Negative cultural diversity:  When individuals and groups regard each other suspiciously. 

Stereotype:  When false and exaggerated descriptions of a group are applied to one individual.

Sociotyping:  An accurate generalization about cultural groups as a whole.

Assimilation:  When minorities slowly adopt patterns of a dominate culture.

Acculturation: When individuals or groups of people come into contact with another culture and learn the new culture and understands how it operates.

Deep & surface culture:  “Deep culture is the underlying value and belief system of a society and may not be recognized until values are seriously challenged (text, pg 24).  A person’s surface cultural is reflected in the way they talk, dress, look, and the food they eat. 

Ethnocentrism:  When one culture believes their culture is the best and judges another culture by the standards of one’s own culture.

High-involvement:  The Russian, Italian, Greek, Spanish, South American, Arab, and African are cultures that have high involvement conversation patterns.  These cultures tend to interrupt and speak over one another without offending one another.

High-considerateness:  The Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Americans practice this type of conversation pattern.  While one person is speaking it is the custom for the other person to listen without interruption.  

Low-context cultures:  In this culture all communication must be specific and everything must be explained in detail.  The cultural expectations are mirrored by how people think and act.   

High-context cultures: In this culture all communication does not have to be done through talking.  The cultural members communicate with a fundamental knowledge of how their society thinks and feels.

Field-dependent: A cultural pattern where children rely more on their parents.  These types of individuals do not seek leadership type roles.  This type of child is more sheltered.

Field-independent learners:  Promotes independence.  Parents in this type of culture teach children a learning style that is more independent and self-reliant.

February / March 

         Part IV – Instruction for ESL Learners (Chapter 14-18)

Process Writing

The writing process allows teachers to observe what students think and do through a series of five steps; pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

                  1.  Pre-writing allows students to collect and organize ideas.

                  2.  Drafting gives students the opportunity to put their ideas onto paper

                       without worrying about correct spelling, mechanical errors, and   

                       punctuation. 

                  3.  Revising allows students to clarify thoughts and to get feedback from

                       other students.

4.    Editing gives students time to check grammar, sentence structure,

spelling and organization.

                  5.  Publishing allows students to share their story with others. 

Observations: 

When teachers have a face-to-face conversation with student; observing facial expressions, gestures, and one or two-word responses enables the teacher to assess the students listening skills.

Language Functions

Teachers can evaluate appropriate language through students’ informal talk, reporting, discussing, describing, explaining, questioning, debating, evaluating, and persuading talk.

Anecdotal Observations

The teacher assesses the students’ oral language performance during the social contexts of the classroom.  Anecdotal observation allows for a more open-ended evaluation of the oral language performance of the students.  

SOLOM – Student Oral Language Observation Matrix contains five language traits; comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.   SOLOM is used by teachers to evaluate students’ communication skills in a real-life context.

Strategies & Skills

1.     Vocabulary words – in order to comprehend the reading the teacher must identify the vocabulary words.

2.    Limit the amount of new words.  Introduce and pre-teach three to five words so students do not become confused or bored. 

3.    New words should be connected to concepts the students’ already know.

Six Traits

1.     Pronounce words for students and have them practice saying words aloud.

2.    Avoid learning words with similar forms and meanings. To confusing.

3.    Use short sessions for students’ to study words.  Immediately have students review and practice all new words that are learned the first time.

4.    Keep word study to five to seven words.  Allows for repeated exposure.

5.    Use activities to promote deeper mental processing and retention.  Visual images promote better word association.

6.    Elaborate – new information, sentence examples, parts of speck, definitions, and key word images.

March / April

         Part III – Principles & Practices (Chapter 12-13)

Integrated Language Approaches

Experiential:  students are learning by their experiences 

Content-Based:   “teachers use instructional materials, learning task, and classroom techniques from academic content areas as vehicles for developing language” (pg130, Fundamentals of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language).

Sheltered English:  second language learners are taught in English.  Language skills are developed as students are engaged in cognitive learning at grade level.  To ensure students comprehend teachers must use second language acquisition techniques.

LEA:  (Language Experience Approach).   Reading material is developed by student.  The teacher will use these materials to teach the student reading skills.  The teacher is the facilitator over student’s background knowledge.

MI- Multiple Intelligences identified by Gardner:  linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual/spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.

Five Generic Principles: 

Principle #1:   Productive learning takes places when teachers and students engage jointly.

Principle #2:  Language development must be included in all instructional activities.

Principle #3:  Teachers must provide lessons that demonstrate how “rules, abstractions, and verbal descriptions are drawn from and applied to the everyday world” (pg 139).

Principle #4:  Provide cognitively challenging instruction for English language learners to ensure academic achievement.

Principle #5:  Communicate and engage students in instructional conversation.

April / May 

Part II - Teaching for Communication (Chapters 9-11)

Acquisition theories-

Behaviorist: (Skinner) Children learn first language through the basic elements: stimulus, response, reinforcement.  The theory is that children learn their first language through the interaction with parents or caregivers.

Innatist:  (Chomsky) Believed that infants were born with “a biological language acquisition” (pg 72).

Interactionist:  The interaction between nature and nurture.   Combining the innateness ability and the social environment to acquire language.

Second language acquisition:  The belief that language is directly related to cognitive development and social interaction.

Krashen model

There is a “natural progression in the process of acquiring a second language that is similar to that of acquiring the first language” (76)   Krashen claims that fluent language comes from acquired language and learned language cannot turn into spoken language.

ESOL methods -  English Speakers of Other Languages

Communicative language teaching principles

Communicative principle:  acquisition of language is promoted through activities that involve communication.

Task principle:  language acquisition is acquired through real-life activities.

Meaningfulness principle:  Engaging learners in activities that promote authentic and meaningful use of language.