Selasa, 03 April 2012

TEFL 1 Chapter 6


ADE KURNIA

CHAPTER VI
LEARNER VARIABLES I: TEACHING ACROSS AGE LEVELS

A.            Teaching Children
Popular tradition would have you believe that children are effortless second language learners and far superior to adults in their eventual success. On both counts, some qualifications are in order.
1.              Intellectual Development
Since children (up to the age of about eleven) are still in an intellectual stage of what Piaget (1972) called “concrete operations”, we need to remember their limitation. Rules, explanations, and other even slightly abstract talk about language must be approached with extreme caution. Some rules of thumb for the classroom:
a.      Don’t explain grammar using terms like “present progressive” or “relative clause.”
b.      Rules stated in abstract terms should be avoided.
c.       Some grammatical concepts, especially at the upper levels of childhood, can be called to learners’ attention by showing them certain pattern and examples.
d.      Certain more difficult concepts or pattern require more repetition than adult needs. For examples, repeating certain pattern (without boring students) may be necessary to get the brain and the ear to cooperate. Unlike the scene with the little boy who had no pencil, children must understand the meaning and relevance of repetition.
2.              Attention Span
One of the salient differences between adults and children is attention span. But short attention spans do come into play when children have to deal with material that to them is boring, useless, or too difficult. Since language lessons can at times be difficult for children, your job is to make them interesting, lively, and fun. How do you do that?
a.      Because children are focused on the immediate here and now, activities should be designed to capture their immediate interest.
b.      A lesson needs a variety of activities to keep interest and attention live.
c.       A teacher needs to be animated, lively, and enthusiastic about the subject matter.
d.      A sense of humor will go a long way to keep children laughing and learning.
e.      Children have a lot of natural curiosity. Make sure you tap into the curiosity whenever possible, and you will thereby help to maintain attention and focus.
3.              Sensory Input
Your activities should strive to go well beyond the visual and auditory models that we feel are usually sufficient for a classroom.
a.      Pepper your lessons with physical activity, such as having students act out things (role play), play games, or do Total Physical Response activities.
b.      Project and other hands-on activities go a long way toward helping children to internalize language. Small group science projects, for examples, are excellent ways to get them to learn words and structures and to practice meaningful learning language.
c.       Sensory aids here and there help children to internalize concepts. The smell of flowers, the touch of plants and fruits, the taste of foods, liberal doses of audiovisual aids like videos, pictures, tapes, music, all are important elements in children’s language teaching.
d.      Remember that your own nonverbal language is important because children will indeed attend very sensitively to your facial features, gestures, and touching.
4.              Affective Factors
Children are often innovative in language form but still have a great many inhibitions. Children are in many ways much more fragile than adults. Their egos are still being shaped, and therefore the slightest nuances of communication can be negatively interpreted. Teachers need to help them to overcome such potential barriers to learning.
a.      Help your students to laugh with each other or various mistakes that they all make.
b.      Be patient and supportive to build self-esteem yet at the same time be firm in your expectations of students.
c.       Elicit as much oral participation as possible from students, especially the quieter ones, to give them plenty of opportunities for trying things out.
5.              Authentic, Meaningful Language
Children are focused on what this new language can actually be used for here and now. They are less willing to put up with language that doesn’t hold immediate rewards for them. Your classes can ill afford to have overload of language that is neither authentic nor meaningful.
a.      Children are good at sensing language that is not authentic; therefore, “canned” or stilted language will likely be rejected.
b.      Language needs to be firmly context embedded. Story lines, familiar situations and characters, real-life conversations, meaningful purposes in using language, these will establish a context within which language can be received and sent and thereby improve attention and retention. Context-reduced language in abstract, isolated, unconnected sentences will be much less readily tolerated by children’s minds.
c.       A whole language approach is essential. If language is broken into too many bits and pieces, students won’t see the relationship to the whole. And stress the interrelationship among the various skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), or only won’t see important connections.

It takes a very special person to be able to teach children effectively. Along with all these guidelines, an elementary school teacher develops a certain intuition with increasing months and years of experience. If you don’t yet have the experience, you will in due course of time. Meanwhile, you must begin somewhere and these rules of thumb will help.

