SLAVIC 818: Fall 1996

METHODS OF TEACHING SLAVIC LANGUAGES

Professor Benjamin RIFKIN

1440 Van Hise; (26)2-1623; brifkin@facstaff.wisc.edu

Office Hours: T 2:40-3:40; W 1:20-2:10; and by appointment

COURSE GOALS

Upon completion of this course, students will:

1) recognize the importance of life-long professional development for teachers;

2) become acquainted with the professional organizations to which instructors of foreign languages belong (e.g., AAASS, AATSEEL, ACTFL, ACTR, MLA, etc.);

3) recognize that most learners have different interests and skills than most teachers;

4) recognize that we cannot limit our instructional strategies and practices to those teaching practices used by teachers who taught us;

5) demonstrate their understanding of several current theories of second language acquisition and the history of foreign language instruction in the United States;

6) demonstrate their understanding of the concept of “proficiency-oriented instruction) even if they disagree with the implementation of such instruction;

7) demonstrate their understanding of principles behind the design and delivery of classroom instruction for all four modalities and culture;

9) become acquainted with technology for the foreign language classroom;

10 demonstrate the ability to evaluate and select instructional materials for foreign language courses and demonstrate sensitivity to issues of inclusion/exclusion;

11) demonstrate the ability to develop foreign language instructional objectives and individual, pair, small group, large group, and whole-class activities;

12) demonstrate their understanding of theories of assessment and their ability to develop appropriate assessment instruments;

13) demonstrate the ability to diagnose problems in the classroom and reflect on feasible solutions;

14) learn to monitor their own teaching performance; and

15) develop a wide range of repertoires of instructional strategies.

Note: In order to achieve the goals specified on the previous page, this course has been designed to provide students with an introduction to the disciplines of applied linguistics and second language acquisition, as well as to teaching methodology. Furthermore, course assignments and tasks have been designed to simulate assignments and tasks typical of the foreign language classroom, although the content of these assignments has been focused on the aforementioned disciplines. It is the instructor's hope that each student in the class will be exposed to new teaching and testing techniques while taking this course and come to understand and appreciate the diversity of teaching and testing strategies.

Primary Texts:

1. Omaggio-Hadley, Teaching Language in Context 2nd Edition (Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1993) will be referred to in this syllabus as O;

2. Hancock, ed. Teaching Testing, and Assessment: Making the Connection  (National Textbook Co./Northeast Conference Reports, 1994) will be referred to in this syllabus as H and is on reserve at the Instructional Materials Center, 225 Mills St.

3. Coursepack: collected articles, referred to in this syllabus as C, available for purchase at Bob's Copy Shop at Randall Square (across the street from Union South); and

4. Blank Video-Tape (of 2-hour length)

Optional Texts:

Wade, A Comprehensive Russian Grammar. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992);

Crookall & Oxford, Simulation, Gaming and Language Learning (New York: Newbury House, 1990);

Macdonald & Rogers-Gordon, Action Plans: 80 Student-Centered Language Activities. (Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1984);

Schoenfeld & Magnan, Mentor in a Manual: Climbing the Academic Ladder to Tenure. (Madison: Magna, 1994); and

Shoemaker & Shoemaker, Interactive Techniques for the ESL Classroom. (Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1991).

SYLLABUS FOR FALL 1996

IItalicized words below refer to class discussion topics which may or may not coincide with the titles of articles assigned for that date. Readings are identified by authors' names.

Observations, Lesson Plans, and Teaching Activities are in boldface.

Class Week Date Class Topic: Reading or Activity

Due for This Date (Assignments Due)

SCHEDULE OF OBSERVATIONS, LESSON PLAN DEADLINES, TEACHING ASSIGNMENTS FOR FALL 1996

Task Topic Deadline

Observation No. 1 General T9/10

Observation No. 2 Listening OR Reading (as assigned) Th10/10
(Read Brandt/Kagan, Kagan,
Sharan & Sharan in C before observation)

Lesson Plan No. 1 Listening OR Reading (as assigned) T10/15

Observation No. 3 Structure Lesson T10/15-10/22
(Read “Oral Drill Types” in C and O 6, p. 266-285)

Teaching No. 1 Listening OR Reading (as assigned) F10/18 - T 10/22

Lesson Plan No. 2 Structure Lesson Th 10/24

Observation No. 4 Communicative Activity Lesson T 10/22 - T 10/29

Teaching No. 2 Structure Lesson W 10/30-11/11

Lesson Plan No. 3 Communicative Activity Th 10/31

Teaching No. 3 Communicative Activity W 11/13 - M 11/18

SLAVIC 818

FALL 1996 COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1a. Weekly Questions: Informal Style [2]

Once a week (through week 9 only) you will be asked to write a short response (in under 3 minutes) to a question concerning the reading assigned for that particular day. You may use your notes to answer these questions, but you may not look in your books. The questions will not be focused on minor details, but on important points, and will be worth 1 point each, except for week 7, for which there will be two questions for a total of two points.

