What’s Learning? How does Second Language Learning Take Place?

Education and Learning, Learning, Second Language Acquisition, SLA 0 comments

What’s Learning? How does Second Language Learning Take Place?

Learning can be defined as “the activity or process of gaining knowldege or a skill by studying, practicing, being taught, or experiencing something” (Meriam-Webster Dicitonary). If this definition is to be moved in a Second Language context, it refers to the fact of how learners gain knowledge in the target language by studying in a course or independently, by practicing the target language with peers, by having an instructor guiding the process and scaffolding his/her attempts, or by undergoing some sort of experiential situation that will trigger some new understanding and use of the target language.

Second Language Learning (SLL), although it may be connected to some sort of language teaching methodology and teaching beliefs, take place in the classroom in various ways. 1) SLL is linked to motivation. A language learner must be moved by intrinsic and/or extrinsic circumstances that trigger his/her learning, and that is brought into the classroom. 2) SLL is connected to a systematic organization (lesson plan) that guides a teacher in his/her teaching. A language student –if attending class- is scaffolded by the instructor in his/her studies (cognitive relationship with the subject-matter), while practicing with peers (social presence and interaction) to test and monitor language understanding (teaching presence) that facilitates the students’ learning.

Then, what’s teaching?

If learning is the process of gaining knowledge or a skill, teaching is the “process” in which learners are facilitated “gaining of knowledge or a skill.” Second Language teaching, e.g., implies a method along with teaching beliefs and practices and a certain organization of the class continuum (lesson plan) with learning outcomes fully connected to hierarchical thinking skills clearly stated by Benjamin Bloom (Bloom’s Taxonomy). Additionally, the gaining of knowledge or a skill is also connected to the teacher’s discovery of his/her students’ learning preferenes (VAK or Kolb’s Learning Repertoire). By understanding his/her learners’ preferences, learning outcomes can be clearly defined in Bloom’s Taxonomy’s frame of learning to trigger hierarchical thinking abilities among studetns. And once learning objectives have been stated, the learnin plan (lesson plan) can be prepared with the activities needed to provoke certaing language uses (behavior) among students. As stated here, teaching is a complex process that –for sure- involves both active participants: the learner and the instructor.

? To fully comprehend the scope of this teaching reflections, it is highly advisable that the following topics must be expanded further:

· Kolb’s Learning Model

· VAK (Visual Auditory Kinesthetic) Learning Styles

· Bloom’s Taxonomy

· Hierarchical Thinking Skills

Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano

ELT Trainer, Instructor & Curriculum Developer based in Costa Rica

NCTE – Costa Rica Member

Resource Teacher and Curricular Developer at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina, Costa Rica, since 1998

Contact Information:

Twitter @jonacuso

Email jonacuso@gmail.com

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Article published on Sunday, April 6, 2014

How to quote this blog entry:

Acuña, J. (2014, April 6). What’s Learning? How does Second Language Learning Take Place? Retrieved from Reflective Online Teaching Website: http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/2014/04/whats-learning-how-does-second-language.html

Click here to read this article on a full screen.

What's learning from jonacuso

Sunday, April 06, 2014

A Community of Practice for Professionals? How Come?

Community of Practice 0 comments

A Community of Practice for Professionals? How Come?

For decades, professionals were absent from some sort of professional development (PD) in which the sharing of ideas, practices, and/or methodology was null. However, the start of the new millennium witnessed the rebirth and strengthening of “the Communities of Practice” (COP), where members generate, apply, and reproduce the “process of Knowledge” (Hoadley 2012). By joining a COP, whose ultimate goal is “to share practices” (Hoadley 2012), participants can keep themselves current in their fields and join a community in pro of learning.

Many young, recently-graduated professionals, as well as people who have been in a field for many years, find themselves dealing with the paradox of not needing additional PD. According to Arturo Muñoz, Academic Director at Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano (A. Muñoz, personal communication, January 27, 2014), graduate education is not enough to enter and survive in the job marketplace; it becomes the pillar for one’s professional development. Yet, some professionals believe that they can stand tall by themselves in their fields without the aid of PD. Due to the lack of encouragement by professional affiliations, members do not feel committed to long-life learning assuming that their college education along with his gained professional experience is enough to perform their job-related activities with a high quality standard. Paradoxically, the no need of extra PD can lead to highly-qualified workers to some sort of “isolation” in their fields and to an ongoing outdate practice.