B.             Teaching Adults
Although many of the “rules” for teaching children can apply in some ways to teaching adults, the latter age group poses some different, special considerations for the classroom teacher. Adults have superior cognitive abilities that can render them more successful in certain classroom endeavors. So, as you consider the five variables that apply to children, keep in mind some specific suggestions and caveats.
1.              Adults are more able to handle abstract rules and concepts. But beware! As you know, too much abstract generalization about usage and not enough real-life language use can be deadly for adults, too.
2.              Adults have longer attentions spans for material that may not be intrinsically interesting to them. But again, the rule of keeping your activities short and sweet applies also to adult-age teaching.
3.              Sensory input need not always be quite as varied with adults, but one of secrets of lively adult classes is their appeal to multiple senses.
4.              Adults often bring a modicum of general self-confidence (global self-esteem) into a classroom; the fragility of egos may therefore not be quite as critical as those children. Yet we should never underestimate the emotional factors that may be attendant to adult second language learning.
5.              Adults, with their more develop abstract thinking ability, are better able to understand a context-reduced segment of language. Authencity and meaningfulness are of course still highly important, but in adult language teaching, a teacher can take temporary digressions to dissect and examine isolated linguistic properties, as long as students are returned to the original context.

Some implications for general classroom management can be drawn from what we know about differences between children and adults. Some management: “do’s” and “don’ts”.
1.               Do remember that even though adults cannot express complex thinking in the new language, they are nevertheless intelligent adults with mature cognition and adults emotions. Show respect for the deeper thoughts and feelings that may be “trapped” for the moment by a low proficiency level.
2.               Don’t treat adults in your class like children by: calling them “kids”, using “caretaker” talk (the way parents talk to children), talking down to them.
3.               Do give your students as many opportunities as possible to make choice (cooperative learning) about what they will do in and out of the classroom. That way, they can more effectively make an investment in their own learning process.
4.               Don’t discipline adult in the same way as children. If discipline problems occur (disrespect, laughing, disrupting class, etc., first assumes that your students are adults who can be reasoned with like adults.

C.             Teaching Teens
The “terrible teens” are an age of transition, confusion, self-consciousness, growing, and changing bodies and minds. What a challenge for the teacher! Teens are in between childhood and adulthood, and therefore a very special set of considerations applies to teaching them. Perhaps because of the enigma of teaching teenagers, little is specifically said in the language-teaching field about teaching at this level. Nevertheless, some thoughts are worth verbalizing, even if in the form of simple reminders.
1.               Intellectual capacity adds abstract operational thought around the age of twelve. Therefore, some sophisticated intellectual processing is increasingly possible. Complex problems can be solved with logical thinking. This means that linguistic metalanguage can now, theoretically, have some impact. But the success of any intellectual endeavor will be a factor of the attention a learner places on the task; therefore, if a learner is attending to self, to appearance, to being accepted, to sexual thoughts, to a weekend party, or whatever, the intellectual task at hand may suffer.
2.               Attention spans are lengthening as a result of intellectual maturation, but once again, with many diversions present in a teenager’s life, those potential attention spans can easily be shortened.
3.               Varieties of sensory input are still important, but, again, increasing capacities for abstraction lessen the essential nature of appealing to all five senses.
4.               Factors surrounding ego, self-image, and self-esteem are at their pinnacle. Teens are ultrasensitive to how others perceive their changing physical and emotional selves along with their mental capabilities. One of the most important concerns of the secondary school teacher is to keep self-esteem high by:
·         Avoiding embarrassment of students at all costs,
·         Affirming each person’s talents and strengths,
·         Allowing mistakes and other errors to be accepted,
·         De-emphasizing competition between classmates, and
·         Encouraging small-group work where risks can be taken more easily by a teen.
5.               Secondary school students are of course becoming increasingly adult like in their ability to make those occasional diversions from the “here and now” nature of immediate communicative contexts to dwell on a grammar point or vocabulary item. But as in teaching adults, care must be taken not to insult them with stilted language or to bore them with over analysis.


















Sociolinguistics


ADE KURNIA

LINGUISTIC VARIETIES AND MULTILINGUAL NATIONS

Over half the world’s population is bilingual and many people are multilingual. They acquire a number of languages because they need them for different purpose in their everyday interaction. Example: like Balinese people have many languages or “logat” to talk with other Balinese people. And they know about another language like Indonesian language English language and so on.  So the Balinese people have multiple languages. The selection of discussion about:
A.          Vernacular Languages
The term vernacular is used in numbers of ways. It generally refers to a language which has not been standardized and which does not have official status. Vernacular are usually the first language learned by people in multilingual language communities, and they are often used for a relatively narrow range of informal functions.
Example:
Like a children are talking with their friends used informal language from his places.
1.            The first language learned by people in multilingual communities.
2.            The variety used for communication in the home and with close friends.
3.            Simply means a language which is not an official language in a particular contest.
(Hebrew → Vernacularisation)
Example: Hebrew
   In the Past
Now
1.      No native speakers
2.      No parental tongue
1.      Vernacularisation
2.      The national language of Israel