1b. Vocabulary Quiz

In week 9 you will have a vocabulary quiz based on terms defined in "Technobabble" (in your coursepack.) You will be allowed to use flashcards on this vocabulary quiz: the flashcards may be any size index card with your handwriting on them. You may not use any photocopied or printed material during the vocabulary quiz. Students who score 90% or better on this vocabulary quiz will earn 2 extra points toward the "weekly questions" component of the course grade.

2. Journal Review: Formal Style [3]

Write a short statement describing one or more journals as assigned. Look at several issues of each journal selected. For each journal, answer the following questions:

a. What kinds of articles are included?

b. Who is the intended audience?

c. Is there a theoretical or practical orientation to the journal?

d. Is the journal associated with a professional organization and does it carry advertising?

e. What are the regular "sections" or "columns" of the journal? Are there any regularly appearing features which might be of interest to you or your classmates?

Put the information for each journal on one page; start a new page for each journal, with a clear reference to both your name and the title of the journal at the top of the page. Submit your paper in the number of copies assigned in class (to match enrollment); each member of the class will receive a "reference guide" to all the major journals in applied linguistics, second language pedagogy, and periodicals published by the language teacher associations.

3. Listening or Reading Activity: Formal Style

Plan a listening or reading comprehension activity (as assigned) and implement in your class or in a class where you can "guest teach." (Students in Slavic 818 who are not currently TAs will be assigned a class in which they can "guest teach.) The activity should take no more than 15 minutes total including the time it takes students to listen to or read the text several times.

The activity must FIT into the regular syllabus or program of that class: you may plan to introduce up to 5 new vocabulary items for the lesson, but no more than that. Use the cultural topic of the course to plan your activity, rather than supplementing the course with a new topic beyond the one already covered in the course at this time of the semester.

In your lesson plan specify each component of overview, prime, drill, [practice] and check (according to the way these stages are defined in the Knop article). In addition, specify each of the following points (in "list" format, not in narrative format!):

a. the level of the course and the context of the activity within the course syllabus;

b. the relationship of this activity to the real world context in which students will listen to or read L2;

c. the rationale for the selection and sequence of the components (pre-listening or pre-reading, skimming and/or scanning, intensive decoding, comprehension check/evaluation) of your activity;

d. integration (follow-up) with other modes or activities that you would use if you had more time at your disposal (if you're a guest teacher) or that you will use if you are the actual instructor of the class;

e. error correction strategies;

f. rationale for grouping of students in a particular way (or for not grouping them); and

g. cultural content and goals.

Begin your lesson plan design by determining the cultural content of the course in which you'll be guest teaching and then try to find an AUTHENTIC TEXT that corresponds to that culture topic. Then, and only then, proceed to developing appropriate tasks based on the requirements above. If you are going to prepare your own text for the students to listen to or read (rather than using an authentic text for either modality), and if you are not a native speaker of Russian, you must check the text with a native speaker to make sure that the text is an appropriate language model for our students, that is, that the language in the text is linguistically and culturally accurate and authentic. Lesson plans featuring texts that are linguistically or culturally inaccurate will lose points.

Suggestions for finding authentic texts: For a listening text, try some of the episodes of the video-series "Contact" at LSS; there are segments on most of the cultural topics covered in first- and second-year Russian in this series. The films Fall Marathon and Irony of Fate are shown in segments over the course of the entire year in first- and second-year Russian, respectively. The videotape for the textbook Nachalo is a good source of material for first-year students, as is the programming we now receive from the Russian-American Broadcasting Co. (Check with the media library for information about programs recorded.) For a reading text, consider looking at either volume of Reading Real Russian or advertisements and short articles from current Russian newspapers available at Memorial Library.

Select an OBSERVER from the class who will be present during instruction. The observer will record and report the data of instruction for you which you will need for your self-assessment. The Observer should record data and report only to the person observed.

For this and other lesson design tasks you may choose to seek inspiration from any activity or task described in any of the required or optional texts (or any other book or idea source), but you must cite this inspiration and indicate how you would adopt the activity in order to reflect Russian culture.

