Week 3 Reflection

[SLS 650] Week 3 Reflection

Tuesday (September 4, 2007)

Reflection and Discussion Leader: Everyone has signed up for a
date to do the weekly reflection. The class also requires you do be a
discussion leader, so everyone signed up with a day to be a discussion leader.

Preview Posts: The preview posts were due today! All the previews for each chapter should
be online on our blog.

10 Minute Free Writing Assignment: The topic was cross linguistic influences. We were given only 10 minutes to write about our personal experience through a story.
((I thought found this writing assignment quite difficult to me because I couldn’t come up with something good to share with everyone. I know I’ve had a cross linguistic influence experience, but I just had a hard time getting it on paper. The stories that I read were great! I loved it, and it helped to clarify and understand the whole cross linguistic influence concept.))

The following is the list that was written on the board.

-positive / negative
-conscious or strategic / unintentional
-avoidance / over use / under use
-L2 -> L1
-L3 / L2 / L1
-codeswitching
-interlanguage force (not really related)
-grammar, vocab, pronounciation, pragmatic
-surface/ deep

After writing our story and sharing it to our partner, we analyzed which group our stories fit into.

1) Shaun shared his story about high school students saying “I am chicken” on his flight.

2) Merica shared her story about the mishap between “ungarn” and “ungern”.

3) Miyung shared her story about the Korean greetings “Where are you going?” and “Have you eaten yet?”

Ben also shared his story about “mecha hungry yade”, and his codeswitching between English, Japanese, and Thai.
(I found this to be very interesting because I understand “mecha hungry yade”, and it’s so funny to hear to, but it makes perfect sense to me!)

Our professor also shared her story about not knowing the word for “cold”, but was able to come up with the word “colding” because of the person who asked her if she was “colding”.

Conclusion:
L1 is important in learning L2. Similarities can facilitate more than being a negative effect. A good part of language mistakes are same with first language learners. Therefore contrastive analysis don’t occur anymore because its no longer about the language, but about the language
learner.

Thursday (September 6, 2007)

Helpful Website: The HATESL website was introduced to the class. (http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/web/hatesl/)

Reminder: Research Bibliography due Sunday 16^th. Remember to include a title, and an intro (approx. 1 paragraph). You are welcomed to categorize your bibliography according to the different topics that are involved in your research.

Everyone’s Research Topic: Everyone shared their ideas on what they would like to do for their research project this semester. The following is a list of ideas that everyone came up with.

track own learning, study abroad, language teaching practicum abroad, acquisition related to participation and motivation, 1^st year teachers who were language learners in immersion camps, ethnic identity and language learning process, extensive reading, vocab learning strategies, explicit/implicit knowledge, computer related communication and second language teaching/learning, EFL context and cultural learning, qualitative study on attitude and perception on bilingualism, bilingual education, multilingualism, creoles, vocab learning through reading, incidental vocab learning, early second language learning, effectiveness of making a video and second language learning (technology mediated learning).

(Helpful Hints: When looking for articles, use the abstract! When you are looking through books, use the index! When you’ve started collecting many articles, create folders to help organize the
different articles. And if it’s printed/copied material, create piles!)

When coming up with a research questions, the following three ways were introduced to the class.
-“To what extent…”
-“In what ways….”
-“What’s the relationship…”
This will help direct you in the direction you need to go to further your study.

Developmental Stages for L2 English Questions: The worksheet handed out to us in class gives us an explanation of the different stages. Therefore if you find a student create a question that is not grammatically correct, it isn’t a mistake. It’s away to classify the student in a stage. However, stages don’t do with accuracy, it deals with development. ((I've never thought about classifying English questions into different developmental stages, therefore this excersise was an eyeopener for me. It's very interesting to be able to break down and analyze it to such a specific degree.))

For next class: Our professor has sent out the empirical study in which we should all read. The study by Spada & Lightbown was briefly mentioned in section 3.4 of Chapter 3, therefore you might want to re-read that section before reading. She has also sent out the reading guide that should help with the reading.

Have a great weekend! (^_____^)/