Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

The use of advertisement as didactic resource in the foreign language classroom according to sociocultural, linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects

Nowadays we are surrounded by advertising; we all are consumers in a society which persuades us to be ones. We are receiving advertising information constantly, consciously and subconsciously, which is why it is a good resource to take advantage of and use it as a resource in order to teach a foreign language. Due to individuals are exposed to advertisement, this paper emphasizes the important of its content from a linguistic, sociolinguistic, sociocultural and pragmatic point of view according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), to achieve an accurate communicative competence. From a theoretical perspective, we have made a distinction between plurilingual and pluricultural competence to speak, then, about the main competences to teach in a foreign language classroom, using advertising resources, according to CEFR. From a practical perspective, we have selected some advertising examples focusing on the objectives of this paper. Because of the amount of advertisements we can find in a society, we have selected just a few examples from newspapers, informative posters and TV spots to accomplish different objectives and proposal in a B1.1 level classroom of English according to CEFR.Hoy en día vivimos rodeados de publicidad, somos consumidores de una sociedad que nos persuade a serlo. Recibimos información publicitaria de forma constante, tanto consciente como inconscientemente, y es por ello que la publicidad es una gran recurso para aprovecharlo y usarlo en el aula para la enseñanza de una lengua extranjera. Debido a que el individuo está expuesto a la publicidad, este trabajo resalta la importancia de su contenido desde un punto de vista lingüístico, sociolingüístico, sociocultural y pragmático, de acuerdo con el Marco Común Europeo de Referencia para las Lenguas (MCER), para alcanzar una adecuada competencia comunicativa. Desde el punto de vista teórico, hemos hecho una distinción entre la competencia plurilingüe y la competencia pluricultural, para luego centrarnos en las principales competencias adesarrollar en el aula de lengua extranjera mediante la utilización de material publicitario de acuerdo con el MCER. Desde un punto de vista práctico, hemos seleccionado algunos ejemplos de recursos publicitarios centrándonos en los objetivos de este trabajo. Debido a la gran cantidad de publicidad que podemos encontrar en una sociedad, hemos seleccionado solo algunos ejemplos de periódicos, posters informativos y spots publicitarios para llevar a cabo diferentes propuestas y objetivos en el aula de inglés con alumnos de un nivel B1.1 según el MCER.Departamento de Filología InglesaMáster en Profesor de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanzas de Idioma

Introducing co-teaching in a PBLL learning unit: “Redesigning public transport in your city”

After observing and implementing a learning unit during the Master’s degree placement period, there was a clear need that could be addressed and improved significantly by introducing this paper’s topic: co-teaching. There are two main advantages that co-teaching provides: in the first place, better attention to differentiation and, in the second place, more time to develop resources and teaching styles in order to focus on both production skills: speaking and writing. Aiming at the emphasis that the Aragonese curriculum for EFL lays on the communicative purpose of a foreign language, co-teaching will enhance and create more possibilities for the practice of communicative skills. By means of interactive, original and well-grounded activities and tasks, students will feel engaged toward creating a meaningful product, i.e. a digital poster, which will contain several measures to improve the public transport system in the city of Zaragoza. Thus, the proposed learning unit is a combination of four pedagogical approaches: co-teaching, Communicative Language Teaching, Project-Based Language Learning and Task-Based Language Teaching. It is precisely by the ambitious combination of all four methodologies that students will be achieving mastery in the communicative competence as a whole, while they work on a topic that is relevant to their personal lives. Hopefully, co-teaching becomes a reality sooner than later and both parties involved, students and teachers, can start benefitting from all its advantages. All in all, the proposed learning activities within the unit are meant to be lifelong practice of Foreign Languages.<br /

Spring School on Language, Music, and Cognition: Organizing Events in Time

The interdisciplinary spring school “Language, music, and cognition: Organizing events in time” was held from February 26 to March 2, 2018 at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Cologne. Language, speech, and music as events in time were explored from different perspectives including evolutionary biology, social cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience of speech, language, and communication, as well as computational and biological approaches to language and music. There were 10 lectures, 4 workshops, and 1 student poster session. Overall, the spring school investigated language and music as neurocognitive systems and focused on a mechanistic approach exploring the neural substrates underlying musical, linguistic, social, and emotional processes and behaviors. In particular, researchers approached questions concerning cognitive processes, computational procedures, and neural mechanisms underlying the temporal organization of language and music, mainly from two perspectives: one was concerned with syntax or structural representations of language and music as neurocognitive systems (i.e., an intrapersonal perspective), while the other emphasized social interaction and emotions in their communicative function (i.e., an interpersonal perspective). The spring school not only acted as a platform for knowledge transfer and exchange but also generated a number of important research questions as challenges for future investigations

Learning by Seeing by Doing: Arithmetic Word Problems

Learning by doing in pursuit of real-world goals has received much attention from education researchers but has been unevenly supported by mathematics education software at the elementary level, particularly as it involves arithmetic word problems. In this article, we give examples of doing-oriented tools that might promote children\u27s ability to see significant abstract structures in mathematical situations. The reflection necessary for such seeing is motivated by activities and contexts that emphasize affective and social aspects. Natural language, as a representation already familiar to children, is key in these activities, both as a means of mathematical expression and as a link between situations and various abstract representations. These tools support children\u27s ownership of a mathematical problem and its expression; remote sharing of problems and data; software interpretation of children\u27s own word problems; play with dynamically linked representations with attention to children\u27s prior connections; and systematic problem variation based on empirically determined level of difficulty

Asymmetrical cognitive load Imposed by processing native and non-native speech

Intonation affects information processing and comprehension. Previous research has found that some international teaching assistants (ITAs) fail to exploit English intonation, potentially posing processing difficulties to students who are native English speakers. However, researchers have also found that non-native listeners found it easier to process sentences given by a non-native speaker with a shared language background, leading to an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB). Therefore, how native speaker teaching assistant (NSTA)’s and ITA’s classroom speech affects the processing, comprehension, and attitudes of listeners with different language backgrounds needs to be further investigated. Using a dual-task paradigm, a comprehension questionnaire, and an attitudinal questionnaire, the present study investigates how the pronunciation and intonation of a NSTA and an ITA affect native English speakers’ and Mandarin-speaking English learners’ processing and comprehension of a lecture, and attitudes towards the two instructors. The present study found shared processing advantages when the listeners shared the L1 of the speaker, but overall lecture comprehension and attitude were unaffected. These findings support and extend prior research studies surveying ITAs’ intonational patterns and ISIB. These findings also have implications for research on the teaching of English pronunciation to non-native instructors.Published versio

3 case studies: a hybrid educational strategy for ART/SCI collaborations

In this paper we report on a transdisciplinary university course designed to bring together fine art/visual communication design and computer science students for the creation and implementation of collaborative visual/audio projects that draw upon the specialized knowledge of both these disciplines. While an overview of the syllabus and the teaching methodologies is undertaken in the introduction, the focus of the paper concentrates upon an in-depth discussion and analysis of 3 specific projects that were developed by 3 distinct teams of students comprised of one artist/designer and one engineer each