When becoming an active member of a Community of Practice, any professional can keep current in any given field. As pointed out by EDUCASE, a non-profit association whose mission is to advance higher education (2014), “organizations, workgroups, teams, and individuals must work together in new ways.” A COP can help professionals to work cooperatively with many other colleagues; through this exchange with career partners, experts and neophytes can be updated by learning from new trends and published materials shared among members. Furthermore, the Community of Practice as a whole can have access or even create their own curated topics online, which will lead them towards sites and experts with specialized information in their fields of expertise. Through this data, COP members can –for sure- spot new trends in their fields in terms of new approaches or methods that can remodel their way of doing things and change them into more effective ways of work and performance.

A Community of Practice becomes a Community of Learning (COL) in the short run. According to the Harvard Business School (2002, March 22), what makes a COP “successful over time is their ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value” is “to attract and engage members;” this is conveniently accomplished by turning the COP into a Community of Learning. A Community of Practice working as a COL will allow members to share ideas. Harvard Business School (2002, March 22) also points out that this sharing of knowledge can be attained by opening “a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives” and by inviting “different levels of participation.” These “levels of participation” can lead a COL to share their findings, experiences, perspectives, and ideas in their work field for the sake of all members. A Community of Practice is indeed a way to remind professionals that nobody knows it all and that everybody knows something that can contribute to make their working performance more efficient and topnotch.

As outlined here, the traditional view that “as soon as I graduate from college, I don’t need any more PD” is radically wrong. A Community of Practice is the best way to keep professionals updated and learning from other colleagues. A COP/COL is indeed the cornerstone for any professional’s PLN (Professional Learning Network) that can ensure PD, ongoing learning, and broadening of new opportunities and working niches. As stated by Acuña (2013, June 9), the best of a Community of Practice is “the potential it has for sharing and learning.”

Works Cited

Acuña, J. (2013, June 9). Reflective Online Teaching: Community of Practice. Reflective Online Teaching: Communit of Practice. Retrieved January 31, 2014, from http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/search/label/Community%20of%20Practice

EDUCASE (2014) Community of Practice Design Guide. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/nli0531.pdf

Harvard Business School (2002, March 22) Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge - Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice [Review of the book Seven principles for cultivating communities of practice] Harvard Business School. Retrieved from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/2855.html

Hoadley, C. (2012). What is a community of practice and how can we support it? In D. H. Jonassen & S. M. Land (Eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments (Second ed., pp. 287-300). New York: Routledge

Friday, February 07, 2014

From Theory to Practice: Nouns in English

From theory to practice, Grammar, Nouns in English, Syntax 0 comments

From Theory to Practice (1)

Grammar is one of those issues that needs to be stressed with students to help them use it as a communicative resource to sound not only syntactically correct but also idiomatically right. Now that I am currently working with students who need to develop and consolidate their English-speaking skills to perform better in their future working fields, I will be posting regularly sample exercises in various areas of the English grammar.

The first sample activity that I created is the following one on nouns in English. Feel free to download it and use it to strengthen your learners’ communicative resource, -grammar.

From Theory to Practice

Nouns in English

Mass Noun: Nouns that can be pluralized and are always singular such as gases, fluids, natural phenomena, materials, academic fields, ideas, emotions, and behaviors.

Mass-to-Count Nouns: Certain mass nouns that shift to count ones when denoting a type, kind, unit, or serving.

Count Nouns: Nouns that can be either singular or plural, except in certain cases such as scissors that is always a plural count noun.

Collective Nouns: This is a subdivision of count nouns that when being used as subjects, they can take singular or plural verbs with a difference in meaning or intention on the side of the speaker.

1. Classify the following nouns according to the categories below.

binder – difficulty – ethics – beer – ozone – book – beauty – milk – mouse – experience – oil – fish – CD – carbon dioxide – pen – wine – grass – cheese – scissors – rain – marker – helium – tea

*Mass Nouns*	*Mass-to-Count Nouns*	*Count Nouns*

2. Which of the following have no singular forms? Supply the singular form in case it is possible.

	socks		beddings
	pants		slacks
	clothes		scissors
	shoes		jeans
	belongings		belt
	desks		briefs

3. Complete the following phrases with “a unit or a serving of” or with a “collective noun.”

a) a __________ of coffee b) a __________ of deer c) a __________ of chocolate d) a __________ of lions e) a __________ of pastry f) a __________ of geese g) a __________ of bread h) a __________ of witches i) a __________ of pizza j) a __________ of wolves	loaf	band
	pack	cup
	coven	slice
	piece	pride
	bar	flock

From Theory to Practice: Nouns in English from jonacuso

Friday, January 17, 2014

Feedback in Online Learning Scenarios

Feedback, Online Instruction, online learning, Online Teaching Practices, Reflective Teaching, VLE 0 comments

Feedback in Online Learning Scenarios

Feedback is no doubt an essential component of the teaching and learning experience of any student. Whether we are in a face-to-face (F2F) classroom or an online course, feedback provides learners and instructors with information on whether pupils understand the material, how well learners are getting along, as well as whether teacher’s instructions are easy to understand.