After the group discussions of this activity, write a self-assessment of your design and implementation of the activity in your journal and reflect on the data and impressions reported by your observer.

4. Structure Lesson: Formal Style

The structure drill must FIT into the regular syllabus or program of that class: you may plan to introduce up to 5 new vocabulary items for the lesson, but no more than that. Select a grammatical, lexical or syntactical item from among those being covered in the class at the time the lesson is scheduled to take place: Do NOT introduce a new grammatical topic beyond those already presented in the class's lesson.

The lesson, from beginning to end, should take no more than 15 minutes of class time, so you must limit the amount of material you select accordingly.

In your lesson plan specify each component of overview, prime, drill, [practice] and check (according to the way these stages are defined in the Knop article).

Provide a plan for error correction for the different kinds of errors you anticipate the students will make.

You will be assigned to videotape either the structure drill lesson or the communicative activity lesson for the methods seminar.

IF YOU ARE NOT ASSIGNED TO VIDEOTAPE THIS LESSON: Select an OBSERVER from the class who will be present during instruction. The observer will record and report the data of instruction for you which you will need for your self-assessment.

After the group discussions of this activity, write a self-assessment of your design and implementation of the lesson in your journal and reflect on the data and impressions reported by your observor or which you noticed in reviewing your video. Note any surprises in the kinds of errors the students made and what if any changes you made in your lesson plan or error correction strategy along the way.

5. Communicative Activity Lesson: Formal Style

Plan and implement a communicative activity. The communicative activity lesson must FIT into the regular syllabus or program of that class: you may plan to introduce up to 5 new vocabulary items for the lesson, but no more than that. Do NOT introduce a new grammatical topic beyond those already presented in the class's lesson.

Your activity should take no more than 25 minutes. "Host teachers" may (but need not) be present during your lesson, but should not participate in any way.

For your activity, be sure to determine the following and specify them in list format in your lesson plan:

a. the level of the course and the context of the activity within the course syllabus;

b. the relationship of this activity to the real world context in which students will speak L2;

c. the rationale for the selection and sequence of the components of your activity;

d. the nature of role-play or other exercises for pair work requiring the genuine communication of information;

e. explanation of grouping strategies;

f. rationale of error correction strategies used;

g. the use of listening, reading and/or writing activities as "priming"; and

h. the cultural content and cultural goals.

Specify the overview, prime, drill, [practice] and check stages of each part of the lesson.

You will be assigned to videotape either the structure drill lesson or the communicative activity lesson for the methods seminar.

IF YOU ARE NOT ASSIGNED TO VIDEOTAPE THIS LESSON: Select an OBSERVER from the class who will be present during instruction. The observer will record and report the data of instruction for you which you will need for your self-assessment.

After the group discussions of this activity, write a self-assessment of your design and implementation of the lesson in your journal and reflect on the data and impressions reported by your observor or which you noticed in reviewing your video. Note any surprises in the kinds of errors the students made and what if any changes you made in your lesson plan or error correction strategy along the way.

6. Writing Task: Formal Style

Review ACTFL guidelines. Plan a writing task in which you specify the language function, and accuracy expectations. Specify the class and the proficiency level for which the task is designed. Explain why this task is a writing activity rather than a speaking or listening activity. Specify cultural content and goals.

The writing task must NOT use writing ONLY as a support skill for the development of other skills! Writing in the writing task MUST be for the purpose of communication, for the exchange of information between the writer and his/her reader.

Plan a brief presentation (the amount of time given each student will be determined based on enrollment in Slavic 818) in which you present your writing task to the seminar. All the students in the class will fill out a questionnaire/assessment for each of the writing tasks presented. A copy of this questionnaire is in the syllabus packet and the peer assessment will be factored into your grade for this task . As you design your task and your presentation, be sure to check the questionnaire to make certain that your task scores well on all the criteria.

7. Textbook Comparison (5-7 pp): Formal Style

Several new Russian-language textbooks have been published in the last few years and it is time, once again, for our department to consider adopting new textbooks. Every student in the class will have to review several Russian-language textbooks—Golosa I and II (currently in use), Nachalo, RussianAlive!, Troika—in comparison with one textbook of French, German or Spanish currently used at UW-Madison (Parole, Deutsch NaKlar, Claro que si). Each student will select one point of comparison, but each student must choose a different point of comparison from those chosen by classmates. Students may choose from the list below, but may come up with their own ideas. Once students select the point of comparison they wish to use, they