Summary and Reflection on Week 6

Reminder:
DO NOT FORGET TO POST REFLECTIONS
For the blog posting assignment, we need to post a message to both summarize and reflect on our class meetings for the week. In addition to summarize, we need to post our insights. Well, I will try to include my reflections as well to this postingJ.

NEXT WEEK
Dr. Ortega kindly extended the due date of our research proposal from Tuesday, October 2 to Thursday, October 11 (WOW, 9 more days to work on, thank you Dr. Ortega!!). We will be learning Cognition from Chapter 5 next week (week 7). In the following week (week 8), we will not have any readings, but need to work hard to complete our research proposal.

Summary:
This week, we read chapter 4 on the environment and Schmidt’s (1983) article on Wes’s language learning experience. On Tuesday, September 25, we were divided into 5 groups in order to summarize and report the theories discussed in the chapter 4.

Five groups were:
1. Acculturation Hypothesis and Input Hypothesis
2. Interaction Hypothesis
3. Output Hypothesis
4. Negative Feedback
5. Limitations on the Theories

Acculturation Hypothesis was introduced by Schumann. The more acculturated is the more successful to learn the target language.

Input Hypothesis was introduced by Krashen. More comprehensible input (i+1, linguistic data slightly above learners’ current level) can help learners acquire the target language.

Interaction Hypothesis was introduced by Long. Long agrees with Krashen’s comprehension, but Long believes that language learning happens through the interactionally modified comprehensible input.

Output Hypothesis was introduced by Swain. In that theory, production is also a key to acquire the target language. Learners many need to challenge themselves in order to produce output (kind of o+1).

We are run out of time on Tuesday, so the group who discussed Negative Feedback reported on Thursday.

Negative Feedback includes clarification request, explicit corrections, recasts, and elicitations.
Lyster and Mori proposed their Counterbalance Hypothesis. In their theory, if the context is meaning oriented, the explicit feedback (focus on form) will work better. On the other hand, if the context is form oriented, the implicit feedback (focus on meaning) will do better.

On Thursday, September 27, Anne and Jung Min facilitated our discussion on Schmidt (1983).

We were divided into four groups in order to discuss Wes’s improvement among Grammatical Competence, Sociolinguistic Competence, Discourse Competence, and Strategic Competence.

Without explicit explanation or formal classroom, Wes had difficulty improving his Grammatical Competence. Since he lacked the Grammatical Competence, he had hard time to improve Sociolinguistic Competence, which requires high level of language competence.
Megumi brought up with an interesting question that whether Wes learn the Discourse Competence or know the Discourse Competence from his L1.
Strategic Competence group agreed that Wes improved his strategic competence ability for carrying out his meaning, but he could not improve accurate part of the competence.

Lastly, most of us believed that Wes was a successful language learner because he was able to communicate and was liked (and respected) by people surrounded to him. In addition to interaction and acculturation, Schmidt argues the importance of attention to learn the target language.


Reflection:
I personally liked the counterbalance hypothesis proposed by Lyster and Mori. It really makes sense to me from my experience of working at the Japanese immersion camp.

As you may know, I work at the Japanese immersion camp every summer. This summer, we made greater shift in our curriculum that we introduced a project-based instruction for our 4-week program. In theory, a project completed by the learners is the way they show what they learn, rather than tests. During the four-week session, learners completed three weekly projects and a final project. Based on this curriculum, we used projects as instruction tools; teachers actually did not give any instructions on grammar and vocabularies, but they gave guidance for students to gather information from the environment. The role of the teachers in this curriculum was one of facilitator rather than lecturer.

The Japanese immersion camp previously used a “project-based curriculum” in which the projects were used to assess learners’ progress in understanding both the Japanese language and the content of cultural material covered in the classroom. However, in this previous curriculum, teachers introduced new vocabulary items and structures in each project unit, which learners practiced in class activities. Teachers also assisted learners with their work by giving them suggestions and providing resources as needed. Teachers usually spent two hours of the instruction every morning and one hour of project time in the afternoon. However, in this new curriculum, teachers were not supposed to give any instructions on grammar and vocabularies in a classroom mode, but gives guidance through mini-lessons that they explained some grammar and vocabulary in the process of completing the projects.

Tell you the truth, the curriculum was not well-received by learners (and teachers as well). Many learners expressed they had not learn anything out of the project-based instruction because they felt they were not receiving sufficient amount of grammar instruction to improve their Japanese. One student mentioned that “the project-based approach is not working very well as it is because the projects do not allow enough time to learn grammar.”

Interestingly, based on my observation and whole-group discussion, the advanced students tended to reject the project-based way of learning since they expressed the interest of learning more complicated grammar structure. The advanced learners are able to handle the complicated context using simple sentences while the lower-level villagers learn simple sentences as new. In that case, teachers do not give any explicit grammar feedback for advanced-level students since learners could handle the target language to complete the project. On the other hand, the learners in lower levels expressed their understanding toward the project-based approach since they were receiving sufficient amount of explicit grammar explanation while they were working on their project.

Maybe, next year, it would be an important idea to incorporate the explicit feedback for the project-based instruction. However, I am wondering how we can introduce the explicit feedback at the immersion camp where we are not allowed to use English and many learners have limited ability to understand high level of Japanese.

In addition to counterbalance hypothesis, one big challenge we had is the lack of output. In an immersion camp I work, we have a lot of input that learners engaged in, but there are limited opportunities for learners actually to produce. Furthermore, many advanced students ended up with completing their projects within their language competence level (without challenging). They are not paying attention for their language learning.
I am wondering how we can promote the output in the classroom using project-based instruction. Projects learners work were proposed by learners and teachers do not know the content and organization until they start working on their project. In other words, we only have opportunities to give negative feedback, but no opportunities for modifying output from the teachers’ side.

Based on Schmidt’s findings on Wes’s successful/unsuccessful acquisition, I think that the promoting positive group dynamics where people surrounded by the learner are willing to listen to each other is important. However, it could be possible that Wes was well-received by other people because he had charisma. I wonder how we as teachers could establish a positive rapport among language learners and let the learner willing to be acculturated toward the target language as Wes did.

Hmmm, there are many things that I can think of now, but it is better to stop now since it would be tired to read the entire thread. Anyway, please give me your feedback on the curriculum at the Japanese immersion camp, I did not make this curriculum, but I was assigned to revise this curriculum for the next year. I am hoping to get your helpful feedback.

See you next week in the classroom!