In the following discussion, we will analyze a specific teaching scenario related to feedback in an online learning/teaching environment. We will examine one of the scenarios provided below, but you can also feel free to analyze the rest of the teaching situations on your own.

§ Online Scenario 1 — Student Frustration

You notice a few students are meeting frequently in the discussion forum. So you decide to see how their conversations were going. You pull up the transcripts of their conversations and notice that they are complaining about the lack of feedback and poor feedback they are getting from another instructor. The students express how frustrated it makes them and that they feel completely lost in that course.

What should be done when students experience frustration in another instructor’s class? Let it be borne in mind that students expect three types of presence from their instructors: social, teaching, and cognitive presence. By means of all three types of interaction with students, learners expect teachers to make them feel at ease, with a low affective filter, and guided to achieve learning goals in the course. But if these presences are not fulfilled, students will experience frustration and a sense of being lost or guideless.

If confronted with this situation, it is advisable to ask student to discuss the issue with their instructor. Learners’ first reaction is to discuss among themselves what is going on in the course as a way to release their “anger” and “vexation” towards what they are experiencing, but rarely do they go directly to the root of the problem. For this reason, it is important that they can ventilate the issue with the instructor and try to conciliate their positions and find a satisfactory way out. If nothing can be negotiated among the instructor and the students, they must address the issue to the school’s director to have both parties find a consensus that satisfies them and that can allow them to work harmoniously.

Comprehending one’s role as a “counselor” for students is key in trying to help them find a solution for their learning obstacles. Interfering in another colleague’s course is not ethical, but what ethics must tell you to do is to advise students to do the right thing. And if one happens to know the other instructor, how advisable is to tell him/her of what is being discussed among his/her students? It can be some sort of irony of situation, but in a very professional way, it is better to inform the head of the department, who can deal with this issue from a hierarchical dimension that could be better understood by the instructor –who in the students’ mind or perspective is giving them no guidance and is triggering lots of frustration-.

Now, based on the discussion provided above, work on analyzing the following virtual learning environment (VLE) scenarios to come up with you own solutions and ways to palliate the emerging problem and the way to eradicate the problem from your teaching situation.

§ Online Scenario 2 — Lack of Participation

You decide to assign students into groups for their next assignment. You see this as an opportunity for students to learn from each other and to practice their collaboration skills. By mid-week as you check your e-mails, you notice two e-mails from two different students. You open each e-mail to read that both students are complaining about the lack of help they are receiving from their group members.

§ Online Scenario 3 — Teacher Feedback

At the end of your online course, your students are required to complete a teacher evaluation. It consists of likert-scale questions and open-response questions. This is a new initiative started by your institution. You are expected to use the feedback to help inform what you are doing in your course. After the semester is over, you receive your feedback. As you start reading through, you notice that about half of the students really enjoyed the course and found it interesting; however, the other half really struggled with understanding the assignments and thought that the discussions were a waste of time.

? To fully comprehend the scope of this teaching issue, it is highly advisable that the following topics must be expanded further:

· Teaching Presence in VLE

· Social Presence in VLE

· Cognitive Presence in VLE

· Feedback in VLE

· How to deal with learning issues in VLEs

Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano

ELT Trainer, Instructor & Curriculum Developer based in Costa Rica

NCTE – Costa Rica Member

Resource Teacher and Curricular Developer at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina, Costa Rica, since 1998

Contact Information:

Twitter @jonacuso

Email jonacuso@gmail.com

Pronunciation Development	BIN-02 Pronunciation 1
Pronunciation Development	BIN-06 Pronunciation 2
BIN-04 Reading Skills 1	Reading Skills Development
BIN-08 Reading Skills 2	Reading Skills Development
Curated Topics Online	TEFL Daily
	ELT Daily
	English Language Teaching Journal
	Phonemics Daily
	The Linguists: Linguistics News Jonathan’s Learning Attic

Article published on Friday, January 3, 2014

Feedback in online learning scenarios from jonacuso

Friday, January 03, 2014

What’s Learning? How does Second Language Learning Take Place?

A Community of Practice for Professionals? How Come?

From Theory to Practice: Nouns in English

Feedback in Online Learning Scenarios

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