presentations (as content for papers) were seen as a waste of time that could be better spent discussing (I see this being a group prepared handout next year) and many people commented on a variety of ways that peer editing could be improved (checklists, modeling, grouping, etc…).
There were many more suggestions that spanned the two categories. Some were more commonly positive like writing topics and the class website, while others were more commonly negative like pacing and Twitter. The Twitter feedback killed me.
I personally love Twitter. I’ve been using it with my writing classes for about 3 years now. It was really difficult at first because nobody had heard of it, much less used it. These days, few are using it, but everyone has heard of it. I get more people each semester who find the value of authentic written interactions in Twitter. These people, however, don’t make up for the masses who would rather not be bothered using it. At this point, I think I will take the hint and kill it for this course. I have other writing courses that are more general in nature and it will likely remain a requirement in those courses. There is more room for using Twitter than in this course.
This kills me not because I like it but rather because I feel that students are missing out a great opportunity. I’ve always justified using Twitter as a way for students to experience daily writing (a sentence a day) and to practice expressing themselves concisely. I still think there are good reasons to use Twitter with a writing class, particularly Korean writers of English. These novice writers are more likely to write confusing, 20 clause sentences.
Facing inconvenient facts is one reason why I love this process. These are things that I would never change if I didn’t have such overwhelming feedback. I love my students for being so honest (at least I’m assuming there is a lot of honesty in there) and I am proud of them for not only providing feedback but doing so with such diplomatic language. The harsh, blunt language I see with many of my novice writers was magically replaced with much softer, modal-rich language. I must be doing something right when they can tell me to go to hell and I appreciate the way they say it 🙂
I’ve taught ESL writing classes for nearly 13 years now. Overall, I really enjoy teaching these courses. It is great to be able to concretely witness student improvement from assignment to assignment. The amazing transformations evident in some end-of-semester portfolios make teaching writing so much more satisfying than “four skills” classes or conversation classes, particularly at higher levels of proficiency. However, there is one practice that drives me nuts, students submitting Google Translate translated papers.
Please, don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them for using it. I used a translation software way back in the dark ages for my Italian classes. I actually think this can be great (wait on the “how/why”).
I can spot a Google translated passage in about 10 seconds. It’s a little eery, but Google actually has a “voice”. It’s a signature voice that, while similar to non-native Engish speaker interlanguage (particularly with Korean learners), is rather easy to identify. I won’t even comment on these papers outside of “rewrite….but actually write it yourself this time.”
So, why do I hate these? Those who do it are lazy. Not because they used Google Translate, but because they didn’t take the valuable second step. They didn’t edit it. Translating software can save people a lot of time, and that’s important to all of us. However, you are missing out an a learning opportunity if you don’t take a look at the translation and edit it for grammar and vocabulary (particularly in regard to context appropriate vocab). It’s important for learners to make sure that the final piece is written in their voice, not Google’s.
So, I finally decided to get my revenge. It was time for students to see what I see all too frequently. I took paragraphs from multiple news stories in an English language Korean newspaper and translated them using Google Translate into Korean (see document below). I then gave them to groups of students and had them translate. They are also instructed to note comment problems/errors with the translations (Korean version), and I asked that they think of strategies for correcting/improving the translations after the fact.
I’m still working out the best approach for this activity, but I was generally happy with the first implementation (2 classes). The students seemed to happily translate the passages, but carrying the activity past this point seemed to drag a little. I fully intend to work it back into future classes though, when appropriate. Any suggestions for next time?
Go to around 18:30 in the video to skip to his talk. I think he’s pretty good at putting his ideas forth and I agree (in general) with his conclusions and queries.
Some interesting points:
The nature and use of knowledge and information are changing and, thus, educational needs are changing.
We need to get credit (as academics) for social media creation. How many tenure committees are going to consider even a high-quality blog? Very few to be sure.
Content captured without context makes less sense. How much of the context do we need to capture?
Major challenges require a socio-technical, interdisciplinary approach. The interdisciplinary part is probably the most difficult. Getting out of our established groupings to collaborate with others outside is difficult.
Need to “cultivate a resilient mindset in our students – an ability to change, adapt, re-conceptualize, and engage in deep listening with humility in an act-reflect, provisional loop.”
I was looking through an old website to resurrect an old class. What I didn’t expect to find was this picture of me with beard and an extra 60lbs. This flash from the past drove the point home that the Internet never does forget. Like an old photo album, this can bring back great memories, but it can also lead to significant embarrassment for some.