B.           Standard Language
The term standard is even more slippery then vernacular because it too is used in many deferent ways by linguists. Here is one definition which can serve as a useful starting point. A standard variety is generally one which is written, and which has undergone some degree of regularization or codification it is recognized as a prestigious variety by a community.
Example:
Human in their places use standard language in their places.
1.             Recognized as a prestigious variety or code by a community.
2.             Generally is written, and has undergone some degree of regularization or codification.
3.             The most useful and widely used as an official language or the national language.
(Example: Standard English)

C.          Standard English
1.             Originally, a regional English dialect.
2.             In 15th, widely used in the Court and the influential merchants of London.
3.             Two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, used it for literature or politics.
4.             London has become the hub of international trade and export.

D.          Lingua Franca
A lingua franca is a language used for a communication between people whose first languages differ. Between the Colombians Indians, Tukano is the main lingua franca, and it can be used with Indians who live in the Vaupes area of the North West Amazon on both side of border between Colombia and brazil.
Example:
Like in Bali, many people want to talk with other people use Balinese language.

1.            Eventually displace the vernacular.
2.            A simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages.
3.            Serves as a regular means of communication between different linguistic groups in a multilingual speech community.

E.           The Development of Pidgin And Creole
1.             Pidgins
Most people have a predictable reaction to pidgin languages. They find them amusing. If you read children story in variety of Pidgin English, it is easy to understand why it sounds a lot like baby talk. But even if we take a serious article from the news paper, many speakers of English still find pidgin languages humorous or babyish.
a.       Why do pidgins develop?
A pidgin is a language which has no native speakers. Pidgins develop as a means of communication between people who do not have a common language. So a pidgin is no one’s native language. Pidgins seem particularly likely to arise when two groups with different languages are communication in a situation where there is also third dominant language.
Example:
Like People from Kintamani talk with someone from Gianyar in the street their pronunciation will be different.

b.      What kind of linguistic structure does a Pidgin language have?
Example:
I have a friend. He is from Kayuambua. He his high Balinese and his brother married with Kristen people and his brother Balinese people. She is can speak high Balinese language with other people because everyday in the “griya” all people there used high Balinese language when he or she speaking. So, she is can speak high Balinese language because that situation each day.

Pidgin languages are created from the combined efforts of people who speak different languages. All languages involved may contribute to the sounds, the vocabulary, and the grammatical features, but to different extents, and some additional features may emerge which are unique to the new variety.

c.       Attitudes
Example:
Like someone long time stay in the foreign to work there and suddenly his or her return to the village and someone ask that people with high Balinese language and he or she said “punapi gatrene?” And he or she can’t give the answer and that people didn’t understand  with the meaning of the question because he or she  often used English language in the foreign so, that someone forget will mother language self when he or she return to the village again.



To sum up, a pidgin language has three identifying characteristics:
1)          It is used in restricted domains and functions,
2)          It has a simplified structure compared to the source languages,
3)          It generally has low prestige and attracts negative attitudes, especially from outsiders.

2.             Creoles
A creole is a pidgin which has acquired native speakers. Many of the languages which are called pidgins are in fact now creole languages. They are learned by children as their first language and used in a wide range of domains.
Example:
Like Balinese children talk with her mother in the house she or he used low Balinese language when he or she want request something to her mother. Example: that children request money to her mother to pay book in the school.

a.       Structural Features
Example:
(a)
Andi membuat sebuah surat                  
He makes a letter                     
Present Tense
(b)
Andi membuat sebuah surat                  
He made a letter                                  
Past Tense
(c)
Andi sedang membuat sebuah surat      
He is making a letter                
Present Continuous
(d)
Andi sedang membuat sebuah surat      
He was making a letter            
Past Continuous

The linguistic complexity of creole languages is often not appreciated by outsider. I mentioned above that pidgin languages do not use affixes to signal meanings such as the tense of a verb or the number of a noun.

b.      Attitudes
Though outsider’ attitudes to creoles are often as negative as their attitudes to pidgins, this is not always the case for those who speak the language.



c.       Origins and endings
Example:
Like from Batur said something used Balinese language with someone in the street and she or he said bee “kar ije” and that someone confuse with the meaning of bee, then that people from Batur explain if the sentence bee that and bee in the sentence has the meaning you (kamu).

The Development of Pidgin and Creole


 














References:
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Ronald Wardhaugh)